Words

Don’t waste your time. Make the most of it. Hard work pays off. Make hay while the sun shines. A stitch in time saves nine. Be the best you can be. Get to it. Just do it. Nothing is impossible. Perseverance commands success. All these one-liners urging you to become something great, stating that you too can achieve something. Do they really work? Aren’t they just words uttered by people who have been declared successful? Did they become great by following such pieces of advice? I try to follow all these little pointers when going about my day but when you get down to it, it’s really just work and more work. I want to rise to the occasion and prove myself, but in the midst of all of it, I forgot what got me so pumped up in the first place. All these inspirational songs and quotes don’t really help at the end of the day. You just do what you can and hope that it’s enough to get you through.

I want to be great, I want to be remembered. I want people to look at me and be impressed and wonder how I came to achieve so much. It’s a pretty shallow thought, really, because I should be focusing on obtaining inner happiness and learning what my purpose in life is. But what if I just want to be someone great? I want to be talked about; I want my opinion to matter. For people to look at me and think: “Wow, she really made it.” Is that really too much to ask for? But there aren’t so many great people in this world. Just a race to get to the top, trying to rise up above each other. Crawling and fighting and nudging and kicking. And only a handful of us will get somewhere.

I suppose the whole concept of “getting somewhere” should be questioned because I don’t even know what that means. Being famous? How famous? Being rich? How rich? Being successful? How successful? So many questions, no answers at all. One day I will find out. Hopefully.

Bittersweet Symphony

Brushes with depression aren’t as fun as you would suppose them to be. There might be a certain charm in being the “broken kind of beautiful” like a girl from a Maroon 5 song but really, the dark circles under your puffed up eyes and the generally vacant expression on your face is not attractive at all. Feeling like you’re being lowered into a bottomless well, down, down, down is a terrible feeling. Like you’ll never be happy again. Like all hope has been lost. And you begin to wonder when it will all end. Some people who genuinely care try to pull you out of depression, but it takes its merry time and doesn’t relinquish control until you decide you’ve had enough. I haven’t figured out the key to making it stop yet; I just have good days and then I have extremely bad days.

I learnt that people begin to lose their patience with you after a while. Sometimes I feel like my friends are fed up with me and just want me to quit being silent all the time. Like it’s an inconvenience to them. One of them went as far as to say that I use my depression as an excuse not to do things like projects. I wish she’d been in my position, maybe then she’d have realized how wrong she was. I don’t like telling people I take antidepressants, I don’t like staying up all night crying and I certainly don’t like looking like my dog died while everyone else around me is smiling like Cheshire cats. The teachers ask me why I sleep so much and everyone looks at me wondering “Why is she so down all the time?” I don’t get any personal satisfaction from feeling like shit and I don’t want people to give me special treatment because of it. Just give me a break sometimes. I’m not a fragile flower but I am weak and I need help sometimes.

Sometimes I look around me and all I see are sad, sad people. They laugh and smile but momentarily. I think I have my head too far up my ass most of the time. This is what I complain about a lot when it comes to other people, but I never really realize that everyone has their own tragedy going on. Most people don’t get up in the morning and think “By, golly! I have a mighty wonderful life!” Some people have problems with boys, some with parents, some with work, some with themselves. My sadness is not more justified than someone else’s sadness. You can’t quantify emotions. However, it is a bit ridiculous to expect to get the same amount of sympathy for losing your pencil case than losing your loved ones. The whole argument of the justifiability of sadness is still a bit confusing to me. I suppose I’ll figure it out one day or the other.

But on the whole, life’s been good to me. I’ve been blessed with people who really care and want to understand. They tell me how wonderful I am and make me feel good about myself. I wonder if they know that they’re so much more amazing than I will ever be because they just make everything seem better and I don’t think I ever do. Some people are just so good, it makes me feel bad not being as great as them. Maybe I’ll get there someday.

