Revisiting Darkness

03/05/2006

Feelings are only one of the many faces of Hell.

19/06/2006

I was looking at myself in the staff room mirror, the other day, feeling quite depressed and hopeless, and I felt like part of me was separating from me as a whole. It was like my soul was looking at the human being, the mortal shell, through a deeper set of eyes, and the soul was feeling sorry for not being able to save the body, for failing.

How long is left?

18/09/2006

And here I am again, on the verge of cracking up like an egg, wide open for a blind world to see. Days are becoming harder to live, the pretence, the fake smiles harder to provide, the strength to do just about anything is fading like a falling star into the deep end of a big, giant void. Images of blood, sharp nails against the skin, violent scenes of all sorts are exploding, spinning out of control in my shattered mind. Death slowly becomes an epitome of beauty...Again. Feels like we've been there before, doesn't it...

Pretending is so hard, acting as if everything is fine when really you cannot take anymore... Wanting to cry, to burst into an ocean of tears, needing a release from a pain you know nothing about, a pain you fail to understand or recognise...Yet the eyes remain as dry as yellow grass burnt by the summer lights. If only I could cry! Let the wave of pain go free in one major outburst of tears! But what pain? What is this pain I feel inside, burning my chest, weighing on it like a rock that never shifts? What is this eternal  “mal-etre” ? Where does it come from, why is it here,constant like a plague for which there is no cure? 

So many people, so many lives around me,rushing all over the place, everywhere I look, yet the loneliness is always the greatest, no matter the number of souls dancing around. Nothing seems to matter anymore, nothing has a point, all is futile. The sky is dark and dull even  in its bluest. The wind is harsh, cold, venomous  even when scarce  Time is bloody, ruthless, even when ignored. Food is poison, evil, even when avoided. People are hurtful savages, even when caring and trying to be kind. Dreams are torture even though I chase after them relentlessly. 

Travelling down the river Styx, hopeless shadow of what I once was, I remember a little girl who would have been good. I remember the one that should have been and stare at the fraud that took her place, reflected in the dark waters of Nowhere.

Sleepless nights

It's the middle of the night and I can't sleep... I woke up with a start from some sort of strange dream an hour ago and since then I have been tossing and turning... but sleep eludes me, still. I'll probably pay the price later on when I have to drag myself into work with bleary eyes.

I haven't had a decent night's sleep in about a week.

As I lay on the bed earlier, my thoughts drifted back on my time in Peru, and suddenly I was missing the wandering across the Unforgivable Land (as I came to call it for myself in the midst of illness while travelling there)... I saw myself sitting on these night buses all over again, watching distant lights rush past me until suddenly night had fallen like a black curtain all around. I remembered the sickness, and how in spite of it I continued my journey to reach Machu Picchu. I had to. It was probably the fever talking, but I really began to identify with the Inca, or perhaps what I understood to be the core of their spirit - which to me was that of seeking perfection using rather Spartan ways at times. How could I not relate to that?

Oh, I miss Peru. I miss trekking across what feels like the unknown, challenging myself and the elements even if I have no clue whether I'll make it alive on the other side or not...

As cliché as this may sound, my wandering steps across that distant land now fees more like some sort of strange pilgrimage on a personal level whose impact has yet to be defined or discerned on a conscious level. All I know is that I can close my eyes and be there as if I'd only left yesterday...

But the sleepless nights themselves, well... they are part and parcel of 'modern' living, I suppose. The stress of office-bound routines, having to mingle with fellow rat-race prisoners under the constant strain of a claustrophobic atmosphere where staring at a screen all day long without moving much from your seat (because unless you're a smoker, you just 'forget' to take a break) is the approved norm... and they call this life. No, actually, it is worse than that: we all know it's bad and shouldn't be like that yet we feel obliged to comply because somewhere down the line each of us will have sold ourselves to the system, one way or another. The only man who is free is the one who needs nothing from the system; I am not sure such a man exists anymore. We're all slaves. And even those who aren't enslaved to others are probably enslaved to their endless wants spawned by a void inside that cannot be filled by material things.

