LONELY BUT LOVELY
I wear the heartbreak for an hour or two, and let the restlessness settle.
If I'm being honest, I think I've just grown so tired of recalling old wounds or trying to remember how I got them, that I just resort to blocking them out (unconsciously) altogether. I don't want to carry them with me anymore. But in trying to slam the door shut on painful memories, I inevitably lose recollection of the happier moments associated with the sadness. I have some trouble remembering things, and when I look back on six years or four, I struggle to remember the details. Would it really be alright for me to just leave things? I had written once or twice before, something about stuffing old wounds with cotton balls, trying to fill a void, and that it felt futile, like 'pushing air into space'. I’m wondering if I still feel the same. Maybe when I wrote that I knew somewhat that I was gaping in places where I tried to seal away the hurt, where I cheated and didn’t really deal. If old wounds are still voids, do I need to find more meaningful things to fill them? I don't quite know.
Anyhow, maybe it’s not the best to just leave things without dealing with them. There's still a small part of me that feels compelled to pull old wounds out of a secret door and play with old feelings. Nights where I’m feeling empty and listless, I look for words in hopes that they may carry me upwards and outwards. Somewhere else beyond who I am at this moment. But I don’t look for words to make me feel better. On the contrary, I mostly just look for something heartbreaking, something profound. I’d written once before that I preferred to play with old wounds, rather than feel numb. There's a wiring in my brain that thinks: if I recall the times where I struggled privately, I'm remembering a time where I actually lived and got hurt. I'm confirming my own significance. Or, when I can’t bear to re-live those old feelings, I borrow them from books and movies. I wear the heartbreak for an hour or two, and let the restlessness settle. But I wonder if there's a way to stop this compulsion. To just live healthily, without letting the hurt lure me in too deeply. Just a small, peaceful level-headed existence?
In all honesty, I’ve been coloured irrevocably melancholic. Maybe that isn’t such a terrible thing because the main way my melancholy manifests is through a desire to see beauty in lonely things. In truth I hadn’t reflected so deeply when I saw these scenes in Iceland. They just seemed… so ordinary. Something precious and understated. But it felt wrong to let the moments go without capturing them. So I ‘borrowed’ them because they seemed like moments that matched my emotional baseline. Dark rooms with windows looking out toward colourful existence. Or above, in that bedroom, the sun streaming in, bathing the walls with a warm glow - and the rest of the space is shrouded in dark weariness. I romanticise moments like this, feelings like this, and cling to them. They say everything I want to without saying anything. They’re beautiful to me. Perfect. Lonely but Lovely.
Still, I'm finding myself on a tightrope, trying to walk across from a place of pain, onto a point of healing, and God-willing, to the starting point of flourishing. Perhaps when I get through healing, the path from there won't be as dreadful and nerve-racking as a tightrope. Maybe it will be a lush walkway, next to a body of water, birds flying overhead and the sun streaming through dancing leaves. I won't be on pins on needles, wondering if I'll make it. I so hate to be nervous, so hate to be fear-driven. I just want to walk happily and happily keep on walking.
An Aside: The self-portrait that became a 2020 playlist titled: 'My saddest most poetic self that will never live (past twenty five)' and like a note to self, that version of myself eventually went away. Maybe because I was a massive idealist in my (more) youthful early twenties. At some point, most probably when the 'old wounds' came into my life, I became disillusioned. A little hardened and definitely more closed-off. I could never rekindle the kind of soft and dreamy-eyed person I had been then. She just went away, but I'll always remember her. She and that playlist are two things I will never seal away.
Some select songs: 2 soon - keshi Someone Else - Obed Padilla untitled - EDEN sex - EDEN end - Jeremy Zucker Breathe - LeeHi Song Request - Lee So Ra, SUGA Lullaby - IU Put It Straight - (G)I-DLE SUGAR - Brockhampton How can I love the heartbreak, you're the one I love - AKMU Crush - Cub Sport Honesty - Pink Sweat$ All About You - Taeyeon Flower Tea - Oh My Girl if i knew - softy listen before i go - Billie Eilish