High Definition Blues
E-Quine
12/11/08

This is going to be another post about change.

I’ve always thought that change was slow and gradual, noticeable only if you step back and take a look at yourself after a few years and measure who you are in the present to who you were. That is, generally, still my perception of it, and it may be flawed, but who really knows?

I wasn’t really thinking about change, or about myself, actually, when something occurred to me – maybe change isn’t gradual. Maybe some changes, like the one I’ve just gone through, happens overnight. Lying in bed about three hours ago, I was talking to Steph about something when I realised how much I’ve slowed down my take on life; I think a lot more, I look at things differently. Then again, it may just be my change of perception, and not me actually changing, given the speed and rashness involved in my last relationship. Maybe. I just feel a lot older and less hotheaded about things now.

Or it might be that this change has been taking place, or is the final result of what has happened during the past five months, or even the past year, just that I have only come to realise it. It’s likely, but we’ll never know. I’ve never been in this position before, so it’s safe to say that I’m still walking on very thin ice, and I might just plunge under, despite how carefully I tread. On the bright side, I suppose it is a sort of clean slate. No mistakes to learn from, but no mistakes to repeat, either. I don’t know… I think of newly fallen snow, for some reason. I keep thinking of winter landscapes and unmarked snow, or autumn.

It’s odd because the last I checked with myself, I was all for summer, even though I’ve always loved winter for the simple reason that it had snow. Well, maybe not. When I was thirteen or fourteen, and possibly up until just before I turned sixteen, I was more the quiet type of person. I was averse to having attention drawn to myself, my self-esteem wasn’t what you’d call self-esteem, and at the same time, I was childish and hotheaded, but never in person. It seemed the only time I had the guts to do anything was in front of the computer screen, where sticks and stones would never reach me, but my words would slash and cut. Basically, I was a chicken shit. When I came to KTJ, with Shen and Ryan, I was still that person. They were always part of the cool group. No; they were the cool group. Dexter, Shen, Ryan, Jason, Phillip, Gary… whoever else there was. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be part of them, and as much as I thought I was, I wasn’t. I could never bring myself to… do the things they did, or live the kind of lives they had, or hang out as much as they did (partly due to the fact that I was situated on the antipodal end of the island). It was only after Shen and Ryan left, and after I’d broken up, that I was, in a way, finally free to stretch and come out of the shell I’d had on me. The oppressors were no longer there, I was in a new environment with new people to deal with, and the best thing was that I didn’t really care what these people thought of me. For the first time in my life, I was actually in charge of it. That brings me back to change; the biggest change in my life. KTJ brought out of me the ego I so fondly spoke of in one of my previous posts, turned me towards summer, let me have the breath of fresh air I’d always wanted, and let me be who I wanted to. Let me shave my head, Goddamn it.

And now I’m back to winter and… well, not to say that I’m withdrawn. Ponderous and meditative. Slow. You may disagree with me, and I might even agree with the reason you have for disagreeing, because some of the events that have transpired don’t really reflect this change I seem to be going on about. I know what some of it looks like, and I don’t like the way it looks, but I suppose you could say: at least I can see myself, somewhat.

This revamped version of me, maybe even better, doesn’t know what to make of anything. I feel like Bambi on ice (no offence to Steph). New. I don’t know. I’m contradicting myself. Winter, summer, and now spring. Spring. Melting snow, new buds, water. Why do I think of myself in seasons? The strangest thing about all this right now is that I feel young and new. I feel young and new, but I also feel incredibly old. Young in the sense that I feel brave enough to do things I may never do if I had previous negative experience, and that I know I will come away for the better even if I mess up along the way. And old. Old because… well. Feeling old is more of a situational thing. Based on my observations and watching people around me, I feel somewhat more mature than others. Call me elitist or condescending, it doesn’t matter. Everyone has these moments; I’m just owning up to it.

If ever someone asks me why I cannot speak like this in person, it’s because I hate being interrupted, and it will take me forever to be able to get this out by speaking. It’s just my mode of expression. I mean, sometimes I think it’s a bit childish that I only ever express myself like this through my blog, but it’s the same as writing in a diary, only less messy. That appeals to me because my handwriting is shit.

