This week has been a wack. (Also, long time no write. I’ve given up on proper farewells and greetings in this space.) There have been a few online lectures to attend via Zoom, which ended up being a very sleepless series of hours for my unadjusted night brain, and a quiz I should have done and seen the end of if not for a technical error I found out relatively too late. Contacted people, saw tears brimming inside my eye socket, decided it is going to be a waste anyway. Time is ticking. There have also been some paperworks to finish that I’m not excited to be a part of, but nevertheless have to tend to because no ghost would want to stress themselves out organizing dozens of PDF files to upload on Google Form. I have been soothing the rough edges by reading and compulsively acquiring new ones. I finished Folklorn not a long time ago, before that The Seas, and am planning on reading another one starting today because I need to quiet down the voices, the screams, the wails. I started two different books, haven’t managed to continue because my concentration is scattered and I don’t currently have the capacity to form cohesion even through a stranger’s story. Maybe we’ll just talk about books I’ve read so far.

First off, the aforementioned Folklorn and The Seas. I picked up Folklorn knowing it has Korean elements, but didn’t know that instead of taking place in South Korea or North Korea, it’s prominently set in Sweden. I don’t think I have read any other book that is so pronouncedly Swedish. Also, I hadn’t been prepared for all the science elements that took off the book almost from the get-go, because as it turned out our protagonist is a scientist and we started her journey when she was part of a team of researchers collecting data in Antarctic. It’s also about, yes, folklore and mythology, retelling, the inheritance of stories, the stories we receive and perceive and create and re-create for ourselves and others. Some things I love: we have a romance here that is sweet, intelligent, and mature (side note: we need more non-young people in love depicted in contemporary non-romance literature, like in this book where our protagonist is in her thirties and her eventual partner is in his forties); I love the conversations of mental health between the protagonist and her brother, about the chronic effect of experience of displacement and unbelonging to your sense of being and perception, how that can seamlessly seep into how you care for yourself and other people; I also very dearly am fond of the portrayal of motherhood and parenthood, of girlhood and coming of age, of being born a girl in the world with its set of tales about what that has meant for others who have been born like you, about the perpetual grieving that comes almost naturally with being a girl/woman/mother of all kinds; and finally, language, especially the part where the romanization of the Korean terms are catered to how they are written in Korean letters (for instance, Ah-bbah instead of the more generic Appa) . This book is jam-packed aside from being very enjoyable, mostly because I’m very easily endeared by the voice and thought process of our protagonist and the way she processes her anger, disappointment, yearning, and love for both scientific grounding and imaginative realm. It’s also filled with history, the way the same themes can emerge from places a world away, the way we write ourselves down and pass it for generations, the way we have striven not to be forgotten. I could go on and on about this book, but I’m mostly only left with immense gratitude for it to have accompanied me for the past few days with my wrecked, wrecked mood. 

The Seas is also, in some way, a story about stories. It’s about the experience of being in love while being in a body of being where love is experienced as unattainable, about the way we make sense of why we have lived the way we are, about how we shapeshift through the years and hurt. It is at times very sweet and charming, and other times incisive about the kinds of ways being a girl can render you invisible, dangerous, unbearable, and fatal. I love the ways it makes me think of seas, of blueness, of islands, of being isolated, of puberty and how it is unlike anything, of  being trapped in an insidious cycle of multiple discomforts of the mere instance of existing in the world. I loved reading it, felt like a dream, a dreamless nap, a melody. It has made me grow keen on descriptions of nature, so I’m looking forward to picking up more books specifically capturing this feeling. I also think I enjoy the vagueness of the book because I’m already in love with the protagonist so early in the story that I’m willing to go through this journey with her, even if it feels like sleepwalking through hallucinations. She is on the brink of young adulthood, with a specific brand of precociousness and observant tendency that made me think of my own youth. Some examples of passages: If they asked me I’d tell them, “We live here because we hate the rest of you.” Though that isn’t always true, it is sometimes; [...] stares into my eyes long enough that velocity, the force which a body approaches or recedes from another body, hits me hard. It pushes me towards him by my sternum with everything it has; Still somehow I manage to walk through our house and think we aren’t trash; [...] imagine that when you arrived at that page, instead of being five inches wide it is one hundred and ninety-eight feet wide. So wide that when you turn the page it crushes you, pins you underneath it. You would never make it to here; It’s funny to hear her tell stories about how much she loved me as a baby because I think it has gotten harder for her to love me the older I get; I spend most of my time here waiting. Waiting to grow up; I continue with the story. “I fell and fell and fell until I was so deep in love that love resembled a well, steep sides with no way out [...]”. It feels both soft and harsh at the same time, both romantic and deadly. I loved it. 

