What's respect to this household? My sister, four years younger, seems to think herself my commander. She thinks it her right to define the tenets of my behavioural code.

She seems to hold herself in such high regard--my superior? She thinks herself the Defender of Good, some high-standing moral signpost when she spends half her breath spiting others. I'd like to start insulting her physical attributes at this juncture as any normal blogger would, but that'd be descending to her level.

As a result I never last a day without a thought of murdering her, with my bare hands, or with something that will have her entirely helpless moments before death. It has come to the point where I'd rejoice her early death. I'd love for her to die gorily. Helpless. With someone laughing at her, would be best.

Thinking about my relationship is suddenly getting me very uneasy. Without the high of infatuation to fuel me, the thought of intimacy is continually scaring me. It has been for the past months or so...my natural self resurfacing, I suppose. I always was averse to physical closeness; there's a reason I don't hug my friends or even dare touch them.

I feel myself wanting distance. The thought of being alone with him makes my stomach squirm, as if I'm afraid of the things he'll do to me, the boundaries he'll cross--intimacy in itself. It's all wrong...or is it just this long absence? Is it just that? I hope so.

I always knew I wasn't meant for real life romance; I never could handle responsibility, obligation, commitment, or even simple care......

I feel as if I love no one in the world. I don't. Maybe I've had to admit this to myself for the longest time.

the story

There's so much that hasn't been said yet.

There's something about every year that reads just like a novel with beginning and end. The year almost seems structured to be story-like: the climax always comes at the end, and the freedom afterwards is the falling action.

It's dizzying to imagine how far back that scripted beginning seems now.

It was a February morning at the top of the spectator stands: one of those days that feels like dawn in more ways than one--like a beginning. A friend came to me, to ask if I had met you. I was glad to inform her that we had, and she went on to mention how strikingly much we reminded her of each other. Something about telling stories about the stars.

"You must make good friends with him, okay?"

I remember the thought I thought in response to this. Is she trying to matchmake us? Does she think we're compatible or something...?

It made me curious, what she saw in you that made her think that way. I suppose I could tell from the day she said it; we were more similar than I was with most others--outwardly at least--in mannerism and speech and maybe smile.

Our first private conversation came rather later than I'd have imagined. We walked to the station together. It was slightly stunning--all I had heard about you before had been long lyrical praises over the awards you had to your name. And so I was slightly afraid to seem uncouth around you; I spoke cordially, and we discussed the girls and guys and the differences between us--and I told you how much the RI guys amazed me. I was formal, and I pretended an interest in current affairs, because I felt as if that was your topic.

I remember two very clear thoughts that came to me as I heard you speak and my replies came surprisingly easily--so easily, for a first-conversation:

1. How funny, you seem to want to make sure there are no awkward silences.
2. Given enough time between us, I know I'll fall in love with you.

And I was right in both cases.

I still remember those days in April, the year so tall and complexly-branched and blossoming. I remember watching from afar, wondering: what are the chances that he'll see me the way I see him? I remember worrying, about how there were girls you saw far more frequently than I, and how I expected that you'd take interest in one of them long before you even realised I existed. I remember worrying that you'd never know I was there, always, however often.


Is this too early? Is this too soon?


I held onto that paper crane. That was the first day I gave up denying, and admitted to my heart that I liked you. I still have it with me. In my file. Right where it was that one-odd year ago. I only told one person the truth, but tell it I did, and instantly it grew worse.

I used to comfort myself by saying: Just another crush. Just one of those short things that last a month and then fade without any trace. I'm not unfamiliar with them.

But I waited it out, and I realised this was taking too long.

Late April, there were tears I hid from everyone. It was like nothing I knew--watching everything happen so fast between you and another while I sat helpless and pretended to enjoy it just like everyone else did, though it hurt my face and hurt my heart even more to do so, to pull my lips into that laughing smile--so much I'm certain it showed.

I remember the struggle, of knowing how you were so blinded to me because you, just like me, had found someone wonderful to hold your gaze upon. I tried to tell myself, for sure, that my chances were zero and that I should just save myself all this suffering by giving you up. But then you led me on and also my friends led me on and hope led me on, and I wanted to believe so badly, and I grew myself a sparse and straggly, blossoming, garden--

--that was destroyed by the deep frost of unprecedented winter, flung from the high precipice by the claws of cold that were neither your fault nor mine, but the fault of the engineer who constructed the human heart and the way it learns to feel...

I never thought you'd save me. It was the last thing I expected, you cruel thing with no inkling of how bad you were making me die inside. I was certain you were a monster, a monster with guilt; I was certain she was too, and all my friends, and I was certain that the engine of evolution was the greatest monster of all. Perhaps you should never have spoken anyone's name on that night.

