She was the nefarious, solitary, and loveless wife of Tarannon, twelfth King of Gondor and first of the “Ship-kings”, who took the crown in the name of Falastur “Lord of the Coasts,” and was the first childless king. Berúthiel lived in the King’s House in Osgiliath, hating the sounds and smells of the sea and the house that Tarannon built below Pelargir “upon arches whose feet stood deep in the wide waters of Ethir Anduin;” she hated all making, all colours and elaborate adornment, wearing only black and silver and living in bare chambers, and the gardens of the house in Osgiliath were filled with tormented sculptures beneath cypresses and yews.
Suddenly into view below came a white horse, gleaming in the shadows, running swiftly. In the dusk its headstall flickered and flashed, as if it were studded with gems like living stars. The rider’s cloak streamed behind him, and his hood was thrown back; his golden hair flowed shimmering in the wind of his speed. To Frodo it appeared that a white light was shining through the form and raiment of the rider, as if through a thin veil.
And I found myself more and more cold, and the more they spoke to me of feelings and regret the more I felt my heart harden and close.
To the predictability of it.
It was so chewed up and replayed like an old cassette tape, I couldn’t bring myself to feel sad, only weary. I felt weary of him and the regret he spoke to me of (and which he spoke to me with), and I just wished I was alone.
I felt my patience seep away and my attention along with it; I had already detached myself from him you see, the moment the “it’s not you it’s me” speech began. It was just so unimaginative, so far from a tragedy and so very devoid of any depth or meaning and I wished he would finally end this sorrowful litany so that I could go do something else.
‘It’s honestly fine’, I told him.
My voice had a metallic coldness to it which wasn’t intentional, it came more from a place of apathy rather than anger or hurt he seemed to be expecting.
I didn’t feel either.
What I did feel was boredom; boredom by the stereotype and wishing I could teleport him away from that serene place so that I could continue where I left off.
He seemed confused, like he expected a different, more sad reaction from me maybe – the look on his face was rather comical; I had a feeling that the longer he looked at the lack of reaction from me, the more emotion he tried to add to his words.
It kept getting harder to keep my focus on the conversation. My thoughts began to wander and slowly they were slipping into familiar world of daydream.
The breeze was nice, a little cool and welcome in an unusually warm springtime evening. It was early enough in the season, there wasn’t any mosquitos by the lake yet.
I wanted it to end so that I could have the place to myself.
His voice was becoming more and more a background noise and I just wanted to end it.
“It’s honestly fine, I’m not angry and I don’t resent you, we don’t need to talk about it anymore. I’m not trying to persuade you or to change your mind - it is what it is and you don’t need to explain or justify yourself or feel bad. It’s fine.”
The iron in my voice wasn’t intentional either, I wasn’t trying to ease a bruised ego by acting superior, it was simply a byproduct of countless disappointments and similar talks, if talk is what you’d call them, both from mine and others’ experiences - I had no reaction left in me for those situationships nor do I have any patience or interest left for them.
“Cathedrals rise from dust, to show man wonder. And in the stones men carve the dance Macabre to show that life is brief. We carry scythes in the army of a robed skeleton who is carved on a thousand doorways, a thousand walls. We are the followers of Death, whose cruel visage is drawn in a million tiny prayer books which the rich and poor alike hold in their hands.”
Back in my childhood room, back on grandma’s cooking. Back in another life that seemed done. Back in European fall.
The sight is pretty outside my window. Summer green is slowly giving way to autumn orange and I’m watching from the inside out, at a world through gran’s point of view. I keep missing those desert sands. It seemed unreal to be here at first, it felt unnatural; but as it always does, wonder gives way to habit and the thought of hearing mosque outside my window instead of church bells again seems as unreal as it did nearly 2 years ago, when I was starting out on my journey east.
Fears are always nipping away at my periphery and the battle with myself is a constant one, it’s only the theme that really ever changes. The “what” that I’m afraid of at the moment, my own personal monster of the week.
Fear is the weakness in all of us, the In Flames tell me.
Fear is the mind-killer, according to Frank Herbert.
Leaves change color and desert sands are running as I battle mine.
I should’ve been born a man. They’ve got a healthier mindset, run on a more efficient engine. It’s more natural for them to do instead of endlessly thing about doing. Everything is more instantenious, more in the now. Decisions are easier when you don’t overthink.
Their biology works to a certain advantage in this sense. They don’t have a biological clock installed within; ticking and counting opportunities away. Their reproductive responsibility is significantly less. They’re the seed, blowing effortlessly in the wind is the natural state.
