The winter may have passed.

After many a times of executing a killing of the free verse through my previous writing escapades, I feel pleased to return to the good old blogger way of writing.

Hello, reader. It’s so weird to think, that I have no fucking idea who reads anything I write here, I don’t know who I write for, in a larger sense of place. It’s been more than four years I suppose. And it seems that I end up writing a long post after some life changing events occur, once I am in an objective place and not consumed by it.

So what is it this time? I honestly don’t know, but something has changed. When I was about to end my semester in university, I was not feeling like myself. I don’t know what people at my university think of me, but I have reason to believe that it would be a polar opposite of what I think of myself. It seems only apt, that this sacred space I call my scribble-pad, finally takes note of what has gone on with me in the last few months, hell years would be more appropriate.  I got so tied up in so many things, so lost from the inside that nights were no longer my place of solitude. At close to 1 am, my body would begin to act out. First my hands, feeling powerless as I tried hard to finish drawing an important stroke on a deadline-ed sheet of paper. Then the shaking, finally unable to work I would step out of my chair and descend to the bed. Heartbeats would race, faster and faster, too fast for my lungs to catch up. The lights would seem too harsh for my eyes and the sound of the fan a deafening echo of the emptiness in my bedroom. Felt like the worst kind of rush would take over me and pass through every inch of my body, until I gave into it, until I would stop trying to breathe and let all the erratic-ness possess me. Some nights I would cry, some were kinder and the breeze from the balcony would calm me down, if I stared at it long enough. Maybe it was anxiety, maybe a panic attack, with the intention of making those experiences comprehensible, those were the terms I used to explain it without having to get into the gruesome details.

Even though, it was becoming a daily occurrence, I knew somewhere this wasn’t normal. Sometimes when I sat in studio, the waves would rise and it felt as though, even if I broke the nib of my pencil, I would break apart right there, bang the floor and cry for dear life. I hated feeling so fragile, and because I felt fragile ever so often, I begun to hate myself. My flesh, my bones, my skin. All of it. You know those water-noses? The red metallic things on the side of a street that they show in the movies? One blow and the water would gush out ferociously, inconveniencing the whole street. That’s how I felt. Some days when I would talk to my best friends about it, I felt like I was making more trouble, maybe they’d had a great day? Maybe they saw the sunshine today and didn’t cringe, but I walked all over that with my soppy stories of the night and ruined any sense of happiness in their life. Guilt would take over, the fear of losing the few that I can trust with my life set in. I wanted to push everybody out, wanted to keep them all as a way as possible. So I stayed quiet.

Call it a trigger, but the events that took place that year had started weighing down on me. And my strict schedule dedicated to university, made it impossible to deal with. You know how terrible it is, when you are having some kind of anxiety attack, when your body is so hell bent on defying you, but you still have to get your crying butt on the table and work four more hours into the morning sunrise because you have one fucking review the next day? It’s like two swordsmen fighting inside your body, trying to win a fight that can’t be won. There was a time when I shut off all social media, because even a slight piece of information from the world felt too much to handle. Debates and discussions that I so eagerly participated in, felt tedious and harsh to sit through.

Fast forward a few weeks, naturally after the deadlines, submissions and exams were over, I promised myself I would dedicated the first long summer break I got in two years, to reinventing myself. I pictured it like a call of light, birds singing, flowers blooming, running through fields, laughing at the dinner table, waking up light with a smile and lots more.

Of-course what I didn’t realize was, one can’t piece a puzzle back together so easily without having the picture or the pieces checked thoroughly. When I began this journey last month, I felt confused. I had no idea what ordeal I was trying to fight. Was it just brain chemicals that had caused these feelings? Was it one particular event? A move, a heartbreak, a conversation, a dream? Which particular failure had thrown me into hell? I simply could not figure it out. So I buried myself in movies, in TV shows, in books, in ideas of great minds and it worked. What I thought was progress from not having another anxiety attack, was probably just avoidance. When you are so lost in characters and stories of someone else’s life, it’s easy to forget your own. Although with each book, with each movie, with each sad and happy and confused character and thickening plot, I would find a glimpse of my struggling self-identities and conflicts in the dialogues of fiction. I would find a similar incident of my past being retold, it was like reading and watching my own life play out in different combinations and sequences. I would hug my laptop, or a book after each finished chapter and episode. My heart felt warm in that hug and my mind cold.

Another thing that happened, I was in a foreign state for two months with my parents. I had no one my own age, of my own reliability to talk to. I was after a very long time, in my own and only my own company. Of course you still remain in touch with your friends through calls and text, but being in touch, being in company, in real time is something different.

There was a time, when I started this blog, it was when I loved nights. I wrote at night, I drew at night, I sang at night, I would dream at night. But last month, nights would be about reflecting, about being so alone in my own brain that nights felt like a person trying to choke me. It didn’t feel like time passing by, but a kind of hold getting tighter and tighter. I would be awake trying to fathom this hold while getting lost in art and music. When I turned the lights off, I did not feel the familiar peace of rest, rather an absurd fear, of movements in the air, of the sounds that insects made outside, of the curtains. It felt like I was self-sabotaging a beautiful love affair that was stable for the last few years with my own toxic mind, the relationship with the night.

In the last two months I have traveled every weekend with my father and mother. It was a mixture of catching up on lost time, silence, kind laughter and rare moments of adventure. But even in those were hidden dirty bouts of time I felt like running away, I felt suffocated. Some sort of paranoia was gaping at me, at the back, watching me smile and then stabbing right when it got too much laughter for a day. That made me even guiltier.