All hope is not lost. I get better everyday. This week was tough, undeniably tough, but I’m holding on. I think I just have to realize that life is difficult and everyone has to deal with it. People are all tragic souls in their own little ways and our ability to move on and be stronger is just how we survive. I’ll be fine, right?

A Life

The moon is a pretty sight. It moves me. To places. Where light travels. To trees and roads and faces and traces of things gone by. A different era. A simpler one. Where you slept and you woke up and the sun rose and set without any  consequence.

Where things made no sense but they felt familiar. The sun changed shades and the grass looked prettier. Cleaner. And now when you grow up, you remember things. Of a bygone era. Which will never come back. And you will die in the hopes of feeling that feel again. Of mystery when you looked at the window of a strange house or the sun when you were sleep in the back of your car on a warm summer’s day. Your hands felt sticky from the ice lolly and it was warm but not hot. Now all you have is emptiness. You feel nothing and you want to cry because you could before. You couldn’t describe those feelings but they were still there. And now you try to fill the void with other things. Like drugs and laughter and sex. But you know that you will never feel the same way and it kills you inside. It burns you. You want to so desperately.

You catch glimpses of your childhood in old Sesame Street clips on Youtube and when you smell the bed sheets in your grandmother’s room. She’s dead now and you’re bitter. Jaded. You want to once again curl up with a book and be transported to the world of adventurous young British children who rode bikes and had dogs and said “golly!”

When the weight if those fucking exams didn’t loom over your head all the time and you were content with staying at home and reading book. No boys to bother you, no drugs to tempt you. You would sit in your grandmother’s lap and listen to stories of your prophets and promise yourself you wouldn’t lie or hit that girl who stuck her tongue out at you in the sandpit. And you wished your school bag wasn’t so ugly but it was okay because the teachers adored you and all the girls followed you.

Strangers looked at you funny but you shrugged off the dear and went home to tell your Mama the spellings of “concentrate”. And then you began to hide things. Like how that man touched you where only you are supposed to. And how you got bad marks in the social studies test so you tore it up and you threw it away. You began to ask for bigger things and your mum looked at you with surprise and worry. Then you realized you weren’t the richest girl in the world and it made you sad. You wanted more Barbie dolls and video games and pretty stickers to put on your books and show everyone.

You grew and you grew and you learnt how to hide those faults and insecurities with a harsh attitude. You were bkunt and sharp all at the same time and people thought you hit too much. You said you didn’t care and you honestly didn’t. You went through school and people told you that you were smart. And you believed them. But this eventually led to your laziness and your grades dropped and your mother’s eyes widened when she saw your report card. You went through various groups of friends, each year a different one. Never really fitting in. Never really bonding. Sure they were all nice but you never felt comfortable enough. Close enough. Wanted enough.

So you left. Then you met some girls. Slowly but steadily you all became friends. You fought and the fights were stuff of legend but you came out stronger each time. If you could describe them you’d say they were kindred souls. And they still are.

But then you start to wonder where you life went and where it’s going. You wake up in the morning running to finish that homework or prepare for that test. It’ll be the O Levels, then A Levels, then Bachelors, then Masters, maybe a PhD. You will decide you’re getting old because everyone thinks you are. Then you will decide to get married.

Pffft, arranged marriage was never for you! But you haven’t found anyone special so you’re resigned to the fact that you never will and you don’t want to be the aunt that is pitied because she is single and all she has at home is a cat and maybe two goldfish. So you agree. He’s nice. And he’s probably in the same situation as you are. Marrying for the sake of marrying. Maybe he’s not even a virgin. Does it bother you? For a while. And then you realize you don’t care anymore. You get married. With the normal events and the dancing and the countless dinners and money that you very well know cuts a huge chunk out of your father’s earnings and could very well pay for the breakfast, lunch and dinner of an entire African village somewhere. Somewhere.

But you shrug it off yet again and go celebrate the fact that you met someone and will have to wake up next to him for the rest of your life. How nice. Then, after an appropriate amount of time you will squeeze out a child and the family will again celebrate this occasion to the fullest. And by fullest, they intend to blow as much money as they can to mark the occasion. Your days will be spent in bringing it up and grooming it to enter a reputable school and then college, obviously. You will be bombarded with having to make choices like choosing between the red or the black suit for dinner.

