Old Sepia Pages

17. perspective

13th september, friday, 2019

dear diary,

Some things about myself I wanted to jot down:

I enjoy living stories. Whenever I'm reading a book, sometimes I put it down, close my eyes and try to feel things by putting myself in the protagonist's shoes and putting my friends in place of other characters. It puts things in perspective. Moreover, it sows the seeds for new stories in my head. I now have characters, and I'm picturing them in a scene, and I imagine more than what's written in the story and it develops into something more. Truth be told, wishful thinking is how I write. I watch movies, wish something like that would happen to me, then I make a few changes and then some more, and there it is⁠— a new story.

I have people living in my head. Ghosts of people, shells of people, people I met and loved, just the way they were when I met them, living in my head, stuck in time.

I think about Kush, but I don't love him, I love the memory of him, and that affection that I have for that version of him, I use that to weave new stories. He's always on my mind,  and I've made a character out of him, and I've gotten to know that character, develop him, so much that it feels like it's a friend. I never have trouble with my characters when I'm writing, I never have to write character sketches, and this is the reason. Would you have trouble with writing about your friends? No, right? It's the same for me.

I recently attended a storytelling open mic. I had no clue how these things are done, but when I watched the storytellers perform, one thing hit me: you have to become the character. You have to live the story. I enjoyed it so much, I think I'll be doing some of those things myself.

Here's a random analogy I came up with:

Falling in love is like falling asleep.

We all want to experience the warmth and the comfort of love/sleep.

The harder you try to attain it, the more it eludes you.

Sometimes, when you're least expecting it, they ambush you, and you have to give in to love/sleep even if you don't want to. You have no control.

Sometimes, you try to take shortcuts to get them. Things like sleeping pills, or like initiating a relationship with someone you're not passionate about because you think it could lead you to love. But these things just end up harming us. 

Something that happened today:

I dressed nicely and went to college. Today just...felt different, I guess. I woke early, which always makes me happy. I went to class, sat on the front, and felt strangely confident. Until today, I had always felt as though I was an outsider, watching some movie that I wasn't a part of. But today, opening my mouth and answering questions felt good. I don't know how this transition happened. Maybe it's like you reach a certain level of comfort, a level of familiarization with your classmates and then you just...open up. Because you realize you belong. I even chatted with 5 people today.

❄