This is something I haven’t done for a long time. Writing. It’s difficult. With life in chaos and things falling into unwanted places. Books and news. TV shows and social media. I got caught up in that mayhem of things I didn’t want to see, but eventually saw for I had feared of being left alone with my thoughts.
It was difficult.
I noticed the rare occasion in which I found myself writing, albeit in my head, was when I was half asleep, with my lids heavy on my eyes. Things flew behind the blackness of they fragile sets of skin. Images. Words. My thoughts materialised into moving pictures. As disorganised as it was, sentences came out in gibberish, and yet they made perfect sense. When I got up, however, they just simply evaporated.
It takes me lots of efforts to organise my thoughts for writing. Indeed, I have concentration deficiency. And as easy as life goes by, when it happens, it’s also all over the place.
And that is how I often excuse myself for not writing. Always busy. More like restless. Always in the middle of doing unimportant things. Petty things. To get over myself. More like distracting myself from myself. It was soul-sucking.
Yet sometimes, times like today, when this restlessness got me stay up all night. My body is exhausted. I have no more energy to put up any reasoning. Words, finally, come easily. This is when I realise I have so much to write about: LIFE. Life! My life! Things! Everything. Things that changed me. Things that changed. Things that stayed the same.
This is why I chose to write from the beginning. I wanted memories to last. To be scripted down one by one. To have things impacted me documented. So after years went by, I could look back and say “Here, look at this. This is what changed me. This is when I was destroyed and reborn. Never the same ever ever again. For better. For worse.”
How different everything is since the last time I updated. And it’d be insane for me to attempt to talk about everything at once. So here’s the first thing that came to me when I was dozing off last night. It came crashing in. Vivid. In technicolour. So intense that it woke me.
These pictures were taken last July, during my visiting in Los Angeles. It was summer, and I was having the worst major depression crash of my life yet. I’ve always had this weird thing about summer. Too much sunlight. Too bright. Things were burning. I was burning. Colours seemed too washed out, too blunt. Or whatever. Thing is, my depression always get worse during summer. Yes, the season when people are supposed to go out and be happy. Plus, with the things that was happening to my life during the time, it got worst. I felt like I was going to kill myself almost everyday. It was horrible. It was bad.
So, Bridgette Lee, the one and only whom I could never possibly ask anything better in a friend, she was sort of my LA host, and was taking care of me the entire time when ever I was under the curse. So one day she decided to take me to Malibu to show me the mountains and the waves. She was trying to convince me to move to LA, for all that mattered. We left early, stopped by the Getty Museum. Got hungry and decided to stop for some lunch. We ended up drinking some expensive wine under the dying afternoon sun. The memory of our conversation was warm and hazy. I remember being very content.
Bridgette and I share the love of drinking during daytime. It is, indeed, the best. The way you are light on your feet but things are still bright so you could see. The colours pop. The sound of seagulls. Waves kissing the rocky shore. The gigantic blue mirroring the sky. The signature faint in the head given by the wine. It was charming.
We then drove down a couple miles heading towards the pacific coast and finally stopped by a well-worn path that leads down the rocky shore. I believe people call it the coast line, because it was literally just rocks and water. The sun was setting but the moon was already out. Round and bright. And we just sat there for hours looking at the moon and listening the the waves crashing into the rocks – chunky black rocks which we sat on. That was when these pictures was taken.
As shitty as a phone camera could do its best, they reminds me of the real sight that I was lucky to see in person. The darken sky lit with only the soft, silver light of the moon. The sounds of sea water crashing on the black rocks. The white foams. The ocean aglow under the full moon. The salty wind from the sea that sweated my face. I remember wishing I was high at the time, but then realising it wasn’t necessary. Because this, this is so out of this world. I felt like I’d traveled through time to witness such calmness. This is the world we left behind, as we pedal ourselves with glamour and city lights we’ve forgotten the things darkness has to offer: ourselves.
This is where we found ourselves: in the blackness of the night coated under only the faint light of moon and stars, we stopped blending in between lights and shadows, and started seeing ourselves.
For the first time in years I was able to let go of my thoughts and let it come back to me, like waves coming from the sea. The way dreams come to you when you’re drifting into sleep, they come when you’re awake as well, if only you learn to stop polluting yourself with thoughts and let them.
Only when you’ve blackened everything. Things of desire. Suggestions planted in your head. Things you were told that you wanted. That you needed. Everything. Deafened by the darkness so once you peaks into them and shine a faint, tiny light, only the things worth shining get lit up.
I was reminded of my purpose, of the meaning of this life I’m living. All things pretty are often simple. Like the ray of sun filtering through storm clouds. Pu-erh tea in a rainy night. Dandelions. Phone calls. Heartbreaks. I’m here to see this, to experience these mundane things that are often brushed off like dandruff on a cold shoulder.
I was happy, and I was suffering.
I was living.
These are the things that I do. The paths I led. How I was damaged and broken beyond mendable. How I continued to love and to lose.
This is me hurting, and breathing, and still keep moving.
Because if all things get to come home. All waves will just turn to foams. This is me crashing into pointy rocks until they are smooth as pearls.
I am the force that obliterates ships before I am foams.
P/s: this is me being a nerf ball and that was literally moon light reflecting in the waves.
God bless.