They aren’t the stem and leaf and root and flower.
They move more easily - no roots digging away deep into the earth, struggling to reach, struggling to ground itself. I’d rather be a seed shat out by a bird in a mudpile than a flower eternally stuck in a beautiful meadow.
It goes against a woman’s nature to let herself be blown about rootless, even when it’s a part of her nature to do just that. You’re less of a woman in a way if you’re like that. If you don’t want no seeds of your own and prefer being the seed yourself.
Your conditioning goes against your nature, it’s a difficult knot to untangle. You’re raised to think you wanna stay in place, spread those roots wide and deep and take care, take responsibility for generations past and future.
It makes a person confused. Some women know from the start that’s not them and they reject it from early on. I wasn’t one of them. It took years for me, it still takes a conscious effort to go against everything to be yourself. Everyone around me spared no time in letting me know there’s something faulty about me, something that just doesn’t add up or needs correcting; at best reassuring me that I’ll sort myself out in time.
At worst, my friends’ parents keeping them away from me and my auntie letting me know she ain’t gonna let her kid be the kind of person I am.
I think it’s easier for men to let themselves be distracted from their preimposed roles and it’s more forgivable for them to be rebels. Almost expected. To take comfort in distractions; they never worked for me. I always had to invest a conscious effort to distract myself, at which point it stops being a distraction at all. I have to remind myself to do instead of just think about all the things I wanna do.
One day spilling into another and then the third, every one of them just a slightly different variation of the previous one. You don’t perceive them changing until you look back into a month ago, or a year ago, or another life past. Like those old cartoons, ones which were still hand drawn, where each drawing is just slightly different that the previous one. You don’t see the difference until you flip through dozens.
Day after day I struggle to keep my emotions at bay. I have no power over them. I have power over my actions despite those emotions, but I don’t have the power of choosing how (or not to) feel. It’s not good enough, and as long as that power over myself eludes me, I won’t be free.
I am, and will continue to be, a prisoner of my own thought, a prisoner of my past and the people still alive there. To me they are very much alive, and far more substantial than those who live and breathe in my everyday.
I’m a prisoner of my father, his family and his neglect; a prisoner of D and L and of N and A, and of all the pain I caused myself through them.
They were only vessels of my thoughts’ black patterns, vessels of my pain. Theirs isn’t the blame. The fault is mine, just as my thoughts now are mine, years and months after they’re all long gone from my life and have had continued on with their own.
I’m a prisoner without cage or bounds. My chain is cortisol dripping into my bloodstream, urged on by a palpitating heart that never ceases to cause me pain. I am running away and into brick walls. I am angry and ashamed. I am a woman who watches her life through a tv playing out memories and sands of time slipping through my palms.
The hour is late and I haven’t moved an inch. I am a woman standing rooted to a spot and watching a kaleidoscope of time passing her by, unmoving, bound to her grief under that failing trees, until all the world has changed and long years of her life are utterly spent.
it is not their fault.
It is me holding tightly the blade cutting into my palms. I cannot let go. I don’t know how to let go. I struggle to release and find my fingers gripping tighter. The spiral curves on and I keep hitting the same curve. What is the curve? Those wisest among us say the way is found through release; of all desires and dreams and expectations.
How do you let go?
How do you let go within yourself after you’ve already let go on the outside?
How do you let go when it’s all you want, all you crave, more than air or food or sleep when you’re so tired your eyes begin to fog?
How do you let go.
How do you let go and which is the road to forgiveness.
If I knew, I’d walk through glass on bloody stumps until I reached my Holy Grail.
“That which you most need will be found where you least want to look”
I have been looking. I have been searching. I’m a desperate man sprawled on the floor, tapping in the dark for glasses to see.
I’m pointing a flashlight into the void around. I shout out and there’s no echo of my voice shouting back at me.
Is there anyone alive out there?
Can anyone hear me?
Give me something. I don’t need much, but give me something. I crave connection. I’m soaring in the sky, looking down at desert sands looking for a spring. Seems like the doorbells that I’m ringing all belong to empty houses.
I have been looking.
All the corners of my mind I’ve searched and found no reprieve. I forgot what it is that I’m searching for. Is it me or you?
I’m desperate for connection. Desperate for a mindlink.
I don’t care what it is, just give me something back.
My back is bent by the weight of unfulfilled needs.
Give me something.
