There was a dream.

A fantasy.
A fantasy so fragile and tenuous and achingly beautiful that it could never have existed.
And when it came close to reality it couldn't quite make itself real.
And so it vanished once more.
Like it could never exist at all if I dared to touch it, because it was so delicate.
But beautiful it was.

I am not sad because I couldn't make it happen.
I am sad because nothing I could have done would ever have made it happen.

I can have but a shadow of it.
And I suppose that that as far as reality is concerned, that is more than I could have hoped for.

New chapter

Haven't posted here in a while (I think I say that every time I post here. Not sure, I don't remember anymore). But I had to get some stuff out and nobody really reads this blog anyway so I guess it's okay.

Uni is starting next month and I just came back from my first orientation camp. Being there felt surreal. And coming home felt like waking up from a nightmare. It was so socially stressful that I got my period a second time this month.
By the end of JC, I had come a long way from who I was before. I thought I was secure in my self-image; I thought I had sorted out all my confidence issues (thanks to some very supportive friends); I thought I knew who I was and I liked it. All of that was torn down in 4 days. It was like starting from scratch, I had nothing, it felt like I was nothing. I thought that I was my own person and that that belonged to me. But it doesn't. I realised that I was reliant on the people who meant so much to me in NJ, and that there is a part of me that they each helped to create, and that without them, I can't access it. It doesn't unlock. It just doesn't work. I am only as good as people expect me to be. And when a group of strangers expects nothing, I stay nothing.
I can't relate to my OG culture and I don't really have anything to say to them. As far as they know, after 4 days I'm just an antisocial noob who has a pikachu shirt, a monotonous voice, and a smartphone addiction (every year I find a different crutch. Last year it was crochet, this year it's Twodots on Android). Just the same as JH1. Being myself bores people. I'm really glad I'll have Maggie and Flea in my OG for the next camp, but what really scares me is the notion that when you take away external forces, that's all I am. An insecure Ball O' Negativity and social anxiety.

I am very grateful to my friends (including boyfriend) for expecting the best of me.

That's all.

Void

Yes, this is going to be a post-A's reflection or whatever. Predictable, aren't I?

The A levels were depressing before, during and after. What can I say?

Math was one of the first exams, and as I sat there holding my thin stack of paper to be handed up, it all seemed so pathetic. Here was 6 years of pain and hatred for a subject irrelevant to my life, just sitting there. In a small pile. The result of 3 hours no different from any mock test.

And then as the month went by it seemed less trivial and more wearisome. There was no triumph after any paper, only a growing sense of burden knowing what had passed and what was to come. If there was anything to celebrate, it was only that I'd never have to see these grey walls again, and I could finally be free to be grey somewhere else.

The liberation I felt as the last paper passed was short lived. I expected an uplifting freedom in finally being allowed to pursue the things I had anticipated over the past year. A whole to-do list once the big thing was over. Instead I find nothing but a void. Worse, I find only more anxiety over the future, restlessness even when trying to be productive, and guilt whenever I feel idle.

As of now I'm dealing with this sinking feeling by crocheting some cacti for my art teachers while watching Daria deal with the petty politics of a world that that undoubtedly caricatures mine.

Sometimes I think that I'm ultimately afraid that once the burden of school work is stripped from me, I'll discover that I really am just an escapist hobby artist who doesn't care as much for personal fulfillment as I think I do, and that deep down I'd really just like to live off my parents.

There is no artistic vision. I just complain about things and mock them.

Back to the cacti.

Sorry for being depressing. 

Lit everywhere

It is a curious phenomenon that I should relate to any lit text I happen to be studying, independent of the chosen text or time context. No matter what I study, it always seems so immediately relevant to me. It also reveals a great deal to me about my life which I have not previously considered. Leaving the study behind when I enter uni saddens me somewhat.

Pearl everywhere

One who, lacking some human quality essential to their nature, functions less as their own person but is instead more aptly a mirror that reflects another's hypocrisy, for the absence of any life that they can call uniquely theirs, and the bluntness of the reflection they project.

Hedonism

A-level year is not a good year to be indulging like this.

It's like I have no will of my own anymore.

I need

to stop running away from my problems