SSRIs

It's my last "Friday of Week 1 of Michaelmas Term" because I'm in final year now, although I guess there's a distinct possibility I'll be staying for my Master's so I suppose I can't be too sure about this being my last Friday of Week 1 of Michaelmas Term. I was going to make this post on Tumblr talking about my day yesterday but I figured i could do it here instead since it's been a while and I feel quite a lot better than I did last time, thank you antidepressants and third year for helping me to truly, truly stop worrying and love the bomb.

I haven't got an essay due until next week so I've been focusing on grad school applications this week. Yesterday morning I had yogurt, granola, and strawberries for breakfast and headed to the SSL café with my Keepcup. I had a latte and soon my friend Eleni dropped by on her way to a tutorial and we chatted - she always has so many things to say, when we talk (which so far hasn't been that often, I don't know her very well yet) I always feel like my brain is going 100km per hour to keep up with her. Rachel dropped in as well. I edited some pieces for Sine Theta and generally checked things off the to-do list I'd scribbled onto a post-it and taped to my laptop keyboard.

Lunch was a simple soba with pok choy and chicken (paprika, garlic, cumin, mirin) - sweet and good, but it was one of those moments where I took a really long time to eat it and it got cold and an hour passed and I just didn't feel like it anymore, so I did end up throwing a bit of it away at the end. I packed up to go back to the café and do more work, but then remembered that my tutor Julia had said I could call her to discuss US grad schoolk so I sat down to do that - she was so, so, so kind and encouraging and actually insisted on reading my (very bad) first draft for Yale so that was awesome. After talking with her I felt really excited and inspired to write my next draft which is what I did for the whole afternoon until it was time for my evening activities.

I first went with Rachel to the Queer Studies Network mixer, which was a networking thing for academics. I had a lot of wine (a cup each of white and red) which on an empty stomach meant I was soon slurring my speech. After slightly embarrassing myself for an hour or so I had to go meet with Sophie to attend the Industry magazine launch, which we promptly left after arrival once we had run into Dan (whom I had finally met last week for the first time when we were teaching Fiction and Non-Fic editing at the Isis masterclass and really hit it off because we both just decided to act like we already knew each other and skip the introductions and awkward small talk) and Kwan Ann, whom I was finally now meeting for the first time after being mutuals on Twitter for a while. She made an uncomfortable joke about Sine Theta rejecting her twice, which was awkward but what can I do, it's nothing personal. We tried to check out a "jazz night" advertised at a townie pub (there was no music), then went to another pub on Cornmarket where we got a fancy bottle of wine to share. We picked the wine with the coolest name, which was La Forge. After polishing that one off, we headed off to Spoons and got some pitchers of a blue cocktail that tasted a bit like childhood cough medicine as well as some chips. Gabriel sent me a Pimm's which was adorable and very much appreciated. We talked for a really long time and eventually split up at midnight. It started raining soon after we went outside, and after we all split up I took out my umbrella and just listened to the patter of rain coming down heavy. I had a hole in the heel of my Converse that I had unsuccessfully tried to remedy with duct tape last week, and my shoes started filling up with water. I squelched back to my room and it was so quiet on St Cross Road that I could cross the street whenever I wanted. I had some hot water and went to bed.

I can't sleep, again, so I'm here to tapoter un peu so that hopefully all the thoughts running around in my brain have somewhere to go instead of my head.

I've started rereading Do Not Say We Have Nothing and it is still exquisite. In novels people are always quoting stuff, like they know a ton of Literature by heart. Obviously I know that, especially in the past, people were probably able to quote stuff a lot, but there's a part for instance in this book where Zhuli, in a moment of crisis, thinks of a quote from Faust that she heard orally just the other day. In contrast I feel like words come in from one ear and out the other. I'll remember ideas and events (though as the start of my previous post attested I seem to forget really important stuff as well) but I could never just quote a whole chunk of text from something I read or heard in passing.

The closest thing I have to that is this single-line poem from Yanyi, which I'm not even sure I have word for word: "There are places I can't go, like outside my body." It really struck me when I read it and I've thought about it a few times in the few days since I've read it, not only in terms of my heart palpitations but also how I hate things like mindfulness/yoga/Headspace/meditation because they make me acutely aware of my body which is an extremely uncomfortable feeling and also how I often imagine myself in the third person as I'm experiencing events.

I actually don't really have that much to write about, which is annoying. There's a rabbit hole about social media I could go down but I'm not sure if I really have the energy to do it right now. But I know that if I clamber upstairs back into bed I'm going to start wildly jumping from topic to topic in my head again, so now I'm not super sure what to do. I suppose I could go back to reading but I'm kind of scared to get sucked back in too much and sleep too late and be tired all of tomorrow.

august

My mom won't let me re-read The Bell Jar because she thinks it'll be bad for my mental health, which kinda sucks because I was really looking forward to it. Jia Tolentino talks a bit about it in part of Trick Mirror and it made me realise that I really remember nothing from that even though I think I read it twice when I was 13/14. It's funny how little I remember from stuff: I've seen Inglourious Basterds at least 3 times but when I rewatched it this summer I realised that I always forget that LaPadite betrays the Jewish family in the tense opening scene, and also that Christoph Waltz ends up doing a deal with the Americans. I guess that's a good thing, because I can keep revisiting stuff and get new things out of it each time. I managed to read about 5 pages of The Bell Jar before my mom took it away and whaddaya know, zero recollections.

