writing

Teetering

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Ronan Furuta

This post has been a long time coming. The idea for it has been sitting in the back of my mind for months as I’ve been attempting to deal with my own mental health in the wake of the pervasive shock to my system that has occurred since I’ve been in this stateless place. Though through the process of thinking through this post, the contents and contexts have changed, I think the feelings generally still apply.

When I was young, I hated the rides and roller coasters at theme parks and fairs as the idea of being taken around a metal contraption you had no control over seemed like a silly notion to a kid who never felt in control of his own life. So any time any of my family or friends wanted to ride a ride, I would walk through the lines with them until it came time to take your place in the wagon, cart, or wheel. At that point, I would simply walk out the exit. Everyone in line would try and convince me to stay, telling me how not scary it really was and if I were to just try and ride, I would like the experience. However, I knew this to be untrue as every ride up to this point felt like an excruciating experience, and making the ride taller and faster did not make relate to making the experience any better for me. So I would leave, and in those few moments of freedom, I would watch and wonder what the other people must have been experiencing being taken around by these giant machines.
At these parks, I become fascinated with one ride in particular, round up. This ride consisted of a spinning disk surrounded by metal fences, usually with beautiful blinking lights on the outside. Every time the ride stopped, new people would file in and find a spot, and then slowly, the disk would spin like a top. Up and down, left and right, round and round again, as people felt themselves pushed back into the fence without so much as a strap or buckle. I would watch people go around, unable to move as this large machine tilted and teetered back and forth. Until sometime later, the ride would slow and come to a stop before starting all over again. I wasn’t so much fascinated with the experience of the ride but the motion of the machine as it would bring people up and down with so much ease creating the illusion of excitement with every lift but never actually changing the experience of those who are riding it. It is in these times when I would stand there watching the blinking lights go round and round, what it would be like wondering what it would be like to just spin forever.

I never really put much thought into the ups and downs of my life other than the occasional consideration as to whether the inconsistent but frequent tumults stem from avoidable circumstances or actions. It wasn’t until the stacking of traumas and tragedies that it felt thought that my own world began to teeter uncontrollably. These high highs would be followed by low lows, each success followed promptly by a disappointment. This moving back and forth became heavy, and I began to become scared of spikes that would throw my world into chaos.

Truthfully it felt like someone had their hand on my head and would push it under the water, only to bring me up to catch my breath. I was swaying, spinning, and losing my footing. Each day became a chore, and each night a relief. Life became like walking through water, getting up on instinct rather than motivation.

I can tell you that I didn’t realize how much my mind was spinning round and round until I finally got some medicine that let it stand still. I didn’t know how pressure accumulated and built upon me, crushing my body and my hopes and dreams. It was then that it felt like I had lost myself, and it made me wonder why I tried so hard in the first place. I lost my way; the spinning made me lose sight of the ground and the sky, for it all to become a blur that some invisible force kept me down. Each teeter gave me hope but then promptly dashed it. Things I could normally handle began to stack higher, and the impossibility of banal tasks made me sink lower. When these dark thoughts began to pervade my mind and my feelings, all my actions that I felt out of control and I wanted to disappear. To hopefully be thrown for the ride and survive or at least to stop this misery.

I don’t know how to escape the ride or if the medicine will let me off. These pills I take scare me because of how well they work. Knowing some external force is making my body feel normal again. It makes me worried that I will be stuck with them, forever unable to be me on my own. Dependent on something else to stop the spinning. I feel like I’m on that round-up machine that is beginning to slow, hoping now that I have the power to make it to the end. I don’t know what else I may experience, but I know I’m not cured. I feel my body still be heavy but at least I feel strong enough at the moment to lift it. Through it all it still feels like I’m still going round and round, watching the world teeter and twirl, and wishing I was still that kid watching from the fence, wondering what it would be like to spin forever.

Cold War Kids

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Water’s Edge – まぬが

People say that the cold war ended in 1991, but for me, it started in 1992.
The day I was born, the battlefield began, not with fighting and disruption but rather through a dissolution of what other kids find as a firm foundation to live life upon.

I do not remember this union, though I am told that it existed through pictures and memories of all those who had the opportunity to experience it’s ephemeral existence. No, for my sister and I, what we knew was shouting over the phone and proxy wars between two people who had said until death to us part but would like nothing more than to be apart at death.

I can almost perfectly recollect the wars that were fought using children as a weapon, swinging us back and forth, with each strike damaging and dulling our delicate mental health. To this day, I look around and wonder what little eccentricities may have bloomed from the battlefield of my mind. How many unexpected scars and traumas are waiting to be awakened in the myriad of moments I have yet to experience. With no way to determine or avoid distress used to brace myself constantly for the cataclysmic collision of conflicts that would crawl it’s way into my cranium.