And you will grow older and older and look to find some meaning of life when you have exhausted its every resource. You will turn to God and pray forgiveness for all your sins. All your lust and greed and envy and everything in between. And slowly your health will deteriorate and you will contract some illness and you will die.

The New Girl

The wind blew into the house, sweeping the curtains off the ground and blowing in the air of a new dawn. The house was eerily quite with a growing sense of anticipation. The wooden floors looked dusty under the pool of growing sunlight streaming  through holes in the rumbling clouds. You could smell the rain in the air and the rustling of the leaves under the drooping trees that made up the forest. A smile was playing on her lips and she surveyed the forest overlooked by the house with a secret air of delight. Today was a very special day because today, She was coming over.

Even Elizabeth’s eyes were smiling as Her car rolled into the brick lined porch and reversed back after she slowly stepped out of the vehicle. Immaculately dressed for the occasion in black; Elizabeth could not have asked for a better candidate. Hesitantly stepping through the door after being greeted cheerily by Elizabeth, she began to take off Her coat.

“Oh, no! No need for that right now,” Elizabeth hastily exclaimed. “I thought we could step out into the forest for a while, seeing as how it’s such a lovely day today.”

“Um, okay. Yeah, sure. Just…..where are your parents?” the ever compliant new girl was asking.
“Oh, they’ve just gone out for a bit. Seeing as how splendid the weather is, they thought they should go for a drive. The longer the better, right? Don’t worry, they left food,” Elizabeth winked.
She nodded awkwardly.

“I just discovered this lovely spot in the forest yesterday where you can see the strangest birds in the trees. I thought I’d take you there,” she smiled encouragingly.
“Sure,” accompanied by a nervous attempt at a smile by Her.

As they made their way to the back door, She looked around, noticing the fact that there was hardly any furniture in the house and it wore a very desolate, unlived look about it. This did not help ease Her growing uncertainty that something was not quite right. Nonetheless, She followed Elizabeth to the back of the house, making footprints on the dusty floor as She walked timidly behind her. She could see the forest through the huge windows that stretched from the ceiling down to the floor and from one corner of the shabby room to the other.  They seemed surprisingly clean despite the grimy, ragged curtains that hung limply on their sides. A spider scuttled up one of the blinds as Elizabeth slid opened the windows. She worked hard to suppress her disgust as She stepped outside onto the creaking verandah.

It overlooked the whole forest which started about 20 feet away from the building. The trees wore an ancient, wizened look while the brilliant gold-colored leaves they had shed in the fall lay beside their feet and crunched under the girls as they walked towards the entrance. There seemed to be a natural path made through the forest but She could see that no one had used it in a long time because there were tiny twigs and untouched leaves lying all across it. The hairs on the back of Her neck began to prickle. Maybe this was not the best place to be, especially since the rumbling of the clouds was getting louder every minute. She turned around to tell Elizabeth that they should probably turn back before it started to pour but Elizabeth put her finger on her lips with an eager smile and gestured Her to come forward. They stepped into a clearing in the trees, devoid of any vegetation except a tall pile of dead leaves.

“What exac-,” She began.
“Shhh. Listen!” Elizabeth silenced her.

But She could not hear anything, A bird hooted in the distance, the grey clouds above them rumbled again, but other than that, the forest was deadly quite like the calm before a storm. She wasn’t even sure what She was supposed to be listening to.

All the while She could hear Elizabeth breathing softly on Her neck but suddenly, even that ceased. She swung around and gave a cry of surprise. Elizabeth was standing with her legs apart, holding a large, glittering dagger in her raised arms and She could do no more than give a faint yell of confusion when Elizabeth swung it down with an astonishing amount of force and stabbed her in the chest. She laughed in quick, raspy cackles as she repeatedly cut into Her smooth white skin. Her eyes gleamed with mirth as she saw the life seeping out of Her body. The raindrops were beginning to fall slowly and steadily from the sky and trickled down the few leaves that were still hanging from the trees before dropping down softly to the ground.