Heart palpitations, still. I ended up sleeping 5 hours last night because I had a dentist appointment, and then fell asleep on the sofa from 6-9pm which doesn't bode well for my sleep schedule. Right now my heart is just beating too fast and strong for me to really want to turn off the lights and just lie there, so....

Earlier I laid on the floor for a while looking at the light fixture in our living room. It's the same one that we first got when we first moved into this house in 2006 and I'd never noticed it before, really. It's kind of ugly, this Dalek-looking assemblage of concentric rings with golf-sized crystal balls hanging off of it. It felt good to lie on the floor because of the cool tiles. I'd wanted to do it back in Palo Alto but most of the Airbnb was carpeted except for the toilet, and I wasn't going to lie on the poop and pee floor. Also, the toilets are shared, and it would've been pretty weird for someone to see me. More specifically, I remember the evening when I had the strongest urge to go lie there I really didn't want O to come and see me because it would look like some massive desperate cry for attention. I didn't want attention, or at least not more than usual. Just that nice cool feeling. The next morning I sat at the kitchen island, which is covered in these beautiful deep turquoise tiles (but that make the surface of the counter uneven) and just pressed my face against it. I did look crazy, and I felt it, but it was more acceptable. I could just say, "I'm really tired" (which was true because I'd had a Breakdown the evening before and not gotten that much sleep). That's something you can just say and people will accept it. In the movie The Farewell, which I saw twice, they say that a lot so that family members won't probe. In late-stage capitalism I guess everyone's just always tired and other issues are, to some extent, about being tired anyways. Or is that a reach. Anyway, I had my arms on the counter in this frame-like shape and placed my face into the center, like at the massage places where they have a hole in the cushion. Then I took my arms away and pressed by forehead there. After O finished his breakfast and left I cried a little bit, still with my face there. I didn't know what I wanted or needed. I had Mitski's "Crack Baby" stuck in my head because I'd been listening to it on repeat. The most dramatic moment, I'm sure.

Today I finished reading The Idiot and read through Yanyi's The Year of Blue Water, which Lis gifted me and said was similar in some ways to Elif Batuman. I definitely enjoyed it a bit more than I normally enjoy poetry, since I don't really understand much of poetry and feel kinda bad that I don't. Some of the lines in there were good. He talked a lot about writing -- writing as a way to survive, writing as something that he had to do like it was just bursting out of him, he needed it to make sense of his life -- which is also something Jia Tolentino talks about and just stuff I've been thinking about lately. Like, do you have to need to write to be a writer? I don't know if I need to write or if I just write because I don't really have anyone to talk to / writing as a way to force someone or something to listen to me. I feel like writing the blog post yesterday helped in some way. Proper punctuation and capitalisation and all that. I guess writing stuff down like this feels better because I'm not really expecting any kind of reply from the void, whereas I tend to be frequently disappointed by interpersonal exchanges.

Sidenote: Why does Min Jin Lee have to retweet basically every mention of her on Twitter? I mean I see why, but she always does them in a huge batch when she comes online and it just floods my feed. I suppose I should just unfollow her.

Thinking, now, about the man in the Economy check-in line at SFO who got upgraded to First Class because the San Francisco - Zurich flight was hopelessly overbooked. As he walked away from the red-carpeted counter he had that expression where you're trying really hard not to smile. First Class -- First, not Business!

I told O that I was trying to be more generous to my friends, which is true. I'm usually quite stingy and get stressed about spending money, but I tell myself that buying gifts for friends, whether it's their birthday or I've just been thinking of them, is a good thing. I said this when he protested about me buying him boba, even though I had said I would because I'd lost a Love Island bet. I hadn't thought Amber would pick Greg over Michael, but she did. When she did, it was a moment of absolute euphoria. We screamed and cheered, and O threw himself onto the floor, I think. It was carpeted. I find that a bit gross, because carpets have accumulated years and years of dust whereas at least you can scrub down toilet tiles. But yes, generosity. My friend E, who to be honest I don't know super well but who is just an absolute darling, very sweet and adorable, had a birthday picnic back in May and I went and got her some stuff from Lush. I even paid for a little handkerchief to wrap it in. And it felt really good that I was doing this for someone else.