On another note, they say it is better to have loved or to have felt than not, but I beg to differ. I still think it is better not to have known. It is always easier that way because once you know or experience something it can never be undone - it can only be healed by time, thus always leaving scars behind.

Interlude

Sometimes I forget to sit back and just think about what it is that lies before me; a naked tree against the waking skies torn apart by softly spreading lights and iridescent rosy streaks. Oh, the iridescence of a waking sky! And suddenly what was before me is no more, gone as swiftly as it had first appeared, and the fading crimson streaks give way to the stronger pastels of day.

On the notion of belonging

What do people mean when they use this word, belonging? How about 'fitting in' or 'having roots'? I have never known, and probably never will. I don't know if it's a bad thing, or a good thing, or maybe even neither, maybe it just doesn't matter - but the hurt from always falling between stones or through the cracks, as they say, is real. I know that much.

My own sense of identity was always going to be a challenge from the start. In literature, love children famously tend to be part of plot devices where overcoming a great deal of difficulties is required. I suppose they make the perfect fit for all that is confusing, unclear, secretive, challenging - you name it. The very nature of a love child is to be ignorant of his/her origins at the start of his/her journey. Not only that, but there is also the premise of social taboo, of rules being broken that the child will henceforth embody. It can only get worse or more challenging from there, often building up towards the need to find 'oneself' in some ways. Exciting, isn't it?

Yeah... when it's not you, I guess.

As if that wasn't enough, my sense of identity was further challenged by a lack of clear roots anywhere in this world - and  I mean this quite literally. Imagine being born in one country, but the rest of your entire family comes from another, yet they never teach you their native language, and you barely get to see the rest of said family for most of your growing or formative years. Imagine that the few times you did get to meet what is supposed to be your 'family' (though at this point it rings false in your ear... it is just a word to you that lacks true dimensions) they would invariably make a point in making you feel like a stranger exactly because you couldn't even communicate with them? Or because you were this 'child from the West' who had it all, supposedly.

Imagine that you have to contend with that - something more and more people are faced with in the 'modern' world: finding your place in a melting pot - and then add the fact that you also have to grow up with a surname that is foreign in the country you were born in - meaning that throughout most of your life you find yourself being asked to explain yourself about how you're really from 'here' and not from 'over there' even though you bear the foreign name. That was the story of my life back in France... and in France, unless your name sounds very French, you are never really considered 'French'. So, I was never 'really' French in the eyes of the country I was born into, and I was never considered part of where my parents were from.

Nowadays, if one asks me what I consider myself to be - and believe me people ask all the time, they think it makes for interesting conversation - I just shrug and say: "European, I guess."

But in the end, all I know about the notion of belonging is whatever illustration, or definition, I found in books along the way. It doesn't tell me much at all.

And then I wonder... I wonder if it matters at all... does it matter, for instance, that I was a teenager when we moved to this city? I wonder what impact this had on me, knowing how confounded I was to have to leave the safe cocoon of high school to suddenly fend for myself in the City of Money pretty much overnight. One moment I was expected to play moody teenager studying for exams, the next I was walking down the streets of an unknown city at night with no clue as to where we were going. One moment I was the brainwashed teen slouching mindlessly in front of the telly after school, the next I was emptying bins in a McDonalds and going back 'home' to a tiny 2x2 metre room I had to share with my mother.

Ah, that very first week in London... I never wanted to forget the details, but I'm afraid I already have... maybe it just doesn't matter. I mean, I was never able to tell anyone the 'whole' truth about me because saying everything that's happened in the last 14 years would never make sense to others. I guess there was a fine line between simplifying a storyline and downright re-writing history, as they say, and I fell into the latter when it comes to trying to share my 'story' with others. Aren't we all guilty of re-writing our own stories at some point anyway? If our history books are anything to go by, I'd say the evidence is clear.

And life goes on... it goes on turning even as we find ourselves stopping in our tracks from time to time to glance back over our shoulder, and what we see is but a blur on the horizon. What once was, never to be again.

And if there can be no true sense of belonging in this life, then so be it. One has to learn to live without it, somehow.

Belonging, acceptance, fitting in etc... they all converge back to the same root, really.