Elizabeth walked over to the large pile of leaves and began to clear them hurriedly. When she finished, long strips of wood could be seen lying over an opening where the leaves had been. She kicked them aside, again with the same overwhelming strength to reveal a marble bath deep enough to slowly slide into and wide enough for a person to lie down in. She went back to Her and dragged Her by the tufts of Her silky, auburn hair and lay Her near the path in such a way that Her head was hanging off one of the ends of the bath to the inside. Elizabeth then expertly slit Her throat and began to remove her clothes as the warm blood gushed from Her neck. She laid down in the bath while getting sprayed by the blood, which she seemed to enjoy very much. She sighed and lay back luxuriously as a mixture of rain and blood began to rise up, enveloping her body.

“Nothing like a good blood bath in the fall.”

The clouds thundered louder than ever.

 

*Inspired by Countess Elizabeth Bathory (1560-1615) of Hungary who is alleged to have killed a total of 650 girls in order to drink their blood and bathe in it, an act that she believed would preserve her youth.*

Silence

She walked the streets aimlessly. One street to the next, looking for something but not knowing what she was looking for at all. Among the lights and the sounds and the commotion. Inside her head was silence, eerie silence that really was the opposite of all the entire hustle bustle around her. She had a pretty, fair face, framed by locks of auburn hair. Her upper lip protruded over her lower one, giving her the look of a child constantly not getting what it wanted. She had big eyes that always looked like they were going to tear up. She was silent and only spoke when necessity dictated that she should.

She went past the restaurants with their smells of spices and sizzling meat. She went past the toy stores where plastic animals made squeaking noises and flashed bright colors at her. From innocence she went to lust and desire; walking among the roads in the red light area. She would have been stopped if anyone cared enough to tell her. But she didn’t. She never did.

A pimp walked up to her and grabbed her by the arm in a rough manner. She took no notice of him and only blinked when he came up in front of her and began to yell. “Do you even know where you’re going?!” She didn’t know but she just looked at him with those mournful eyes of hers and even he went silent. He lowered his voice to a whisper and said, “Look, if you need some money, I can help you out in getting a job.” When he received no resistance from her, he took it as approval of his question and began telling her what her job would require. Most women would be embarrassed or outright furious. He was generally met with slaps or tears but she seemed to have no mind of her own.

He took her to his apartment building where a dozen other girls lived. They looked at her and sighed. Took her to be one of the many others who had to resort to selling their bodies. One of them tried to initiate conversation but it was as if she lived in a world of her own. Completely oblivious to anything and everything happening around her. They took her to be haughty and soon made presumptions based on different things they observed. She had a gold pendant around her neck which she never took off. They saw that her nails were manicured and she sat with perfect posture, which made them think that she was from a well off family. One of them whispered to her, “Dear, go back to wherever you came from. Escape when you have the chance. Forget what mummy and daddy said to you. Running away just makes things worse. Trust me.” But again she seemed to not have worked. The hooker, who had meant well, shrunk away as well.

Her first customer was a teenager, a mere boy. He had come with his friends to have a ‘good time’. You could see it in his face that he’d rather be someplace else but he had come along, succumbing to peer pressure that dictated people from his section of society partake in such pleasures. He didn’t know where to start when he was shoved into a room with her and the door was locked “for half an hour and not one second more!” the pimp had said, as if the boy wanted to be there.

His face broke out in a sweat. He thought of his mother and his sisters, What if they knew he was up to such things with his friends? His mother’s hair would turn white at the very thought. He looked at her. She was quite pretty. He managed to feign a smile which quickly slid off his face when she gave no reply to it. All she did was stare at him with those mournful eyes of hers. He sat on the edge of a bed, trying his best not to make it seem like an invitation. The silence grew more and more uncomfortable. It was so loud that if he listened closely, he could hear his friend in the other room clearly having a better time than he was.