What am I doing now? Around a thousand words and one hour later, I don’t know. Still thinking, I suppose. Thinking without having anyone interrupt me, thinking without having sports to go for, thinking without having to get up and do things, thinking without having to worry about meetings or hockey or the yearbook. But that’s now as in the present time or moment. If I included a wider scope of circumstances and occasions that ‘now’ may encompass, I really wouldn’t know. I’m just living.

Love is (oh God, I’m back to this topic again) a very complicated emotion. For the past five months, I’ve had nothing else to live for besides my future and for the small hope that someday, things may be alright again. I never gave up hoping for it, because if I did, I’d have gone back to brushing things off my shoulder and making nothing of it. I wouldn’t have learnt anything, and well, what on Earth was I going to live for if nothing beautiful? Life is short, and I didn’t want to live my life just brushing off past experiences like they didn’t mean anything, because technically, I could do that for the rest of my life thinking that I never actually met the ‘right person’, so I clung on to the coattails of this passing gentleman and hung on for dear life. It did get me somewhere in the end.

Letting go of someone is… progressively easier. Not to say that I’m an expert, but based on what I’ve experienced. It’s never easy the first time you tell yourself you’re not going to talk to someone anymore. You can only hate for so long; it’s fiery, but it dies out, and then all there’s left is coldness and indifference. The temptation to resume talking in the hope that maybe something, if not everything, may be salvaged is always there. Mind, I’m speaking in the context of actually wanting to let go of someone intentionally. We always want to ‘just be friends’, but that is near impossible, especially if the bond between two individuals runs deep. The deeper the bond, the harder to break, the harder the fall, and the harder to heal. But after the first ordeal, your heart develops this first stratum of indifference or apathy, and it gets thicker and thicker until you are finally able to let go of the person completely, and feel nothing for it because you really are just weary and worn out by the effort it takes every time. The first time I tried to let someone go, to forget him, I couldn’t. I held out for three months, distracting myself, thinking about other things and turning my attention elsewhere. It was easy to do at first, because there was hate to help, but its effect wore off eventually. After fights and patching up and countless arguments, whatever remained died and I just let it wash away from me. It wasn’t really something I decided, rather happened. I suppose that subconsciously, I’d had enough of that scene in my life and it was really about time I moved on. Then again, whatever I say now may not be what I think in the future. I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to hold out completely and so stoically with just one view throughout time, but it may just be me being fickle about things, changing my ideals to suit whatever it is I may be thinking.

That brings me back to now. Now I’m living my life for my future and for someone I care about. It makes more sense to me to have loved than to never have loved at all, to have felt emotions that made me feel alive than to have shut myself out to everyone, and keep on moving on after each disaster because I don’t see the point on living my life for just that someone. It’s not that I do or am, but the process of packing up and peregrinating is a process I could repeat forever if I wanted to.

Do I wish it didn’t happen? I never expected it to, and I never thought it would end up this way, but I’m happy it did, and even better since it so happened for someone significant. Fleeting fancies lose their charm after you catch hold of them and look at them up close. Rather like how a strand of hair is seemingly perfect until you magnify it about ten thousand times its original size, because then you see all the frayed ends, the irregularities and the jagged edges. You let them pass and go, and let them go on their way, and they leave barely a dent compared to some others, sanguine as they may be because deep down you know that nothing meaningful will grow out of it. Quite like killing the chances of things happening, but there are some things I want to play safe.

It may just be the consequences of my upbringing, but I regard people who don’t read with slight distaste. No, not people who don’t read, per se, rather, people who proudly declare that they have an aversion towards large quantities of text, apparently turned off by the sheer volume of words. Technically, people who don’t read. I don’t know why I have a problem with that, but it irritates me. Maybe because I get people telling me, “Shit man, I just saw your latest post and I didn’t bother reading because it was so long!” and then ask me to tell them what I said in it, and I can’t because I’ve already let it all out there, and I can’t be bothered to talk about it. Read the damn thing if you want to know.

That, and I can’t stand people who blog in chtspk. It is such a turn-off.

Another hour has gone by. It is 4:05 AM and I am feeling the beginnings of diarrhoea. I hope it will pass before I have to ‘wake up’.

Forty minutes have gone by. My guts aren’t fidgeting anymore. I’ve just been listening to music.

End post here.