What I'm trying to say is I'm trying to be kind and generous and open-hearted, partly because I feel like have a slight mean streak or at least used to, partly because I always feel like I'm too self-absorbed and selfish and self-centered, partly because people are always talking about how important friendship is and I agree but I don't know if I really have that kind of Perks of Being a Wallflower type of thing going on and I try to invest in the people I'm around. I always try really hard to not try and expect anything back because interpersonal relationships aren't transactional, they're built over time -- like how whenever E (a different E from the Lush one) pays for me at mealtimes and I try to pay him back, he shrugs and says "I'm sure it'll even out in the future. At some point you'll spot me for something." It's annoying, but it's also very moving. What he's saying is that he likes me, that we're friends, that we're going to continue to hang out a lot in the future and continue to be friends and he'll continue to like me. That's a pretty nice thing. Nevertheless, it always hurts a bit when I feel like I haven't gotten back what I've given. Like how when I'm depressed and it's pretty clear that I could do with some help (sometimes I specifically ask for help, like for help making soup or something) and my friends don't really show up for me. Or I'm just not asking properly. Or I'm isolating myself on purpose. I sometimes don't have the energy to talk, but I always kind of need someone there to absorb the unspoken energy that I have, if that makes sense. I don't have any study buddies.

I'm making myself a bit sad writing this. I hadn't expected to go into how I'm really lonely or whatever. Basically I shouldn't have such high expectations about anything and I should stop trying to make stuff into things and just let it be, and I should be kind. I was telling O (and this is again something like what I wrote on Tumblr like 2 weeks ago and I'm annoyed at myself for wasting time re-hashing stuff but I guess I've led myself here so) that if we'd met in some more organic situation like if we attended the same university, I would've probably made some kind of snap judgment and dismissed him and we would never have been friends. He says he thinks we would've been friends but not best friends, but he thinks that because he's good with people and somehow adapts to whoever he's with. I think he's very different in different contexts, and I would've seen the way he behaves when he's with others just categorised him as some typical American dude who's way too much in his comfort zone, who moved with too much ease. Or, I don't know, I can't really imagine what I would be like at an American university -- probably I would've just become an Asian-American which is depressing as fuck. "So if we weren't friends, it would be your fault", he said, and yeah, basically.

The only reason why we became so close is because we were in this weird situation where we only had each other, 24/7, and saw each other all the time. It made me sad when we both left (and still sad, now, because he's a terrible texter (he had warned me) which doesn't help my attachment issues) because I felt like this was one of the deepest friendships I'd ever had, and it had only lasted around a month, and I was basically never going to see him again and that was that. I knew, again, that the only reason we were so close was because of this highly unique and almost artificial context... like being the only two people on a spaceship, or being stuck at an Arctic science lab during a blizzard, etc etc -- fanfiction setups, almost. In a regular situation everyone has many acquaintances and you kind of cycle them around. Given the choice I would've obviously hung out with different people instead of giving O this impression that I was some kind of unhinged suicidal witch who needed to be looked at all the time or else she would evaporate, like how the Weeping Angels from Dr Who turn into stone when someone is looking at them so you just have to keep your eyes on them all of the time and not blink. So because it was so unique, I know that I shouldn't see this as some kind of indictment of all my other friendships, but I can't help but feel like my regular friendships don't really match up to this. At university, aren't you actually supposed to have breakfast together, watch Love Island in the evenings together, go out for a weekly dinner on Saturday night, late night talks every once in a while, have banter inbetween? I mean these are regular things you do with your so-called best friends, so when you distill it, it does feel like I'm missing out on something because I'm doing them with a handful or rotation of individuals. Like how when I told E (a third E!) that I ate alone all the time and had no hangups about it, it was just convenient, and she said she couldn't conceive of it -- even if she was at home making pasta she had to take it into her friend's room for a chat. This is a weird example but I think I'm bringing it up because my month in Palo Alto I was a lot like this E.

Here I am again talking about how I "don't seem to be able to make connections with my peers" when I was trying to talk about something positive, about how I'm trying to be kind. My point was that I wouldn't've normally given O a chance and so I should give more people chances; and that I shouldn't let my quick closeness with O make me feel bad since it's such unique circumstances and so I should stop fretting over my other friendships' "deepness" and just let them be; and finally that I shouldn't fret about my friendship with O now, because I know a lot about being a terrible texter and bad at maintaining a friendship over text and not having energy and not wanting to, so I shouldn't let dry texting give me the fatalistic impression that he now hates me/never liked me, wants nothing more to do with me, and that I should just disappear altogether, because what does that achieve, really. What's the point of playing hard-to-get when we're already friends and he already knows I'm needy as fuck? Reading about Selin's exchanges with Ivan I wondered if I could relate to her feelings, and turns out I can't, not at all, because we're in very very different situations. I was mainly thinking about how I spend my days waiting for a Whatsapp notification and then pretending like I wasn't, and feeling excited every time I'm hit up proactively. The only similar thing I guess is just that excitement and uncertainty, like having a crush, but a friend crush -- or since we're already friends, a friend continuation crush? It's not crazy that I'm like this, because underneath is the very human desire to feel like you matter, that you still matter even outside of those extenuating circumstances, that Airbnb bubble, that turquoise kitchen island, that TV room with the HDMI cable unplugged from the DVD player, Stanford campus and its ugliness and all that unhappiness, Emerson Street, carpeted corridor, Philz Coffee, boba, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Salt and Straw. That you weren't just someone he was stuck with. Just like when I meet people through activities like Isis and really want to become friends beyond that but don't know how to make it work. I need to stop playing this bitter and ugly game of viewing friendship as transactions, why didn't you hit me up first it's because you don't really care about me, it's awful. I'm a terrible friend online, to others, so why freak out when it happens to me. If I see a meme I should send it. If I think of anything I should say it. What's the point of angst and nervousness, it's not like I'll ever express it, it only stays on the inside of me so I might as well just... not. I should give and give and give and give and give and ultimately it evens out in a way that can't be calculated. It's scary because women always do that and get trampled and flattened completely, but surely that's only in romantic relationships, not friendships? I think people need to talk about friendship a lot more.

