Prose before hos

 A question I get frequently is about my writing process—what is it?

My first instinct is a clip-on-loop, playing in my head- a body, bareback, under the shower head, crying. Like a fever dream, conjuring that memory is low-res in my head at best. You cannot tell if the person crying under the shower is me or someone else but someone is definitely wet under the shower and crying at the same time. Is it a familiar entity? Is it a fictional character? Who knows. The location remains static, my parents' washroom. I trust very few spaces with my intimate thoughts and while my folks may not make the cut, their washroom definitely did. 

Truth be told, a good washroom is a great space for thinking. It's a better spot for ideating than the overhyped notes app. However, coming back, thinking of my artistic process puts the fear of god in me; I'm able to think through words and ideas during my lowest lows. I could be howling my eyes and processing my emotions while I come up with what to write. I think through the men I've loved and the few people who I trusted, and how they further broke that chain of trust. I think about the filler scenes of Fleabag in S2, Ep1 when she's rummaging through her memories of how she's overcome the filth that her existence stood for in S1, I filter through the man who I thought held me when I talked to him about my lowest lows and then another who caused it (there are usually only two—and if you think you know either, you need to stop reading this page cause you know nothing). Both let me down and both come to mind during the question of my artistic process. I find it easier to write in hurt than when I'm satisfied with life. 

I've been waking up a lot at 4 something am. It's usually a dream; something about a traumatic episode, my mom, dimsum, and a friend. I turn my phone on, look at the time, try to catch my breath and calm my heartbeat, stare at my phone a little more, and hope I get a buzz from [redacted]. A minute later, the phone is turned off and I tug my plushie as tightly as I physically can; I don't have the physical strength to write that I just went on an un-consented adventure with familiar characters in my head, but if I could, I'd beg for the rollercoaster ride of my dreams to stop.

I often daydream about how the guy will hurt me. People live through happy fantasies and mine are about how he'll destroy me. If he ever reads this, he might actually be drop-dead disappointed in me but knowing the people in and around my life, he won't be the first to feel jaded because of me. If anything, this goes to show it's mostly me, I'm the problem before there's a problem. 

I went for this film recently (Holdovers), where the protagonist is every bit despicable and I never related to a fictional character more. During a small talk scene, when he's asked to relay a happy fantasy, he implies he dreams within means. To this, the opposing character points out how his fantasies are also short-lived and incomplete and that he is allowed to dream in full, with hope—I'm exactly like that. Even in my fantasies, I can't hope for the best of me because it's better to lose the hope of it all. Some would say it's a problem of lack of faith or trust in people but I don't think so. What they don't get is that I have more faith in them, in the actions of anyone who is halfway compassionate to me than I have in those who claim to look out for me. Those who've made these proclamations to be there have done nothing but destroy me should look at themselves first and their lack of actions. We should be safeguarded from our well-wishers, well, at least me.

It's almost done. Winter's done another round and nearly out of my way for the foreseeable future. 

I'm amazed at people, including myself, who can plan ahead. A few years ago, I couldn't look at an hour later into my life and today I'm accounting for plans over the Summer, or lack thereof. I don't know what I'm doing over the Summer so I should do it now. 

It's surreal how I'm focused on one area of my life, and in my experience, that's when shit blows up in my face in the most grand fashion ever. Last year, this time, I was thrilled to be dating, thrilled to be writing for a living and keeping my chin up. This year, I don't know if i'm going to have a job in the next six months and what will the nature of the job be, obviously know zilch about dating anyone and doing nothing about changing the status quo. 

Sometimes I wish I were running a vintage thrift store (not the kind you're thinking) but a curio store with beige interiors, minimal with accessories and posters as a part of the collection and a fat, sleepy cat snoring by the glass counter, against which I've stashed my most prized possession, button badges. I am so far away from that dream that it sounds like a lie even when I write about it. 

Lately, I've been seeing those posts a lot—you have what you were chasing five years ago, and true, I do. A diagnosed history of living with PTSD, a heart that's been broken so many times that I could be an influencer running that Japanese art of gold-filling broken pieces and selling you gold jewellery made from the pieces of my heart alone, a salary that is roughly the same that I was drawing (what a shame) five years ago and an overwhelming desire to change my whole existence, which is currently at an all-time high. 

