Old Yellow Pages ✓

16. winter and thoughts

30th november, friday, 2018

dear diary,

If you wake up early enough and look out the window, you find the world curled up in a blanket of darkness and fog, sleeping. It's peaceful. You are shivering slightly, your bare feet giving all your heat to the cold, tiled floor. No one in your house has woken up yet. You put on something warm and go to the kitchen. You make Maggi noodles for yourself. There is a sense of thrill in the air; this is a secret meal. You won't tell your mum because she will scold you for eating something unhealthy in the morning. These noodles are made of maida, she'll say, and it sticks to your stomach. You put the noodles in a mug. That way they will stay hot for a longer time than they will on a plate. The steam from the mug feels good on your frozen face. You sit by the window again and look out at the buildings. 

I need this moment of contemplation before I begin my day. I like to think. Sometimes I meditate with Headspace. I can't rush out of bed, get ready, hop onto the bus and propel myself into the madhouse that they call a school and start chattering away to people. In the darkest hour, just before dawn, time stands frozen.

I think about people a lot. The "important" people of my life. Take my dad, for instance. He's related to me by blood, so he's supposed to be important to me, but I disagree because I think families are formed by love, not by blood. When I think about these "important" people, sometimes I feel nothing. Nothing at all. I feel like I'm not capable of loving. I feel cold from the inside. Sometimes I wonder if I have psychopathic traits. I long to think of someone and feel a warmth inside me. I want that, but it just doesn't happen. Nothing happens when I think of people, apart from a mild irritation distorting my facial expressions.

Some psychopathic tendencies:
✽ superficially charming
✽ highly manipulative
✽ lack of empathy or remorse
✽ willingness to take large risks

There are days when I am really, truly scared that I exhibit these tendencies. I mean, is it normal to think about your family and feel nothing at all, or rather, feel an impulse to run away?

In moments like these, I think of Sherry and about hugging him. It gives me a warm feeling inside, but it's not very intense.

Today I learned something. I was silent for most of the day. I woke up early, sat quietly on my table, did maths, or rather, struggled with it, and stayed silent. And I'm feeling great about it.

I'm at peace.

In the morning I meditated under the guidance of Headspace. I sat on my bed and played the audio, and the man's voice told me to breathe in and out.

Usually, when I sit for long study periods, I get bored and an arbitrary thought enters my mind. My brain starts whirring and keeps going on and I can't stop thinking about it until I write it down. That hasn't happened today.

See, there are two opposite things that I want. Firstly I want to be able to control my mind and thoughts and that is why I try to meditate. Sometimes I sing instead and that works fine. Music is like meditation. Producing sound from your own mouth can calm the mind. Maybe that is why chanting Om works.

But then sometimes I think that if I control my mind and stop any thought from entering, how will I write? My writing is nothing but a patchwork of my daydreams and stray thoughts. My creativity is a product of my lack of concentration.

Meditation is described as sitting quietly and observing your thoughts as they pass by you, just watching, doing nothing. But I want to get up and chase them.

I can't really decide what is more beneficial for me, writing or meditation, and sometimes I really wonder if meditation will affect my writing or if writing and thinking too much will affect my peace of mind. These two things are completely contrasting.

Slowly the sky becomes a lighter shade and you see the street lamps going off. As daylight hits the stupid pigeons that have nested on the ledges just outside your room, they start cooing and making noise. Your peace is stolen. The day has officially begun; the moment is gone, the spell broken. 

❄