On one of our last nights in Palo Alto, O and I hugged and he was like, "You're pretty great, I care about you a lot." Obviously people have showed me direct affection before, but not as direct as this. It was a pretty great feeling that this was said, out loud, to me, friend to friend. I just need to be as nice to everyone, be honest and direct. Kind and generous, as I've said about a million times in this post already.

It's past midnight and my mom keeps coming in to check on me because she's worried I can't sleep. I eventually had to admit I was writing a blog post -- I don't think my mom or anyone really has been reading my blog posts recently since I've been so inactive -- but now she's going to read this which is annoying because it's going to change the way she sees me. I've been more vulnerable in this post than I've allowed myself to be -- to myself and to others -- in a long time. I hope she pretends like she never read this.

heart palpitations

I got back from California the other day and I've just read half of The Idiot again because I'm jetlagged, and I'm thinking about how fiction (especially debuts) seems to always be autobiographical to an extent, and about the interview I did with Jessica J. Lee where she said writing about her experience in her (non-fiction) book Swimming actually ended up helping her resolve a lot of her baggage and learn how to let go, and how my response was to invoke Elif Batuman and how it made me think that all I have to do is survive and write about it later and it'll all be worth it. It's 3:38am and raining outside, thunder and lightning, and I can't sleep at all, and Twitter is dead (impossible!) and I'm just so full of anxiety. I'm sorry, mom, because she totally thought that I would be all cured and ok once I got home because my unhappiness always has some distinct cause (like antihistamines maybe) that can be subtracted from me like pulling a blanket off. But I don't know if there is a "real me" underneath all this, just like, um, how there might not be a "real", essential culture in a non-Western context untainted by colonial and postcolonial Western ideas that you can just uncover and reveal if you tried hard enough. 

I spent some of today watching this ASMR Youtube channel, it's a young Korean housewife who makes really high-quality videos detailing her daily life, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and highlighting the small joys in her everyday routine. Apart from the fact that aesthetically it's really pleasing, I also think I really connect to it because (at least based on the English translations of her subtitles) it's clear that she's deeply depressed and using these videos to try so, so, so hard to find something that will make her feel happy, or at least good, something to live for, like the sizzling of oil in a pan, her son's little feet standing on a stool, an ant crawling across a tree root, a folded towel. And while that's all and good, it's also pretty depressing, still, to me. I've been following this poet on Instagram and Twitter who is totally awesome, half-Sino, in her twenties, MFA, doing a lot of great creative stuff, loves nature, posts a lot about the tomatoes she grows on her windowsill. And she's friends with Jessica, who's just turned 33 and whose social media is basically the same stuff. Cooking with friends. Swimming. You'd think looking at these posts is really calming and nice, but there's something about it that makes me lose all hope... This life is probably a pretty accurate picture of what my life is going to look like in the coming years, my twenties, my thirties, maybe even after that. Just going to work, doing something creative whether that's for my job or just on the side, coming back and watering the plants by the window and taking a photo of something nice. And that's... just as good as it gets. I mean, it's nice, but that's just it, for the rest of my life, tomatoes on the windowsill. A trip to Italy every once in a while. And I mean it's good, it's good to love the little things, but is that really just going to be how I live, waiting for that next little fleeting thing that will make me feel like not-shit for 2 fucking seconds and grabbing onto that for dear life, until I die? 

Thinking now about this quote from Gabrielle Calvocoressi. Rachel recommended the essay after I posted about the poem she'd had in the New Yorker, one of the only TNY poems I ever read when I had my subscription. That poem was called "hammond b3 organ cistern" and the quote from a different essay is this, specifically the bolded part:

Why did my mother kill herself and I didn’t that year and have not? This is a question I ask myself almost everyday, though never during moments of despair. The thought never comes to me then. I ask myself at the farmer’s market when David shows me the black radishes that I use in risotto or when Sarah takes me to the ranch and the horses press in on me so I’m nothing but warmth and breath and their snot on my hair. Is it this? Is this the reason? I ask myself at the rodeo and the rowdy square dance when the rain starts to fall. I don’t mean for it to sound romantic. I have questions about what keeps us alive. I don’t believe it’s a phone call or trying harder. I don’t believe it’s an act of cowardice to take your life. Or that it’s brave. I think it’s the most natural unnatural thing in the world. My analyst said, You have to decide her story is not your story. Even if it’s the last place you know to find her and you really have to say goodbye.

