Tints

I've been ill for quite some time now. Cold and trembling, merely breathing, dragging my feet across the floor only to reach the limit of my squared life and turn around just to make the same journey backwards. I should know that there's no room for giving up... not now when I came so close to grabbing it - that ray of light silently knocking at my window each day at the same hour.

When it first appeared, it scared the shit out of me to be sincere. It was all yellowish with tints of orange and red - a whole rainbow caught in a droplet of light! And the way the glass warmed up my cold, sweaty forehead... Nothing was the same afterwards! I came back day after day, dragging my legs for hours just to see that for a couple of seconds.

But then the clouds came, my illness made me feel cold and too tired all of a sudden to even open my head. And so I remained pinned in my suffering, angrily building forts of darkness to prepare myself for what seemed to watch over me with every second that passed by - Death. 

And then you came along and nothing was the same anymore. You brought light where darkness had nested, you planted flowers where the ground was dead and dried and watered them with your tears, giving them nothing but lullabies and gentle smiles. And you held my hand when I was all gray and cold, stony figure laying on a bed of fresh and poisonous ivy. You weren't scared of my dirty looks, my sharp tongue or of me trying to escape your gentle grip. You remained despite my cursing and begging. You stayed still and just hushed me back to sleep when the rain would force my darkness out. You - you were my light, my hope, my ultimate colour. With you by my side I could have coloured the entire world and there would have still remained enough paint to glue my skin back to my flesh and my bones all back together.

You - you were my salvation. For when I was gray, you were red, when I was just about to give in to my darkness, you brightened up my fear with tints of pink and when I was this close to just give up on everything, you held me next your golden heart. And nothing was the same...

And now you're down, running out of light and colour, holding tightly onto me, hoping for that small ray of light at the window. So I'll be your guiding hand, your light, your colour. I'll paint your life in bright colours and just a patch of blue of my own, for you gave up on yourself just to bring me back to life. You helped me find my colour when everything was hopeless - you gave me my blue. So now, when you're running out of your brightest colours, allow me to stay by your side and make the same journey back and forth until you finally gain your faith back.

I love you, don't you ever forget that...

How do I even survive?

Not that long ago, a person who didn't knew how to deal with my melancholic personality told me that no man is an island. That person told me not to worry so much over small things that seem to take a lot of the space dedicated to thoughts about myself. That person told me to try and see the good in every small thing that happens to me.

So I got a sheet of paper and a pen and wrote down a list of answers to the following inquiry: "What do I enjoy doing/ gives me satisfaction and allows me to wake up every single morning, breathe and function at full capacity?". And here's what I got so far:

• I enjoy reading. I lived thousands of lives made of paper and ink and felt things I know will never happen to me. But as much as I love reading, I can't have it when I want. I have classes, people to meet, evenings when I go to sleep as if knocked out. I have days when I would just sleep and sleep and sleep, days when the thought of reading makes me fall asleep instantly.
• I like making people smile. I really like when people smile at the sight of me. My friends, my loved ones - they all smile when they see me. But I have my bad days when I am grumpy and unfriendly, days when I push people away and am unreachable. I have days when jokes are flat and nothing pleases me. And those days are much more than those when I am silly and full of smiles.
• I love when people show their affection, be it a hug, a bite from a sandwich, a sip of water or a piece of chewing gum. I love when their faces lit up and they wave as if they haven't met each other since ever. But I'm too shy and cold to do so. I can't hug someone all of a sudden and I surely can't say words like "I love you." or "I like you." or "I miss you.". They just... remain stuck in my throat most of the times and make me come as a cold person, distant and unapproachable... or plain awkward.
• I enjoy listening to music. Classical, rock, '80s, ballads, disco, but what I like the most is k-pop. I love listening to the bit and humming along, I love the language, trying to understand words. I love how k-pop can express so much of me. But people don't understand this preference of mine. Most of them find it odd. It's not like j-rock or American pop. It may be influenced here and they by them, but it's still different. I love how there are songs that make me my smile go from ear to ear, while others make me melancholic. But they don't understand this attachment of mine. They tell me that it will wear off with time and as I grow up, I will more than surely come to find it no longer attractive.
• Grey's Anatomy.
• Supernatural.
• Empress Ki (or other Korean dramas).
• Teasing. It's an intriguing game of mind and will, wittiness and fast thinking. It can easily transform into inside jokes when with friends. But my teasing often is mistaken for flirting when a boy is involved as the teased part. And so it leads to awkward situations and intentions misunderstood. So I'm often pushed away.
• Writing. I love it like I love my blood. It's running in my veins, a living thing. I would write day and night. But I've lately developed some sort of a syndrome: the words are there, but somehow they won't come out. It's like trying to draw a feeling and you do not know the sign associated with it (love = heart).
• Sleeping. I would sleep 12/24 if I could. I love the sensation of being underneath the warm covers, of vividly dreaming and knowing I am still asleep. But people find it weird and tell me to go to the doctor and get a check-up.
• Staying up late. Not staying out, but just awake till 3 am or so. I like the solitude of those late hours while just browsing around the internet. But when I do so, I tend to sleep till late in the afternoon and that's not alright at all.
• I love being in love - with a song, an animal or a person. I am just happy. But the songs get old and others take their place and often, I cannot spend all my time with my pets. It's the feelings for a certain somebody that stay, linger around for a moment longer. But then, my feelings are often unrequited and eventually, end up being stepped on and I choose to throw them away.
• I love sweets. But we all know they're a two edged sword...

