ace.

a reader, a listener, a professor, an amateur poet, an occasional thinker, a professional overthinker, a perpetual mess...

[stay-close]

“If you’re struggling and your people are just sitting there watching you struggle, they’re not your people.”

— Unknown

[sophsun1]

Hocus Pocus (1993) dir. Kenny Ortega

[ronakt88]

Being seropositive. I've never made any bargains with any divine powers to rid myself of this status. I just accepted it. What more could have I done?

I admire those who have come out and spoken about it. I too wanted to do the same. I wanted to make a difference. But that was me, at 18. Within a month, by the time I was 19, my stand to open up had withered.

Flashforward, it's been over thirteen years.

I can't sleep. So, here I'm. Writing. Opening up a little bit.

If you are still reading this, thank you. You've been very kind.

[stay-close]

“Please don’t expect me to always be good and kind and loving. There are times when I will be cold and thoughtless and hard to understand.”

— Sylvia Plath (via quotefeeling)

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To whom do I owe the biggest apology? No one's been crueller than I've been to me.

— Alanis Morissette, "Sorry to Myself", Under Rug Swept

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And how horribly easy it is to be hurt. I am being hurt all day, & hurt by the tiniest & most subtle things. And the self, even the wounded self, is hidden from so many.

— Dylan Thomas, in a letter to Pamela Johnson c. March 1934

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Solitude was my only consolation — deep, dark, deathlike solitude.

— Mary W. Shelley

[quotespile]

“I felt the taste of mortality in my mouth, and at that moment I understood that I was not going to live forever. It takes a long time to learn that, but when you finally do, everything changes inside you, you can never be the same again. I was seventeen years old, and all of a sudden, without the slightest flicker of a doubt, I understood that my life was my own, that it belonged to me and no one else. I’m talking about freedom… A sense of despair that becomes so great, so crushing, so catastrophic, that you have no choice but to be liberated by it. That’s the only choice, or else you crawl into a corner and die.”

— Paul Auster, Moon Palace

[ronakt88]

Happiness is a fleeting feeling. Grab it. Consume it. Revel in it. It is. It is. And then... It's gone, leaving behind only the memories fossilized by myriad perspectives. Good day to you.

[ronakt88]

Looking back: My reaction to the historic event of the Supreme Court of India overthrowing section 377 of the Indian penal code on September 6th, 2018.

"Happiness. Relief. A sigh of fresh air. Stunned silence. A glimpse of light. Pride trumps ignorance and denial. Tears of joy. The papers today are glowing with a rainbow on the front page, in huge block letters. Inside there are stories of a long arduous struggle by the many, many trailblazers. I cried. I'm crying. Yesterday, I had shut myself, in disbelief, in awe, unable to function or speak. I wanted tell that afraid boy, the confused and petrified teen, the perpetually down young adult, This is the future; This is Me. All I did was gaze in silence, observing, reading and smiling at this new page of our shared history."

I didn't think this would happen in my lifetime. I'm glad. I hope a lot of younger individuals have a better life ahead.

[ronakt88]

Confession time: When I was a teenager, my recurring nightmare was that I’d be trapped in the humdrum life, a 9to5 job, be a regular person, just remain ordinary, in the closet ‘mo... flash-forward 2020, I have somehow become accustomed to this humdrum that is my existence, my 9to5 is the only thing that’s keeping me sane, recusing me from the throes anxieties and recurring/weekly episodes of self-loathing (and might i add depression too), being a (seemingly) regular ordinary guy is my favourite appearance, i have perfected it, painted it with years of hard work... in quest to escape the regular and the mundane, I have become the quintessence of the same. Do I hate it? No. Life is an excellent teacher as is nature. i get that we make our own fortunes, but we also live with the hands we’re dealt. Amen.

[stay-close]

That is my story, simply told. Please do not ask again. I have told you in order to issue a warning. I have been damaged. Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.

— Josephine Hart, Damage

[ronakt88]

Memories... Just like Barbara Streisand once famously sang... Light the corners of my mind, misty water coloured memories of the way we were...

Looking back at the past through asynchronous memories, like a spectator, I realise what a fool I was - "Lord, what fools these mortals be". The errors are not magnified. The mistakes are not turned into things they were not. The past was just...the past. However, it is the clarity gained through retrospect which gnaws me. This clarity is no wisdom. It is simply the gradually nurtured growth. Even if I could, I don't think I would change the past, not that I wouldn't wish a few things were different, but who wouldn't? We all have our own skeletons.

It's just sometimes memories are akin to ghouls, like old friends who maybe far away but our association with them just grew offshoots from the ground we had buried them under, now with the fruits of recognition.

[stay-close]

There are memories that time does not erase... Forever does not make loss forgettable, only bearable.

— Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire

[ronakt88]

Love. The most cherished sensation, the most yearned feeling, the most desperate desire, the most unattained and yet the most lonely experience. Poets and historians and novelists and filmmakers and even philosophers and mystics and infidels... all have written and spoken about this most sacred and profound thing called love... and many ouvres are brimming with definitions and translations of this word that opens up floodgates and dries up even the most hopeful souls. Yet with all my basic reading and all my knowledge and all my life and all my hopes and bitterness and anxieties, I've yet to understand it. Maybe, that typifies a lot of people, who like me, have not experienced or recieved or been just oblivious to love. That is just another symphony sung by many of us today. It'll remain unheard and we too will probably remain deaf to someone else's tune. Oh what a waste of nature's most beautiful sensation...

[ronakt88]

Reading. The manna of the lonely. The nectar for the bruised. Reading literally saved me.

Books were some of my best friends growing up. I'll not be ungrateful and say I didn't have friends at school and college. I did. I met some of the most wonderful people at these institutions. However, even they'd agree that I've generally gravited toward books. The written word! What an ingenious blessing.

I met so many friends and people on their pages. Be it the tragic Eustacia Vye (The Return of the Native), Miss Havisham (Great Expectations), Holden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye), Jay Gatsby (The Great Gatsby), Prince Hamlet (Hamlet), Felix Turner and Ned Weeks (The Normal Heart), and so many more... these became my mode of understanding the world. So here is another facet of my being, my educators and friends, and another proof of my "lacking" social skills.

[ronakt88]

Enough about my emo phase, it's here to stay. I've since the past few months become found of black coffee, reading (histories, world wars, queer history, fanfictions, plays, novels, and most importantly poetry), and being a very proper sloth. RuPaul's Drag Race is my present guilty pleasure. Bianca del Rio is my favourite person on the show.