Every time I pass by a pretty flower or smell tapioca when I walk past a boba shop or witness golden hour I'm like is this why I'm alive? Is this why? Is this just what I have to keep waiting for? And this is supposed to be worth it? This is supposed to make it all ok just in this one moment? 

I didn't really mean to make this post be about death again. It's pretty embarrassing to be so earnest and vulnerable and sincere, and not just because this is the Internet and anyone that I know could read this even though nobody reads this someone could see it, someone who usually knows me by a Cool Girl reputation I've tried hard to build up so that boys in high school would be scared of me. (I wonder if they still are. Probably not.) I probably couldn't even write it down in private. This is especially true when it comes to talking about other people, my friends, people I think are cool, because god is it not the worst thing ever to want, to feel, to take oneself seriously? Thinking about the part in The Idiot where Selin is mortified to read her story at the magazine event even though it won first prize because "I didn't want anyone to think I thought it was good." (150) 

Like how I used to have a mild I'd-be-down-if-you-were-but-otherwise-I-don't-really-care crush on M when we'd banter over Messenger, both measuring our intellectual dicks, and continued to think he was hot even after I was no longer single, but when I saw him again for the first time in over a year after we'd both spent 4 terms at Oxbridge I immediately, suddenly, and irrevocably lost all interest in him. Emily (not abbreviating because I think Emily actually does still read this so it would be weird to act like she needs anonymity due to me writing without her knowledge or whatever, plus, there are like a billion people named Emily just in my life) and I met up with him briefly and when he came to pick us up because we were lost in Downing College I didn't recognise him at first, in that oversized black cardigan, those tight black jeans, those black Dr Martens, that comically posh accent, God, who had he become, I mean really? The point wasn't that he was now a total softboy, since I happen to be quite attracted to that kind of man (I know, I know), but that he'd become this kind of person overnight after having spent years as some nondescript, cerebral, slightly nerdy dude who hadn't seemed to care what others thought about him at all. It turned out that he really, really did, because clearly he'd felt some desperate need to remodel himself based on the latest trends, to change who he was (at least externally, which of course is the most immediate and important facet) in order to please others' standards. Emily and I had very different views on this: she thought that it would be vindicative to come back changed, new, suddenly Cool, and to see the looks on the faces to those who had scorned or ostracised you before. I think that's the worst thing, to give in, because doesn't it show that they, whoever they are, were right all along, that you were wrong and all you had to do was change to be accepted? That what they'd done had indeed hurt you, struck some deeply buried internal chord? I would much rather they realise that I was the one who was right all along, that the things I'd liked were suddenly cool. And I still don't really know what that means, specifically in what ways Emily's and my stances differ and what that says about us. I do know that it means I think showing you care is really, really fucking lame. 

All this is to say, again, that I find it so hard to be personal in part because I'm constantly assuming that I have an audience. In a way, I can't really exist without an audience: all of my thoughts only really get crafted when I imagine in my head that I'm saying them to someone, writing them down somewhere, posting it on my blog... otherwise they kind of just float around as concepts, some weird fog with no substance. 

Back to California, which is the reason why I was makin this post that has just turned out to be a collection of some of my recent concerns (ie better-phrased versions of my panicked Tumblr posts). I was feeling so listless in part because my experience there was so liminal: a vacation but not; work but not; alone but not; far away but not; my own boss but not... One Monday, after a weekend of allowing myself to do nothing productive since it was "the weekend", I found myself unable to decide precisely what I was going to do for lunch: every option seemed to entail some kind of loss, cost, or reveal some kind of failure, and deciding precisely what to do after lunch was also absolutely paralysing -- I had become Chidi from the Good Place, unable to even move, unable to do anything -- I ended up missing appropriate lunch times and missing the movie that my boyfriend was trying to get me to go watch even though it was a Monday -- it was one of those awful depranxiety attacks where I really just could not do anything at all -- eventually I calmed down enough (after crying in front of the cleaning ladies) to go back down to my room with a bowl of plain tortillas and gear myself up for dinner -- which turned out to be poké, a huge portion of it because this was America, I felt suddenly dizzy and ill and light-headed so I picked out the rest of the fish and threw the bowl away in a trash can outside so the employees wouldn't see what I'd done -- I passed by Trader Joe's to pick up some groceries and try to turn the rest of my week around -- I ran into my only friend and housemate O who was boycotting Whole Foods because of the Prime Day strikes. Later that evening after watching Love Island, O, who was in much of the same situation as me except he really did have a boss who assigned him tasks and expected him to complete them at a reasonable time, had been there for a month already, and also wasn't a crazy dumb bitch who hated being alive, told me that ever since I'd arrived it had thrown him off his groove, because seeing me drift from coffeeshop to coffeeshop had made him realise that he could kind of just dally around too. I was like, "Um, okay, well I had a breakdown today because I'd run out of food in the pantry but also didn't think I deserved to spend money on a lunch. I have way too much freedom." And indeed every morning I woke up filled with emptiness and unhappiness and dread because there was basically nothing stopping me from just lying around in bed all day watching Jake Gyllenhaal interviews. Who cared what I did with my time, I was spending half my stipend on this Airbnb and flown halfway across the world just to sit around and do the same shit I'd do back home for free, which is be depressed and scroll on social media. I needed to be working and that had a lot of other complications. For the second time in my life (the first time being September 2018 when I briefly broke up with my boyfriend) I had heart palpitations, or maybe my heartbeat was normal and I was just overly aware of it, but basically, even after I'd cut caffeine, I would just feel my heartbeat all the time and it would drive me crazy and I would just wish it would stop once and for all. This is just to provide a bit more context. I tried to express this jitteriness over poetry but mostly failed. 

