Sneezes, Perfection, Ice-cream

Dear V

I hope you are well. And I hope that you hope that I'm well. Because its a nice sentiment when someone else cares about you. Like how saying "bless you" after a sneeze is absolutely unnecessary but at least you hope that someone in the room will bless you. Either way it is usually just empty words, produced out of reflex. But really how can words make any difference to the sneeze you just released? None really.

Well I've had a rather poor day. And I feel like you are the only one I can really talk to right now. Its about Perfection. I don't think I'm a perfectionist but I pretty bias towards myself. Though I feel as though I have given myself standards that are much too high, and don't get me wrong high standards are great, fantastic! But it is the extremes that I expect of myself that usually let me down. When I don't reach them, I tend to crash and burn and demolish a decent 1.5L container of ice-cream. (those really expensive and indulgent ones that need a warning label to indicate that there is actually no conceivable healthy serving.) If you must know, I ate a salad for dinner in self defense. It was an assessment I received today, and I was not pleased with the mark. My teacher gave it to me and I felt like heaving.

I hate being wrong, it makes me feel vulnerable, weak, and inferior.  

I've been trying to get my head out this gridlock for the whole night. And I'm slowly getting over it. I should have started this earlier, to clearly document the states leading to this revelation, but you know, i was too busy feeling sorry for myself. As I have actually come to appreciate the learning process of being wrong or feeling disappointed. I feel like if I tell myself things, these things will be true. Like when I talk to friends and succumb to mirroring their likes and dislikes in order for them to like me, I slowly lose myself. I chip away at myself to slot in someone else. I noticed only recently when I had a strange urgency to have a spoon of peanut butter, that I actually enjoy the taste of it. All these years with an unreasonable distaste for peanut butter has deprived me! I am digressing...

So I'm going to tell myself;
1. That I should not have eaten all the ice-cream (in one sitting)
2. That I will take disappointment in stride
3. That I will be the caring one for others
4. That Karma is not a bitch
5. That I will study harder and be rewarded
6. That I am happy
7. That you are happy
8. That I will buy my mother more ice-cream


P.s Its ok to be wrong as long as you promise yourself to be right next time

Love,
Michelle

Twenty- Five, Eyes, Swings

Dear V

I'm getting older. I will never be as young as I was when I wrote these words. I'm older now. Older again. And just because I don't feel the atoms in my body disintegrating, there is a wizened part of me that realizes that I will not be young forever. I don't mean the physical aspects of being young, though I don't think I will miss certain things like acne and angst, but rather the mind set of being young. Finding joy and enthusiasm in passions that I will eventually characterize as immaturity. I want to be young in this way and though the thought of being physically older like not being able to run, jump but rather confined to wheel chairs, dinner tables, special toilets until someone retrieves me- is somewhat daunting. That I can't run as fast as I could when I was younger. I know this is life, that it is a fact universally acknowledged that all things living will decay because they are temporal. I can see myself however, with my vein-y hands grasping knitting needles recalling the wind rushing through my hair and violently caressing my face as I sprint down the track- crying, cursing my bones that are weary after such a life time.

It might sound strange or not so strange but I think I should like to die before it comes to that stage. But still things change like everything and I might regret writing that. I hope I do. 

A few years ago in Physical Development and Health class, someone off handily said; "you know you start dying once you reach twenty-five." I don't think anyone was as shell shocked as I was. I silently contemplated this idea for the rest of class- and the week. At times I wished I didn't hear it, that I didn't need to know that. Sometimes mysteries are good, it keeps people hopeful and where there is hope there is no potent fear. Fear of course is always present. Lurking behind a facade that we ourselves conceit ourselves with. No one can be truly fearless, only to pursue a state of being in harmony with one's fears.

I fear time so much. And it actually took a very long time for me to get over the twenty-five dilemma.  

I'm taking a day off school today. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. It's hard for me to day that because people don't associate me to stress or anxiety. So I don't associate myself with that. Its a hard standard to follow. I'm a bottler, but I like that sometimes. Its just me and my thoughts. I find that sometimes when I'm talking to someone, I'm thinking about something else but still managing to sustain a substantially complex conversation with another person. Its all about eye contact. Its not that I'm not interested, it just I have to think about something but I'm too much of a people pleaser to reject you.

Enclosed is a picture of me that I would like to remember when I'm older. The plaits in my hair heavy on my shoulders, my scarf twisted around the rope, the sensation of flying with the sudden hitches of free fall at the maximum of the swing. When I can remember things so vividly that I fool my heart to beat like the moment I was recalling, I leave the reverie and feel my heart beat. Thump, thump, thump, thump. I just hold my hand there letting it vibrate through my skin, reminding me after each beat is life. And Life means decay and tragedy because we are all doomed. But life goes on. It is far greater than one individual life.

P.s  "Those who fear life are already 3-parts dead"- Bertrand Russell