What you should not know
What would you do if you knew, didn’t know.
I’m in the bookstore Kyobo again, sitting at a large community table, reading Bossypants for days. I can use the laugh, it’s also something to do, outside of sitting in my apartment watching youtube videos.
I feel helpless and useless and forgotten. I know I'm not useless or forgotten, but depression sets itself in. I've lost weight, complexion, motive. Traveling will do that too. It will lift you and inspire you but it will also leave you in places where you know few people, have few things to do. Travel removes you from the stability of routines, adding costs to purchase their benefits back for you.
I want to say it’s my fault, that if I tried harder or did something more I’d have more accomplishments here. That it’s my fault I don’t have more students or more motivation or more money to fund two hours of gym each day. But I also need to be kind to myself and accept that this is also part of extensive travels. The down. Empty sections of time. The hopeless vacancy of will.
I’d rather not write about my worries or tell you how sad and empty I’ve been. No one wants to hear it. It’s not attractive or impressive. I much rather tell you how busy and happy I am, how far I’ve come, or where I hope to go. I’ll post photos on Instagram for you so you can remember all the good. Then I’ll keep myself removed and hope no one has noticed. That will eat away at comforts too.
I have dreams, fogged by uncertainty and insecurity, but I have them. One small idea in action. A place where I can create comfort and harmony for others. Where I can do something calm. A decent life. I have dreams of stability and healthy love, but it seems to be slipping the more directly in line I get. As if the more desperately you want something the farther away it goes.
How old will I be when I notice, and how much fear I have that it will never come to be told.
I say this knowing full well how unfair that is, that I am in the midst of something difficult and painful, delusioned by the current mood. That I have skills and positivity and good to offer this world. That just around the corner something inspiring can happen. That I can change my mood and create something uplifting. That I am human too.
No one wants to know how we get there. We don’t want to talk about the pain, or the truth about our inner mood. But I’m feeling that now. Feeling dark about myself and my age and my years of not recovering sooner. I’m accepting this particular sadness, and accepting that I’m not entirely at fault; that the world is not a set of controlled actions; that sometimes the world treats us kindly and at others we just hope to stay silent and still.
What would you do, because the hurt is for no one to know.