And this is just the top of the list. There are a lot of other things I enjoy. And they all have set backs/bad effects.

So, drawing the line at the end of it, I wonder: how do I even wake up in the morning?

Can you come back home?

I woke up with a whirlpool of dreams spinning inside my head. Bittersweet samples of what reality could have done to me, little threats from a yet unknown future, seeks into other dimensions and just imaginary situations I put myself in because I can't stay still even in my sleep.

And as I laid there in my warm bed of dreams that were getting cold, slowly fading away, I felt my heart sinking into the ink of loneliness, preparing to write yet another page of signs and symbols I could not recognize.

In a room full of sleeping people, I was lonely.

In a room full of dreams chasing one another, I was laying stripped of my personality, involuntary staring at the darkness that was crushing me, somehow thankful that there was no one to see my pitiful tears. For I was pitiful and scared, lonely and wounded, not understanding the heaviness I was carrying on my shoulders.

We are all born alone into this world and we die alone. It's a fact. But I was born incomplete, missing something, a piece, a fragment, a shard of soul... something. And looking back now, I realize I was always dysfunctional one way or another, a puzzle with a missing piece, a painting without name.

My soul is too old for my body and I can feel its weight inside my chest. I need that missing piece. I need it to make it stop hurting so much, I need it to light up my darkness and offer me comfort. I need to find it and never let it go! But where to look for it? Should I post an ad "Looking for my missing piece. Please contact me ASAP!"? Or maybe I should start calling it in the middle of the street, waste all of my money of trips so I can call for it from different countries, just in case it got lost abroad? Or put a board around my neck and travel around the world?

What should I do?

I want to be complete when I die so that in the next life, in another world and dimension I can be full of colours and not the dull grey I am right now. I need my colours. I need my mind to find peace, my soul to be stitched up and my heart comforted.

But in this search of mine, I think we've been thrown too far away from each other - me and my missing piece. We're being kept hidden from one another, torn apart by daily life circumstances.

Or we're simply blind...

So, I'm going to begin my search now. This year. This month. This week. Today. Right now. And now matter where you are, I will find you and I will make us one - one soul, one being, one heart. But if you're reading this, if you randomly came across this message in a bottle, if you're feeling like something has been missing from you your entire life and want to be complete once again, can you come back home?

Please.

I Am Nobody

"I'm looking for companionship." - It was written on a wooden board with pure white chalk. 

It was Saturday when I first saw it. It looked defenseless and lost, like coming from another world or maybe from other days, days long past by now. The letters were slender and determined to remain imprinted on one's heart - like the mourning call of a swan that lost her lover. It was the writing of one with bleeding wounds and plenty scars...

