Stab

You can only hate yourself so much

Sleep Rants

Tonight is much colder than the last.

I want to curl up next to a hot water bottle and slip away into sleep. But I know I can't. I will be spending the night tossing and turning, feeling the sharp bite of the cold in my toes. The portable radiator is on the max and I am bundled up in thermals, flannel pyjamas, hoodie and socks. Tonight isn't going to be easy...I can feel it in my numb fingers.

Pass the time with some music:

"I turn the music up
I've got my records on"

Fancy listening to Coldplay on a chilly night in Surrey. If only the night would pass over sooner - five more hours before the alarm rings. I tuck my fingers under the pillow. Just another pathetic attempt at keeping warm. I can feel the sleep bearing down on me but the cold keeps me clinging to consciousness. I guess this is limbo.

"Once upon a time, somebody ran
somebody ran away..."

I can't think. I am too tired. But yet I am awake. I want the darkness to drop on me and smother me and take me away. I want to float off to another sense of non-awakening and sink into it so that it would become my world.

"You really hurt me..."

My hands are water and yet I can't feel them because of the cold. I turn over onto my side. The wall never seemed so colourless, so patternless, so non-existent. In fact the world no longer exists. It's all an abstract concept within the mind. Memories and experiences seem to bob in and out of the sub-conscious with images of child-me running around in the park emerging on a non-chronological time frame. I can see the sun on a humid morning and suddenly the thunder on a stormy tropical afternoon.

Shrill ringing

I can see the old car my father once owned and suddenly the bicycle I used to ride in my grandmother's porch.

"In the night the stormy night
she closed her eyes"

Shrill ringing

I can hear the voice of my grandfather and suddenly the chants of the nuns at his funeral.


Shrill ringing. Shrill ringing. Shrill ringing.


Yes..yes...I'm up for god's sake. Time for work...
...fuck, I've overslept again.

July 4, 2009

the door is creaking
I can hear it slam shut as shuffles of those slippers
travel up and down the cement corridor
but I lie awake in my...
..pains?
...regrets?
...loss?

It's one thing to lie on the cold hard bed and
another to be with a presence on that
same, cold, hard bed. The matress
would seem...
...more inviting?
...more warm?
...more loving?

How do I equate a loss of the world
when all I can do
is lie on that damned
cold, hard bed?
I hear the door open.
Creak
And then shut again.
The echo of a closing
renounces throughout the room
and I lie there
only to believe that the world is cold and hard
just like that damned bed.

I've got my believes
and I suppose I should stick by it
no matter how much I'm being
tempted into destroying it
along with my morals
but everytime that damned door creaks
or I lie on that damned bed, I'm
always reminded:

There is a life out there, and
only I can retrieve it for myself
and so I stay on that bed
alone
cold
aching
just to be able to achieve that life
in hope that maybe
some day
I'll be able to let it all go....

A&E

There were no sirens, no screams, no horror.

There was regret, disappointment,and hurt.

The A&E waiting room had never been so empty. Well, it only seemed empty in my head. I realised it was an illusion that my deprived state had left me with. All I could see was what I was focused on - my hands. Everything around it blurred, the sounds muffled.

My hands were light and strangely angular. It looked almost distorted with its anatomy so prominent - I could see the blue veins which ran down my arm and the tendons which joined the bones to muscle (or what's left of it really)

I felt the weight of someone's hand on my shoulder. It was then I looked up to see a young woman looking at me with tearful eyes. She was my friend but at the time, she seemed just like any other person who didn't matter to me. I could feel all emotions, but dread, ebb away from inside me. Suddenly the world seemed so insignificant - nothing in the whole world could be bigger than the emptiness inside my mind. It was so overwhelmingly...non-existent.

My friend placed her hand on mine and said: "You're doing the right thing." I sighed and dropped my head - and dozed off as the world walked silently over me.

Let's

Let's write about the lies we told each other
the ones we coughed up
not to deceive
but to progress.

Let's share our stories with each other
the ones we buried
not to hide
but to protect.

Let's forget the past together
the ones we survived
and lived to tell
and hope to conquer.

Let's not think of existence...

...and float away into the empty sea.

Chronology of Friendship

Here we are at five.

We were playing at the swings after a thunderstorm. Below our swinging feet were puddles of water where little tadpoles swam. We held hands and smiled knowing that tomorrow was going to be just as fun. The sun will always shine after a storm



Here we are at ten.

