Pretty Little Death

Author: Shalom.I.Am.me

  • Hold on/me

    For the past three weeks, words have failed me.

    So I did what every Tamil eventually does when language falls short. I turned to Sangam poetry.

    Perhaps this can say what I have been trying to.

    Translation and my thoughts are at the end.

    குறுந்தொகை 40

    யாயும் ஞாயும் யாராகியரோ?

    எந்தையும் நுந்தையும் எம்முறைக் கேளிர்?

    யானும் நீயும் எவ்வழி அறிதும்?

    செம்புலப் பெயல் நீர் போல
    அன்புடை நெஞ்சம் தாம் கலந்தனவே.

    Translation:

    What are you and I to each other?

    What relation is my mother to yours, and your mother to mine?

    How did you and I ever come to know one another?

    Like rainwater falling upon red earth, our loving hearts have mingled and become one.

    My thoughts

    There is a reason this poem still finds people after all these years. It understands something I have never quite found the words for.

    Sometimes, people just happen to us.

    They are not ours. They do not come from where we come from.

    There is no reason for them to matter as much as they do. And yet, they do.

    Two people, born into different families, living entirely separate lives, somehow meet and feel as though they have known each other for much longer than a lifetime permits.

    “Like rain on red earth.”

    I think about that line often.
    Because once the rain falls, can you really ask the earth to give it back?

    Maybe that is why some people never quite leave us. Not because we are unwilling to move on, but because somewhere along the way, they became a part of us and we, a part of them.

    Kurunthogai 40 isn’t trying to explain love.

    It is simply acknowledging that some things were always going to happen.

    And perhaps that is the saddest thing of all. That some people are written into our lives in ink, even if they were never meant to stay.

  • Protected: Imagine hurting someone with nowhere to go

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  • 3.40am and I am still up

    I want things I can never have.

    But I deserve those things.

    I’ve always been a dreamer.

    You can take the dreamer out of the dream.

    But you can never take the dream out of the dreamer.

  • How do people stay un-tired?

    Because I am exhausted.

    We’re at the midpoint of this week and I’m already tired.

    It feels like we’re stuck on a hamster wheel and the thought that we are racing against each other while going around in 3D circles makes me giddy.

    Sometimes, I ask myself what the point is.

    The disenchantment is real. I sometimes find myself craving darkness and silence after a day at work.

    What is work and why do we have to work? Don’t give me the usual answers.

    I find myself going back in time and questioning whether our modern economic system is really a natural way for society to function.

    It is, after all, a human construct rather than an immutable law of nature.

    At times, it feels less like a system designed to serve humanity and more like one that concentrates wealth, power and control in the hands of a relatively small group, while the rest of us spend our lives chasing numbers.

    What is currency? Why does it have to exist? Can money ever truly and fairly compensate someone for their time, labour and service? Or is it simply a construct we have collectively agreed to believe in?

    If we removed currency from the equation and returned to a system of barter, perhaps the world would become a simpler place.

    Value would no longer be measured by numbers on a screen or pieces of paper, but by what we could genuinely offer one another.

    Sure, one might argue that this is a step backwards, a sign of becoming less civilised. But look at where we are now.

    On the grandest scale, the world is still consumed by war.

    Closer to home, within our own little ecosystems, we fight over things as trivial as status at work or the power to make decisions that rarely matter or create any meaningful positive change.

    What is the point of it all? And can we really call this progress or claim that society is moving in a positive direction?

  • Protected: Rant: Work is a sh!tshow with processes that have to go

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  • Inconsistency

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but the lack of consistency in almost anything annoys many of us.

    When you order soup at a restaurant and if that soup has an annoyingly inconsistent texture, it almost immediately spoils the experience of dining.

    You put on some makeup and when that powder you have on becomes inconsistent and patchy, it ruins your mood to leave home.

    These are all inanimate things that we purchase or own, and still somewhat have control over and every right to feel some way about.

    But what happens when it comes to the people in our lives? Should we reject inconsistency as immediately? Or do we then have to force ourselves to understand and accept that we humans cannot stay the same way all day every day?

    Where do we draw the line with acceptance, before we decide that we are being taken for a ride?

    It’s never easy.

    While inconsistency from a human feels sickening, confusing and irritating, we can neither immediately reject the person nor tolerate it for longer than it should be tolerated.

    The consistency for this situation: sticky

  • Shut it.

    How do you tell someone to stop yelling at you? Do you yell back or do you go silent… do you simply walk away or do you throw water from your mug on their face?

    There’s no right answer, and it really depends on who’s yelling and who’s on the receiving end of that verbal noise pollution.

