all words are made up.

    i've said this before but i don't and have never really considered myself a very insecure or anxious person. Which is weird because there has always been a third, secret, unexplainable thing that has weighed on my soul so heavily since i was a child. 

i have spent a long time realising that that thing is shame.

      we talk so much about insecurity and not enough about Shame. Call it a bias, but i think that shame is a far stronger weapon than insecurity. So many cans of worms could be opened here and i'm wondering if i have the will right now to use them all to catch the Fish, you know. I don't want this to be a self-pitying sob story and i hope it isn't taken as such, but for me (thus far in my life), shame is a trump card of all my emotions. 

above everything there is shame. beneath everything there is shame. built on a generation built on it built on it.

    Every facet of my identity that plagues me can be more or less attributed to shame;

    All the things I don't like about myself are a result of shame;

    i am ashamed of myself.     (o_O)

It feels like unlearning internalised shame is like, fucking impossible. It's hard to not just wallow in self pity and call it a day, a week,, a year,,,

    and then it's been a few! and you look around you and youre like, what fucking happened? (nothing did, that's the problem.)

    My shame is quietly souring my beliefs, it's rotting my teeth, and watering my joints, pinching my lobe. the way Your shame feels about you feels about you feels about You. it's so easy to do nothing but Everything is all there is.

 

doesn't sound like a real word anymore.

3/05/24 mate lock in

 

光阴似箭，日月如梭

Message Alex G. one take Jake XD.

It's my 20th birthday today.

i don't know. I came on here to perhaps talk about something meaningful and heartfelt about growing up but to be Honest i don't really enjoy (my) birthdays at all. Two days ago my grandma told me the Chinese idiom, "光阴似箭，日月如梭", meaning "time passes like an arrow, the sun and moon move back and forth like a weaving shuttle." She often talks about or recounts times when we were babies. it makes me sad to think about the fact that she doesn't Know me and i don't know her. We know each other but we don't. Even past a bit of a language barrier, she will never understand me and i will never understand her. anyway. This idiom scares me because i am very afraid of it going too quickly. Which i think has a beautiful irony to it for me because there was a time where I was absolutely not concerned with the rapidity of my life, rather the presence of it all together. LOL. Well now I'm 20 today and it's getting a little bit of a serious number and every year i go "i had not planned for this! What now!" and then i just keep going despite having no answers to anything and i keep going despite still not having formed feasible dreams or aspirations. I say it's whatever man but it's kind of Ever man.

I recently found and read a letter to my future self from when i was 15 that we were required to write in high-school. I had so many questions for me... most of which i am still asking. I know it's cliche but I feel kind of sad for Her because i have always expected myself to have figured things out and i look back and have to tell her that I haven't quite yet and i'm sorry that it is going to take more time. I think i'm going to wait until further into the year to write my yearly letter to my 2035 self because i want to leave time for better character development. you Understand. Ten more years until I can open them all the day after my 30th birthday. Not sure why 13 year old me chose 30. felt like a significant number at the time i guess.

I am not a singer nor a guitarist but felt Message to be very important for me in my teenage-hood and relevant to my feelings about my birthday. So i hope it's okay to break out the novice song or two every now and then at least for the sake of bitter-sweetness.