It was your birthday and I had my arm over your shoulder in a friendly embrace. You threw bits of cake at me that year. It was a friendly gesture - it was your way of letting me know that you were thinking of me. I don't think our mothers were impressed to find their daughters covered in cake.



Here we are at fifteen.

I stood behind the group of girls we went out with. I didn't think what we were doing was right. Weed and alcohol on a humid night. There were dark-clothed men walking the alleys looking out for promiscuous, naive girls. I didn't want to be one of them. I slinked away from the group before midnight and left you to form new, dangerous relationships.



Here we are at twenty.

I stood over you. With flowers in my hand. I had never see you so calm before and I smiled weakly as I placed the flowers in your hands. The bruise you obtained from the asault was barely visible under your make-up - you looked perfect, just as you did in life. The lid closed and you resigned into the darkness.






And now, here I am.







.

.

Sanity left me stranded.

Unclear

Complacency

I'm complacent.

I woke up one day, quite suddenly, after two years. It was reality and it was harsh: no matter how nice a person one is, there's no such thing a karma. It's bullshit.

But forget karma for now. Think about reality for awhile. What is it? - It's a perception and understanding of life concepts and it's different for everyone.

However, if it's just perception, isn't it just an illusion - an illusion which is morphed by life experiences and individual differences? For example, the aphasic patient who can only perceive things in his left peripheral view. Or the depressed victim who can only perceive the sad and the negative.

Emotional perception is the individual's own inner illusion and can only be viewed by the one it belongs to. But the individual still chooses how he wants to see it.

When I woke up, I decided I was going to perceive complacency. Fuck perfection; fuck happy endings; fuck all the unnatural expectations of modern society. They are all the illusions created by a mass of unthinking schmucks and adopted by an even bigger mass of unthinking feeble-minded individuals.

And so with that, I followed a more obscure path - and stayed quite complacent and pretty damn happy ever since.

..Perfect Symmetry..

"I shake through the wreckage for signs of life
scrolling through the paragraphs
clicking through the photographs"

Dear Liv

Dear Liv,

I haven't spoken to you in awhile and I was wondering how you are. So, how are you?

I've spent days in solitude reading books about how you would swoop down and pick up the feeble-minded and give them hope that there is something beyond 'now'. I am usually sat in the cemetery reading these books. On John Marble's headstone to be exact. He was a sailor who died in the 1850s. I suppose you left him back then too.

I just wanted to let you know that I am still waiting. I know you'll probably never come back again but I can always wish you will. It's the best that I can do.

Well, it's been a joy knowing you, Liv. Thank you for reading my letter. I didn't think you would. But if you never do, I hope these words end up in the hands of someone who can relate to them.

x

Dispersion

The second the light touches the ground

it disperses
and reflects off in tiny invisible rays
never to be seen as a whole again.

Realisation

It makes you realise what you've lost

It makes you realise who you're not

It makes you realise what you can't do

but then again

It makes you realise what you have

It makes you realise who you are

It makes you realise what you can do






I want to know what else it can make me realise.

Sometimes.

Mind-reading.

I study Psychology.
I can't read minds
as much as I wish I could

There isn't much sense in worrying about what the old man in the park thinks about me considering I don't actually know him. But it feels like he has a critical eye on me and I'm scared.

I join the crowd of grocery shoppers in Tesco and it doesn't feel like I am as submerged as the others. I walk quietly through the aisles, not saying  word. I am listening to Keane's 'Bedshaped' on my iPod and hoping the people around me aren't paying any attention to the girl in a checkered shirt and shorts. I am too self-conscious. What are they thinking of me? Why is she looking at the tin of beans I am holding? Why is he looking at my legs?

I walk off to pay for my items and a small child runs into me. There is a look of shock in his eyes and suddenly he cries. I feel guilty for being the one he ran into and I feel terrified his mother might think I've done something to him.

I drop my basket of items and leave the store empty-handed.

I am in the park. It's dark and everything seems to be going to sleep. Still listening to 'Bedshaped', I thought about the old man in the park, the random shoppers in Tesco and the small boy I inevitably scarred with my presence. I rip out some grass and examine it with what little light I have and notice how not one blade looked different from the other - I want to be like grass - to fit in and not stand out. I want to be deindividuated and be engulfed by the crowd so that my being is the crowd.