Before those two, I read Ponti. I loved it so, so much. I picked it up after watching some clips and reading articles about Girl from Nowhere, which is a Thailand TV show about a girl named Nanno who keeps transferring to different high schools, all the while having herself surrounded by people worth getting revenge towards (also, with multiple trigger warnings on all things you can ever think of). I was understandably in a drunk-dazed state of wanting to explore more stories about young girls and schools, which then I picked Ponti after roughly hoping it would fit this headspace I was in. It did fit, and it was so much more than that. It moves between different perspectives and timelines, but the first protagonist we are introduced to is the one I’m most feeling attached to. She’s jaded, tired, always sleepy, and is washed out of dimensions. She’s moving through her life like she’s being fogged, and she’s not particularly looking forward to anything. School is boring, the students and teachers are cliche, nothing is enough for her to want to keep being here. This is also the first time around I picked up a book set in Singapore, and I love the descriptions of heat and humidity, of bad odor and bad food, of mosquitos and skin and marks, of feeling like existing is being boiled uselessly on Earth. It also reminded me a lot of Plain Bad Heroines, especially during the first few segments, things about: being a part of B-rated horror movies and having a lukewarm history of fame, coming to terms with never understanding and in turn understood by the person who’s the closest to you, and being in an everlasting state of unfulfillment. It also tackles weird, intense, and eventually estranged friendship that started, bloomed, and ended in a blink of an eye, the kind that seems to only affect young girls, and usually in two. It also has a sense of magic realism, curses and hauntings, karma and prayers, and the things you shed as you grow up in distress. It was genuinely frustrating reading this book, being enamoured by it, and not having anyone to share it with, not having anyone to also see how this rather unusual book is making me feel and think a lot of different things. 

On another note, I’ve been drowning myself in Highlight’s and Oh My Girl’s new albums. Highlight, especially, has been making me cry whilst I watched all of their performances and activities. It’s been too long and it has accumulated, prickled my eyes. Their newest The Blowing is so, so good, and the fact that the members Lee Gi-kwang and Son Dong-woon have actively participated in the composition, production, and writing of the songs just make it all seem more bittersweet, more sweet than bitter. My current favorite song, apart from the title track Not The End because that song slaps, is Hey yeah or Bam-iya in Korean, meaning “night” literally. Love, love this song. Meanwhile, whilst all of Oh My Girl’s newest Dun Dun Dance B-sides are far too perfect for me, Dear you is quite phenomenal. It’s making me very sad, soaking my heart with rain, and embracing it in warmth and fragrance. It’s quite wonderful, all of these. It’s been a while since I’ve been excited about anyone’s musical release and promotion, but this month has been generous on that note. Fangirling has never been more engrossing. Other things I’m obsessed with: some Korean dramas such as Taxi Driver, Doom At Your Service, reading fanfictions of Hospital Playlist’s Winter Garden OTP (also the alternate universe version where the actors playing the roles are falling in live on and off set), learning more of warming up to fantasy books (read Unbroken earlier this month and it changed me), and just an unhealthy amount of reading. I’m glad I’m alive, accessing stories and narratives, being able to allow myself to be okay again, or at least to be here and stay whilst time is tick tick ticking. I’m kind of not okay at the moment, but it’s temporary and will pass. I’m going to start a new book very soon. I’m thankful for books, eternally. Always, always thankful for words. 