So anyway, I was increasingly, 'ow you say, losing it, and increasingly crawling into O's room after Love Island to just sit and stare and talk because I could not stand being alone, just really really needed some other human being to be there and absorb all of this energy I had, which was difficult because I had only 1 friend whom I did not know super well and needed to constantly limit myself so that I would not come off as an absolute psychopath. I had to set myself a quota on Depressed Anxious Bitch Hours With O and it was hard because I felt like that all of the time. (I put O through a lot, I felt awful about it but I also just really needed to. But there's a lot there.) One night we were talking and I made a comment about how I'm either emotionally numb or having a breakdown -- but that I doubt the authenticity of my breakdowns because it feels like I'm doing it for attention, but not someone else's, my own. His insight (and thank you God for a male friend with EQ, finally) was: "Do you feel like your feelings don't matter unless it's a disaster?" And I was like, wow, yeah, probably. He asked if there are moments when I do think about myself or prioritise myself, and I said I talk about myself quite a lot when I'm with others, and maybe that's because being-yourself and making conversation is an inherent part of being friends with someone. When I'm hanging out with someone I identify these moments as worthy because I'm socialising, and anything I do within that framework is productive and net-positive because I'm contributing to the strengthening of my relationship with this person. So that brings us back to me existing only really in terms of others, or allowing myself to do so. I don't really know what to do about it though, because I tried "spending time with myself" and "focusing on myself" -- California was basically an experiment of this -- and it fucking sucked, because there isn't really a me, again, without all the stuff I'm doing all the time, so what does spending time with myself even mean, apart from hearing my own heartbeat at night and getting really freaked out and crying? 

Going back to the start again. I had a terrible and confusing and highly liminal time in California and I feel like the only way I can make sense of it, and also the best way to feel like it was all worth it, is to write about it and then profit from that, in every way possible. Jia Tolentino says she hasn't got that much to say about her year in Kyrgyzstan because she really didn't take that many notes, and now I'm like, shit, do I have to take notes while it's still fresh in my memory? Or can I just get away with posts and Instagram story archives and stuff? Because I feel like it's much too fresh to start writing about it now, I certainly don't feel comfortable writing about the friendship I formed with O because it feels a bit like a betrayal and also is way too much vulnerability for me. What parts am I meant to fictionalise and what parts am I meant to add and.... I don't know. I guess I was gonna try to take notes but I really just can't, not just because it's traumatic, not just because to put it into words out loud or written down, whether in private or online, feels dirty and crass, but because it's just, god it's just so embarrassing to have feelings, real feelings, about myself and about others, and to write about them, as if every thought that came tumbling through my head was so important that it would be a crime not to publish (loose paraphrase of Rooney Mara in The Social Network, which I saw both on the plane to and from San Francisco), as if I thought it was good. And it's 4:40, the rain has stopped, and I'm still not tired.

analogy about existential angst

i was talking to my friend about my #existential angst and he brought up the stoics and how they kind of considered that they couldn't control anything and just needed to manage expectations and take what comes in life, ride the wave in a way.... which made me think of a way that might explain how i feel? like, if life is all about riding the waves that come and letting them take you wherever, my question is why am i in the ocean in the first place? why do i have to deal with waves? wouldn't i prefer to be on land, where there are no waves? but in this world i dont even know that there is such a thing as land because ive never seen it before, so all i can do is stay swimming in this ocean wishing i didnt have to do it, because it's so hard, and yet not knowing where else i might be / not having an option to be anywhere else. lol. just wanted to note that down i guess.

read this piece a couple weeks back: https://theoutline.com/post/7267/living-with-passive-suicidal-ideation?zd=1&zi=amdkoiqx which is about a similar feeling of not really wanting to be alive but i dont really identify with it, because while the author compares it to treading water with the risk/possibility of drowning, i dont feel like im at risk of drowning, i just don't want to be in the water in the first place. but i am, so i have to keep swimming, and it sucks.

