this is a list of notes app entries, scrap pieces of paper, and general thoughts i’ve compiled over the last year.
13/03
re: maybe it’s seasonal depression?
i find myself sitting in blank spaces and wondering if my existence impacts them at all.
25/04
re: can you know someone after just one night?
i had just worked an event in the city. on the train home, the stranger I sat beside tells me we had just worked a three hour shift together. romanio, or at least I hope that is his name, was the man i sat next to. within the hour trip, we talked about work, the past, and our dreaded fear of the future. i learned about ecuador (his home country), his journey to living here, struggles to find work, and the existential crisis of being thirty years old; meanwhile i talked about university life and gave him my film score recommendations.
beginning with mere small talk, from stranger to human, an hour’s conversation felt deeper than any previous conversation I have had, and one i will not repeat again unless fate decides it.
10/06
re: i’m actually nineteen
thank god. apparently this is meant to be the worst year of my life, so obviously i’m very excited to commence it with a job interview tomorrow.
16/07
re: maybe dracula was a coeliac
i don’t know how i got to this conclusion.
04/08
re: my last day of technicolor freedom.
i’m absolutely terrified of tomorrow - it’s my first day on antidepressants. i don’t understand why im so anxious, i’m doing this to get better. and it might actually do that, but i think i’m afraid of losing the creativity that fuels me. what am i beyond the art i make? all the noise that drives me insane can’t just disappear, because what am i without it? sure, my life is a mess, but i like the technicolor of it, and i don’t want it dimmed because of pills that might not even work.
27/08
re: mourning everything
i’m young but i feel like i’ve has been processing the grief of myself and my relationships for a decade. i don’t think i could survive the pain of someone actually passing away, in all honesty. i’ve just had really abrasive and deteriorating relationships with people and nothing really seems to stick, so it’s a continuous mourning period with no funeral or closure.
i’m also mourning my favourite pair of shorts. they’re lost in the sea of unfolded laundry and hasn’t resurfaced in a few months. i hope they’re okay.
06/09
re: spring into summer
i envy springs ability to grow. maybe it’ll come with the warmer weather.
01/11
re: poverty cosplaying is so tacky
we’re so happy to embrace brat summer and walk around new york in our underwear with only a cigarette and purse in hand, but we don’t examine or recognise the devastating effects that poverty and addiction have on millions of people. most of the people we perceive as cool and enviable online have one thing in common - being skinny. thinness (to the point of malnourishment) is the true thing we’re collectively hungry for, as well as the privilege of laying on the ground without social anxiety or fear of hepatitis.
15/11
re: growing pains
could eight year old me feel all these emotions already? was it always lingering, or did it appear suddenly? it’s not something you feel when you’re existing, rather it’s something i wonder about in hindsight.
13/12
re: god, i love luca guadagnino
“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!”
- Andre Aciman.
how has it taken me seven years to watch call me by your name ?? every day now feels like there is a part of my soul missing, something i’m not achieving, despite not knowing what that is. perhaps i should learn italian.
18/12
re: there’s nothing left to decode
i just handed in my notice after 6 months. thank god for that.
it’s also been about five months without therapy, and i’m feeling good. there are awful stints, of course, but i’m at a point where i don’t really have much history left to analyse or ‘decode’. I've told my life away to six different psychologists, i tried medications, i’ve previously made my trauma the only fuel of my art and creativity (which was a HORRIBLE decision) - now i’m trying to enjoy the silence.
til next time,
f