"How odd, I can have all this inside me and to you it's just words"

— David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

Rinse and repeat

There was a time I believed I was happy. Once, I could say the word and it lit the room like a small lamp. Back then, happiness wore no label and needed no defense. It hovered at the back of my throat, drifted through my head. I knew it when it came. I didn’t need a cat video to coax a laugh or a pint of vanilla to bribe a smile. Happiness wasn’t something I held; it held me. It was the lightness of a small camping chair set on a shy strip of shore, no one around—only the water’s hush, birds stitching the air, the wind sweeping the rest away.

And I knew it would pass. Nothing keeps forever, they say, don’t they? Even as I floated, some part of me counted the seconds to its leaving. I feared I would lose it before I could taste it whole, like a fruit snatched clean from my palm. I lived as if in a trance—the world could burn and I would still be suspended in that nameless calm—and threaded through it was a whisper: hold your horses, you fool; this will end.

So I kept circling the same track: worrying about letting go, worrying about the wound to come, worrying about who I’d be after. And the worrying curdled what was sweet. The little draught of joy went flat on my tongue, stale at the edges, twisting my stomach.

Then the old ache returned—sadness with its patient face. I thought time would wear it down. It did, in its way, but it left a map on me. Some marks are scratches. Some are jagged and deep. Some I still trace with a finger, asking what bargain I made to be caught in this rinse and repeat.

Maybe I will never know. Maybe happiness is a word we invented to sell the soul a promise it cannot keep.

If I am not happy, then what am I?

My Sunshine

today the sky looked like a clean shirt, the kettle sounded happy, the door clicked right, and you were the reason. it’s ordinary and that’s the best part. i feel steady when you’re here

i love you in the morning, after lunch, and when the lights are off.

thank you for being my favorite simple fact.

I think I am at the stage where I don't really give a shit about what's happening around me.
I'm not saying that I have tons of money to ditch work and whatnot — heck, I'm laden with debts that even breathing feels like a labor.
I can't say that I am depressed, and I can't say that I am not.
It's just... life feels static and running at 200 miles an hour at the same time.
Living feels like being in a void. In a limbo. In a constant loop of uncertainty.
At times, I feel like crying. And most of the time, I struggle to find a single reason to cry.
After all, you can't just cry, can you?

There's a deep wanting to let go. To blow off steam.
But if I can't tell what's the pressure that's been brewing inside me, how could I vent it off?
I just don't understand.
Maybe it's the loneliness.
Maybe age is starting to knock some sense into my head.
I just don't have the answers.

And if you may excuse me, I have some weeping to do.
Goodbye.