society cafe

a list of the times i've been to society café on st. michael's street:

1. Meeting up with Lana in Michaelmas term of 1st year. We were supposed to go to this other café that I'd found when I googled 'cafes oxford' but it was closed so we came here. I haven't seen Lana that many times in Oxford -- we live in completely different worlds. She looks exactly the same though.
2. Hilary term 1st year: Meeting Alexis for the second time after Tobi had brought her to an informal Isis meeting (location: the then-new Common Ground coffee on Little Clarendon St) because she'd heard a lot about me and wanted to be friends. I ducked into Society right after having lunch with Emily at Handlebar just down the street, so this would've been our first meeting when we'd both just been chosen as the new Isis editors. The Handlebar has this French waiter who speaks with a heavy accent and I'd instinctively ordered in French. I came to Society early to wait for Alexis but she was late, so I sat downstairs with a tea and carrot cake for the longest time. Eventually she showed up and we had a riveting discussion right before she left for China.
3. Shortly after my meeting with Alexis -- like, a couple of days after -- Sanaa and I dropped in to her Homecoming Queen launch which was here at Society after hours, before going to the Isis HT18's journalism panel.
4. Michaelmas 2nd year: group lunch with Michelle and Li to celebrate/welcome their entry as Sine Theta interns, and then I was bored so we decided to skip down to Society to study. I was reading T. J. Clark's Farewell to an Idea for my Picasso essay and greatly, greatly struggling. Eventually the others left but I stayed until 7pm agonising over that chapter. 
5. Today, Trinity 2nd year. I keep forgetting that you can't move the tables here at Society. The table is a bit too far away from the (hard wooden) bench for my comfort so my back and shoulders are definitely gonna hurt after this. I passed by Society on the way to brunch with Gabriel at Bill's and decided to spend my afternoon studying here. But I need to remember the thing about the table's distance from the seat. I don't think I'll be back anytime soon.

I guess it's just cool how many experiences overlap and fold onto each other in a small town like Oxford. I've been to other cafes like Skogen too many times to count now, but here at Society I still remember all the little details of each time I was here, like the fact that the toilets used to have blackboard walls with chalk graffiti encouraged, but now is just a regular toilet. 

little update

Yesterday was the day I'd picked to have a chill little birthday picnic outside but it rained intermittently all day (it's been raining for over a week now) so we had it in the JCR instead. When I came back I did a bit of reading, or tried to, while Gabriel napped, and then watched a movie before going to sleep. I woke up at 11 to a really sunny day, which is infuriating, and had cake leftovers for breakfast before going over to Skogen for a light lunch and some studying. I finished Saturday's reading, did another, and then half of another, before we went to the Anthroposphere launch, then got bubble tea and came back, and I've still not finished this reading but it's okay. It's okay. It's okay.

When I get my own place I'm going to try to keep a clear desk, and put all my necessities like stationery and books on shelves etc. so that I can periodically wipe down the surface of the desk. I just noticed earlier that my desk has some oily patches on it and when I wiped it with a tissue it was black. So that's why. But I never know how you're meant to keep a shelf, with all of the books and knicknacks on it, tidy and clean. Do those fluffy duster things actually work? How do you keep dust off? I don't know.

things i like #12

Wow, the last "things i like" post I made was a full year ago. I haven't posted much on this blog lately because it requires way too much brainpower to string together full sentences about Interesting Topics rather than just fragmented ramblings about things immediately connected to what i'm doing at that very moment.

Anyways, this is dedicated to the broken escalators at Tesco on Magdalen Street which bar customers from going to the basement, where the snacks, sugary things, and health and hygiene items are stocked.

- when you open a new dove soap bar and you run your fingers over the dove logo stamped onto the soap, which because it's new feels really harsh and hard but also substantial and strong; also the smell of dove soap
- my chemical romance
- rilakkuma paraphernalia
- being able to rip off a piece of tape with your teeth in one go
- my new(ish) sienna uniqlo pants. the color is just so beautiful, im obsessed with it!

too much and not the mood

an extended abridged quote because i'm still not done reading this book:

Older girls, like babysitters or a friend's sister in high school, were pedestaled beings with perfect jean jackets. They were white girls mostly. Close-talkers with side-swept bangs who never appeared too wowed by anything, because they had yet to and might never encounter what it means to be denied. I coveted their casual nature, believing their incuriosity was a sign of self-possession; of not harboring some secret longing to be seen. Seen alone, not in comparison or as other, or through the bewildering construction of compliments that seemed to only further other. [...]

