Most people stop living long before they die

For the last one year of my life, I have been experiencing my emotions tainted through a smoke screen filter of guilt. I have made serious mistakes, sure, but I aint supposed to live like one, too. The thing is, the smoke doesn't die away on it's own (at least, not fast enough for emotions to get through), and if you tamper with it, you end up releasing more fumes. There are certain people that make this all go away in a magical puff, unexpected allies in the otherwise grayscale life of yours truly.

One of them perplexes me. I don't know if he does it on purpose or it's just his chaos interacting with mine on some subconscious level where I lose, but I can really focus on anything I choose to when he's around. The other one, he looked really pale the last time I saw him, we're like that Andrew Eldtrich song. The third one is the closest being to my soul I've ever met. He's also my preferred choice for wingman, the designated person to hold me from the back of the head as I spill my guts down the toilet.

Hardly healthy, I know. But the other-people-are-not-responsible-for-healing-up-the-shit-inside-your-head doctrine can wait. And if you think I'm talking about you, I probably aren't.

Everlasting supplies of strawberries

There have been times in life when my awareness of myself as an entity in the physical world has been reduced to an awareness of my hands. Skinny white human sticks interacting with spoonforks, steering wheels, magical seashells and hot air balloons! There's laughter and love and a light gray shirt on my shoulders as we drive towards the sun.

This trip was good for me. A country that respects itself and its visitors is a painful metaphor I can live with. Waking up with a sense of purpose, rather than a resignation to fighting with nothing, is refreshing. Some day I will learn how not to taint those sentences. For now, I am content learning how to play my own game again. It's rather odd, that the (my) way to personal confidence is to try everything else first.

Apparently, there is no legislature against discrimination in Greece. If the color of your face is not on the EU flag, you have no right to certain professions, qualified or not. If I don't want you two folks kissing in my restaurant, I am a very legal asshole, you can whine, but you can't take me to court. I wonder how the fuck we got accepted in the EU in the first place. Apart from the lack of proper human laws, we're also a dishonest breed of people - why would you trust us with any money, at all? There's only so much mess we can get away with, gentlemen.

But I don't really care for anything, right now. It's scary, my capacity for despair takes me by surprise and I end up freezing my ass off, gazing at the silver leaves beyond my window. And they look back at me, and they're malicious, and cold.

revolution

You know, all my life, when I paid any attention to the voice in my soul, there was this ever-present question. Why. The only acceptable answer is - because this is my desire.

I am very ashamed of the times I did what was expected of me without answering this question. Because then, what am I? I don't know, but I know I am not this.

I feel like I've spit out a part of me that nobody even wants. I've thrown up all my possible favours. The monsters in my head were there to help me all along.

the colorful goat is laughing too

You still cut right through me like a crystal tear on a Christmas morning...

Even after all this time, your eyes are clearer than everyone else's and I still have the uncanny ability to feel it when you are going to show up. The implications are obvious to anyone with half a brain, and they're laughing at me. (It seems that I have less than half a brain...) I am a misguided messiah at best, and at worst, a revolutionary girl who ended up getting stabbed by the witch princess at the duel for the world.

But I grew up. Thank you, I suppose, for the memories and everything. I .. am not mad anymore.

Θέλω να κλείσω τη σκέψη σ'ένα μαύρο κουτί

Last Friday, I was at a bar with some friends from the university and suddenly, some guy from my class walks up to me and says something to the effect "Wow, look at this, we've got a celebrity here". I had never thought of myself as a fucking celebrity and although it did make me smile, I didn't hold on to it at all. So next time I go to a bar and people don't wet themselves with anticipation to get my autograph, I think I will be okay.

This incident, however, did make me wonder what it would be like to live life undefined by the past. You would really LOVE everybody. But that could be potentially harmful, right? Because there are some people with which interaction has been proved to hurt you. Sometimes I can see it in my mind, that some people around me have large red post-it notes above their heads that say "this person might hurt me (again)". What are you supposed to do with them? If my yoga teacher is right, the answer is to love them too, but from afar. It's kind of scary, loving somebody who's hurt you - but it only makes you a fool if you expect something.