I had been reflecting on this recently, about the way I never truly understood a sense of normalcy because my normal was made so askew that I believed mountains were valleys and valleys were mountains. Though I have since learned this lesson, I am left with this sense the “normal” life will never be within my grasp. Like a fish living in water, I will never fully understand the nature of the bird that was given a chance to fly.

I remember the days in and days out when I lost who I was, I lost choice, I lost breath, and most of all I lost all that was left. I became the puppet who you could pull the string and carry out a messy pantomime of what I believe to be a functioning human being. I remember the voice of those friends who told me that I would no longer be able to play with them because it was too hard to keep track of my schedule. I recollect all the opportunities that faded away because arranging a meeting became too much of a hassle. I still have engraved the moments I missed because I was not allowed to exist in a way that made sense. I lost so much I became obsessed with perserving all I could keep, but like sand on the beach, all that I could hold would ultimately wash away when the water comes in.

I wasn’t until after I returned home from college that I sought to find some solace and peace in the chaotic sprawl that had become my life. Even now, there are wounds all around from the damage done by everyone involved. Patterns of behaving that have no hope of a resolution. I find, though, that recognition of humanity in those superpowers that lead the fight as a way to cope with the travesties I experience growing up.

Though I recognize our faulty lives and acknowledge the inadequacies that pervade those who had a hand in shaping this situation, I can tell you that I still feel the sting of disappointment, even when the expectation is failure. Perhaps this is the last semblance of childish hope that stokes the light of a small candle within me.

I found acceptance in my unordinary life, though sometimes I wish things were easier. I may never know what it will be like to not have family drama or conflict, though I can be one to champion peace and understanding.

I can’t say every moment I lived was terrible, and I have nothing to look back to fondly, but like a flashing bulb, my dark memories still light up the ceiling as I lay in bed at night. I know that though the war may be over, its effects are long-lasting, even when I am thousands of miles away.

A Last Song For Duo

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I’m going to try and put into words, this experience made too ephemeral, this moment crafted premature, this time intended for never and not yet but arrived just the same. Oh Duo, for how I miss you. How dearly I cannot say for language falls short in constructions of eternity and the infinite. These memories and moments with you seer beneath my skin, for forgetting, is a sin and I intend to be a saint. Though I’m sure this prose is more for me than for you, these words stand as a small testament to you and our time together. Though I can’t hold you any longer, I hope that this passage will preserve a piece of you everlasting.

What can I truly say other than I miss your large bright green eyes. Oh, now they used to look at me like I was home. A place I feel for me I hardly know but for you was within me. This peace I had because I was able to provide for you something that I had long forgotten myself. This yearning, I feel and wish I would see them truly looking at me one more time. That love I felt when you would do was almost comedic in character because how could it have been? I had always felt so undeserved, but you paid no mind to my insecurities and faults.

It’s in that memory of laying with you, and how you revised the way I slept that I found peace. The way you insisted on laying between my legs felt so warm and weighty that in my absence, I cannot sleep. I burn for the way you used to keep me in bed long beyond my morning alarms. The way I would play tardy with you, and the world would pass us. I savor the moments for I was with you because for those moments, I felt whole with you in reach.

It’s in your soft fur that my fingers can still touch. The way you would acquiesce to my whims, begrudgingly but trusting. The peaceful confidence you displaced traversing the world. The way your brother relied upon you to make sure the sky was not falling, and that there was always a warm place to lay his head. The way I knew you would always come back around so I would never need to chase.

I wish I could wake to you. Those visions of it all being a terrible dream and that it was only a manifestation of a worry gone too far. For my days have gone to grey waiting for you to return through that front door that you left through. For that night I can’t escape, that stain on the concrete and grass; that deep red turned to various shades of rust and grey. Something broke inside for me that night, and I don’t know if it will ever be made right. I pray for you every night that you come home and pray that if you cannot that you at least are happy someplace else. Oh, how I miss you so much.

It then a tragedy of that night that these flashes of the pain of memory keep these bittersweet memories sufficiently somber. Through their experience, I become darkened further because how can a light like yours be put out. Like others in this situation, I blame myself, wishing I hadn’t let you out that night because I didn’t; you might still be here. I can’t escape you but nor do I want to. I just want the pain to finally subside so I can enjoy memories of you without this inexplicable dark from arising. A pain that is both a curse on my heart but also a blessing of your existence. I know with time, I will heal, but that will not make me yearn for your soft fur and heavy frame any less. It’s my arms I wish you would still be, wasting and watching days go by, making life a little easier and more worthwhile.