I am so glad to have made this blog. The thought has just occurred to me now. I am so glad to have an external space where the sensitive nerves are aspersed through words, spaces, line breaks, paragraphs, click click click. 

I do not know what to write other than that I am feeling a lot better these days. I am still nervous about everything, every day. Still, I believe I am doing okay. 

So for now, I will hold on to that and hold on. I am hanging in there. Click.

This is turning out to be a book blog, and I am surprised myself that it took me this far, this long to have broken down to my primal senses of hoarding texts into my brain. I think it is a good idea that in the midst of this grim forest with crooked lanes, I found books, again. I think I have found my saviors once again. 

That being said, I finished both We Are The Ants and One To Watch. I think I have said a lot about We Are The Ants, but if anyone wanted a shorter version of the word-vomit I have been screaming inside my head, it is: it broke me in thousands of ways, took me to so many different places, and I would not have traded the time (and tear duct fatigue) I had with this book. In retrospect, it was weird I chose that book out of everything I had acquired and could had made my way through; I am glad, though, that through some forces of nature it found me, or maybe I found it, and it was not the perfect time for me personally, but it was perfect for this book. I had fun.

Speaking of fun, One To Watch is so fun. It is so juicy and dramatic. I think years of watching Korean variety shows brought the giddiness in me watching all the behind-the-scene shenanigans and over-the-top formulaic twists and turns, but it is weirdly so packed with so much tenderness and hearts in its sleeve that it just worked so well. The things I have said about this: "This is the most fun I have had with a book in a long while, and to have that consistency stayed until the very end feels very, very rewarding. For a story that involves reality TV (yes), it is brimmed with a chock-full of vulnerability, softness, and non-pretentious warmth that by the end of everything, I am just glad for this woman to take control of what she is feeling, and prioritizing her well-being in terms of romance and relationships. It can be very, very triggering with how it depicts a lot of different forms of how people perceive and police different bodies, bodies deemed "unfit"/"unhealthy", bodies considered a reflection of "immorality"/"laziness"/"curse" (!@#$%?)" So yes, I have said a lot. This also has made me eager to read non-fiction books around bodies and fat-phobia, but for now I am onto another book entirely:

What I said about the book (re: ranted on my WhatsApp status which are only seen by my siblings): "Have been meaning to ever since I became aware of it through its TV show adaptation, which I have not watched except for bits of Tumblr GIFs here and there (and thirsting over the romance within my narrow frame of non-existent watching), but I know this is up my alley and I am going to love it." I am excited to read a crime/detective novel, and I am a few pages in and loving it, as expected. I am glad I can be excited about this.

On another note, here are the collages of book covers I got:

[Screaming in colors.] I am psyched for all of these, but especially the childhood excellence that is The Land of Stories series, which I had not known consisted of six books (I had thought three/four maximum). I have had two of the physical copies for years (and barely finished, maybe because it made me sad for some reason) and now I have them all and it is glorious. 

On life personally, I am still being gobbled up alive emotionally. I am working on it. All in all, grateful for books; grateful for the last few brain cells I have capable of producing serotonin/endorphin/joyful chemicals. Ciao, not for long, I think, because I am now always more than ready to talk about books. 

For some reason, I have been meaning to write. I have been lonely, which is not new, but maybe lonelier because now my only escapism is taking multiple depressive naps while the rest of the house seems to hustle and bustle with usual normalcy; I have been meaning to finish a specific task by the end of the weekend, which is now, but now that my screen-time-use-induced headaches are getting worse, I need multiple breaks, and when that thought becomes unbearable, I sleep instead. I slept a lot, considering how nervous I am. Inside, I am constantly screaming.

The good news is, I have been trying to read. Manga, as always, but also books with only words. Safe to say, I have fully embraced my book-hoarding mechanism as a way to cope with life, and depression, and feeling like I am a failure 24/7. I have made collages out of the book covers I have acquired; my phone wallpapers are now of them, and I am positively excited for something, at least. I can now add "beautiful book covers" as one of the reasons to stay alive, for now. 