I've not worked out in almost 5-6 days and I know I can feel better, just a bit, but I also know restarting sugar after 40 days has done a number. I'm already dreading the bloat and fat (and at this point, it's a fair assumption to say I'm probably on an ED-spectrum). What was once a theory is now a fact— I've lost my friends to my lifestyle—shutting inwards, quitting alcohol and being a recluse, which I know, doesn't show up but it also does. I'd rather run to a stranger's apartment to see a spare bedroom on 21st floor than check-in with a close friend and tell him I miss him. Instead, I find people have moved on, as always, all without me and I've made my peace with it. One Amazon book order at a time, one Nykaa nail paint at a time. 

The way I shed the skin of my selfhood after each heartbreak needs to be critically studied by scientists researching on sustainability. I'm a new person in my heart and yet, it's never enough for me. I always feel like I'm swimming in the same water when that's hardly the case. 

It only sinks in, how I'm a new individual when I have a run-in with someone who didn't walk the mile in my shoes during the said transition. It's even better when it's someone who knew me 5-6 heartbreaks ago. They're usually in shock to see the 'new' me and I'm usually gobsmacked to hear about the 'old' me and how I was perceived. 

It's usually the parts that were perceived are the ones that are first to be rewritten. I don't know how that happens, but it's unconscious and when someone brings it up, that's when the first realisation hits- oh shit, oh fuck, I used to be that. 

But, what about those parts that remain? What about the filthy sleeve full of the same personality and the choices I carry today? What about the outtakes I measured and engaged in and safely bubble-wrapped to be indulged in another day? They're simply there, in ether. 

There is a no-man land where they exist parallel to my new self, in an archival state, and I don't know what to do with them. Those are the things I liked way too much to let go of during my transformation or allow to be discarded in my transformation or memory rewriting. 

I find their existence similar to those of pre-teens who face divorce and watch their biological parents go through new partner(s). That's how some of my opinions and choices feel—they were a composite whole in the company of another individual, who is now seemingly missing, but those opinions, which were once mine or ours still remain. Some are unclaimed and some are claimed with a disclaimer, there's some context that I don't have the bandwidth to get into right now, I hope you'll understand. 

Some, such, unclaimed, unlucky and orphaned thoughts linger on the regular. Every time I see a certain car, I'm reminded of a man who once cheerfully gleamed at a stranger on his good choice cause they had the same model. Another time, I saw the model of a car and thought to myself, it's an apt name for a car owned by the man who was driving me to his home that night. I don't know why it was the first time ever that I chose to notice but then it stuck with me, and how he was exactly like that in person. I remember another nuance, one where you can tell who's texting you by the number of times your phone rings. I've visited that thought a million times since we parted ways, and now today I can count by the pacing of the notification buzz who's texting me—there are only a handful who do anyway and it's easy to pick between them. 

There was one I encountered recently, on giving preference for a new phone, I parroted what someone once told me, without jumping into extensive context and felt sad when I chose to rewrite the version, "friend" told me this. 

Then there are those thoughts that I shared with them, that have absolutely no home whatsoever. One morning, when I was bed-headed and trying my best to leave the sack (before his parents arrived to meet him), I announced how we'd go and see Taylor Swift together if she were to do an Asia Tour. That was probably the first time when I discovered I liked her enough to make that trip and he must do that because I like him just enough too and since he likes me just enough, we must make it happen. 

I was listening through Lavender Haze a lot, during that time, a track I could never go back to after we parted ways. It recently played on my shuffle and I felt nothing, until I was reminded that it was while this track was playing is when I told him that we'll see Taylor Live. Now that she's performing live in Asia next month and I'm not going, it doesn't bother me at all. It felt like a shared goal, even though the guy had no part to play. 

Similarly, this one time I saw the car number of the guy I really, really liked and it was the same as a driver we both fancied. Awkwardly, between goodbye hugs, I had pointed to him and he hadn't noticed. I think about that moment a lot. Did he play coy because there was an awkward moment or did he truly not register the similarity in the car registration and driver number? I don't know; I'll never know.

I don't want to know.