Midnight

It is midnight and why is it always at this time that I start writing? Because it is only at midnight that the heaviness of the day weighs on me, and I try to scramble to find a solution to unload it all. And writing, writing always works. I don't know if its precisely what I write, or if it is even just the act of writing. But somehow, it puts me in the state where I feel less heavy, and ready for sleep and the day to come. And would you look at the date, I had forgotten that with the arrival of midnight also means the arrival of Friday. Another week past. I'm still not sure how to feel about that.

At the same time, I feel a little sick of writing, MY writing to be exact. I always wake up the next morning feeling a little embarrassed that I managed to spew out words and words of sentimental nonsense that scream woe is me, as if I were the only person in the world to feel unhappiness, as if my hurt is the only hurt that matters. I feel silly about that, always. But I remind myself that this is my blog, and at this point, it is more of diary than anything. Except here, I write under the pretence that it means something, that I am doing something formal and proper and significant, it forces me to try a little harder. I wonder if that is at the detriment of my writing quality, at the cost of honest writing, writing as if someone else is in the room. I don't think so, because at this point, 3 years after starting this blog, I think the illusion of writing for an audience has long been been discarded. In my mind, I picture this space to be an small dimly lit room, where I am joined by my own company, perhaps an older more mature version of myself, reading words that are no longer applicable to me, with a sense of nostalgia, fondness and perhaps understanding. I think that is what brings me the greatest comfort of all in this act of writing, that I am writing to the one person in the universe who will understand me with ease. And in a convoluted way, it reminds me to be a little kinder to myself, a little more tolerant of flaws, because we are always paradoxically more forgiving of shortcomings when they belong to other people. I guess this is what they call introspection, to look inwards with the impartiality of a stranger.

Although I must say, writing this paragraph has robbed me of the fervour and indignation that had consumed me at the start and that had prompted me to write in the first place. I had meant to start this post with this statement: I am angry. Which is the truth but, now that I've talked myself out of it a paragraph ago, feels a little silly to type out now. I guess what I mean to say is, I am quick to latch onto dissatisfaction these days, I am easily annoyed, easily irked, and sometimes, I catch a glimpse of myself and think, what a grump! It is not who I am, but there are some days, it is just easier to be grumpy and almost accept the state you are in and wallow in this dissatisfaction, rather than acknowledge that this is NOT how you are meant to feel and in doing so acknowledge that there is work to be done to get out of this rut, work that I do not want to do at the moment.

But I am cautious of how this all sounds. One should not be writing about unhappiness with such expressive indulgence. I came across a quote by a Slovenian philosopher called Žižek, on Tiktok of all places, that goes "Don’t fall in love with your suffering. Never presume that your suffering is in itself proof of your authenticity". This will be the source of my embarrassment when I wake up the next morning and think about all I have written. That I had gotten carried away, that I had made a big deal out of nothing, that I had written as if the sky was falling, when it has not even cracked at all. Hysterical is the word that comes to mind. Hysteria. Almost immediately, it is the image of a wailing woman that comes to mind. A hysterectomy, removal of the uterus. Why is it always a womanly characteristic, a womanly flaw, to express oneself in this manner, and subsequently downplay it all. I am not in love with my unhappiness, but why do I feel uncomfortable even labelling it as that at all? As if any second, someone will jump out of a corner and call me out for making a big deal of it. I'm partly projecting I think. No one is jumping out of any corners. Perhaps it just me who feels guilty for allowing myself to remain in the state of discontent, and on top of everything, writing about it, in such a way that inspects in close intimate detail as if under the lens of a microscope. Shouldn't I feel uncomfortable discussing my feelings in such honest detail, without any preface or afterword cushion phrase of "but it's not that bad", "I'm making a big deal over nothing". No. That, I do believe, comes from ingrained societal habit, the need to not take up more space than needed, to downplay emotional reactions, to not appear hysterical and thus silly and foolish. It is for a similar reason that these last few years I am trying to not start my work emails with, "sorry to bother you but I was just wondering". Anyways, I am getting sidetracked, that is a whole other unrelated topic. But yes, sometimes I question the manner in which I should be writing on this blog, how much of my honest self do I inject in these paragraphs, how much do I allow myself to be carried away by the feeling in the moment, knowing it may well fade the next day. Because despite what I wrote earlier, there is always still the illusion that this is meant to be proper writing, presentable and polished, with no room for cracks. Because almost always, I still cannot help but pretend to be writing to a large public. But, in some ways, this is also the polar opposite of public writing, in fact, I don't think I would even talk face to face with any of my friends in this manner, in the way that I write, about the things I write about. This is very much an honesty that can only exist in the form of words that are not meant to be spoken out loud.