I know, what gorgeousness. I am swooning. Also, believe me, there are more. I am reading The Deep now, by the way, which has the cover of something out of a very atmospheric webtoon/comics/manga, whatever. I am just loving that graphic. I also enjoy its very visceral, sensory-related descriptions regarding movements and motions, and since it is set underwater it is all the more magnifying, the effect. 

I have also been reading manga, as I have said, and found a scene that describes my feeling:

This is from the manga Saraba, Yoki Hi which is unsettling, moody, and very, very beautiful. I have a lot of thoughts but not enough words in my throat to want to elaborate about it, but it is very, very engaging. I also, randomly, started reading another book, which is called We Are The Ants, and I have screenshot a few lines I highlighted, because I am in my angst phase once again:

It is, dare I say, a very strange book, but maybe in a lot of ways that are in good effect because it makes me keep thinking about it. The whole, brief time I made in the afternoon to read it felt like a fever dream; probably like how the whole week has been for me. 

I keep having nausea and migraines, and I have taken so many pills and eat so little as of late that I am amazed that I can still stand, walk, and use my hands. I feel like disappearing. On most of these nights, I do not sleep and instead cry, curse-crying that I could not physically make myself rip my lips and have bruises on myself, because I do not wish to inflict harm, and I do not wish to feel even sicker than I already am; but why is it so lonely? I have been here before, a number of times. I have been here and stayed. What is it about now that is making this especially hard?

There is a specific type of loneliness that these past few days have been making me feel. I stay up until dawn, or past 7 AM, without anyone knowing, eyes hurt from being blared by the laptop screen for hours. Waking up at 12 PM, I would go to the kitchen and see no one, and there is this sense that I can easily allow myself to starve, to make myself unfazed by the human hunger. There is a specific feeling where I realize I can go on hours making myself sleep, eat, and drink less, and still, when someone look at me in the eye, they would not sense my dread, my fatigue, my cry for help. There is this feeling where when it is nightfall, and everyone is getting ready to unwind, and I am just getting started and thirsty, so I go to the refrigerator and pour myself a drink, in that specific time, and darkness, and coldness, I feel how easy it is to abandon me, my body, my soul. I feel it in my bones, how if I could just go over about it, I could make myself freeze, die, copper in my tongue, because even I am sick of being here, being in the loophole of feelings I cannot even begin to get over with. I am not even exaggerating when I say that as of now, I am only alive because of book covers and manga. 

I cannot even begin to say that every time I open my mouth I feel like crying; now, all I am is silent, roaring tears.

But I also have this voice, saying: nothing, nothing, nothing. 

I know there is a very particular task-related stress I am having at the moment, which is not helping this situation given my tendency, and if I get that done I will be a lot, lot better, and I know it, I know I will be fine, but I also want people to know I am not fine, at the moment, and let me allow myself to be affected by this. I have not had these dark thoughts in years, when I was in high school and felt life was pointless. I still feel everything is pointless, but instead of that I get this underlying doom, panic, sensation that I am beyond fixing, that what I am now is a result of all the years I have ignored myself, and that I cannot undo this negativity, this hopeless crook in my heart. That what I am is nothing but a skin and hollow goosebumps. 

I am hearing the morning prayer call already. It is dawn. I am going to shower, probably, and change clothes, and charge my laptop, and eat breakfast. I am going to have to play the game: do the routine and be normal. It is easy, so easy I wish it was not like this. I wish I had anyone, any breathing being, telling me that it is so jarringly scary I appear as normal as I am, because I feel like a wreck. I do not know what is exactly keeping me so normal, collected, and scarily silent. I wish I can scar myself with loudness. I wish anyone can hear this, and recognize this ugliness, so that I can, for once, stop feeling dissonant from the world.

But I am going to eat breakfast, something I have not done in days. That should be fun. I am going to have this work, task, whatever, done soon. I have been saying that to myself a lot. Soon. I want to get over it soon, but also this ugliness draped in me, this strange being that has emptied me. Soon. 