And the seconds clocked by like minutes. There they sat, on the edges of the bed for what seemed like an eternity. Sweat collected in his shirt and he thought he must seem repulsive to her, which was why she wasn’t making any move to seduce him. Was he really that undesirable? Sure, he wasn’t the best looking of the bunch, but he was sure these working girls had met far worse looking characters. He began to feel even more embarrassed. Smoothing down his hair, he examined his reflection in a mirror hanging on the wall. She made no sound as he looked over his face. His nose was rather big but when had he become so unattractive as to face the rejection of a prostitute? And so that half an hour passed with the boy thinking and thinking, until the pimp flung open the doors to find a very dejected customer. The boy couldn’t even admit to anyone what had happened and pretended that he had rather enjoyed his time in the room.

Her customers came and went. Some of them quickly demanded that she take her clothes off and get down to business whereas others chose to partake in a little foreplay. All of them would get exasperated by her non responsiveness. She was like a statue. Sure, she breathed and ate like the rest of the girls but she was not like any of them. They laughed, they cried, they fought and complained, but she was still.

The eerie quiet began to fascinate some customers who would pay just to look at her. The fascination drove them mad in the end. Some would be exasperated, others would be puzzled, but mostly the men would be embarrassed. They did not know that all the men were treated in the same manner as them and it seemed to them that they must have some kind of defect within themselves that made her unwilling to perform her duty. They would sit and ponder over what repulsed a working girl so much that even someone who would be paid to like them wouldn’t deem them worthy of sharing a bed with. For these men usually just came for one thing and that was approval. When she didn’t give them that, they left, worse men than they were before they had entered. And they went home to nagging wives and the thought still wouldn’t leave them: if someone who was paid to love them could not do so, what was so wrong with them? The pimp saw men coming out looking like shadows of their former self. He didn’t say anything because he was getting the money that he charged and nothing seemed to be amiss directly.

He yelled at her for not satisfying the customers enough but she would just look up at him. Even if she fought back it would have been better; at least he would know she was human. But no, it wasn’t like that. Her beauty attracted many clients but none that were permanent. There was only one. He’d come every other day just to look at her. He would pay the price for an hour and spend it asking her questions. Questions about himself. Why he was so unworthy of her words. And she would do nothing but stare. Not even blink at times. His frustration got to the point where he flung himself out the window of the apartment.

The pimp beat her for causing trouble. Now his business would be rumored to be the one where the client had killed himself. He tossed her out on the street and she began her walk. Looking for something she couldn’t find.

Let me

Let me love you. Please let me love you. Let me treasure you. Let me want you. Let me feel the longing that tightens my muscles and makes my heart race. Let me count the freckles on your skin, let me run my fingers over your face. Let me gaze at your eyes in wonderment and question how you could have become the sun to my earth. Let me accept this fact with a sigh of peace. Let me think of you at night as I sit in my room with so much to do but in my mind lies only you. Let me blush when someone says your name. Let me count the days I will see you again. Let me stroke your hair playfully, hoping you won’t feel the electric shocks running through them as I do. Let me think of all the little things that make you endearing and mention them to my friends. Let me become starry-eyed when I think of the way your lips curve when you smile. Let me cherish the moment when you looked away surprised at what you saw in my eyes. Let me imagine you when a love song plays. Let me see you in my dreams, turning up in the most improbable places. Let me try to remember the scent of your clothes and sniff my own, hoping some trace was left behind when we embraced, however momentarily. Let me think about your life and your dreams and all that you want to be. Let me pray that you are happy even if I am not. Let me ask God why I came to meet such a beautiful soul. Let me thank him, thinking all the while, in the back of my mind, that you may just be my undoing. Let me feel a spark of jealousy when you talk to another girl. Let me feel a twinge of disappointment when you don’t reply. Let me be torn up when you laugh at my dreams. Let me lie in bed at night going over what I could have said to make you want me like I wanted you. Let me think of all my imperfections and realize that my love eclipses everything. Let me cover my eyes to to hide the pool of tears when I see you with her. Let me chuckle nervously when you tell me things about her, things that you find fascinating, things that I will never be. Let me drown in my sorrow and let it take over me even though I know there are worst things that could happen. Let me still hope you were too scared to tell me. Let me hope the rumors of you going strong are wrong and you are both sick of each other. Let me ignore it when my friends don’t mention your name so I won’t be upset. Let me feel a wave of joy when I realize you have broken up with her.