I remember when you first came home that I used to lay awake at night, making sure you were still breathing. I would sit there watching your tiny frame anxiously until I could see that hearty breath in and be relieved that you were still there. I would worry you would be gone from me any moment, but when that worry stopped you were gone, and I didn’t know how to pick up the pieces. That night I carried you and had hoped you were warm. I saw end the end of your breathing, and I felt you and your soft fur grow colder. I wish I knew to do more, but I was helpless in front of this fate.

It’s unfair, and I know life is never that way, but why did it have to be you. The blood on my clothes and the towel I wrapped you in, markers of a life that could not be spared. I suffer the trials and tribulations of the world knowing the punishment should fall on me but in a split moment, the world collapsed around you for no more reason than it feels to prolong a certain sense of wretchedness. I would take the world on my back to protect you from harm and yet I could not protect you from danger and chance. What purpose could lie in this, a lesson that could not learn some other way. That is to say I miss you, so dearly that don’t have words to describe. I would trade it all for you and I wish you were still here. I wish above all else that could see those bright green eyes look at me again and have those mornings with you. Oh for how much I love you Duo, I always have.

At the end of this, what I wish I could tell you is
until the stars burn out.
and the sky goes dark
I will always love you

Goodbye Duo, I didn’t deserve you, but you came to me anyways. I will take care of Hero and everything else. And I hope, deep in the purest place in my heart, to see you again.

Hoping for Wishes and Wishing for Hope

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Snow by Pascal Campion

I don’t know how to speak to hope, with the words I put to the page never seeming enough. The only reason I want to speak to hope in the first place is that I’ve been thinking about hope, or the lack thereof, in both myself and the world around me. It’s like gravity pulling dreams and aspirations down to the ground and burying them beneath the soil. It’s like a force is speaking little messages to people, telling them not to hope or pray for wishes because wishes are for the lucky and hope is for the foolish.

But what is hope except for a wish not yet to come, a part of our heart speaks out so loudly that ask us to take a chance on the world and its wonders and believe that more is possible? Hope is what the architect sees before the building, the engineer sees before the machine. Hope is an extension of the dreams but… dangerous thinking that is, because to aspire to leave your neck out to get cleaved and those who forsake hope, survivors of the dream guillotine, don’t want to get hurt again.

I can understand this apprehension and this desire to abandon hope. As you get older the world continues to test the willingness to hope and more of your life feels as if it were to be a graveyard for dreams. Those who are lucky, seem to be blessed in some way by the universe to continue forward unimpeded, but the for the rest of us, it feels as if every day we spend climbing mountains.

I’ve lost hope in people and institutions while I’ve been living in this stateless place. Maybe I’ve been an idealist all this time because I’ve been fortunate enough to guard my heart and hope enough not to get ravaged by the hands of time. Now my heart lays exposed and bloodied by the experiences of the past few years, marred and marked about the failings of hope and effort. I’m sure there are some that will believe that the death of ideals and dreams will give way to a clearer view of reality. Those who believe that setting the bar low only provides a more accurate view of the universe. The people who call themselves realists have been beaten and broken by the cost of dreams, see the world as one broken place and that if they dare to dream that dreams would be dashed and only pain would persist.

Maybe this is why I can’t stop myself from caring because I stop caring about this world and others that I give way to the death of my dreaming. That if I lose all hope and persist entirely without the expectations of others or the future, all that would be left is a shell of myself who goes through the motions without an end in sight. That it’s this foolish hope about the change in the world, that someday we find can find a better way and my efforts mean something that keeps me looking forward and coming back to the table.

It’s hard though, to hope in a place that has done nothing but balks at my dreaming and my aspirations. To call only for persistence through extraordinary circumstances as a solution. To feel isolated, alone, and not to be taken seriously. I can understand why I have so much hurt with hope because hope is the knife that continues to make me bleed. It’s the belief that things will get better here and that all my experiences have been a string of bad luck and not the result of my failings. Hope has me believe that the future is calling, and as long as I work towards it, things may go my way. It’s hard to continue to be as I feel hope as I experience the cleave of dream guillotine regularly. At times it feels as if these people and places are avatars of the universe acting like an executioner of my dreams.

I know the power of hope, though small at times, keeps me persisting ever longer with the belief that my continued progress will get me to eventually meet my dreams. I haven’t given up but man… it’s been hard, and at times I find myself hoping for wishes and wishing for hope.