2 a.m., I remember how late it was before the ceiling stopped seeming like it were made of ice, the world through my window a wasteland stripped bare by wind. Do you know how it is, to stare at a blue ceiling, and feel an empty shell of yourself, a husk without the substance that makes it special, makes it worthwhile for the world? I was cracked open by thought and regret and hate.

But save me you did, as I always wished you would. Yet you did, yet you did. I didn't think it so easy for a mind to change. I feared, and my friends bred that rightful fear in me too--that it was a lie for my comfort, a lie meant to set me straight before you vanished without a trace, again, to pursue prior dreams.

I can be sure now that it was no lie. I owe you; we owe each other. Prices we can never pay, hopes we could work lifetimes for.

blade

That opening gap, the hollow fills with night wind. That half-guilty irritation, that unsettling discomfort, when you want to sever a connection, but the other party persists--for veritable years--in his/her pursuit of the long-dead friendship. Teeth on the cards, still playing on the gamble that the lack of definitive word on the subject, on your part, is acknowledgement of its continual life.

I cannot as of now bring myself to say it straight--but I've lost all desire to speak to you. Verily, it agonises and imbalances me to have to remember everything I associate with you, your words, your intentions. I thought I'd bypassed that frame in the reel, but you seem to keep stamping your presence upon the present, reminders of a time and a world I'd rather forget.

Can we say our goodbyes and pretend we each never knew the other? Pretend our faces left no imprints in each other's memories? I want to forget the section of my life that you are chained to in my mind. I want you to stop returning. We were never close to begin with.

I'm latent death

I just don't like to please people, I guess? It might be an instinct for my personal freedom, freedom of fate.

Sometimes, I find, I disagree with others or specifically avoid following their advice just to show them they have no control over my decisions. I hate being predictable. I do not want others to pre-empt my decisions; I'm not a machine running commands, not a function processing variables to produce calculable outcomes.

I'm a free person, an outcome of the fundamental chaos of my molecules, of the molecules of the lineage that begot me, sparked in a broiling sea of lightning billions of years ago.

(...how did my small rant about hype aversion and hate for advice turn into that?)

semi-related ideas orbiting a nebulous central issue

My brain chooses all the wrong times to bestow inspiration upon me.

It's random, but I've realised all it takes to make a popular romantic lead is to make him/her nondescript and then have the main character fall for him/her. Reader-insertion does the rest of the work.

I'd like to write another story after Umbrella and OTDOTS, in a world that runs by different rules. Maybe the 12-panel revolving door world. Each universe will have a different level of technological advancement. The main character team will include a person who keeps the world in motion and must be protected at all costs. Also, one with the ability to leave invisible markers in the terrain that can be triggered to explode at will (posing a threat to allies if he/she can't remember where they are), one who must close an electrical circuit with the target in order to attack, one whose type of matter/energy control depends on mood. It'd be very nice to write about rarely-used powers...

An idea that just popped in by looking at the "custom" button below this: there could be one who can customise the physical rules within a certain radius of him/her to his/her preference. Potential need to nerf this person via plot device.

I realised fictional works don't just inspire me by being wonderful. I might simply rue that the story handled a brilliant premise or element terribly. It might merely be something about the work that left a bad aftertaste. In any case, the work gets done and inspiration is always for the better.

Pretty word of the day (not because I learnt it today, but because I've been thinking about it a lot recently): agnate. A relative sharing a male ancestor with the subject. Most often used to describe two people of a common lineage, especially a royal one.

...

Paranoid or not, am I being complacent? Am I indulging too much in my own compromising acts?

.........didn't think I'd start feeling threatened again. Am I not trying hard enough? I'm surprised that this has me worried, but still...

uh.

Braggarts and people who acknowledge them.

just saying

If ever I gain the powers to murder someone instantly, the first to go will be my sister.

oh, really?

You brag, and you ask me why people expect so much of you. I thought you were a genius.

hating

I do hate. I hate intensely.

In my imagination, I will crush people to death, rip them open from a precise point in their abdomen. I imagine buildings falling upon them so they'll die with no one to see them die.

Sometimes I kill myself in my imagination too, but that's a different matter entirely.

I want to murder; I want to strangle most often of all. I almost did, once, it was my mother.

I must confess, some people have me raging to injure and maim them from the moment I catch sight of them. Thankfully I can appear only mildly perturbed, or at least I hope I do.

grr

My sister's voice makes me want to strangle her. The falsity hurts, the pride even more so.

so i finally understand it

The only ones who impress me are the ones I never found reason to belittle. Otherwise it's hate, just hate. If I found you unworthy once, you'll always be so in my eyes, changed or not.

"she has become a caricature of her very worst traits."

Sad, when your friendship grows warped by time and separation, by exposure to different environments that change us, little by little, into separate and incompatible entities.

What was once the same doesn't always stay the same, not if there's disconnect between. I guess you cannot avoid it if a friendship breaks open this way. Sentiment begs me to hold on, but sentiment is the fool's advisor, oblivious to changes it could not predict.