Let me do it all over again.

Sleep

Counting sheep in his head wasn’t working tonight. It almost never worked but he thought since he had had such an active day, it might have stolen his energy by the time his head hit the pillow. But he was wrong. The annoying feeling of an itch that needed to be scratched came up within him and he sighed as he prepared himself for another long night of turmoil in his head. He was an insomniac and had been for the last month or so. Every day was the same. Waking up like the living dead and going through the motions like a machine. Everything seemed automatic, pre planned; it was as if he was performing some trick and it had yet to fail him in front of the public. Only the shadows under his eyes and his generally vacant gave him away but it wasn’t like anyone cared enough to notice how he had been doing. No one cared. His friends were busy in their own jobs, slaving away and running after money as he was. His parents lived an hour away from him and he was able to feign a voice that suggested nothing was amiss and that he was doing fine as usual. He worked long hours, trying to distract himself of the thoughts that had been plaguing his mind recently. He was successful in the daytime but when the sun set and he had tried everything from a hot bath to drinking milk and even sleeping pills, he could not get rid of the doubts. They were minor doubts that didn’t seem minor to him. He worried, constant worry, that eats you up inside as you lie in bed. His eyes would stay fixed in the ceiling for hours at a time, only moving when he shifted his position. He would wait for day to rescue him from the constant regret and fear churning up inside of him, treating anything and everything as a distraction to save him. What if I never become anyone successful? What if I live my life in a small cubicle, breathing in it and dying in it? What if I’m just one face in a crowd of thousands, all grays heading to work, day after day, never achieving anything? What if no one remembers me? I could very well just be a name in the obituary column if a newspaper, or just a statistic. This and this many people died in the year 2067. And no one would care if I was one of them. What if I became a loner and never found anyone to be with me? One of those sad, lonely old men who sit alone on park benches, wishing they had someone by their side. What if they lay me off one day? What if I get cancer tomorrow? What if I have cancer? If he looked at one spot on the ceiling long enough he could make out shapes in the wallpaper; animals, faces and even countries. Countries he might never go to. People he may never meet. Animals he may never admire. His throat would become dry and he’d put on some music to drown out the buzz, the never ending buzz that was like a wasp, whizzing in and out of his head at will and he had no control over it. He had tried the alcohol and it just made the voices worse. His thoughts would become stranger by the minute and he would become more terrified by the end of the night than calm. They would talk about how his co workers made jokes about him amongst themselves when he wasn’t listening. How the last date he had was painful because she shivered at the sight of his face and thought him too poor for her taste. How he hated his job and only stuck by it because he knew nothing else to do. How nobody wanted him, really, and no one would notice if he died in his sleep. He wondered how many people would come to his funeral and how many people would actually cry. He’d like that, if people cried. He remembered his friends and the promises they had made to keep in touch. Where were they now? Why didn’t they reply to his messages? Wasn’t it obvious? They were avoiding him. Who would want to be his friend? No one. That’s not true, a feeble voice would fight back. I am someone and I matter. But then he thought, really, if he didn’t exist it wouldn’t really change things much. If only he could get some sleep, some goddamn sleep! Even sleeping pills hadn’t helped. It was like he couldn’t feel anything. When he laughed at shows on television, it wasn’t because he found them funny. He just followed the recorded laughter as cues for his own, in the same way he went about work and meeting people. The general response to “How are you?” would be “I’m good.” But he wasn’t good. Not really. Today he wanted some rest. And by God, he was going to get some rest because he could do what he wanted and he was the master of his own fate. And so he gilled the bathtub, he slit his wrists and lay down. “Finally. Some good sleep,” he thought.

