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Happiness, soon.

2/27/2023

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My father asked when I would start writing about happy things. Because enough time has passed, right? Because I've been doing so many fun and joyful things, right? Because I'm happy now, right?

I'm still trying very, very hard to write when I am happy. Right now, I'm writing from a place that is sad about the fact that I often don't write when I am happy. I'm writing from a place that knows what it means if I write out my happiness. The truth is I'm terrified. As if writing about happy things would be an awful and instantaneous jinx. And on the other hand, being connected to my sadness is being connected to him. I'm scared to let him go too. I still don't want to. Despite my numerous pep talks with myself, I know I'm still leaving the door open a crack for him. As time rolls by, it seems more and more like a disservice to myself to not fully close that door.

Talks of joy for the future leads me to think of joy in the past. I remember the joy I felt with him... Sometimes so viscerally that I need to shake and shrug the thought away because I WILL feel it again and then have to coax myself back into consciousness only to find myself flung back into a reality where that type of joy doesn't exist for me right now. It's in those moments I want to stay, I want to stay with him. That's the only way I can be with him. I don't feel ready to wake up. To never have him there again. That place, with him, still feels like home. It still feels safe and loving and just perfect for me. Even though it doesn't exist anywhere else but in my mind and memories.

I suppose I'll write about something objectively happy when I don't allow sadness to put me in a chokehold. I know I lean into it. I know it's almost masturbatory at this point. I write sad things not because I feel sad or that I'm always sad. It's how my writing practice developed and what I'm most well-versed in. And while I am rediscovering my talents and passions and confidence, I write about what is comfortable for me to write about, something I know I won't fail at or people won't relate to.

Alternately, I live my happiness, I am so present in my happiness that I oftentimes forget to write. Reflection upon happiness is hard because it is not a language I'm fluent in. When I begin to write of joy and bliss, the flow falter and my words are crude and painfully simple. I don't feel like the feelings have been fully expressed or captured by my words so I stop mid-thought, mid-sentence. I put down my pen or close my laptop. And then I begin to question if I was really happy then - i it was genuine emotion. Because if it was then why can't I write about it. Im supposed to be good with emotions and expressing them. Then ultimately, I don't try to write when I'm happy because I'm so terrified of invalidating and questioning my own feelings. It's easier not to write and have that lens of pressure. Sadness accompanies writing well because the pressure of perfectionism is outshined by the need to relieve my own heaviness. When writing about happiness, it becomes a classic battle of good vs evil, light and dark. I realize I must fight. I must fight for all parts of myself to be seen and loved and spoken for as they wish to be. And to use my gift of sharing (that is what writing is), to share that it is indeed possible to allow yourself to be all things. Or even just to allow yourself to be different to the person you were a decade ago, a month ago, yesterday. You deserve it.


Happy things to come x
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In Her Eyes

2/23/2023

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He stared at her in disbelief. He'd expected her face to fall or her brow to furrow or for her to storm off. Instead, her face softened and a small smile formed under her big, gentle eyes.

She slowly stepped towards him, almost as if she were approaching a skittish animal that had been backed into a corner. She was glad that he didn't flinch when she placed a hand on his arm and looked into his eyes.

"She's lost it," he thought to himself as he tried to rein in his panic, ironically induced by her calmness. She could feel his quickening heartbeat through the fibers of his sweatshirt - in the silence she swore she could hear it. Still she said nothing. The look of slight shock lingered in his eyes as she searched them. His lips had parted but no sound escaped from between them. He felt as though he was in a trance of sorts. She felt like she had cast a spell of some kind.

"Go ahead," he thought, willing her to get on with whatever she was trying to do. Maybe he wasn't completely in the clear, maybe she was just waiting for him to let his guard down. She thought she saw his ego returning to his body - a conjecture confirmed by a clearing of this throat, a stiffening of his shoulders and a straightening of his back. He suddenly appeared colder despite her warmth. She wasn't perturbed - she understood that he was trying to protect himself from whatever she was triggering him to face.

Finally she whispered, "Do you know what I see?" His eyelids fell. She heard the faint grating sound of his teeth as he clenched them tightly. She so badly wanted to kiss him in the hopes that it would cause him to soften his jaw and later his grip on his composure for the sake of his pride. She wasn't sure she still had that specific effect on him though.

He shook his head. He wasn't even sure he knew what she was referring to. She felt a wave of sadness wash over her. She couldn't tell if it was hers or his. He was trying so hard to find the logic in this interaction. It was not that there was none - it was more so that logic wasn't the only factor; the full answer or conclusion still seemed slightly obscured and out of reach. She reached up and held her hand to the side of his face. He surprised himself as he leaned into it. "The answer is not just in here," she said, tapping his right temple with her fingertips.

"Do you know what I see?" she asked again. "What's so important about what you see?" he replied. For the first time, her soft gaze and smile faltered  and flickered for a moment - a twinge of pain as he attempted to distract her with his iciness. "I see..." she began. His breath caught in his throat as she slowly let her hand fall from his face to his shoulder and then all the way down his arm until she found the spaces between his fingers she used to frequent so often.

She sighed shakily, tears pricking and filling her eyes upon the heavy exhale. He wondered why she wasn't furious at him. She knew why she could never be, at least not for more than a moment.

"I see someone trying his best to be happy."
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Dormant

2/19/2023

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I'm trying (and failing) to write reflections and streams of consciousness that don't include an ounce of you. It's pretty impossible so much so that I give up almost immediately on trying to write anything at all. "Frustrating" and "tiring" don't even begin to describe the essence of how it has come to feel.

A part of me wishes that people were like jackets - easy to take off when they start to make you feel uncomfortable or when you no longer need them. Or maybe like a pair of socks or shoes - easy to toss and replace once you've worn them down. Another part of me is reactively angered by that thought because that is, in fact, how some people treat other people. That's how I feel you treated me in the end - as if I were disposable or replaceable; an object. Maybe that's how you rationalized and justified your actions and choices. Maybe that's why it didn't bother you that I became the collateral damage of your war with yourself.

I'm exhausted of having to be face to face with my feelings all of the time. It's so much easier to just find something else to busy myself with - there is no shortage of distractions (no matter how important those things are, in this case they're still distractions - work feels like a distraction, investing in my other relationships feels like a distraction, self care routines feel like a distraction, cooking feels like a distraction). There's a gnawing feeling in my mind that persists even though I've tried to release and surrender to it so many times. I don't want to write about you anymore. I don't want to cry anymore. I don't want to push through it anymore. I just want to feel nothing when I see you instead of unknowingly holding my breath until you're out of sight. I can feel the volatility of my internal world - swirling like magma beneath a calm and cool exterior.

There's some bittersweet irony here. The way in which I wish to become like you is the reason why you were able to hurt me like you did. I wish to have capacity for indifference because your indifference has devastated me. And now I understand you even better. And if I ponder on whether my theory is at all correct, my heart breaks for you all over again... until I've felt so many waves of emotion and thought that I crave to be indifferent once more. (But I can't/won't be so the cycle persists)

When will the thought of you run cold and lie dormant?

Or when will I explode?
----
Was it desperation -
My bleeding heart,
That drove us further
And further apart?

Or was it you
And your indifference -
Your resistance
To doing anything hard?
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    Jillian Lawrence

    South African. 20-something. Hopeless Over-Thinker.

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