Ciao. It has been a long post. I said already I was itching to write. That being said, happy Monday. Let's try to be well this time around, too.

I have myalgia all over me. 

These past two days, I have been going back and forth to the hospital from afternoon until night, the nooks around my neck muscles pained after hours of analyzing specimens through microscope. It was cool; for the most part, I was alone, and something about the monotony and repetition of the task makes me not ruminate internally. I was just doing my job. When it was done, I got home, showered, ate, drank chocolate, and slept at 3 AM. I overslept this morning and missed my first lecture; it was cool. At this point, I will just have to make sure I know what time it is, and then I will be good. 

I have not had breakfast.

For this elective term, I chose to study about psychophysiology. So far, it has been all over the place, and I am cool with it. I love the inherent messiness, how nobody tries to gloss and mask the complexities, how everyone is having fun with the abundance of inside jokes accumulated after only three days we have been starting to learn it. I wish I had more time to sit through the materials, reading and highlighting e-books, because even now I am all dozed off and hungry, only thinking of when I should be napping for a short while today. I am trying to survive. My self-therapy now involves watching BookTube videos. Bless them. I would have died if it were not for them. 

Bless my soul. I am tired. 

I feel like the weeks have only been some one long day of keeping up with things I had also been doing already: going to the hospital to collect yet another batch of medical records with a few other friends, being in my desk for hours trying not to scratch my face in frustration listening to virtual lectures/practical sessions/listening to myself talk over several tutorials, typing endless things for the dozen of written assignments tasked. It has been hard to even stop doing anything to admit this has been crazy. When I do stop, I find things to do instead of thinking: I play videos in loopholes through Youtube, I watch and read the news, listen to things. 

Still, some things happened, and I am glad they did. I met up with D, one of the very few humans I met in college whose presence I can actually, physically and emotionally, withstand for hours, and for hours did we talk and dine in someplace nearby my house. It is so easy being with her, as if I can actually enjoy being unassuming for the few hours I can afford in that one day, and it has been so rare for me to find the time to enjoy being with people when they are right in front of me. It was awkward, and I loved it.

In one of the afternoons I was in the hospital with K and Y, we happened to be seated with an older man I have assumed is a resident doctor, and we talked for longer than I had expected. It was a lot of things, and by the end of it I was very uncomfortable and nauseous. It was hard for me to even explain these things to K when I felt his questioning gaze, and it was one of the things when I realized I have no words for the very many things I happened to be concerned of. Yet, I was too tired to try, and when I got home I barely remembered why I was trying so hard to say anything, to do anything at all. 

Today, I woke up very late after sleeping in for over twelve hours, showered, ate, and spent about thirty minutes freaking out about the things I have not let myself ponder as of late. I have a lot of examinations coming up, a lot of things I need to think of moving forward in my life, a lot of reasons for not wanting to be here, or now, in this body, in this ache. I have been meaning to write something, here or otherwise, and allowing myself pour, to rage over, to feel, but at the end of the day, whenever I think of things I would rather allow myself to do, it is sleeping. I am glad I managed to sleep a lot earlier. 

I am glad I am still here, despite not knowing why it has been so hard these days, and even harder still to let this be expressed and told to anyone. I am glad for a lot of things, but I would very like for these things not to be final, not to be this long, not to be this devastating. I would like to have time to collect some remnants for myself to keep, to find words for whatever these are, to believe I have not been hopeless.

In the end, I only have me. I can only be me.

Today has been scorching. I remember not sleeping well for the last few days, heat everywhere, the skin around my clavicles burning in an abyss of vehemence.

I managed to drop by the hospital again yesterday for about an hour and a half. I finished up looking at the records feeling like my limbs have gone into cloudless wind in extreme height, which did not subside even when I have gone inside Mom's car, drinking water with cold sweats on my temple. I felt like I lost air. I felt like a part of my head went shapeless. 

As much as I have been trying to rest a lot, maybe this is loneliness. Maybe this is, finally, my limit. 

I would like to rest and be rested.