Even their bad skin conveyed a type of beauty that desperately drew me in because it wasn't beauty alone. It was notional. What I perceived as built-in unhindered-ness. Like ripping and ruining one's clothes at one's pleasure. Drawing with ballpoint pen on the rubber sidewall of one's Converse--a truly satisfying motion, actually. It was things done just because. It was disinterest. Inconceivable amounts of it. How exquisite I thought it would be to not care.

feelings??

last night wes and i were sitting in my room playing music to each other and talking about how the music made us felt - like how shostakovich's jazz waltz no. 2 was a checkerboard-floor ballroom with several couples dancing in sync, the women's identical long skirts twirling in unison. i showed him rex orange county (which he didn't seem to like) but i said that this was some guy our age in london with acne who made music about how much he loved his girlfriend, which wes thought was cute. then i showed him "les yeux d'elsa" by louis aragon (which by the way is not the same in english translation at all) and told him it was about this guy's love for his wife. (also, after doing some reading over the vac for an essay on surrealism i found out that aragon was a hardcore communist and a surrealist, which is so interesting because that poem itself feels like a really conventional work of french literature with meter and rhyme and fancy words and all that.)

at the same time i was reading both "too much and not the mood" by durga chew-bose (which i bought at blackwell's after reading that interview) and jenny zhang's "how it feels" online, again. (and then also "having a coke with you.") both durga and jenny zhang's works have this honesty but they could not be more different: zhang's poem is this typical zhang relentlessly raw and unflinching work that makes me want to self-annihilate every time i read it, like i really just want to disappear off the face of the earth because i just cannot deal with the emotions that she doles out on a platter like that, it is just unbearable how much feeling there is in that piece, like, oh my god?

and durga's honesty is sincere and tender and gentle. i'm still in her first essay called "heart museum" and she's talking about all the times her heart has skipped, and the soft way in which she talks about the feelings she had when she was in love - she isn't embarrassed at all to talk about her emotions. i don't understand how people can be so absolutely vulnerable in writing, immortalising the strength of the way they felt.

when i write, sometimes i feign authenticity - sometimes it sounds like i'm being vulnerable and honest, but i truly have not been for years. and when i look back at actually honest works i cringe so hard that i just want to die. why am i so afraid of having emotions? or more specifically of letting other people know i have emotions? it seems so embarrassing... and yet i am bouleversée, bowled over, by other people's emotions. like frank iero's "they wanted darkness", the absolute teen angst of that, that feeling of being so sad and angry and resentful and truly feeling like you're the only person in the world who feels that way, that self-absorption and self-indulgence and lack of shame... let's face it, i could never write about myself in such an open and unbothered way. maybe my destiny is to be like elif batuman, cynical and over-reflective, opting for the filters of self-deprecation and witty self-awareness, opting for telling stories about herself and for teleology instead of having to face the fact that those periods of angst and agony we went through were completely... completely... arbitrary and never did lead up to any kind of vindicative or conclusive moment where everything fell into place like a common app essay.

i guess i'm supposed to become a semiotician ... i'm too obsessed with meaning.

bad poems #10: feeling like white noise at the social science department café where i like to study because it has an almost perfect level of white noise noise that doesn't suffocate like complete silence does but also isn't too loud or distracting (except during lunchtimes when people sit at my table and speak at length about their boring lives) and where i can get a hot drink for very cheap

i

earlier i spilled tea

all over myself in the

ssl café

ii

55p tea

regular, milk and sugar

in a huge cup that

iii

i didn't put a

lid on because... i don't know

i guess i'm just dumb

iv

i was opening

my notebook to check something

about h. wölfflin

v

when it fell over

a burning sensation on

my lap and my thighs

vi

it splashed on the floor

(but thank god not my laptop)

i had to move spots

vii

my body was moist

my brand new brown pants felt cold

against my sad skin

viii

only after a 

while did i notice that my

favorite shirt, which

ix

i bought in japan

was wet, and would stain slowly

as it dried, a brown

x

patch with dark edges

i thought about going home

(which was very close)

xi

to change my shirt and

soak this one before it stains

but i had only

xii

recently arrived

at the ssl to do

some work, finally

xiii

and could not bear the

waste of time and energy

i also could not

xiv

simply take off

my shirt because the turtle-

neck is see through. so

xv

i have been sitting

here, sunken into a deep

inexplicable

xvi

state of depression

as if that tea had been my

only connection

xvii

to some kind of will

to live. i don't know if this

stain will wash out now

xviii

and it fills me with

incomprehensible sadness.

i'm demotivated.

xix

i was going to

go to edamame but

i don't think curry

xx

will heal me today.

nothing seems to matter now

all i want is to

xxi

lie in my bed and...

wait. no, not that. i want to...

i don't know. i want...

xxii

some kind of respite

(temporary) from being

conscious and feeling

xxiii

so i can stop this

void that has opened itself

in my tea-stained chest.

an article i saw

I've been procrastinating studying for my collections and found this really interesting interview where two close friends who are both writers have a conversation that's mainly about one of them, Durga Chew-Bose's, book of essays that's just been published. I just thought it was really cool and interesting and makes me want to go out and write more too so I'll paste the link here for future reference: https://www.bookforum.com/interview/17729