#diary entry
when i was eleven, my older brother passed away. he was fourteen, he loved blink 182 and the offspring, he played guitar and was even a part of a band (MFIC; motherfuckers in charge). he was impatient but kind, and he was the best brother i could have asked for. it has been nine years since he passed and i have forgotten what his voice sounded like.
i have forgotten what it was like to have a constant companion, someone who was always there to talk to. when he was with me, i felt protected. nobody could hurt me with my big brother there. he never let anyone rag on me, even if he was actively doing so (which was often.)
i loved my brother dearly, even though he most likely regarded me as the annoying kid sister most of the time. I liked to be wherever he was, doing whatever he was doing. i admired him more than i had or ever will admire somebody else, with no regard to how irritated he would get at my constant presence. nobody likes to hang out with their little sister 24/7.
looking back i am glad i pestered him so much to play with me, as now i have more memories to look back on. like playing on the stairs that led up to his room, slowly moving up each step until reaching the top, where i would be so loud and obnoxious until he came out and let me play the playstation with him.
or when we would play swords in the backyard, when we shot empty soda cans with bb guns, when he dared me to eat a jalapeno out of our mom’s garden (which i did, in one big bite.) and then had to run inside to get a glass of milk while i cried and blubbered in the middle of the yard. when we were playing storm troopers in the middle of winter, and my tongue got stuck to a metal pole.
while i may not remember his voice, his smell, or the small details of him as a person, i do have the memories of the time spent together. nine years have passed and my brother has become more of an idea than a person. i think about him everyday, if not when i wake up then before i fall asleep.
i think about what my life would be like with my big brother still by my side. would i carry the same ideas, would i have the same passions? who would i be had he not passed away? sometimes i wish i was her, oblivious to loss and able to live a complete childhood.
but i figure every life has a purpose, so does every death. in the short time i had my brother, i had the best childhood any kid could ask for. i had a partner in crime, who i thought would be there forever.
after nine years you would think you would find a way to fill that hole that is left in your hear after losing a loved one. you find ways to distract from it, to busy yourself. but you never find exactly what you need to feel complete again, simply because you are unable to.
i love you big brother, you stay in my heart always.
New York wasn’t the same without you. I never once thought for a second that a city, so vast and overpopulated could ever make me feel so lonely. But that’s exactly what it did. I could see your face everywhere, almost like you were haunting me. Guilt following me wherever I went. I shouldn’t have been thinking of you. But I saw you on street corners laughing drunkenly with your friends. I saw you in Central Park, smoking cigarettes. I saw you at the Highline - looking out at the skyline. And then I saw you, outside the hotel - teary eyed, arms outstretched - begging me to stay. And then I saw myself, shaking, with wet cheeks from the tears streaming down them, turning around and walking away from you. And as I stepped into the yellow taxi, you disappeared, faded away like you did 7 years ago. What would have happened if I stayed? If I didn’t get into the elevator?
New York left me lonelier than I was after I left you. I guess it’s my karma - you always had a way of coming back to me. Without you, my vision of New York is tainted - haunted by you.
You walk across that dirt road, and make your way towards the lake, our lake. And you’ll sit on the hill, under the tree and you’ll light one of those Marlboro cigarettes you always used to smoke. And you begin to remember. It’s been nearly two years, but you still remember. You remember it all perfectly. You’ll remember the songs we listened to, and argued over. You’ll remember the first time we sat there at sundown and how we spoke endlessly for hours. About everything, I learned about your fears and you learned about my dreams.
And you’ll remember the first time you kissed me, and you’ll remember the last. Then the sun will eventually fade into the horizon and the dark will creep it’s way in, and you’ll realise that it’s over. We don’t get second chances in this life, and we can hold on and hold out but nothing will change it. All we have is the memories, those bittersweet memories that are far too precious to let go of. Without them, it would have all been just a dream. A picture perfect dream. But you’ll be there in our spot, and you’ll remember everything as if it were yesterday - and you’ll wonder where it all went wrong, and you’ll think about the timing, and what it could have been, what we could have been.
A diary excerpt
America - summer, circa 2015
*sigh* i wish i stopped listening to my insecurities and just enjoyed this shitty life as much as possible.
like what i see in the mirror. be comfortable with my body and not hate it as much. feel beautiful and sexy, not decrepit and old. be more carefree. laugh more
idk man, what a fucking mess
today after doing my chores, which included hanging out the washing even though it’s a little stormy, I wanted to try calming down, because I don’t remember a time when I felt calm. I made some chamomile, lavender and rose tea, opened my windows and sat on my flowery couch, I was drinking nature and appreciating nature, I watched the trees while the storm rolled on and the rain pitter-pattered, I copied the dances of the trees in the wind, slowly swaying and fluttering their leaves to-and-fro, the sun is setting, so the trees are glowing with little bits of gold while the sky is grey, pale blue and lavender.
I just looked out the window while I’m writing this to find a big, beautiful rainbow reaching right down to the trees.
I just had to go out and see it, it was so beautiful, so soft and light, it’s amazing that rainbows are real, not something we dreamed up and wished into existing. but then, nature is very good at being beautiful, so it’s not so surprising after all.