More Morose than Most

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Moon Sea – Sun Kai

It’s difficult, this wandering mind that speaks of despair and death followed by feelings that prance and plague the heart and soul with solemn thoughts and wicked words. It is the invasive conceptions of a traumatized mind that form an inescapable umbra casting shadows in the light and swallowing hope whole. It is cruel premonitions of a life steeped in inadequacy that encroach like a predator starved for prey, slowly and with great care, only to strike right at my throat, choking me with metaphor and simile until I feel myself grasping for breath. I fear these moments because it leads me to believe the floodgates on my feelings have been loosed, and that I will forever feel that dreams of death will always taste a little sweet.

It scares me late at night or worse, during the day when I feel this crippling sense of lowness. This feeling that through all my toil, I am unequivocally bound for a life of ephemeral mediocrity followed but the subsequent oblivion of being forgotten. It paralyzes me, drowning me in this waking nightmare about a time that has never come and still yet never may be. The visions appear to me in the visage of a well-worn memory, as if to be assured premonitions warning me about the future that is to come. It sours my mood and makes me believe fate is a foe insurmountable.

It speaks to these insecurities of mine that those around me never put me in their mind. That conversations are short, and feelings are even shorter. That I am minuscule and momentary to the experience of those who are meant to serve as compatriots for a time on spaceship earth. It makes me read between the lines and question all statements. To take every action, movement, song, and verse as evidence of my accusatory paranoia. Though I override these thoughts and beliefs, I grow weary of fighting with myself to come home exhausted and unable to sleep.

It’s a menagerie of experiences that culminate to inexorable episode of multitudes of meloncoly. I try to see with eyes unclouded, but wounds in my heart remind me that this place I exist may never be as I want to see it. I have become attuned to my world, and I find it darker than the halls path I walk at night. This cold place makes this feeling echo loud and makes the noose tighten slightly around my dream.

These feelings come in ways and waves that I don’t know how to fend. I may have let too much in to be free of these feelings for the rest of my life. For now, I try and rest and write my way through it in hopes that by the time the morning comes that I can once again start again.

In Days I Dreamed Of Dragons

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Winter Vibes – Atey Ghailian

I remember when I was younger that whenever I would be able to see the moisture on my breath it feel like I was blowing fire from my chest. “I am like a dragon” I always think proudly, braving the winter chill of childhood. “Nothing can stop me” I thought as the breath reminded me life inside burning brightly into the world. The world was full of these breaths and their wonder, every one could breath that fire from their chest, some stronger than others but all of us the same. I would savor the moments all wrapped up in jackets and jeans to test my breath to prove what a beast I was to be.

Those breaths changed as I got older, changing from a testament of invincibility to reminder of the thing I had to overcome. These breaths come more most notably on the road when running, sweat dripping down and freezing in the bitter wind. Those breaths represented a burning up inside of all the things I never knew but had to endure. A fighting spirit that persisted beyond the circumstances looking to burn my fate and the world along with it.

Now the breaths represent a small sense of solitude. I quiet moment in the night as I traverse hard concrete and quiet soil. It’s only my breath left, I feel it beneath my mask and skin. There out in the world it seems so empty, so lifeless, so void. I wonder, will there be others out there fight against the cold, looking for life out there in world or will breaths be the only one to refract those dimming lights. I once dreamed that we may have been dragons but sometime, just sometimes I feel that I am all that is left.

Succinct

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The Fall Woods – Me

I can be honest, writing has been hard these last few months, to the point where I had to leave the page unattended to feel free of the burden that comes with this regular exercise. I can blame all of this on the pandemic and the crappy year that 2020 has been but that would only reflect a small portion of the tumult my life has felt. I needed to take a step back, reevaluate my personal processes.

It’s been fruitful, being inconsistent with my writing. It has allowed me to realize that though I like to write a certain way there are always ways I can improve. That things can be made more understandable while still retaining my own flourishes. A need to cut down on the words but improve on the prose. That is what I here to do now, to write in a more compact way because I was allowing my brandishes to obfuscate my true aims.

This time has given me also the ability to contemplate how far I have come and how far I still need to go. I have realized and had to reassess my foundations and my beliefs because I am invariable drawn back my past as I fight for my future. For now I am writing to pledge once again to start this dance between statements and sentiments.

Move, Pain, Repeat

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To Start Over Again – Shal.E

It’s actions which define our days but our habit’s which define our life. But what happens when our habits fall apart, and our actions become strained. What would we do to try and regain control?

