#sysscribbles

[threadingcolor]

its like. one of those things i realized a while back, and im glad for it, really, but i- re-remember it, every now and then, and it feels shocking in an embarassing kind of way. in a - right, thats why it was an important lesson, kind of way.

I think its something like- when friends, loved ones, worry about you, when you reveal concerning information about concerning behaviour it is. not a cute little foible or a fun little scavenger hunt.

it is. scary. and worrisome. and stressful. it is concerning. because they love you.

I think its something about- living with your own flaws and ill advised coping mechanisms and bad habits, it becomes easy, to dismiss the worrisome behaviour. It becomes easy to joke about it, to make light of it. Its very easy. Sometimes its the only way for you to even look at it head on.

You are- living in it. Breathing in it. Doing it. Surviving it.

And so I think it becomes easy to forget- hard to remember- what it looks like with fresh eyes. With the gaze of someone worried about- not just managing whatever else that came with it, but the act itself. Someone who hasnt had time to steep in the behaviour and deem it a lesser evil than- whatever else. Whatever else.

There is part of me that treats revealing personal information like a twisted scavenger hunt, like a fucked up little puzzle- stilted wording here, meaningful silences that, a show of your hands here, and here, jokes that sound just a little too honest.

Its all so mundane, for me maybe. The novelty is the fact of the reveal- none of the details are fascinating to me, anymore. The implications alone do not hold my attention. Any excitement, any adrenaline, is from the reveal. Is the idea of fresh eyes on old news, someone I have grown to love and trust uncovering a new facet of me, carefully tucked away, until now.

Its so easy to get so wrapped up, and forget- the horror of it all in the first place. The reason these details were tucked away at all.

you have the reveal of the lie. you show how the magic trick works, and you're so caught up you forget why we needed the illusion there in the first place.

A friend loves you, and you say something that you know will shift their understanding of you, and it might feel like a weight lifting, to have something known- but the weight was there, you understand? They do, now. That too, is heavy.

People worry about you. When they do, you need to remember- you need to remember. It is, among everything else and the good and the tricky nuances. It is still, worry.

[colloquialcolors]

trifold - tomorrow

"you're going to feel okay," she promises, her voice tight. "i promise. you're going to sleep, and wake up, and tomorrow things will feel better than they do right now."

"right," you say, too tired to be properly skeptical. "and what happens if they don't?"

this gets you a little smile, or a fascimile of one, all teeth and sharpness. "That's the fun thing about that promise," she admits after a long moment, grinning with no real humor. "there's a lot of tomorrows it can apply to, right?"

"There's always another," you offer, and it's not a comfort.

"There's always another." she agrees, so you shut your eyes and wait.

[colloquialcolors]

calibrate

i have been telling people i am okay,

and it is not a lie, exactly

or not in the way i am comfortable with.

a lie is meant to be intentional, done with purpose-

controlled.

more and more, it is feeling like; a misstep. an oversight. the moment between getting injured before your body registers the pain.

-a vague. "ah, damn."

it doesnt feel controlled. it feels like a mistake. like being resigned. like being lost and tired and. fine. being fine, by some measure of the word.

i tell people i am okay because i am. sure. by some metric, out there, except i'm calibrating on a tilting scale and too fed up to account for error. I chew through the sensation and measure and weigh and. Yeah, its okay. Its alright.

And if- if I'm not. Well, we'll know someday, and I'll add it into my calculations. recalibrate, calibrate. recalibrate.

i think i'm fine. i think i'm not. i think the scale is a little too skewed to matter.

[colloquialcolors]

patchwork girl: quiet spaces

When I was in high school, the only time I could breathe easy was late nights, with Cry in my ears.

It was a matter of slowly falling in love with games, a matter of feeling stretched thin and too clogged up with feelings I could never express. Of pulling facades day in and day out, and all sorts of other cutting metaphors I could spin. There were so many things to worry about, it seemed, so many ways I was constantly lying, constantly wound tight and listening for footsteps, or a message noise, or anything calling me to be someone.

Some nights though, I could curl up with some stolen ramen and a gentle playthrough from someone I trusted, and for a few hours everything would slow. The dark would press in around me, and I could breathe and feel okay, feel accompanied and hidden in the best way.

A few months ago, Cry outed himself as a sexual predator, and his channel isn’t gone, and no one is stopping me from rewatching old comforts, but they’re as good as gone. They’re as good as gone. It’s been years since I relied on him like a crutch- I suppose I have his transition from videos to twitch, to thank for that. But even then it wasn’t long since I’d listened to his streams at 2, 3 AM while coding, listened to editing streams as I struggled through corralling my brain into place.

I’d stopped, by the time all this had rolled around, so it wasn’t as much of an active hurt as much of an unexpected absence. Moments where I would reach and find empty air where there’d once been comfort.

During the turnover, I’d watched my sisters streams more and more. Now- now this is the comfort I get to have. This is a comfort. (This is a prize, too, hard won comfort with someone who I never thought I’d get a second chance with.)

Now, I sit in quarantine, fiddling with an assignment at 3 AM with my sisters voice in my ear, and it’s not the same, not anymore. But its something. It’s something.