It was Monday when I got out of my house with one single thought: find the owner of the written board and maybe offer myself as a tribute to her silence. What good was I by myself anyway? Every single day the same vicious circle of events: ravished bed, bad hair that just wouldn't listen to the brush, a piece of toast left hanging on a white plate and hot tea with half a spoon of sugar. And sometimes there'd be someone's silhouette's profiling from underneath the covers of my bed, but never the same person twice. People come and go. We're but transitory existences in this timeless life. Why should have I made it all complicated by bringing someone in my life? And where could have I found that person when sincerity has been forbidden right before the very beginning of this life?

Tuesday. Another cup of tea and a map, all lying on the wooden surface of the kitchen table. And screams from upstairs where the only couple known to be still alive is once again throwing their clothes out through the open window. He's sleeping. On my bed, a man is sleeping. I don't know who he is or where he comes from. I just know he was half naked and his skin smelled of snow and apples. A nice smell. The smell of belonging to someone. And I had to have him. Naked, begging, screaming, suffering and crying, laughing and sighing - I had to have him all. One night, only for one night.

But he was there on Wednesday and Thursday as well - still on my bed, still naked, but smelling of ice and wild, unexplored woods.

Friday came and there was no sign that the rain would ever stop. Huge droplets hitting my window as if someone was throwing pebble stones like in the Shakespearean novel he never got to write. And my house was full of the smoke of one cigarette that was burning in between my fingers. Was it odd that even if I never smoked before I felt the need to inhale that smoke and let my lungs choke on it? Or was it odd that I bought a whole pack just to take one out and threw the rest of them? I don't know. I never smoked before.

Raining rain during my rainy day, when my mood was all rainy. A sad picture. And maybe wet from all the water invading it.

Laying on my bed, I watched the strange drawings on the ceilings. Rusty stains left behind by an old flood cause by an old tenant who killed himself in the tub. Stains that seemed to tell the story of my life: hands stretching out for something to grab and holding only on nothingness. For nothingness I had found everywhere I went.

And rain.

And smoke.

The incapability to find meaning in all the secrets that came climbing my walls, finding cover in between them.

Saturday and I was left on the floor, naked and smudged lipstick, a crumpled bill hiding in my tightly closed fist. I had problems breathing, adjusting to the suddenly cold air surrounding my skin. It felt like being underwater with this new him. A pleasure moving to pain as we moved through the salty liquid of muffled sounds. And then pain - the pain of feeling my flesh burning and of contracted lungs. It got stuck inside my head that my apartment was messy and I suddenly lost any interest in his beard and dark blue, fantasy like eyes.

Dirty.

Smelly.

Cold.

The body of a nobody.

And he left, angrily stomping on my floor, leaving other cracks in the wood under his soles, rude openings staring blankly at me now. He didn't say a word... or I didn't hear him say it as I was too busy trying to understand my broken mirror and the fine lines I discovered in the paint of my walls.

It was all crumbling down...

Sunday and far from being perfect: a house with red lights and I don't remember how I got there. And mirrors everywhere. Pale faces with dark eyes, smudged make-up and skinny limbs were blinking at me. Confused. Why they were all staring at me confused? Was I not to their liking? Was I too much of a mess to be picked up, repaired, dressed and maybe held?

So I ran outside. I ran barefooted and didn't care to look back. I felt like they were all coming back together - all of them, all of them. Dark eyes, blue eyes, powerful bodies holding me in their arms and warmth - it was all coming back to me, trying to get me, to pin me down to the ground and leave me senseless. But I was too strong to give in that easily. And so I ran and ran and ran.

Away.

Rewind.

Saturday. It was the first time I hug the sign on the old door, stealing glances at the man in the corner. It wasn't the first time I was telling to myself that it wasn't like I was lonely or lost my way. It was just turning the page to get a new start, to get a new page to scribble down the same meaning I never got to find...

"I could not tell you my secret."

"I don't know where to go from here."

Saturday. It was the third time I was hanging up the same wooden sign. And soulless eyes would stare to damn me to nothingness. 

But I spent an eternity of being a Nobody... their darkness wasn't frightening anymore...