Something to hold on to, whatever it is, just give me something that’s real. Something so raw it hurts. I don’t mind sharp edges. It’s the blunt ones that cut my skin.
I walked to the moon and back in search of something, I don’t even know what I’m searching for.
I live without inspiration now.
I go day by day and watch myself go through the motions. It’s all I know. I wake up every day in search for meaning. I cannot stop. My own mind nipping at my heels, urging me on. “Faster you idiot!”
If I stop I’m lost. It’s how I keep my wolves at bay. There has to be something out there for me. There has to be something. There has to be something more. Something to be awed by, something to care about, something that cares. Something to give everything to. There has to be something other than this. All that I’ve learned in my old life is void.
I don’t have patience for average.
I sit by myself, unable to connect with the everyday I feel so alienated from. I inhale and feel sands of time burning away at my lungs. I’m not selling out. I’m not breaking. I’m never weakening my stride, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference.
My entire body chemistry is working against me. It got used to the feeling of pain and it’s not letting me break out. It takes so much of my strength and discipline to defy this body that constantly breaks and betrays me.
If I look back I am lost.
I’m waking every day trying to burn away my memories and bring calm to my mind. I’m like a man on death row desperate to do as much as he can before the curtain is down.
It’s my greatest enemy and I’m either coming out of this with a shield or on it.
Nothing else matters now, no one matters now. Self vs. Self.
Gambatte ne.
I feel dizzy most days. I’m at warp speed all the time, digging away at myself, desperate to change and to cut away all the rot around my heart. All the years of pain and loneliness have morphed my brain chemistry into making it a default state and it’s like battling with an addiction.
I got so used to those feelings, so used to thinking thoughts that come with them, that I wouldn’t know how to be happy even if I made a list of everything I wanted and got it all. It amazes me how much damage we can do to ourselves. The easiest thing in the world is letting your mind roam on it’s own, and think bad thoughts.
The opposite takes training and discipline and it’s my greatest challenge. Everything is working against me. External and internally, but it just makes me bite down harder. I’ll stop at nothing because I have nothing else to lose.
I’m sitting in June Caffe, without thoughts or emotions, just a sense of peace. Nothing but me and the sea, nothing but music and the wind. M inner turmoil took a day off and went away. Switched off, logged out. My mind is blank, I have to call my thoughts up to the surface. I ask “who am I” and realise I don’t care in this moment. It doesn’t matter now. There is only music and the wind, only the sea and a desert sun on my left cheek. Moments like these are rare, the ones when I don’t care. I always care.
Nothing matters now and no one matters now. I can’t taste seasalt in the air in this strange country. I can see green rushes swaying in the un-salty breeze. Its’ relaxing to see a bit of green in this world of sand. Majd is never far from my thoughts and again I find myself writing unreceived letters to an Aquarius who gave up. How many times will the history repeat itself and where does the spiral end?
I enjoy being alone in this strange world, in this new home of mine. I feel I can start calling it “home”. I don’t know what my future brings and I’m not sure if it matters whether I know or not. I wish I took my knitting with me.
“Standing in the open. Dried out tears of sorrow.
Following the lifepath. Moving with the motion.
Set me free”
“Who is ‘I’ without a past?”
I feel so deeply detached from the people around me. We walk the same streets but in in different worlds. I pass them by and I don’t see them. It’s a different air I breathe. None of them exist to me, I can’t feel them. I feel no sympathy for their crying children and I don’t see their faces.
It’s like they aren’t there at all.
Less than a piece of scenery; birds and lanscape and palm trees I notice and take in.
People I feel nothing at all for as I walk pass them. I can’t relate to them. I don’t share their desires and thoughts. I feel so completely apart. I’m an aliend in this world of men.
I don’t want them to see me. I don’t know if they do.
Am I as strange to them as they are to me? I must be.
There’s a different color to my flame. Are their candles burning? I can’t smell them. We walk the same streets and couldn’t be farther apart than stars in the night sky. I like it that way. I don’t know why I feel so deeply different from most everyone else but I like it, despite the loneliness that comes with. I very rarely mind that gap
I’m not interested in their thoughts and dreams and desires and there’s no place for mine in their empty world of smiles.
Osjećam se strahovito iscrpljeno pri pomisli da razgovaram s nekime. Jako jako iscrpljeno. Osjećam da nemam mira i da nemam predaha, da nemam trenutak onako samo za sebe da odahnem, da popijem kavu sama sa sobom i dođem k sebi.