[colloquialcolors]

somewhere, out there, there are flowers.

you have seen them- some, not all, because you would never be able to. flowers bloom, and die, and if you circled the world over you would always get to see some of them, and you would never get to see all of them. your garden can always grow flowers but there will always be more, just past your eyeline. somewhere, out there. somewhere.

somewhere out there, there are flowers.

they bloom, and grow, and push through cracks in the sidewalk  and burst in miles of color across desolate deserts, for days at a time, minutes at a time. snowflowers that push through negative degrees and blankets of white. trampled buds on the edges of manicured fields, yawning blossoms that smell like rotting flesh, haloed by buzzing flies. Your world might go cold and still but there is, there will always be, someplace warm, someplace humid, someplace just barely habitable, someplace, just right for color and light to burst and grow. somewhere, out there. there are flowers. there has to be.

there are flowers, somewhere out there.

they’re worth the trip. you say, you tell, you’re told. even if you don’t get there. superblooms and algae blooms and spiraling patterns offered to a birds eye view. things of beauty, things of nature. things worth the risk. worth the trip.

sometimes you don’t make it to the destination. thats okay too. you’re out somewhere, too, looking for flowers. you know where they are. you just need to get there; get somewhere.

somewhere out there, something blooms.

you hope you get to see it. you hope you get to nurture it. you hope something will always, be blooming.

you hope that something means you, too.

[colloquialcolors]

trifold: a collection of liars

ie me doing more character study.

i have a soft spot for characters who lie. but not- not in the generic sense.

trifold is an exploration of that; of different ways that people are strong and honest and inherently dishonest at the same time.

There are characters who lean into the worst of what people see, do so by playing up the “im untrustworthy ;)” *wink* when people get hurt. there are people who lie because they like watching the chaos ensue  and they like fluffing themselves up.

these characters, characters like loki, who relish the chaos and the confusion of their lies, aren’t the kinds of characters I like to explore. Maybe that’s the point of trifold then. there are plenty of liars in media, but the ones I love are specific.

Eris is the liar I am most well acquainted with. Eris lies, but she mostly bluffs, works to make people see what they think they see. But eris doesn’t want to be seen as a silver tongued mastermind, eris wants to be the dope, the clueless, the harmless, the crass. she wants to be unseen; not invisible, just harmless. eris lies because she wants plausible deniability. its about covering her ass, about tucking herself into covers that no one cares to pick apart. its not about self gain. its about self protection.

Ava is a liar that I would like to be. Clean, controlled, smooth. She aims for perfect and hits it more often than not, but... sometimes she misses. She doesn’t lie, not in the generic sense, that would be immoral. Oh, but she’s got a killer poker face, oh, she’s got a killer sense of composure, oh, she knows how to pull herself together.

Ava is not untouchable. But she’s very, very good at seeming like it. Its not lying, exactly, right? just a little bit of bluffing, just some good old, smoothing over.

Smooth as butter, that Ava.

Kirin is the kind of liar that people don’t expect. She is sweet, she loves people, she believes in the best of them, she is generally, a good person, and she also doesn’t really have qualms about lying because sometimes that’s what people need. 

Kirin is a sweetheart with a good read on people and a good understanding of what people want, and don’t want to hear. Her morals regarding lying to people is less predicated on “lying is bad” and more “will hearing the truth help this person or not”. Kirin is a good, good person. But she’s is not necessarily an honest one.

So, I suppose, going off of this- trifold is really just an extension of “three liars walk into a bar....”

and then what?

[colloquialcolors]

important: that you spent all of your life chasing after other people, chasing after sensations, chasing, always chasing. some kind of running.

“its not okay to pour yourself into other people.” because pouring means gravity, means falling. you’ve always been falling- in and out, of things and people and the steady patterns of your own life. falling means gravity, means you stumble without stopping. means that the descent starts and you don’t get to stop halfway through.

[colloquialcolors]

I’m feeling a little less dead today which is nice. I assume it will crumple in soon but while I’m here, I got a lovely list of shit I need to write about, someday.

 patchwork girl : lucky

-> gonna make a Thing of stuff wrt personal identity. uhhhhh, in the sense of not just the crushing identity crises or like, world crumpling moments. maybe a few of the Actual Regular Emotions and shit i dont try to think about all the time. oof, brain is already sidetracking, so clearly today is not for that.

l&l 

-> seriously, someday soon i gotta scream about it. rereading echoes and bits of RtD are keeping me afloat right now. 

pla(tonic) 

-> *something something distant screaming about forced romance and SOTP MAKING PEOPLE WANT TO FUCK EACH OTHER JUST L E T T H E M  B E   FRIENDS*

“you’re still a control freak. its just that you’re more terrified of failing to control things than you are of being unable to control them.”

-> ready to be unready idk

lucky

-> this probably needs to be its own thing and its gonna be fucking ugly

“you’re always waiting to unlove people”

-> will i write this? will i eternally keep it trapped in my head? who knows? find out next week on “What The Fuck, Sys, Get Your Shit Together”.

oops im dragging myself down. no more for today. 

 back to almost working but not quite.