This is a private note.

It’s not right to say I deserve more but I feel I do. I suppose everyone feels this after plowing through a mother’s cancer diagnosis, unstable financial situations, and a crippling jackhammer noise that steers me away from some semblance of a career path. I’ve forsaken myself to this pish posh of lovers quarrels that cannot be explained more than my reflected airless emotional state and uncertain footing.

Let’s take a look at the lies I’ve told myself in 2024. (1) I’m making enough money to sustain my lifestyle by working 29 hours a week at a lowly paid coffee shop. (2) I’m giving enough time to my parents, one of which very clearly have at most several years left to live. (3) The goal of this art-community project I pour into is clear to me. (4) I need sex as much as I believe I do in dire situations. (5) Some money generously thrown my way will solve most of my problems and jumpstart my relief to success.

Let’s look at the truths I continue to believe. (1) Secular love is unconditionally temporary. (2) No amount of explaining will stretch as far as doing, and a leading in doing. (3) I cannot create a religion for myself, but I can discover the mythology of myself. (4) Basketball truly is a beautiful funnel for me to understand a stance on life and stability [i.e. I used to be a playerr, that if they make the first shot, then it’s game over, just keep passing me the ball. But I can still miss that first shot. I caught a glimpse of what it felt like to play in a way not contingent on flow, but effort.]. (5) Definition ruins immersions, which I have always believed, but some things are not meant to be immersed in. Seeking a continual definition for every idea you honestly pursue requires a discipline crucial to how I believe life ought to be lived. 

I’m writing to hopefully scratch the surface of whatever walls I have formed, or whatever softness I have accumulated at the time I revisit these ideas after having forgotten most of these details. Right now, it feels crucial to write to try and wade through the clumsiness I have been so deeply neglecting, in my day to day choices of consumption and exertion, and the emotional dues I owe friends and family. I cannot deny the sadness or excruciatingly frustrating confusion that surrounds my inability to feel and make sense of these last few months, and I acknowledge how these words convey such away-ness. What can be wondered is how much lower I can go and stray further away from who I once was. The fear of completely forgetting who I was or what I was doing with my voice, has become increasingly more possible as my memory and idea retention has become significantly less productive as of late. Perhaps writing more with cohesion will trigger the cohesion I would have so quickly defined many months ago. This specific and current sadness and away-ness feels especially more real and troubling than past deviances from a ‘somebody that I used to know’. Usually I am conscious of how less reactive I am to hear of a strangers troubles or how I have chosen to take action upon an opinion or idea I feel inside myself; since Jan 1st not so much. Or, it may be since the conference. I am not sure.

I’m realizing how much weight I put on my mother’s cancer. “If only they knew, they would treat me better,” I find myself thinking subconsciously. Such selfishness, and such unrealistic expectations of what such conditions should make upon a person. I’ve always thought putting an end to these thoughts would mean to dismiss the impact of the diagnosis. Processing it admittedly alone leaves no reference on how it can, or should impact my daily life. This deep seated truth, must be learnt as such, a truth, 

I must learn to balance a public acknowledgment and private ownership of the diagnose’ effect on me, by first acknowledging my lack of understanding on the meaning of life as I think about my mother’s (more closer) imminent death. I must find a way to move through it both inspiring and progressive for me as it to those around me.