This summer was the perfect mix of good and bad days, quiet and loud days, peaceful and torturous days, all of these a culmination of various moments that passed over two months. I can say with confidence, I have had the biggest internal roller coaster these two months. I have cried for no particular reason, I have stuck my head out of a car window and had clouds pass through my face like a happy ghost on hilly roads, I have stared at windows till the light of dawn began dancing its shadows on the bare marble floor, I have climbed mountains and stood at the edge at the side of my father’s wisdom and watched the sun slowly take over all the buildings and trees. 

I have seen and met the darkness that resides in the corners of our minds and hearts.

It comes out in the form resentment, regret, hopelessness, loneliness, hate and mostly growing up. It feels like a person with all these qualities living inside you, that you invited yourself.

9 days ago I had a breakdown. When I tell you the reason, you will probably never come back to this blog. It was that silly.  It was a sound. It was 12 am, and a loud sound kept going around in a synchronized loop. It was a grasshopper, probably sneaked in through the balcony at daytime. We had returned form a three day travel trip, I was exhausted and sleep deprived, wanting nothing more to rest. But as the silence of the night grew, the sounds got louder and louder. And that’s when I broke. I got angry and frustrated, burning heat in my ears, I shouted into my pillow, restless and tired, desperate to not be awake, to not be conscious. It was that moment, everything felt like a void, it seemed like I was floating, just me and my bed, if I stepped out of this mattress, and I would get sucked into a larger void, an inescapable darkness. I felt like I would never ever sleep again. I cried and cried. I cried like my life was ending, like no one was coming. The door would never move again. It felt like I was placed in a fortress of void, with me and this sound and even if I shrieked the loudest I could, my parents would not hear me. No one would hear me. I texted two of my friends, one who often goes through similar experiences as myself, hoping they could see me. And when a little more time passed and no one answered, I dived deep into those corners of my mind.

And I saw everything that had happened flash in slow motion. And I realized, I had lived the last three years in continuous change, every day, every month, and every year. Big and small. And I realized I just went along, I didn’t protest, I didn’t ask questions, I didn’t let them sink into my bones, I didn’t ever get used to change. On the outside, I was growing up, adulting, moving on, taking challenges and working hard, but on the inside I was still that happy, bright and warm 16 year old girl, living a life of stability. Stable. S-t-a-b-l-e.

U-n-s-t-a-b-l-e

You know when big changes happen to you, you take it one step at a time, and you adjust a little each day until one day you’re completely consumed in a new life.

I did get consumed, but without reading the adjustment manual. And when I had to spend two months in my own head, I started seeing little bits of me, that were dying, that had never made it through the last 3 years. That we’re still living in the safe bedroom, with posters and instruments on the blue walls. It felt like the biggest moment of confrontation I’d ever had in my life. By then one friend had responded. She helped me that night, I can’t imagine what would have happened of me if she hadn’t helped. She talked me through it, let me face what I was feeling and told me it’s okay to be vulnerable.

Vulnerable, what does that feel like to you?

What are words but generalizations to get through conversations without revealing the dirtiness, the truth. And I believe we all experience our truths differently, what I feel like when I love will indefinitely be different to your feeling of love. Still we place it all in the same phonetic spectrum.

That day,  vulnerability felt like a knife had been cutting open my flesh, arm by arm, neck to chest, thighs to feet, and every bit of my insides were pushing through the walls and tissues and coming out, oozing and splashing. I felt like now that 16 year old was outside with me, sitting next to me on my bed, crying. Telling me she grew up too fast, that she didn’t want to, that she did things without noticing the gravity of their consequences, and that Consequences of other peoples’ actions had not asked her permission before affecting her. I didn’t know if I comforted her, or she comforted me. I played Oblivion on repeat to mute the humming of the grasshoppers. I breathed in and out, until my heart settled down. And at break of dawn I slept.

Its been 9 days, and I feel, okay. Okay in the purest cleanest, happiest sense possible. The heaviness is gone, nights are starting to feel magic again. It’s only been 9 days. But maybe whatever it was that happened to me lately had started to wash out. It is a feeling of genuine freedom. And I am so grateful to feel free of all those skeletons that resided in me for so long. As I once said to someone, maybe after all the darkness has held me and left me, I can finally be sunshine and flowers, I can finally bloom.

So no, I did not get the Hollywood summer of my dreams, but I feel like now I am getting ready to let go of all this baggage. I want to be warm, I feel warm, I want to be happy, I feel happy, I want to be around those who love me and cherish me, and I want to do the same for them. I want to engage with life in more than just ambition and work. I want to fuel my soul, take responsibility for my actions and walk side by side with all the changed that are to come.

I don’t know what to call those nights, I don’t know if it was anxiety.

I don’t know if 9 days ago, was a mental breakdown.

It’s all a bunch of formal terminology anyway, besides mental health terms seem to be more of a self-advertising tool than a genuine human condition these days.

I am not writing this to be part of the ‘lets talk about our feelings’ narrative here. We should of course do that, but I wrote this so I can remember, that this was the time I decided to change my life. These were the days I started to become someone I could be proud of. Who knows, two years from now I’ll probably cringe at this post and call myself an overly dramatic person with a teenage hormonal phase. And maybe that’s what this was? But I’m not going to patronize it now. I don’t want to hide it under my skin and clothes. My blog is my only mouthpiece.

And I will lay a milestone here each time I cross one, even if that road was painted black, even if the milestone was sort of broken.

In less than a week, I return back to university. Travel days will be over. More change and growing up will be awaiting me. And this time I won’t stand by and let it walk all over me.

If this is the moment my life changes, I have written it down, it will live forever. Maybe I did have the summer that changed my life for good, after all. 

If you are still reading, you may have just witnessed one of the greatest moments of my life. Thank you for being here.