wispy threads
Beirut, May 18, 2018
It's funny how, every time I start writing anything - or rather, before I start writing anything - this narrator voice in my head starts playing its tune, and it's often just saying bits of sentences that mean absolutely nothing, bits of sentences heard in films, perhaps. They make all that I'm about to write more interesting. Or they seem to.
Well, this time, I'm going to be true to the unromanticised reality: I'm sitting in bed, pillow rests uncomfortably between the headboard and my back. I'm listening to Studio Ghibli instrumental music and there's an aching pain in my left ear and around it, at times it's piercing, at times merely a nuisance. My cheek is puffy and slightly blue, the result of a severe and intense wisdom-tooth-extraction session.
My life is in no way romantic. Not the way I had pictured it would be, twelve years ago, when I was a teenager, inexperienced, painfully optimistic, revelling in the firm belief that it would take far less than twelve years to find love and live it. Or live some sort of version of it. What a notion, love.
That I'm 28 years old and have never been in love is something that I am trying to release far, far away from me, into the wind, into the storm, into the hurricane. Yesterday, while watching an incredibly not age-appropriate teenage romance (which I was way too old for), the main character said that she was content with her impossibility to end up with her love interest. That she had to remember that she was but a particle in this ever-moving system, a very small cog that made the clocks turn. And that her own life problematic was chiefly inconsequential to the rest of the universe. And, though it is embarrassing to say this of a 6.6/10 IMDB rated movie, I profoundly connected with that statement. I felt that a good way to accept the perfidious lack of romance in my life very much involved accepting that I was, equally, a small fleck of dust, a rose petal that was meant to fulfil its rose petal destiny and flourish for as long as the universe, the weather, the wind had decided for it to flourish, and then fall down. I, who have despaired so much over hoping one day to find love, must at last accept that my finding of love was inconsequential to the workings of everything around me.
If this doesn't make sense, it's okay. Nothing ever does.
I decided to write this bit of text because I was reading Howards End, and there were Helen and Margaret walking some girl over to Battersea Bridge Station, and then there I was pausing at the mention of "Battersea". There was Battersea making me remember the song Skwod, and there was I, thinking of whether I could still rap this song or not, which in turn made me think of boasting so proudly of this prodigious ability to some boy as a way to impress him. And I realise I never did get the chance to rap this song to him. This boy disappeared into the ether, and so, I never shall get the chance to do so, not in any foreseeable future in any case.
And this just made me think of how every single connection I have ever had with any boy had been determined by time, significantly later, as half-finished. I could now walk through all of these stories, hanging in mid-air, waiting for gravity to pull them back down, or to reject them upwards. The books are open, and the stories waiting to be written, but there's no pen, no paper left, no inspiration, no desire to write anything or imagine anything anymore. They are threads that I've been forced to walk away from, in order to secure my own sanity. Threads that are so wispy at the end, you can barely see them.
But they are there. My life is populated with them. They hang about every decision I try to make, they obscure thoughts, they demand an end I cannot bequeath to them.
Love is as elusive as ever. In the past few months, I have made no efforts, nor had any efforts crushed. My emotions are stagnant, they turn to the past, to try and revive some of it, to relive some of it. They build fake ends onto my wispy threads. But nothing works.
So I tell myself I am but a rose petal. A small and inconsequential element whose own destiny means very little to all that surrounds it. The world will go on without my precious little heartbreaks, without all the pieces hanging about, without all the longing and the distress. It will. A small comforting thought.
And that's all I wanted to write tonight.
It's funny how, every time I start writing anything - or rather, before I start writing anything - this narrator voice in my head starts playing its tune, and it's often just saying bits of sentences that mean absolutely nothing, bits of sentences heard in films, perhaps. They make all that I'm about to write more interesting. Or they seem to.
Well, this time, I'm going to be true to the unromanticised reality: I'm sitting in bed, pillow rests uncomfortably between the headboard and my back. I'm listening to Studio Ghibli instrumental music and there's an aching pain in my left ear and around it, at times it's piercing, at times merely a nuisance. My cheek is puffy and slightly blue, the result of a severe and intense wisdom-tooth-extraction session.
My life is in no way romantic. Not the way I had pictured it would be, twelve years ago, when I was a teenager, inexperienced, painfully optimistic, revelling in the firm belief that it would take far less than twelve years to find love and live it. Or live some sort of version of it. What a notion, love.
That I'm 28 years old and have never been in love is something that I am trying to release far, far away from me, into the wind, into the storm, into the hurricane. Yesterday, while watching an incredibly not age-appropriate teenage romance (which I was way too old for), the main character said that she was content with her impossibility to end up with her love interest. That she had to remember that she was but a particle in this ever-moving system, a very small cog that made the clocks turn. And that her own life problematic was chiefly inconsequential to the rest of the universe. And, though it is embarrassing to say this of a 6.6/10 IMDB rated movie, I profoundly connected with that statement. I felt that a good way to accept the perfidious lack of romance in my life very much involved accepting that I was, equally, a small fleck of dust, a rose petal that was meant to fulfil its rose petal destiny and flourish for as long as the universe, the weather, the wind had decided for it to flourish, and then fall down. I, who have despaired so much over hoping one day to find love, must at last accept that my finding of love was inconsequential to the workings of everything around me.
If this doesn't make sense, it's okay. Nothing ever does.
I decided to write this bit of text because I was reading Howards End, and there were Helen and Margaret walking some girl over to Battersea Bridge Station, and then there I was pausing at the mention of "Battersea". There was Battersea making me remember the song Skwod, and there was I, thinking of whether I could still rap this song or not, which in turn made me think of boasting so proudly of this prodigious ability to some boy as a way to impress him. And I realise I never did get the chance to rap this song to him. This boy disappeared into the ether, and so, I never shall get the chance to do so, not in any foreseeable future in any case.
And this just made me think of how every single connection I have ever had with any boy had been determined by time, significantly later, as half-finished. I could now walk through all of these stories, hanging in mid-air, waiting for gravity to pull them back down, or to reject them upwards. The books are open, and the stories waiting to be written, but there's no pen, no paper left, no inspiration, no desire to write anything or imagine anything anymore. They are threads that I've been forced to walk away from, in order to secure my own sanity. Threads that are so wispy at the end, you can barely see them.
But they are there. My life is populated with them. They hang about every decision I try to make, they obscure thoughts, they demand an end I cannot bequeath to them.
Love is as elusive as ever. In the past few months, I have made no efforts, nor had any efforts crushed. My emotions are stagnant, they turn to the past, to try and revive some of it, to relive some of it. They build fake ends onto my wispy threads. But nothing works.
So I tell myself I am but a rose petal. A small and inconsequential element whose own destiny means very little to all that surrounds it. The world will go on without my precious little heartbreaks, without all the pieces hanging about, without all the longing and the distress. It will. A small comforting thought.
And that's all I wanted to write tonight.
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