Fragile

He lived in a decrepit house in an area no one would set foot in unless they were being forced to. The walls were covered in grime and devoid of any paint. It wore a look of abandonment, as if someone had been building it and decided to stop halfway. The house would smell damp and no matter what time it would be, there would be an omnipresent darkness that clung to everything and never left.

He would steal babies. One, maybe two each day from different hospitals. He wouldn’t care if the couple had conceived their first child and were weeping with their heads pressed together and smiling at the new addition to their family. No. He’d just take the child of his choosing from the nursery and stride off with it before anyone even noticed. He’d cover it with a cloth to stifle its muffled whimpers.

He’d take it to his house. The rats would poke their noses out the holes in the moist walls and sniff up in anticipation of new meat.

He’d set the baby down and get to work. He’d tune out its wailing if it began to cry and focus on the business at hand. He’d take some clay and begin pressing it on the baby’s neck. It would flail its arms around but he’d slap them away because they’d be distracting. He’d build walls on either side of the baby’s face. Higher and higher until they were above its head and then he’d join them.

The clay’s smell would become unbearable for him and he would turn to the sink to wash his hands. The baby would begin flailing and thrashing around on the counter top even more. He would see the movements becoming more and more frantic as he wiped his hands with a washcloth. Suddenly, they would stop and the limbs would hang limp from the body. The mask of clay over the baby’s head would make it easier for him to go about doing his work.

He would stop breathing for a while when the baby would be taking its final breaths but now he would breath in the smell of clay and it would no longer cause his stomach to coil. He would go into another room and pick up a book to read from the dusty bookshelf that lined one side. They clay would take some time to dry. His eyes would dart from word to word and he would devour the book as fast as possible.

He would go back to the kitchen and stride over to the baby. He would tap the clay with his knuckles. If it was hard and firm, he would proceed. He would pull open a drawer and take out a long, shiny butcher’s knife. It would be impeccably clean, made of stainless steel, with a wooden handle. Now would come the difficult part where he would have to separate the body from the head. This was usually messy but he would rely on the rats to take care of the meat, once the two had been separated. He would cut the throat of the baby, slowly running it over the flesh, then fast. The blood would begin to seep onto his hands but he would hold the baby over the basin as he went about his job. The meat would be so tender and soft that it wouldn’t take long enough for the body to be separated from the head. The blood would still be warm and he would moan in pleasure at the feel of it.

He would rinse out the body of the baby which would take quite some time. Then he would lay down the headless body in front of a hole in the wall and he would know that within an hour, the rats wouldn’t even leave its bones. He would take the head and make a little hole in the clay bowl. He would loop a string in to it and tie it. It would be ready for the wall. He would go to his bedroom and take a ladder. He would get up to a naked nail in the wall and hang the head. He would get off the ladder to survey it and even though there would be dozens other like this, he would smile at a job well done.

What if

What if the ground was blue and the sky was green. There would be blue grass. Imagine that, You’d pull out bright blue grass from the ground when you were talking to your friends and instead of having a GreenCar or a Green building, you’d have BlueCars and Blue buildings. The leaves would be blue and when you’d have lunch your mother would tell you to eat all your blues.

Eat your blues. Imagine that. You ate all your sadness and despair. You just picked it up out of your hair and you ate it. It tasted like dark chocolate  and left a bitter aftertaste but at least it was gone. You got bad marks in a test and it began to hover over your head like a cloud and then you reached above your head, plucked it out like cotton candy from the air and put it in your mouth. It melted as soon as it touched your wet tongue and it disappeared. And you felt light. And you could breathe without feeling heavy, like something was still stuck inside you and you couldn’t get it out.

What if you cried tears of glitter and then smeared them all over your eyes and it looked beautiful. And you cried and cried and cried and became more and more beautiful. It left glitter tracks on your skin and he would look at you and smile and see how beautiful you were. He’d marvel at the shine and then he’d say you looked pretty and stroke your hair and tell you not to feel sad even though you looked so amazing. A vision.

