#ireadintothings

[ireadintothings]

[Chapter1 Pg1]

It's 4 am on a Sunday and you're lying in bed with your eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. Your mind is racing at a million miles per hour but you're unable to will yourself to get out of bed and extricate your body from the bedsheets.

"You use your depression like a crutch." 

One can only say this to people who are so depressed that they don't even realize that anyone who says this is in all actuality an asshole. It's punching down; it's pushing someone into a whirlpool of feeling like shit for feeling like shit ad infinitum. 

Yet, that's what your best friend (Matt) said when you saw him last and that makes you angry now thinking about it.

Now it's 9 am and you're sitting on the living room sofa in nothing but your underwear and a souvenir T-shirt from Japan. You've never been to Japan. The T-shirt was a gift from your dad when he went on a business conference - he bought the T-shirt at the airport because he didn't get to see much of the country himself. At any rate, you're back on the sofa sipping some instant coffee and eating hummus with a spoon. 

The instant coffee has a malty taste to it. You consider instant coffee its own stand-alone category of hot drink, not really a type of coffee. You know you must pack for your car journey tomorrow but you put it off until the evening.

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[ireadintothings]

[2]

You put off packing until the last minute and now that you’re all packed and loaded for the car journey, you decide to drive overnight to avoid traffic and shave off a few hours. You’ve been having trouble sleeping anyway.

[Photo credit]

Your hometown was hard to leave and it's hard to come back to now that you've finished college. But you wanted to try on the city again - to see if it still fits after so many years. You finally arrive just as the sun is rising and go to sleep in your old bed in your old room. When you wake up, everything seems off like your room is not the same - maybe even new altogether, but you shake that feeling off.

Home is shaped vaguely familiar but all the furniture has been rearranged as if the room came to life while you were asleep and decided on a new setup as a committee of furniture. Change in one's childhood home should be illegal.

Your parents are away on their annual vacation and you have the whole house to yourself. House, not home. There's no "home" anymore. When you visit, you now arrive with a suitcase full of your stuff; "home" is just where most of your belongings are stored relative to other places but not a permanent fixture in your life. Transitory. An address where you order your parcels. No sentimental feelings. You'll keep paying your share of the rental in your college town for the summer because you don't want to leave your roommates in the lurch. But you have no long-term plans on where to live, neither here nor there.

The city stayed the same, more or less. Maybe the city missed you too. You wonder if nostalgia is the past reaching forward or the present reaching back. For someone looking in from the outside, it might seem like you are trying to escape yourself, but it is just the opposite; you're trying to find yourself.

In a few days, you know, that feeling of nostalgia will wear off and you'll be crawling out of your skin with boredom. But for now, you enjoy the quiet suburban streets. Sitting on your porch at night as you listen out for joggers walking their dogs; the intensifying reception of barks as they pass neighbouring blocks gives away their approach. You see them on the well-lit street but they don't see you, only a floating disembodied amber light bobbing and flickering at the end of your cigarette. 

[ireadintothings]

[3]

You’ve been home for a week now you’re itching to get out of suburbia. It’s an itch escalating into a pang.

[Photo credit]

You’ve been picking up family photos and examining them keenly and putting them down, trying to create a bridge in your memory between a child in the photo and who you are now. But the line from one to the next feels dotted like you’re a detective working backwards to find the culprit and motivation from a crime scene.

Then you come across an old photo with your ex. You must have both been around 15 on this picture, leaning up against a wall, standing next to each other, too awkward or too cool to embrace for the camera. Probably the former.

You’ve been avoiding her for over a week but you know your she is expecting a call. You always call when you’re in town. In fact, in the past, you’ve visited just to see her. The two of you have stayed friends through relationships but now you’re both single again.

You used to love her and if you’re honest with yourself, you still do. But the two of you are different and similar in all the wrong ways. Most of all, Laura is an idealist and you’re a cynic. She is a good influence on you in an extremely irritating way.

On the other hand, you could call your friend Matt. But Matt can be a judgy asshole. Maybe not what you need today.

[ireadintothings]

https://www.instagram.com/gloryszabo/

[ireadintothings]

[ireadintothings]

https://www.instagram.com/gloryszabo

[ireadintothings]

Everything that’s good disappears slowly or avoids me from the start. At the end, creativity, although not always on display for others’ pleasure or assessment, is the only melancholy consolation that I can rely on for direction, like a constellation. Dull and scarce sometimes, like a worn duvet—doesn’t do much in the summer but when everything falls apart and winter comes, it's still enough. It will sustain me. It’s reliable. Even if I have to grind my teeth as the memory of a more fortunate future me passes me by in a parallel universe, giving me chills, even if it’s the very thing others say I lack. It’s not much but it’s all that I have. And yes, as you know now, it's easy to steal from me. And no, I don’t have an infinite well for source. But every time someone puts me down with heavy words, I can turn my feeling of being used into a metaphor of a butterfly, and after resting on my fingertips, it leaves me delicately like a dream.

[finelivescollective]

Love Despite Machina by Glory Szabo

I want to be subtle, with grace and decorum that matches my best intentions; To say only things that are meaningful and spread hope, To give hugs that aren’t lost in the gesture but help others cope.

No judgement just acceptance, no fighting just agreement, No pointing fingers or sitting on the fence // No drive or motivation, no leaving the house, No getting out of bed, not making any difference.

Why can’t I rest at the top while happy, why can’t I catch my breath? If I go up I must come down soon, with speed accelerated. I envy people who enjoy the ride; I just love the first half -Could we pause there? -If you need to, I don’t mind, Close you eyes and hold my hand.

(for more of Glory’s poetry please visit ireadintothings.tumblr.com)