Pretend this is my first blog post

Act 1

You haven’t felt alive in a long while, have you? 

Ah, well, I blame this nasty little habit of yours. After the first time, most dryads learn not to break themselves beyond the point of mental disrepair. They learn from the struggle to rebuild themselves, and yet, you…

This is the third body I’ve crafted for you.

Do you not remember losing the first? Your entire mental world, all the daydreams and thought patterns that comforted you for years, decimated because of a single incident. You carved yourself another safe place in your skull, and I commended that… but now look. You’ve destroyed it twic-

“I touched the happy ending.”

… Did you now?

“I fixed - I redeemed my fatal flaws, tore my stitching to sew myself anew, someone who smiles and conversates and does what others ask of faer without walking in uncertain circles and panicking and because of that I almost… 

“But I did something wrong!

“I don’t even know what - it’s always wrong! Whenever I brush my fingertips against happiness the story whisks it away and casts me to a dark night of the soul and nothing stays with me and I’ll start all over again and…. 

And I… I can’t fortell… I don’t know if the story will ever move on from… this.”

---

There’s a shock about it. 

And, since this happened before, it’s familiar.

First, the coping wears off like a sedative. The repeated thought wears itself to nothing: It’ll be over soon. Just bear through it. It’ll be over soon. Just wait a little while and it’ll be over. 

Then it’s over. 

You’re never one to think a month in advance. You can barely imagine yourself a week from now. But that time, that moment, the moment your skin’s torn open and the flesh weaves across in a tentative scab, you’re left wondering if you’ll ever run your fingers against it and feel something whole. 

At the time I had this little metaphor for myself, an idea I found comfort in, so I branded my website and myself and everything I ever wanted to do with a single concept. 

If my actions are to dig myself a grave, then I’ll make it cozy. 

I’ll plant flowers - dandelions and apple mint and chickweed, the sort of plants people tear, the ones they leave for scraps. I’ll string fairy lights. Cover the hole with magnolia branches. Line handcrafted dolls among the dirt and the exposed roots, so that I might have company. 

And it’s funny how the mind prepares itself. Perhaps it knows when I’m too happy, that when the joy sparks, it must build itself a hiding place. 

So you hide yourself. Make jokes in your head. Tell yourself it doesn’t exist. Lies. 

It’s still damaging. Some of their words and their pain claws through the branches and rakes through the garden, through the vines creeping on the walls. They steal the dolls and the bracelets and the safe place. If someone looks for too long, they’ll find it, they’ll pillage through it, and leave us afraid that not even the furthest recesses of our head will save us. 

Asking, over and over and over again, how will I live in a month from now, a year? I must suspend my disbelief when the dystopia arrives. No one reacts correctly, that sort of response belongs in the movies. 

The movies exist. What to do?

Make a decision. 

This is your chance to improve yourself. To fix what brought you here. Even then, even when you were happy there were parts of yourself that scared you. Parts of yourself that string themselves so thin you’ll dangle charms from them. Watch them float upon silver sunlight strands. The pangs beating at your chest. The strings will snap. The charms will fall. They’ll wonder who’d be so stupid to hang them up when the broken glass only cuts your feet.

You rub your fingers across the scab, wondering when it will heal. 

How to heal it? 

Choose to keep your joy, or wonder if you’d simply sweetened your poison. Wonder if you’ll dissuade yourself out of your fulfillment, the greatness you dreamed of, or perhaps holding onto your childish habits is the very thing that’s dooming you to this cycle. 

You chose. You chose to clean yourself. To grow means leaving behind your negative traits. And perhaps yours manifests as squeaking like a tea kettle over miniature kits or running around in happy dance circles to your favorite song or ranting about tv shows and books for hours upon hours. Perhaps it was daring to leave your weirdness in the open, not thinking anyone would happen upon the signs. 

Next time, leave it in the closet, where it belongs. 

__

ACT 2

“How can I foretell if this path will lead to a happy ending?”

“You can’t. That’s the whole thing about… well, just about everything.”

“My actions today may cement my very doom.”

“Maybe, but-”

“Ohh, then I must express utmost care when tinkering with my head this time around. What memories to forget, what to express and what to bury… what the consequences would be… If I change an aspect of myself that brought me worthiness, thinking it was a fatal flaw, there’d be nothing worthwhile left of me. Yet, if I change an aspect that harms others, amplifying it as something endearing… hm! Then there’s really no hope left for-”

“Want to know what helps me?”