I’ve been having trouble sleeping and trouble waking up. I lay in bed late at night, after all my tasks are done and my body feels strained, wondering if it will be few minutes or few hours before I finally see the sandman. I sleep for as long as I need to or can before I start the day again, knowing I am missing some parts of my preparation and others of my coping.

It’s because I want accomplish things that I feel my body turn against me. I have resorted to super charging which makes my muscles feel strained the next morning from how tense it becomes. I feel sore the next morning, not from exercise but from the toll on my body all this energy comes. Like a double edge sword, stealing power from tomorrow to use today, indefintiely until my body feels like it’s slowly falling apart from just moving.

The good thing is that all this energy my body in place so I can be a puppeteer to a marionette. Moving myself in a way that makes the show go on, that gets my work done, and makes me feel as if I am finally getting things done. They don’t tell you about the strain on the strings though. Creaking loudly throughout the day as they continually push against the burden of a resistant self.

I question whether life at the moment is a series of trade offs and balancing acts, and for a man who wants everything this becomes problematic. To I push my body through the ringer to get my body to follow my mind wants or do I let me body continue to delay workings of the mind and soul.

I come up on this dichotomy and my decision usually is to throw myself through the pain and anguish if it means that I can get what I want. What is one more step full of pain if it means I can get the life that I want. I just feel the strain right now, the pain in my muscles and bones, but it’s the price I am willing to pay for the moment, but who know what I giving up in the long run.

It worries me though, that I may be giving up too much. That these things shouldn’t need all this extra help and I should just be able to persist without all this extra help. What is happening and has happened to me and what might that missing ingredient be in all this. That would make me feel whole mind, body, and soul.

For now, there is no time to worry, I will just keep pushing through until one thing finally gives.

Tar And Feathered Words

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The Wanderer by Dániel Taylor

I am always afraid that as I put words to a page that content of those words become meta. Words talking about words, language talking language, and yet I can’t divorce myself from these words. This language for me is as muck and tar, stretching and pulling me inexhaustibly to get stuck and dirtied. I fall back into them because of this apparent mismatch between me and them. Like an abusive relationship where I am betrayed over and over again by these things that I give my heart to only to fall back into their arms again.

It’s in a lot of ways the an inevitability as I am so scared of my own voice for it to ever learn to fly. So afraid of my words evaporating into entropy, crumbling into dust in those who they happen to reach. This why words become so focused, like a fetishism that my words are never allowed loftier dreams and goals as I just want them to work in the first place.

If only their were a tangibility to these abstract figures. To manipulate more fully with my hands aside from the language we have all agreed on. To put my mind down on paper, to transcribe these inner thoughts and feelings in a way that does justice to them.

The destruction of this fantasy is what spurs these regular meta commentaries about my inability to articulate in my everyday life. I keep telling myself to be more deliberate with my words, less is more and more is less but I spew them as a safety net as saying something always feels better than doing nothing. A fallacy I repeatedly find myself falling into, but trudging forward just the same.

I’ve already said too much so I shall leave it for now, but I am wise enough to know this is not the end but just another step on long journey.

Recoil

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Maryannemade

Dark days and nights give way to for desire for the sun but a call for rain. A look to the sky speaks to the wanting, the waiting for the lightning to strike to feel the easiest reprieve for the karmic destiny that has befallen me. Wondering why not just take it all, why leave me then to weather the storm and give the hope for brighter days ahead. It’s under that rain and wind where I feel like the world and I are finally aligned.

It’s that recoil from the sweet, the pleasant. It hurts at times to be helped because in the my mind, it feels as if I am the poison that would corrupt and corrode all those around. The sweet that gives me shade as the barriers begin to crack and break, the adrenaline which I used as fuel begins to get used up, and all I feel how much the frustration and despair turn to pain and sadness. The way I had always learned to cope it to continue to push forward unrelentingly because I knew if I stopped, I might never get up again.

It’s in watching the sky as rain falls do the tracks tears begin to form. A welling up of emotion finally begins to overflow, and the water of the world becoming indistinguishable from this water pouring out from within. There is some solace in it as it assures me that I exist. The cold no longer bothers me as the clarity of the moment lets me breathe easier. The up and down stabilizes as these emotions I had been holding inside begin to settle.

I spend many moments there, sitting under the sky wondering what my purpose in this world, and if there would be a purpose to my suffering. Those nights when lying in bed become easier as the exhaustion from those emotions put me to sleep quickly. By the time the morning comes, the clouds have gone away, though I know not forever. I will appreciate the sun while I still have it as I try to find peace within myself and quell the storm brewing within. Long days and nights are still ahead, but the whether it’s one storm or many, there can be peace in the recoil from both the pain and the promise.