Fleeting Insignificance
It’s 6.38 AM in Sydney right now. Look at me, writing to you all so early. Posting regularly two times a day like a pro.
I woke up at an early night today. My sleeping pattern is a mess, my life is a mess, everything is a mess and i’m trying my best to be okay with it. Got a phone call from a friend, at least that made me feel a bit better about the messy situation that I’m in.
“What even is time anymore?” As yesterday, today, tomorrow dissolve into one long stretch of who knows when and how long, my sleep pattern has been supremely fucked and I’ve been having a hard time recalling things.
Mornings are easy. I’ve always found hope in the act of pulling back the curtains and pushing my windows open each morning to let the sun in. But 5 PM is when the shit show begins. Nothing emphasizes the sameness of each passing day like switching on the lights in my room as the sunset fades and dark settles. Look how everything is still exactly how they were, save for the diminishing ingredients in the fridge, the half-cut cucumber, the eggs that have gone from 12 to 4, the bread a few days past its expiry date. Switching on the light to walk around my space at dusk is what I imagine being at the receiving end of a prank reveal might feel like; jokes on me, I am absolutely still here, we are not going anywhere, I am so alone.
Other timestamps: the corner of my room I reorganized three weeks ago to make space for my quarantine movements. An empty 30 Mile Cabernet Sauvignon bottle that a friend had gave me a few weeks ago. The Tully soundtrack blasting in the background through the speaker.
Most everything else in between those moments have been a repeat. Days so uniform, so predictable that if one took a step back, a whole month is really just a whole day. I could time travel a few weeks back, choose to go down a completely different path and still end up at exactly where I am right now. Tinkering with the details will not change the plot.
Maybe when you take away the rollercoaster of emotions typical of a normal Sydney day pre-quarantine, you also remove the frame that gives it shape and holds it together. To my surprise, I haven’t developed a resentment for doing the dishes — and it’s not that I love them either. They just seem to be constantly there and I do them without much thought, sometimes it feels like I’ve spent half the day just doing dishes without even intending to. My laundry is just a rotation of shirts of varying degrees of worn-ness. Occasionally, a cute top I haven’t seen in ages would present itself in the mess of my closet and yeah, sure, maybe I’ll pair that with shorts, maybe I’ll do a Tik Tok dance video to mark the occasion (I am not going to do it). Is the mundane still mundane if it’s become your entire life? I don’t know.
It’s disorienting how the consequence of a change so monumental and significant can be, in practice, the exact opposite of all that: sustained stillness, fleeting moments of insignificance. Nothing has ever felt more meaningful and meaningless at the same time.
I feel like this is Day 1000000++++ for me and it’s all starting to feel less like a long sigh and more like constant internal crying. There is a heaviness to my days and I fear thinking of the future (some form of future) lest it gives me false hope or instills in me possibilities I am not quite ready for.
I need to stop being difficult but I really can not help myself.
It brought me to the realisation of how fluid my external identity is, and how unwaveringly solid my deepest essence is EVEN thought sometimes I feel like I have lost myself by shedding my stories. I have strengthened the connection to self deeper through this process. Delicious unfolding, letting go and digging new paths. Even on the days my hands are blistered and tired of digging. It feels a hell of a lot better than auto-piloting my way through stories that kept my essence from shining. My power feels so good sometimes that I forgot about my insecurities for a second.
Perhaps if my fingers trail across the keys, following the whisper of my thoughts, I may finally be free. Perhaps I must let the thoughts simply be somewhere outside of me, round around the horizon asking to myself who I wanted to be.
The pressure I need to face once the questions flee.
See you in a couple of more hours I guess.