Author: Fangjie

I own none of these quotes. All credits go to Lang Leav for her beautifully written quotes that resonate so well with me.

I am having an absolute nightmare, yet completely paralyzed from head to toe. I jerk my eyes open and lie in complete stillness fully aware that my limbs are malfunctioning, knowing there is nothing I can do to help myself get out of this horrid situation.

Sleep paralysis strikes again, and for the longest of times I have been trying to understand why it happens to me so often. There is a feeling of utter terror, knowing that you have lost all control of your body except your mind, watching helplessly as you lie in your bed or sometimes on the floor and hoping this would all end quickly. Is this how death feels like? To have lost all physical sensation, to be wide awake to witness your own limbs failing on you. And your dreams, they return and haunt you, as though mocking you for having such a weak body.

I wake up in a pool of my own sweat, my mouth is dry and my hands are clammy. I try and speak, but my mouth isn’t moving. I can’t twitch my fingers and toes however hard I try, eventually I knock myself back out and drift back into my nightmare. Everything reminds me of death. Everything reminds me how lucky I am to be alive. If sleep paralysis be a simulation of death, I am not ready to die.

My clothes are soaked and my sheets are a mess. I stumble down my bed and feel the sensation slowly returning back to my limbs. I check that I am still alive. 

Sleep is wonderful. Sleep is supposed to be wonderful. Except, sometimes it is not.

There are certain things that are better felt with the heart and imagined with the mind, than to try and pursue in real life. There are certain people that come into our lives so unexpectedly but they leave behind the strongest memories, albeit increasingly minimal contact in real life. Perhaps, this shall be one of the very last times that we will ever meet, and maybe – just maybe, this is where our worlds will have its greatest collision yet.

To be very honest with you, I have long conceded to my fate and my emotions that this is where I stand. I am done with the tiresome attempts to deny myself of my own emotions that fail every single time, with each relapse even more emotionally traumatic than the previous time. I have said this since late January, and finally I will say it aloud and convince my heart to start facing a very basic reality: I have fallen so hard for you. I no longer care what I will think about myself, I no longer care about the cringeworthy naïvetés of the past. I will not let my head hang low from past shameful events, and I will walk through this storm knowing that I must, regardless of the outcome, regardless of the process.

I guess that you have already found out, whether it was through my own mistake of being too obvious or through other means, I frankly do not care and do not feel embarrassed or disappointed in any way. This stage is inevitable, although some nights kill me inside from missing you. I have done everything I possibly can to forget about you, but even with all the other people I mix with and laugh with in the day, my mind and heart still wanders over to you almost every single night before I sleep. I miss you in such an inexplicable way that almost makes no sense, I have almost forgotten how your voice sounds like but the image of your smile is like a tattoo inked into my mind. Your smile is perhaps the very thing that reminds me how it is possible to still feel so much for you even though I have distanced myself from you as best as I can, and it is even until today that I cannot understand why your smile has such a powerful and long lasting effect on me. It does more than captivate, it strikes the very chords of my heartstrings and it completely robs me of all sobriety to leave me high on cloud nine even if it’s just for a fraction of a second.

Admittedly, I have, and am going to, lose it all. One day, I am going to forget about you just as you will forget about me. One day, I will forget your name even though like a curse it’s appearing everywhere in my life nowadays. One day, I will forget why I was never able to tell you in person how much I really felt for you, and one day, I will probably forget the familiarity of your smile and the way it used to light up my nights. But perhaps, I will never forget how you made me feel, I will never forget how you took away my greatest pains and replaced them with your own form of innocent love.

All these while I have not talked to you, I have never once stopped thinking of you. I have never stopped braving all of these storms set aside for you, I have never stopped silently praying for you just because you don’t like to be openly cared about, much less coming from me. I have never found such patience within myself when I inevitably fell for you, I have never thought that it was able to love someone as quietly and as discreetly in real life as now. My atlantis, engulfed by the sea of torrential downpours, yet I fight all these storms just because I am ready to die if I don’t manage to stay afloat. There is no way I can turn back now.

I miss you, but I don’t think I can ever tell you that in person. I keep my posts anonymous but every single post is heartfelt and honest. If for a moment you took all of my troubles and pains away, it is now that I need you more than ever. Yet, how can I need you when I am worth nothing at all to you?

