It’s 2025. Like something out of a sci-fi novel, we have reached a future that, to my inner kid, looks tremendously mundane.
It’s such a disappointment to have reached those dystopian worlds we used to watch in amusement as teenagers, but in the most boring version possible.
It amazes me how living long enough to reenact the first chapter of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” on a daily basis can feel so… normal.
Dreaming of owning a house, of having a real pet while browsing videos of funny animals on my phone is not entertainment – it’s self-sabotage. It is time spent on impossibilities – anything I can do to ignore a present that, in reality, is still mostly what I wanted: to own my fate, my time, and my labor. Yet somehow, I am still relentlessly pressing C on the Penfield to rid myself of depression.
Half-truths Are The Hardest To Disprove.
It all started a few years back, when I stopped writing. Right around the time I realised it was never truly for myself, but for others.
Once I discovered that my motivations were not truly mine – that I was out to impress myself through others – no amount of output or success could have satisfied that hunger.
It was never the exercise in honesty I had believed it to be.
I kept thinking, outlining, dreaming, writing.
But I kept it to myself.
Instead, I started singing. I traded long-form diatribes and story arcs for poems and lyrics that felt true to me – yet cryptic enough for plausible deniability, left for others to interpret.
All of a sudden, I was actively speaking about racism, imposter syndrome, sexuality, or the PTSD of living in a world that always told me I was too sensitive, too odd, too intense…
I was just giving them the reasons behind me. At last, I didn’t sound like an excuse, I was an explanation.
All the things that attracted others to me were a consequence of what could just as easily be used against me.
But instead of learning to appreciate just how much they meant and contained, they were contested, and in the process they purposely misinterpreted where my spark came from.
To say you love the sum of someone when in action reject most of its parts is so ironically upfront. It’s just a sweet way of saying they liked that edited version they can easily decode and manipulate. Just keep the rest, even the awareness, to yourself. Compliments shouldn’t be needed when the truth is hard felt.
But by the time I understood my value, most of them were long gone. Their purpose for me had expired; they were no longer available to me or their intentions fully exposed. I came to the painful conclusion that I was never going to find the right explanation for what had been left purposely misunderstood. That I can’t catch up with people running away from growing, understanding and yearning, and all the things we do when we truly love. That I couldn’t count on the opinion of people who had made it their job to see both me and them as what they needed and wanted, not as who we actually are.
That’s Why I Am Writing Again
I no longer have a choir of voices telling me all the ways in which I’m not the person I think I am. Now, I don’t need to prove them right before I believe in myself. My plan was always to create a life where I wouldn’t have to pretend for a living. The motivation was always to stay true to myself, as painful as it can be.
Now that I’ve reached that goal, I am fuelled again by possibilities, just as I used to be. They are my thoughts, my work in progress – a promise I know I might never fulfill. But if anyone is allowed to break a promise, it will be me to myself. And whoever is lucky enough to accompany me on this journey must now perceive me for who I am or recognise their own inability to do so, without further ado or explanation. Because that’s exactly what I’ll do.
It will never be me again, trapped in a loop of misconceptions, over-debating the most basic concepts such as respect, accountability and self worth so nothing of substance can ever be achieved. I had always been speaking up; I was just not being heard. Now, I think twice and I speak once; I no longer wait for an answer. I expect communication. I accept nothing less.
All The Words We Take For Granted
Some words are journal entries, some are lyrics, and others are hidden chapters of what might never become novels. I have finally found the motivation to lose myself in them and share thoughts that are more than twenty-five years in the making.
And that’s fine – some journeys must take longer than others.
Simplification will never make complexity easy; it will always be just another abstraction – or a fragment – of what otherwise would be unfathomable. But fools will use it like a body-sized blanket pretending they have completed the journey without taking a single step.
You Only Learn To Communicate By Communicating
I will never be defined by what others perceive of me at a glance. And I no longer have the time nor patience to explain myself just so they can make sense of a glimpse. It is really that simple. There is finally enough silence for my mind to hear that. And to receive it.
It takes a lifetime to truly understand concepts, ideas and people – including oneself. No amount of rushing can speed that up, and no amount of words will ever be enough.
But they are a start.
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