Da se podružim sama sa sobom, zbrojim pluseve i minuse i da vidim gdje sam. Na kojoj sam stanici. Malo da pogledam u kartu i vidim koja je cesta za dalje. Na koji vlak, ili možda pješice. Sama ili u društvu. Fali mi moj mir, u svojoj kući i da me gnjavi moja mačka. Da sjednem za svoj stol i popijem kavu iz svoje šalice.
Da ne vidim nikoga i da nitko ne vidi mene. Da ni za koga ne pravim osmijeh. Da je sa mnom samo moja tišina i zvuk igala za pletenje i mačke koja mi prede u krilu pa mi noga trne jer mi se žao pomaknut.
Umorna sam od brige za tuđe osjećaje i od prilagođavanja tuđim potrebama. Od toga da se pravdam za svoj novac, da pričam onda kada mi se šuti i da ostajem budna kada mi se spava.
Fali mi sjest u auto koji ima pribadače na krovu. Fali mi otići na trening dok je još bio u staroj dvorani. Sad je u Dojou, u njemu je oružje i japanski oklop i teretana, ali nisu Basti, Dujo, Nik, Jelena, Andrej, Maja, Miha.
Sada mi se šuti sama sa sobom i šeta noću nasipom i vozi biciklom do Marije. Sada mi se vozi tramvajem ujutro do faksa i da mi In Flamesi sviraju u ušima dok gledam Maksimir kroz prozor. Ide mi se kod mame na selo i pravi mi se večera s Jocom dok gledamo Supernatural. Svašta mi se radi i ne radi mi se ništa.
It can be hard being yourself, but I’ve found it’s the best way.
What does it mean to be yourself? To truly be yourself?
And why does it matter?
How does life change when you choose to be unapologetically yourself?
I’ve come to realise that confidence is a concept you can choose.
I’ve come to realise that authenticity is necessary and it’s powerful.
I’ve tried to spend the time being like other people.
It didn’t work.
I’ts a lot of hard work not being yourself.
I wish I wasn’t so easily satisfied with material. I wish that I was more More than somebody made happy by a rack full of freshly laundered black clothes. I wish that I was again somebody who would feel awe by being underneath Edinburgh castle.
I wish that I could’ve felt that moment when I was standing beneath it, in a spot that must’ve been a battlefield at some point. I couldn’t.
I couldn’t feel it, not there where Zara now stands and where “scottish men” look just like men anywhere else. It doesn’t taste different, it doesn’t feel different. I miss a time when visiting a gas station in Germany felt more like an adventure than bathing in Thai sea does now.
I want to be able to feel things again. To feel the moment I’m in without anxiously anticipating the next one and the promise it brings.
An unfulfilled promise, it seems.
I think that I’m finally learning to accept and to be happy in this new life that I have. Which only makes my mind go to the inevitable “what if” - what if now that I’ve finally made peace with it I get fired?
Now that we’re financially dependant on it too? I’ve finally made the place my own and found a steadiness, a rhythm to my life with two who aren’t strangers anymore. and I’ve accepted, or at least I’m learning to, that the anxiety I feel is the same “sunday-back-to-work” anxiety everyone else feels before going back to work on monday. The only difference being that mine isn’t isolated to the end of the weekend same as everybody else’s, having a life based on a roster.
I’m finally learning to find and sincerely feel gratitude and joy in the job that I have, for all the material and immaterial benefits it brings.
What a wonderful life I have. I was so afraid of having it ordinary. So afraid that it won’t be special, that it will be the same as everybody else’s, as if that could ever have happened. I was so afraid of the scarcity of those “special” pebbles and how far and few in between I’d find them, that I hadn’t realised that this means that my bowl of pebbles will never contain an ordinary one.
Even those lonely days creating things and wishing for something special to happen, for anything to happen, are now a warm memory that comes with an understanding that it was a way and a precious chance to hone the artistic, creative portion of myself.
A way to be more than the always-drinking mass of the world that seemed like it was having so much more fun than me. Being used to solitude, loneliness and the sense of not belonging eased the transition into this new life where I didn’t know anyone and where I didn’t have my place.
Because of those lonely years, this wasn’t a shock, it was just, in a way, more of the same. Those feelings that most of the girls never felt before coming here were a big reason for me to leave home in the first place. I’ve felt more lonely back home, surrounded by everyone I love, than I do here, where everyone is a stranger, where nobody is a person I chose but rather a person who was thrown into the same kettle as I was. Or is it like this always in life?
