reflection
disclaimer: i am playing a character. that character is i.
this day 4 years ago, 2018, was around the time i first began to write. that time it was out of internal anguish, and this time i find myself in a similar position.
internally, i have always been too complicated. and this is always worsened by the season. one could say that not much has changed, other than that the problems i deal with now are of greater magnitude, or perhaps just of a different flavor. nonetheless, they remain rooted in similar complexes.
at the same time, this I in the past that wrote those poems is not really related to this current i. in fact, we are wholly strangers. perhaps, that i in the past never quite existed. i have willed him into existence, now. there is only one i, and that is no i at all.
no i, no i.
it has become like an affirmation. no i...
i would like to romanticize my life as a fall from grace. but everyone's lives tend to take on this pattern; it is the journey from the naivety and innocence of childhood to the corruption and guilt of being an adult. growing up is not a victimless crime. it is a killing, a constant murder of yourself. and only through death can there be this transformation. i wonder, how many more times must commit this act before i have finally matured, completed my descent from heaven.
i just await the earth to open up into a great void and swallow me up. perhaps it will be alcoholism. drug abuse. self-destruction awaits me in some form. destruction of this form, that i must discard somehow. escape. and i am running out of patience.
i do not hate myself. it is not i that hates myself. it is i. if there was a performative aspect to my writing before, i think there is no more. there is no one to prove myself to but i.
but this i is just i wearing a mask. but i have worn it for so long that i had forgotten i had another face underneath.
What did your face look like before your parents were born?
—asks the famous zen gong an.
there is something stopping me. from completing my ascent. and that is shame. there is still too much shame weighing me down. this shame is useless. i just need to learn to have none of it.
what is shame? is shame found in the eyes of others, or your own? perhaps, it is more in the others. it is a fear of what everyone else might think. something unnecessary.
i have always carried too much shame. it is what is weighing me down.
there is too much shame loaded in my past. that's why i don't like thinking about it. too much shame coming in the future. too much shame to cope with in the present. and yet, there is nothing shameful at all. nothing at all.
i am too ashamed to be myself. that is the problem. i am too ashamed to be honest. i am too ashamed to do the things i always think of doing. everything can be traced back to this. i am hyper aware of shame. i feel shame even on the behalf of others. i am so afraid of feeling shame that i become passive, timid.
people who are shameless, inspire a kind of curiosity. a kind of disgusted fascination. but perhaps, that is who i need to become.
the despair is stewing in my chest. i don't even know why. we could name the tangible causes, but the actual causes is intangible. and i tire even of writing.