“... okay.”

“Think of the worst case scenario. The most awful result you can think of.”

“We all die miserable deaths.”

“Er… maybe a bit less awful.” 

“... The story stagnates. I revise myself to no avail. Everyone’s still stuck here.”

“And that’s the same as now! You’re handling yourself now, right? So, you’ll be okay even if your worst case scenario happens. Isn’t that comforting?”

“... That’d be the end of me.”

___

You’ll undo the sewing of your patchwork quilt. Watching your scraps, your fabric collection fall, your entire life’s collection, everything you are, everything you’ve become, tattered lumps at your feet. 

At least you have some idea of what to parse out. 

 Being as you are now, broken and decimated and not much to call yourself, this should be easy. 

It isn’t, because you’ve always viewed the world from a glass jar, gazing upon the outside world as the people bang against the glass, trying to get you to listen. 

You don’t. You can’t listen. The glass muffles their words. Everything you are exists in this jar. No one can see inside, the glass warps your joys, and they remark on how strange it is. You cannot reach the outside world, to you, it’s nothing more than an apathetic illusion.

And maybe you’d be happy here, in another universe. 

 They tell you to leave. The lid weighs too heavy. They tell you you’re lazy. It’s cold outside. They wonder how someone so smart can’t understand simple things. You cannot experience the world as they do. Your world tilts on an axis, and you imagine patterns in the shadows. 

Even this, whatever I’m writing… is it the thing of static violin music that touches someone's soul, is it the thing I imagined to shoegaze while cleaning the dishes, my mood teetering over to utter bliss? 

Nope. The prose is full of passive voice. I feel I’ll always fall prey to tangents unless I write a story. Yet I can’t do that and count it as online content. That needs marketing. Marketing needs the ability to connect with others. This is why I’m doomed. 

The searching for ‘being a good person’, the answers that come up fruitless, restarting, over and over and over again. At the very least, I’ll say I’m doomed, unfit for society, and it’s an utter waste to even consider my existence, and people will find it endearing, not me as a person, but my ideas, the characters in my head, the philosophical waxings or the perspectives on world events. There’s nothing of myself that I can take away without losing my footing, so I’ll carve my brain from my skull and let it bleed on the kitchen table, hoping that makes up for the inconvenience. 

I’m still selfish though. Don’t ever think I’m not just making excuses and justifications for being self-centered.

Eventually you come to the point where you’ve looked for happiness for so long you don’t know what happiness truly is. You don’t remember being ever truly happy as a child. The childhood joy that others talk about, how effortless it is… you stare at the sun filtering through dust particles, begging yourself to pick up your dolls. 

And eventually we’ll ask ourselves if this is it. If we’ve made up this better, perfect life full of feelings that stay forever, feelings we’ve never felt before. Perhaps, for us, life will be nothing more than this apathetic haze, and we’ve lost even the longing to the void. 

And, dear wanderer, I’m here to tell you that this, this apathetic haze, is the place you’ve been looking for.

Sort of.

At the very least, this is what I think right now. 

Please humor me for a moment. 

ACT 3

“I am not a character in this story.”

“The story’s wrong. I’m a narrator, meant to describe, meant to watch, meant to follow, never to partake, never to be seen, never to affect another.”

“Yet affect the others I do.” 

_

Was this not your happiest memory?

“There are no happy memories.”

…Hmmm. May I ask why? I thought this one gave you many joys, inciting your love of soft things, soft rain, and sunset clouds.

“I fell. Kamari had to catch me.”

Oh… was that-

“Fae cried.”

… Hm. I see. 

“No. No. No. No. Kamari cried. And thinking myself to be some grand storyteller, I tried fixing it.

“I should’ve known. I already knew and even still - everything I touch breaks.”

_ 

I think there’s a joy to be found. It doesn’t penetrate the apathy, doesn’t touch my heart or pluck music with the strings, but it’s soft. At the very least, it’s a sun-warmed droplet catching the light, my own rainbow painted on my fingertips, as the water soaks into my palms. 

Oh, what does it matter?

This little thing exists. I’m not going to place it into a ‘good event’ or a ‘bad’ one. It simply exists. They materialize every second and all I have to do is watch it. My emotions as well. Who will claw my heart from my chest and give it a failing grade? It’s alright for the heaviness to stay, if it wishes. Welcome. Welcome. 