I almost made my first mark in this house, while I was painting my rainbow maker pink, I held the tube of paint upright, and carefully squeezed it, hoping the paint would reach the top so I could get some on my paintbrush, but without any warning, a drop of paint leapt out of the tube, straight up in the air~ I thought it would fall down with a big splat, but it floated down- it was a pink bubble. it surprised me, but I just got a rag and some (eco friendly) cleaner and cleaned it off the carpet. I’ve been really careful in this house, because I’m afraid of getting in trouble, so I worried that it wouldn’t come off, but it did. if it hadn’t, it would join all the other marks, the scars that tell a story about who lived here.
there are ten patches of a slightly darker paint on the walls where holes have been repaired, one is the shape of a fist, just like the one in the first house I lived in that I noticed but never questioned.
there’s dirt and dust all around the front outside, where visitors would first see if they came to the house. and through the fence near the clothesline, I found: faded pegs, a padlock, a dirty bar of soap, and what looks like the skin of a wallet, while I was rescuing my pooh bear towel with a fishing rod I made out of a stick, some yellow yarn, the hook of a coathanger and some magnets. they gave up on their lost things, but I didn’t.
if this house belonged to me, I’d probably not clean the pink paint off the carpet, and by the time I left, there would be marks of not just colorful paint, but biodegradable glitter, lots of tea, kitty whiskers, claws, and fur, tiny bits of pink and white cotton thread, because those are the only two colors I have for all my sewing, and rainbow polkadots all over the walls from the colorful sticky tack I use to hang up my coloring ins and artwork.
this morning I made another mistake, when I opened my bottle of pills (which of course I painted the cap pink and made my own label with a bunny nurse and a loveheart and two flower stickers) it fell and the pills spilled out spectacularly, I laughed at how dramatic it looked, but I still felt fear throughout me.
I told myself “it’s okay, are you okay?” and I replied “I think I just have fear leftover.” (save from the echoes)
I reminded myself “we’re here now, in my house it’s okay to spill things, you weren’t being careless, you do this every day and that’s never happened before, you couldn’t have known they were going to fall. you didn’t do anything wrong.”
and so I was smiling as I picked them up.
while I went to sit on the floor in my room, my cat walked beside me and put her tail on my back, something she does once in a while, it’s like her way of patting me, it feels like when someone is crying and someone puts their hand on their back, and I need that sometimes, and I wouldn’t rather a pat on the back from anyone but her.
I smiled and looked around to find it wasn’t her, maybe my shirt pat me on the back. but when I saw her, smiling at me from the couch we’d both been sitting on, I smiled back at her, both because I couldn’t help it, and to tell her I love her, and I thought “she sent a smile to pat me”
Wednesday, 27th October
the death of beauty as we know it
“Cracking open a ginger ale in the harsh cold of October with brown rimmed glasses sliding down my nose bridge ever so often, I tried to find warmth in the layers of my coat. To a random passer-by I certainly looked mad as I gathered up small, yellow leaves to mark the quotes in my book-but I’d like to think that the characters adorning those pages would have been infatuated by me. Franz Gordon’s “The French Library” was blasting through my ears, and yet it was unsuccessful when it came to taming down the noise of the outside world. Cars were racing left and right, their engines roaring and klaxons honking repeatedly. In some ways the noise had been appropriate, it matched Richard’s state of mind whilst he was in Plano. Oh, but the headlights were horrific, they made my eyes hurt terribly, and even words blurred up from time to time. The ginger ale wasn’t sitting right with me, more so, it was actually making me sick; yet, I continued to drink it. Was that a form of self-torture as well? Probably, I didn’t care that much. I was so absorbed in the book, that finally, the world had turned silent. Recently, I had learnt that there is no stillness in big cities. There is no time for rest, silence and peace. The world of men appears too never be silent. Even the nights are noisy. I had craved silence and solitude for so long and rereading “The Secret History” has finally brought them to me.” -an excerpt from my journal entry
Nobody can help me.
21.36
I always thought one day I would be happy. Now I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever be.
1.53
True love makes you stronger.
3.45
People are disappointing.
3.21
It is beautiful because it is sad.
16.27
Be a good person and you can save the world.
00.27
My life is killing me.
23.52
I want a quiet love.
17.16
Value yourself even more when others don’t.
17.36
If you don’t have any dreams. You are already dead, you just don’t know it yet.
23.31
Love didn’t come for me when I wanted it to. Now it is too late…
1.11
There is no bigger loneliness than to desperately want something you can never have.
01.34
I wish I could sleep forever, dreaming of a love I know I can never have.
23.45
Love has become so superficial.
00.24
Nowadays people hate everything and love nothing.
08.13
God doesn’t give a fuck who you fuck.
And love was found at the place I least expected.
10.20
You only stop dreaming when you’re dead.
22.11
-diary entry from 15.12.21
Overnight, I became the friend that will make personalised playlists for people’s birthdays, the friend that will ask you how you were at every silent moment in a conversation, because it’s a question that isn’t asked enough, the friend that won’t go a day without seeing you because she misses your face, despite the fact she didn’t know you before September, the friend that will get up and dance the second Ode To A Conversation Stuck In Your Throat plays, or Sex by The 1975, and will grab the hands of the closest person and get them to dance too, the friend that will knock first so you can speak, the friend that will talk to the Year 13s because they seem so scary despite being only a year older than you, the friend that walk you down to the coffee shop because you were going on your own, the friend that says hate is a strong word, but uses ‘love’ as easily as connectives, the friend that will ask you if you want to talk, because she’s there to listen, the friend that will be the first to apologise, the friend that will write poetry about you at 3am, and post it anonymously on Tumblr, the friend that confidence comes easily to, the friend with a god complex, despite hating herself, the friend that tells you that she dreamt of you the night before, despite it being a complete lie, the friend that will lie and cheat to get her own way, the friend that will manipulate and deceive just to remind everyone that she isn’t really thatfriend, because how could anyone have thatfriend? No one has her, really. She’s a Manic Pixie Dream Girl that’s trying too hard for the purpose of something that doesn’t even exist. She was none of these people four months ago. I wish I never had thatfriend. I think I’d kill her. She’d drive me mad.