I feel that I’m living, finally, not simply waiting for my life to start. So desperately waiting for something to happen. I’ve never been more caged and yet I’ve never felt like there were so many possibilities at the same time. I realised just how all those feelings of despair were necessary to propel me to come, to leave everything behind, and all the guilt for my constant dissatisfaction was misplaced. I never would have left if I was feeling content.
Still round the corner there may wait
A road or a secret gate
And though I oft pass them by
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hiden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.
I cherish being isolated from people. All of my life I have felt so very strongly detached from them and long have I thought that it was because I wasn’t part of their world, but in truth it is they who aren’t a part of mine.
I’ve despaired so much because of how you can never truly share anything with anyone. About how much I wanted to, despite knowing I couldn’t. Despite knowing that we will always be alone within our minds. I think I can finally, except in moments of hardest sadness, accept that and be at peace with it.
"That's life. Trust and you will be betrayed; don't trust and you betray yourself. Like most moral paradoxes, it places you in unattainable position."
Roger Zelazny
Nothing kills you like your mind, says so on a Pinterest post. I feel trapped by mine. By its desires and an impossible world it creates for me to escape to and where I can never live in. Every time I do it feels like I'm just trapping myself farther down (the rabbit hole). Click-click-click goes the lock as the key turns. It feels like the agony should be liberating by now. What else is there? I should be well used to being by and with myself. I didn't think I needed anothers' company for comfort anymore. I'm finding it hard to find joy in this all too-quickly-changing flying world.
I can’t stop reading Henry Rollins. There’s never enough of his material for me to read. Everything this man says only makes me work on myself more. Bite down harder.
I was never one to dream about weddings but if I ever marry a guy I’d want it to be that kind of a man. Part of me wishes I wasn’t attracted to that kind of a man. It’d be easier that way. Easier to find someone, easier to sleep with someone. Ah no, not really, but...
It makes me scared and relentless at the same time. The amount of luck needed to stumble upon that kind of a person scares me. Then I bitchslap myself internally and carry on.
I was very careful at making myself stop searching, constantly searching. Making myself let it all go. The idea of a happy ending, letting go of the constant lookout. I’ve spent so many lonely years trying to mould myself into what I thought a perfect girlfriend is supposed to be, as if such a thing ever existed, biding my time, only to fail at it completely. And good thing that I did fail.
Everyone around me changing their partners regularly with me looking on like a beggar, watching into the living room window at a happy family eating Christmas dinner. Feeling starved and jealous and wondering when is it my turn. It’s my greatest weakness. There is still a part of me that wants her happy ending, that dreams of a man that’ll face the world with me. I like to think that I’m stronger than that now. That iron was replaced by steel. I’m planning an adamantium upgrade with time.
“where shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding? If I knew, I’d walk over and stand there.”
I came here expecting to see something of a mixture between “google image search” shiny skylines and the souq scene from sex and the city 2. Living here means living your life seated down. Any place you want to go to requires a ride - sidewalk will only bring you to the nearest store if you’re lucky enough to live close to one.
I’m glad I didn’t grow up in this kind of decadence. The amount of it needed for that kind of urban planning. It’s a desert city, I get it. My arms are already full of beauty marks where the skin was unblemished all but 3 months ago, courtesy of arabic sun. I can understand the laziness that gets embedded into a nation after generations of living inside an oven. I can feel myself slowing down too. You have to. You have to wait until the day is over in order to start it. I hate it. My body craves discipline.
This is my biggest trial so far. Bring it on, that was the whole point. I’ve never been a sedentary person and I’ve always looked down on people who never did anything with themselves besides watch tv, procrastinate, hang out and let their lives run their course as if they were nothing but a spectator of their own destiny instead of being an active participant. I could never understand it. I always pictured their blood seeping slowly through their veins like one of those sad little creeks with gasoline stains. I needed more, I still need more. I (hope) am more.
Can you imagine spending your life in a place like that? Never being able to simply get out of your house, put on some headphones and just go. Go lose track of time, of direction, of yourself, just go and let everything but the music and the movement be stripped away. I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to.
It’s good for me though. I never learn as much (or as fast) as when I’m doing something I don’t want to do. I’ve learned, long ago, just how much faster you learn through pain and I’ve had plenty of teachers. I don’t regret it. I never regret anything except for lost time. Wasted time. All the most valuable lessons come at a great cost, and I’m curious to see how I come out of this one.
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