How did I even get here, goodness. I had started this with the intention of writing 3 things. One, that I felt angry. Two, that I had finished 2 books in one day, which I think is a new record for me. And three, that today while driving to the community center library at 6PM, I said to myself out loud: I can't help but feel like I am doing something wrong. Two and three are linked, because I don't think I could have felt this way, had I not spent a good majority of the day reading. The first book I finished was one that I had started last week, All the Light We Cannot See. My friends gave it to me, and I absolutely loved it. I smiled, I cried, I was on the edge of my seat, rooting for these characters. Reading is interesting to me, because for the duration of the time I spend with these characters, I manage to construct a mental image in my head, so that the entire story plays out like a movie. It mostly just the appearance of places, the layout of houses, but somehow never faces, and yet the mental image of each character is associated with such a strong feeling of their identity that is much sharper than any physical features I could conjure. Anyways, I build up these elaborate houses in my mind, some borrowing details from places I know (interestingly, my grade 1 classmate Celeste's house is frequently used), and in this way, each book vaguely feels like a memory, each story feels like one that I am actively living through, such that finishing a book with well crafted characters always feels in some ways like saying goodbye to an old friend. After that book, I read the Stone Diaries, which was also good but did not make me cry, although I was shocked upon finishing to discover how quickly I could read 361 pages, all in one day. That was the kind of reader I used to be as a child, wholeheartedly in love with reading, something that I have lost in recent years. All the reading I did today reminded me of this old love of mine, which I came to realize was what translated into my love of travel as adult. It was the novelty of it all, the new places you saw, the new people you met, and through it all, the stories you encountered. I am a devourer of stories, I always have been, I hunger for them like no other. And driving to the community center library at 6pm, with the sky already pitch black, I realized that I was not putting myself in a position to devour stories. Going to the community center was something I did as a child, or something I see old ladies doing. There was no one my age there. And under the jarring, all too bright fluorescent lights, I read and read, and I wondered again if I was making a terrible mistake with everything, that this was not at all where I was meant to be.

That feeling lingers, albeit not as intense now, because writing wears me out and also because it is 2AM and I really do need to sleep now. Also because despite all this fanfare, despite all this longwinded writing, I know myself well, and I know that I am far from my limits, far from being irrevocably and indefinitely dissatisfied. For all of my unhappiness that I write about, there are moments of happiness where I do not feel the need to write. This morning, while sitting in bed having just woken up, the sun peeks then hides behind a cloud, and momentarily, against my still closed curtains, light silently swept into the room, warmth lingered, then slowly washed away again. I am familiar with this occurrence, although I have not actively stopped to notice it since I was a child. The motion of it always like a wave upon the shore. The words ebb and flow come to mind, which I first learned from the poem Dover Beach, "the ebb and flow of human misery". But also of human happiness. One never without the other.

2AM me is much more confident than 12AM me, or just perhaps all too tired to fret and worry. Everything will be fine, I know this to be true because saying it out loud feels as certain as a heavy rock in my gut. Don't worry, go to sleep, everything turn out fine eventually, as it always does.