What if your eyes were made out of different gems. That’s why they sparkled. And obviously, some would be more rare than others. Like blue eyes are in places like where I live. What if an animal saw them and was so entranced that it tried to scratch at them and you would go blind.

What if you were so poor that your mother had to sell one of her eyes to pay your school. What if she walked around with only one eye but when she saw you studying she’d forget all about it and be happy and look at you and smile and you would study and not go to school to waste your time and her eyes. She’d hope but she’d never know for sure until you were done with school. What if you did waste your time and decided to make nothing of yourself? Then she’d cry and cry and cry and you’d realize that you’d become one of the many people who had wronged her in her life. She was so pure that she could never hurt anyone, yet everyone else hurt her. And she took it. Always, like the stoic person she was.

I don’t want to waste the money. I don’t want to waste the long days that they’ve worked and pulled themselves out of bed when they didn’t want to. When they spent their days working and working and earning money just so I could go to school and get an education. I don’t want to crush all their hopes and dreams and I want them to wake up one day and have the world tell them that yes, your daughter did do something with everything you gave her and you have left a lasting impression on the world.

What if I became someone great.

Pessimism

I felt like writing something but I just had Maggi Noodles and I feel this odd sense of satisfaction in a way that it seems as if all is right with the world even though it clearly isn’t.
My trip to Bhurban was extremely depressing and I’m not even sure why. I’d be ashamed to admit it was because of a boy. I don’t think it was. I was already in a deep kind of funk before I came to realize that my love life was bound to be doomed but I suppose that did contribute to it significantly.
The realization that every person you like will always like someone else who surpasses you in talent, beauty and intelligence just hits you in the stomach and I don’t really think about in terms of thought because I can’t process the feelings into words but it still feels really shitty.

I want to be poetic, I want to be able to play with words that come together like a beautiful piece of music and actually make sense. I want to do work with some energy instead of just going through the motions, feeling numb all the while. I’ve never felt this empty before and I can’t even pin point the reason. Like I said, it’s not the boys. That’s a story I can worry about another day.

Maybe it’s watching the clock ticking by and realizing that there’s no time to lose. I literally paint a picture of myself sliding off a cliff and the rope I’m holding onto gets more and more slippery. I was actually looking at the clock during class today and I watched the needle tick by and I could feel this sense of hopelessness growing inside me because it was going so face and I was just sitting there. Like a body without a soul. I can’t think in class. I just say things without any thought and I just hope whatever comes out of my mouth wasn’t complete gibberish. I couldn’t do a simple calculation and I just looked at my friend and smiled because it was like I could see something terrible happen and I just didn’t care.

My best friend told me that the greatest fear that people have in life is not of death but in fact of failure. It made so much sense because it’s true. Right now, all I want is to succeed in getting amazing grades so I can go to an amazing university and have an amazing life. The worst part is that people tell me I can do it but now I just doubt them. I’ve been told time and time again that I need to be optimistic but honestly, being optimistic has never gotten me anywhere. All you do with optimism is set yourself up for eventual disappointment. I like the quote about reaching for the moon and landing among the stars, but I don’t want to land among the stars. I’ve been able to deal with failure though. I wanted something so bad I thought I’d die when I didn’t get it but after a while, it was okay.

The only thing keeping me hanging is the fact that everything happens for a reason. I may have stopped believing in a lot of things but not this because God has to have a greater plan, right? Otherwise I don’t want to live.

There’s too much resting on my grades. My own success as a writer, my parent’s expectations and so much more. I know, in the end I’ll have to do it. I don’t mind doing it but I can’t let anyone down.Not me and especially not them.

As for being pessimistic, I’ll stick to that because it’s served me completely fine up till now. I cannot force myself to be happy and be one of those sad souls that try to convince themselves that their life is perfectly okay when it is not. I don’t sit in my room and drown myself in self pity, which is a misconception many people have, but I don’t see the point in ignoring it either.