I hear someone clearing his throat behind me. It's the old man. I get up and walk off as quickly as I can.

I lose sight of the old man behind the trees and I feel safe.

Paradise

"When she was just a girl
she expected the world
but it flew away from her reach
so she ran away in her sleep"

"Life goes on and it gets so heavy..."

"In the night
the stormy night
she closed her eyes"

Time Games

There wasn't much to look forward to at some point. Frail, weak and dying, the self was focused on inner destruction and outer torture.

The sandwich packet sits unopened in the fridge and days later ends up in the bin with patches of mould already on the bread. I frown at the thought of food wastage but I knew that that's what I had to do to get things my way. I put my hand to my face and felt the dry skin and the wrinkles which should not be there in youth.

There's a clutter of plates behind me.

It's my flatmate, preparing a plate of toast and baked beans (Heinz brand). I briskly walk out of the kitchen without a word to her and sigh at the thought of a conversation lost to my irrational fear of her toast and baked beans.

Time passes.






There isn't much time left. A friend calls me into a coffee shop. It is urgent. She tells me what she has to say. I break down.

Time stands still.

IVs and ECGs and "Ill...need help...ward in Farnham". This whole time, my friend holds my hand and tells me it will be alright. I don't believe her and I say "I hate you for doing this to me".

Time becomes irrelevant.

As I look out through the barred windows onto the hospital grounds, I think about how I never thought I'd be in this position - tagged and observed for 6 hours a day. I can smell roast potatos coming from the room next door. I want to cry. "They're undoing everything..." I look at the ward staff and see them gesturing me to come into the dining room. I sigh. "Their job is to undo everything."

Time is in sync with reality.

My coursework is beginning to pile up and it all feels too much. After weighing out my lunch of hummus and cucumber sticks (in grams) and counting the cherry tomatoes, I sit down in front of my laptop and begin to type away at my assignment:

The motivation of eating and hunger is supported by studies based on the set-point theory and settling-point theory. However, sufferers of certain disorders such as...

Time rewinds itself suddenly.

I slam the laptop shut and abandon my hummus, cucumber sticks and cherry tomatoes and punch the wall. I pick up my bag and decide I am going for a walk. As I leave the room, I feel my fist throbbing and my eyes tearing up.


Fuck memories.

Can you Hear It?

They whisper...

...whisper....

...whisper...

I can't talk back to them.

They want me to die.

You don't deserve existence

Carry away the voices.  

They scare me so much.

It's almost like 

it is me.

I am you.

Dark Scenes

The day fades into night quite unnoticably.

You forgot they turned the clocks back an hour didn't you?

I looked up into the night and realised how much the darkness had changed the scene. I could no longer see the clouds; darkness and all had enveloped the sky.

I heard a plane fly above me but I could not see it. But the ethereal sounds of its colossal engines echoed across the sky, leaving me somewhat in awe at the fact that something so hidden could produce such a thunderous roar.

It was only six o'clock but it felt like the world was already sleeping. It's the illusion the early-setting sun created - it shut the busy society indoors and lulled them to sleep but I stayed outside to look at the changing skies.

It was beautiful - but oh, so lonely.

Legacy

Arnie drew his last breath. And of course, he died.

I kind of expected it. Fifty years of smoking clearly would do him in at some point. Unfortunately, it had to happen after I got to know him - after he became my friend. Had I not known him, it would have saved me a trip to the cemetery.

They buried Arnie on a Saturday morning and engraved on the headstone was:

Arnold Joseph Miller

25th June 1930- 3rd August 1995

May he rest in peace

Jesus, Arnie. No wonder you're dead. Smoking since you were fifteen!

The crowd of mourners soon left, gliding silently between the headstones of the long dead. They left their last words and took their tears with them. Soon, they would change out of their black attire and change into their summer dresses (it is August after all) and sit in their gardens sipping wine.

"To Arnie," they would say as the scorching sun beats down on their pale skin. When the sun set and the people intoxicated, they would retreat to their homes and shut the door on another day without Arnie.

And so summers and autumns and winters and springs pass and good old Arnie lies a good few feet under the cemetery grounds, silent. No one visits him, no one speaks of him and (unsurprisingly), no one remembers him. It is another life wasted - his stories, his experiences, his values gone. But what can we do? Poor Arnie's dead and gone. Perhaps if he'd left a legacy...

Smoking for fifty years - foolish Arnie..