But my mind can never leave a perfectly simple and all-encompassing set of instructions alone, so it quickly, and really, against my will, started examining the particulars of loving someone from afar and how it's possible to love without inviting them back [fear, dread]. As it always happens since the beginning of this year, the examining refused to put an end to itself, taking a life of its own in my head. I hate it when this happens, and it's every day.

After some quiet struggling with how not to struggle with my mind, the idea came to me, that since I can't stop living in my head for whatever reason, the only thing that's left to do is make my mind a more pleasant place to dwell in. Give all the recurring thoughts a nice home and some attention - the kind of attention you give to a neighbour when you're in a middle of a job. Say hello to every figment in the morning and tuck them into kitten baskets every night. Think of them as cute furry animals who really don't know better than to tap my shoulder with their paws whenever and wherever. Residents with a license.

This way of thinking made me laugh quietly and it worked, too. When I woke up the next morning, I said good morning to the figment, but it didn't wake up. I thought I had it all figured out for some precious, quiet moments, when a strange thing I had read crossed my mind: "Pretending the elephant isn't there or that it's a cute bunny might feel good temporarily, but is potentially harmful. What you really need to do is to safely get out of the jungle." I tried to resist this, against my better judgment, convince myself that it's not applicable here... but I really don't know. Either my mind is trying to sabotage me now that I've found a solution, or I haven't found one that will do more good than harm. Realistically speaking, a sane person wouldn't have to resort to putting imaginary black foxes into thought-boxes and feed them imaginary chickens to stay sane. So I suppose my mind is broken and any mental scheme I try to execute on my own is doomed, because I am both the patient and the doctors and we ALL have our sets of problems.

I give up, officially. I will not take my mind seriously again.
(I might as well get certified while I'm at it.)

The problem with the world

lies in the unchallenged perception that value should be sought after for the sake of value. You can substitute the world "value" with any other end-goal the world generally views as worth pursuing, like happiness, wisdom, good looks, peace of mind... But if you are really happy, do you really care about clinging
onto the image of yourself as a "happy person" (tm)? If you are really calm and content, do you enjoy thinking of yourself as a calm person, or do you enjoy the silence? What is a good looking person without an admirer? What are words of wisdom without anybody else to hear them?

The value is within everything you do and not in the fact that you do it. Likewise, when you fail, the only thing really lost is an opportunity to create something of value. There will be more. Lasting pain and suffering are unnecesary, but inevitable when one focuses on the fact that they didn't manage to do something and not on that something.

If everybody could grasp this concept we could eliminate egoistical pride - because somebody who's out there having fun or doing something well wouldn't need to think of themselves as better than everybody else - they'd just enjoy themselves. We'd also eliminate jealousy - it's never the actual qualities we pathologically envy in others, it's the fact that THEY HAVE THEM and WE DON'T. Finally, we would be able to let go of guilt and regret over past mistakes - it was only value that was lost. We can cry our hearts out (and sometimes we should) but, after some point, being disappointed in our own disappointment.. just .. doesn't make much sense.

An exercise in futility

Counting the ways you, I, them can put me in a destroyed mood, is what puts me in a destroyed mood to begin with. Sometimes it's so hard to be aware of what's changeable and what should be left alone... of how actions sometimes affect reality and sometimes merely unveil it. I will never know. But I will let you go away if you want to.

In fact, I firmly believe in letting people do whatever the hell it is they think they want. I will not blame a soul. All these things I carry with me I don't need, I will shed them. I will find a way.

It is tempting to attempt to fix the shattered image of another or even your own. But glue doesn't hold and the glass will cut you. The problem lies not in breaking down, but in not seeing breaking down for what it is.

There is no sound in letting go, it only feels like open eyes underneath an air-condition (machine).

I let go.