I can’t breathe.
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I’d like to think that I am breathing. But I’m not.
Maybe the fact that I can’t write is because I can’t think clearly.
I can’t think of how best to tell my story, there are so many universes, multiverses. Which one should I choose from? Which one sounds like me? Which one will sound like the me I would like to be? Which one will people understand? Why do people need to understand? Do I need to be validated? Am I writing just to be heard? Do I not have a voice? Do I have a voice? Can you hear me? Am I living my life or just documenting my life? is there a difference between both? Is life lived to be documented? Is the main purpose of life a story? We only live to recount our stories? To run to our best friends and recount what we have lived? If we don’t ever recount can we ever live? Will we end up being Monsieur Mersault if we never recount? In jail? Void of emotion, crazy, not normal. Have we always told stories? Are stories the meaning of everything? Live to tell? Live to tell? Live to tell! Have we always told stories? Is this natural? Have I been socialised this way? Or this is just the truth? This is the only way we can connect. If we don’t live in the past, we can’t live in the present. Is there any past, present or future without us? Without us will we ever consider the past, present and future as things that exist, like water and air? Yes? No? If yes then are we time? That present past and future, is it all me? All me? So that without me there will be no time? And if I wasn’t time then would these planes be superimposed? Yes. Why is my time a straight line? And why have I accepted it? Is it for my own good? That everything has been simplified? Does your heart thump when you think of yourself existentially? Of how insignificant you are? Of the amount of things you can’t change? Of how you will die but don’t know if your consciousness will live? Of how you will feel living as a consciousness? Of how this whole world that is you could be nothing, gone, gone, gone, gone. How you are but will never be? How long have you dwelled in this inconvenient nothingness? I wish I could describe this nothingness to you, but my mind doesn’t allow me to dwell in it, and soon as my heart thumps, my head escapes. Why can’t I comprehend it enough to explain it to you? Is the purpose of solitude for you to escape other human beings that solidify your current reality, so that you can create a new one for yourself? So that you can question time and the absence of other people there to amalgamate their experiences into one reality grants you the chance to escape and explore other realities? Is this why writers are respected? Because we know this is true? Because they exist in solitude and come up with new worlds? Can you describe the way things make you feel? Like music? Are these the things that make us human? Or are they the things that make us realise we are not human? That we are more? Are we more? Are you more? Am I more? I am. I am more. If you don’t believe it, I will. If I don’t believe it who will? Why do I need you to believe it? Have I already asked this question? Yes. What do I need to accept now? Is seeking validation a bad thing? Why does my mind rub me wrongly when I think of validation? Aren’t we all looking for validation? I just need to accept it right? I need validation, I am not a rock, I am not an i-i-i-sland, it is not a winter’s day in a deep and dark December. We have harmattan. Is validation not synonymous to connection?
This song says, “this time I come first”. Did I never come first? Whatever I did for you was for me, first. Maybe I should get high today, and get lost in my thoughts and fear that I will never come back. We always get there, to that line we feel we shouldn’t cross, and don’t cross(1). I won’t cross it, It’s easier here. Here is what I know.
We is not you, we is me and my friends. I met them this year and one night honestly thought to myself, “could this be the best time of my life?” I can’t speak of them in great detail, because even though I am trying to share, I hoard. I think what I appreciate most about these friends is that they allow space for this constant questioning, in between conversations and laughs, when we look at each other at that moment in-between, we both see each other standing there in an empty room, questioning the authenticity of the current interaction. Yes I’m laughing, but why am I laughing? It seems as though it manifests as glint in their eye, which is most likely true, which is most likely false. And I love how we tether on the edge of our reality, all the time. So that we (1) and never stay in one line of thought for too long. We move like tangled earphones in-between, inside and outside, forward and backwards, burrowing deep at one point, only to end up at the top of the soil, mangled.
ALWAYS QUESTIONING
When I write sometimes and I write with the person “I”. It is because I am talking about myself, as a singular human being bound to consciousness. And when I talk about we, what we want, I am speaking about the parts of me that are connected to something more. I feel like, feels different from we feel like. We feel fine. I know what we want to do. I always know what we want to do, I just don’t know what I want I to do, and how to make I do it well. But it’s weird because we know. We know that it’s by listening to these things and feeling them as part of it. Allow yourself be pulled into the experience of your we. The world around you.
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