    It also depends on the situation’s potential to turn more violent.

    It’s never fair, especially to anyone who’s neurodivergent, to be on the receiving end of that yelling.

    Picture all that over-stimulation while being non-verbal… how unfair is it to be left defenseless, with a head full of thoughts, a heart full of pain and confusion?

    Whatever the disagreement, there are so many other ways to sort things out.

    Humans who are not speech-impaired and/or non-verbal can always talk things out.

    How lucky one must be to never battle being non-verbal and have every ability required to simply shout their point at someone else?

    Well, to such people, I’ll say one thing.

    Why should anyone be subjected to your abuse and have to turn into another version of a yelling you just to stop your negativity?

    Shut it.

  • Shadow work is the sh!t

    Gotta low-key show the flaming drinks I had recently

    No, I’m not about to talk about making big bucks in the shadow economy.

    Recently, through being by myself more often, I had some time to think.

    From those thoughts appeared a realisation that I had some serious inner flaws that required rectification.

    It was shocking because I’d never before thought of those traits as flaws — or red flags.

    That realisation led me down the path of shadow work, which essentially refers to the act of self-reflecting and exploring parts of the self that one often denies, hides or avoids.

    Many why’s and what-should-I-do’s later, I decided to change a few key aspects of my life that were feeding some of my serious flaws.

    ♡

    For example, I tend be clingy around those I love. (But! That’s just a surface-level observation.)

    As I dug deeper into this, it became more apparent to me that I had a fear of being abandoned.

    This might have come from the experience of being ditched for someone more exciting in most of my romantic relationships.

    But looking deeper than that, I learnt that my fear of abandonment must have come from being emotionally isolated and mentally abandoned by my parents when I was a child, and never being allowed to feel like I was good enough or deserving of kindness and love.

    So, in addition to being clingy, I’d also become a people-pleaser. (I consciously have been trying to curb my enthusiasm for people-pleasing.)

    But, going back to the topic of my clingy-ness… while “doing my shadow-work”, it was evident that I’d been inconveniencing some of my loved ones by being exceptionally clingy.

    I finally understood how accommodating they had to be by often catering to my emotional needs, by being present and by walking me through the many doubts I’ve had about my relationships with them.

    Shadow work isn’t a one-off process.

    It’s going to take me time to realise why I react and think in the ways that I do. It’ll also take time for me to condition myself to hold back at where I should and let go at where’s good.

    I’ll keep at it until then.

    If you haven’t taken the time to do some shadow work, you should. Totally worth it!

  • Whine and Cheese

    Oh, save your sorry sob story for the sober soul because sinners will sin anyway and the drunkards know better than to cry over the intentionally fallen.

    I’ll tell you a secret: The happiest thing in this world is the Siamese twin of the saddest.

    For example, you adore your loved ones and are happiest around them. Then, one day, they die… and where does that leave you? Drowning in a sea of grief you can never truly completely overcome.

    When I was a child, my parents didn’t let me be happy.

    I was constantly reminded that happiness is fleeting, as much as sorrow is. Some of my close friends have heard me say this too many times.

    My folks forced me to find contentment, confidence and company in ambition instead.

    That obviously didn’t work because, like most adolescent girls, I too did the total opposite of what my parents said. It was mostly because it seemed like my own parents did not want me to be happy.

    But recently, I’ve been recalling what they said and reflecting on it.

    I think they’re right. I shall find contentment, confidence and company in ambition. We’ll see how that goes.

  • Drainage Beauty / Beauty Drainage?

    From ten years ago.

    Captured this low-res image with an entry-level phone back in 2016, after I drunkenly fell next to an open trench drain and dropped my spectacles into it.

    I’m extremely shortsighted and had to use my phone camera, with the zoom and flash turned on to battle both myopia and the darkness of the night, to look for my glasses.

    That method somehow worked. I found my specs and, next to them, stood this beauty.

    (Sidebar: I was surely not sober because sober me would have left my specs there and flagged a cab home. I always have a collection of 20 or more pairs of specs. Besides, the drain was definitely filthy and filled with the possibility of having a brief and unpleasant meeting with rowdy rats and lurking lizards.)

    After seeing the plant in the drain from my phone screen, I asked aloud in my drunken stupor: “How can someone as beautiful as you be here, my love?”

    I remember this moment vividly because I snapped a photo, obviously… but I also remember this encounter because I felt upset, thinking about how the plant growing in the drain was very much like myself.

    Ten years on, I am no longer on the ground next to the drain.

    I Am The Plant.

    In the drain. Haha.