It’s wondrous, the spider’s web catching the sunset. The mellow fiddle leaf fig leaves in their shade. The smell of rosehip tea, sweetened with maple syrup. My kittens as they meow. The last wisps of the world in a downpour, the world as it rains. Even if I couldn’t get myself to go outside in time to dance in it. 

Do they make me feel anything? Nope. Any childhood whimsy? Nope. The flesh in my heart’s center burns, the sparks burst bubbles lined in red, and the blood spills into my stomach, the pitter patter trickle and its bitter taste. 

But this, something wondrous and uncomfortable, they are part of the same experience, yes?

You’re free to wander, dear butterfly brain. If none of this makes any sense, I apologize, but I want you to know that you don’t need to be comfortable to find the little things wondrous, that even if you only look in the stars or the clouds out the window every once in a while, even if you feel nothing at all for your favorite song… that’s still living. You’re not failing at it. There’s nothing more to be experienced, because this is yours to witness. And the fact that you’re witnessing it at all is enough. I’m glad you exist. 

(I don’t know what glad feels like. Also yes, that’s a reference to spaceboy on webtoon. Please read it.)

_ 

You’ve been here for quite a while.

“I’ve lost the point.”

Hm. Perhaps it was to leave and drink water once and a while. Take care of yourself, you kno-

“A narrator’s most important task - know the meaning of the story, know the point, the message, the idea this story winds itself upon… and describe it in pretty words, so the listeners might hear and understand. 

“My words are wasted upon myself. This would be a better story if someone else were to possess my head and speak my words for me. How am I supposed to get to a happy ending if I don’t even know how to start it?”

The reason they call it a happy ending, Anuli, is because it ends there. 

It ends there, and you’ll search for another story, yes?

And in another story, you’ll live something wondrous. You’ll live the sweetness of the breeze, the ladybug crawling over your toes, the bitterness of defeat, yes, and the depths of despair, but even pain feels lovely in a story, yes?

_

Don’t you remember the days you spent, staring, simply staring at the wind teasing grass blades, the treetops as they wave and rustle like puddles, the ant perched on a leaf’s edge?

Don’t you remember how silly your stories were? How your overthinking and your daydreaming bled into the world outside? You remember, don’t you? You’ve hidden yourself away in your head for a while now, but in these stolen moments, no one will punish your happiness, I promise. 

Now, what is your rendition of the ant?

“It’s… It’s searching. It left its home a long while ago, trekking across fields of jagged stones, navigating across grass blades, teetering on the tips and narrowly avoiding the long fall to the dirt. Its searching, the ant. Its searching for… for… for the reason it left its colony, who loved the ant so, where they gave the ant a purpose, gave the ant a meaning. “Yet, the ant still left. It left because of some quiet stirring, an unknown caught in its carapace, growing in discomfort until the ant had no choice but to leave and search for the solution. 

“It perches on a leaf’s edge, gazing upon a world too vast for a creature too small, and realizes, something quiet, something soft, something it would’ve missed had the breeze not quieted just so… 

“Perhaps what it was searching for, was the searching itself.” 

See, you don’t have to hide yourself in your mind to be silly.

OKAY I’M DONE. I WROTE THE THING. YAY. 

I JUST WANT TO SAY THAT IF YOU LIKED THIS, IT WAS VERY PAINFUL TO WRITE. I BARELY ENJOYED WRITING IT, THE PAIN OF NOT FINISHING IT WAS GREATER. BUT IF YOU LIKED IT, THAT MAKES THE PAIN OF WRITING IT WORTH SOMETHING RIGHT? SO DON’T EVER THINK JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT ENJOYING EVERY SECOND OF THIS PROCESS THAT YOU’RE FAILING AT IT. YOU’RE DOING LOVELY THINGS REGARDLESS. 

Recommendation for today: https://youtu.be/i9coWIOPBlA?si=jeoSuHyo0ctXRsIy

“Get Weird to Survive Late Stage Capitalism." Honestly I’ve heard the same sentiment even from the business-y AI fanatics. (They’ll learn eventually.) People like us, people who see the world on tilt and have well trodden paths littered in our skulls, we’ll be okay. And this video is more comforting than I can be here, so please watch it!