Tell me that I am crazy, that I have lost my mind. You are my wish upon every shooting star, and a dream I can never seem to wake up from.

(If only, I hadn’t made that promise to you)

I have tried so hard. I honestly have.

The memory of you clings onto my skin even in your absence, gnawing at my heart in the most complex ways. You’re like an emotional tattoo in my spiritual canvas, leaving your mark deep in my heart even when I try and brush you away. I have never intended it to turn out this way.

I want nothing out of this struggle, except closure with the ink left under my skin. The permanence of a tattoo will perhaps remind me of everything I never said, and everything I will never say.

Jacket on, and my skin is hidden. My tattoo is not illegal but I keep it hidden just for the sake of the time being. I have not worn a jacket in school for the longest of times, but I cover up because she tells me I must. 

It’s painful, it’s needles penetrating your skin at rates of 80-150 times per second, but nothing worth keeping ever came without a sacrifice.

Are you my soulmate?

I feel like I have never had to tell you anything for you to already know it. Your presence, is ubiquitous in my life.

You read my words between the lines and you understand the language of my eyes – you tell me things are not going right before I even realize. My secrets are no longer secrets because I can’t seem to hide them from you, my lies are useless because you see me right through – as though I am transparent, my tangled thoughts as apparent as black and white.

How is it possible? As though our minds are connected by divine powers. My thoughts, are your thoughts and my sight is your sight. My darkest secret I’ve kept for 9 months from the rest of humankind, yet you tell me you have known it since the beginning of time.

Our mutual circle of interaction covers everything that have ever mattered in my life, and you’ve seen me from every side, every angle, every single perspective during this time. You know me like you know yourself, you know me even when you don’t try.

There is absolutely nothing left of me that you do not know of – it creeps me out but it fascinates me at the same time. Because of you, I believe in magic in real life. You’re my clairvoyant, my soulmate this lifetime.

I felt so much for you that
Now I feel, almost nothing
except the dull aches that
Surge through my veins.

 
The memories are encapsulated
deep down, in the darkest corner
the first time I let you in and felt you
take my breath away.

 
Remember how we used to laugh?
I didn’t smile because it was funny,
but because the reflection of your eyes
Struck me like lightning.

 
I’ve told countless lies but
I’ll never forget how I told you
Everything is okay when you
Set my world up in flames.

 

Last night I saw myself in my dream, in the perspective of your eyes.

I walked around in your skin, saw the world through your eyes and felt every single little difference of yours that was not mine.

I saw the scars that I left on your skin, the memories that made you cry. I felt the tenderness of a touch I’ve once been so familiar with, heard the words from the voice before everything turned into a lie.

My blood flows, together with my tears. It’s hard imagining all these, but my dreams are perhaps the most powerful form of catharsis that I know of. I rarely dream, but when I do it feels so realistic that I wake up in a pool of my own sweat.

I’ve forgiven you for all the faults you have done, but perhaps you will never forgive me for mine. You’ve always told me of ugly truths that I always deny, despite knowing from deep down that you’re probably right.

You’re right, darling. You’re right about this since the beginning. You saw it coming before I did, and you told me that I have left before I even realized it. You told me I was no longer the same, you told me my eyes didn’t lie. You told me you could see through all of my lies because I was too afraid to admit them, but you never asked me why.

You read me to extents I don’t comprehend of myself, and you force my eyes open to the realities I didn’t want to face. You saw me fall hard in the world of someone else but you never forced me to stay, and maybe – just maybe, you saw this coming along all the way.

Perhaps, I’ll choke on my own tears and my blood will run dry. They tell me I shouldn’t be blaming myself for my feelings but I can’t understand why. Regardless if you are a day, or a hurricane, you’ll always be the reason why my dreams are better than reality and until then, our lives will never cross paths again.

“How can I reconcile this passion

with our modesty
your calvinist heritage

my girlhood frozen into forms
how can I go on this mission

without you
you, who might have told me

everything you feel is true?” 

― Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language

And how can I possibly come to consensus with myself

that it was indeed all a lie?

A spark ignited out of nowhere,

a flame destined to die.
A voice that is all too foreign,

a vision clouded by misty eyes.

A scent too faint to detect,

a cry too muffled by the invisible line.

There’s nothing to reconcile

Nothing left to hide

There’s nothing to be afraid of

Not when it’s already killed you inside.