dreamingwithfairies

It's been weeks since I felt like myself - but what does that mean, exactly?

It's funny. As someone who has always struggled to identify myself with anyone or anything, who has been perpetually unstable and changeable for as long as I can remember, and as someone who has desperately sought some kind of answers about who I truly am or who I should become... I never identified myself with the world or any groups or ideologies. Sure, I tried. I envy anyone who can divorce reason or compassion just to be part of a tribe or something.

You are female. You are Caucasian. These are your parents. This is your nationality, your religion, your sexual orientation, your generation (millennial or zillennial???). This is your school, your college degree, your job, your circle of friends. This and this and this that you fell into that you were given is you. Yet something deep inside me always said "no", and that voice told me even stranger things which I argued even as a child. "You are not like everyone else. You are not here for the reasons other people are..." I said, sure literally everyone thinks that. I am not different. And how narcissitic of me to assume I have a destiny. I told no one but somehow even as a child I was already an adult. There was not a moment in childhood outside games that I ever thought or felt like a child. I was weary, convinced that I have seen all this before, that I have lived many lives on this Earth. On the outside I acted like a normal kid but I had secrets. As I got older, the voice became quieter until it stopped. To be different - truly different, forlorn, "homeless amongst family and friends" that really hurt. To be different than was not to be better than, though there was also a part of me that took pride in who I was. But even now, I struggle not to tear up because of this, because of this sense of being abandoned or lost in a world that does not feel like home, does not feel "mine" in any sense of the word.

And yet, despite this ephemeral self, whose substance is like a dream, I am free. And I find it odd when I see other people, average people, actually everyone I know, identify themselves with labels and tribes and ideologies and communities. Like how white European nationalist scream about Christian traditions and values being inherent to our culture, without stopping to think Christianity was imported from the Middle East and was spread throughout the Roman Empire thanks to Constantine's conversion. The so-called Western values are mostly based on Roman and Hellenic structures that predate Christianity. True nationalism is reviving pagan gods, everything else is sectarian rhetoric and pure tribalism... When I consider Christianity, I consider it as a whole - the histories, the peoples, cultures, the geographies. When I consider Christianity as a faith or a way of life, I keep my views as close as I can to the early Church. The many saints who were ascetics, former slaves, even nobles who gave up their riches to join the monastic life of prayer, meditation and service, many of whom were also animal lovers and vegetarians (St. Kevin, for example, who had a mostly plant-based diet). Very different from the Christians of today, except perhaps Eastern Orthodox priests, some of whom live in the remotest parts of Russia. Orthodox denomination is the one that most closely resembles the early Church before the schism. I like them a lot. I do not think about Europe or Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter, all of which were appropriated from pagan festivities. Christianity and white European identity & comservative values are not even in the same dimension to me. That's why whenever I have actually prayed to God, even as a child, I had a very very distinct sense that I was not praying to the same God all other Christians were. I felt like me and the universe had a little secret between ourselves.

That's why Gnosticism connected to me so strongly when I started studying it. But it went a little too far, it feeds into fears and anxieties of the most painful kind. Even reincarnation becomes not a path to spiritual refinement and karmic lessons to lead to eventual Nirvana as the Buddhists and Hindus believe, but to Gnostics reincarnation is a trap for the soul - a sinister recycling of souls locked far away from God who may or may not hear our plight. Gnosticism feels real because it is easier to believe in evil, loneliness and suffering as the default state of existence itself. Confronting existential pain and claiming it to be the ultimate truth might feel both liberating and horrifying - which is also what Gnostics write about. If the truth of life does not horrify you and fill you with despair, it is not the truth but a deception. But what I fear that does is validate existential dread without offering any guidance or moral values - the biggest criticism that Gnostics ever faced in their early history and continue to face into the modern era. How can you live a good life if you see yourself as a slave trapped in an evil universe presided over by a false god? What values can there be when the only salvation is in total isolation, asceticism, celibacy or even suicide? I once had a vivid dream filled with Hindu gods where I was told that a far greater deception is the perception that we are not already in Heaven. I was told that bliss is right here and that pleasure, not suffering, is the meaning of human life. Whether true or not, that alone can give rise to many ideas, thoughts, actions with moral values and alignments. This year I made it a conscious decision to align myself with peace. I may not be perfect but I have noticed myself think twice before reacting first. I sit with my feelings, process them, scrutinise their origin - is it ego? Or is it the soul? Is it valid or ignorant? Having a positive value to align with is better than believing you're God's punchbag and making a shield of stoicism out of your victimhood.

So why is it that I, unsure of who I am, do not attach myself to anything or anyone?

And yet, I do. I do attach, and it is a bit frightening when it happens, it's like being struck by lightning. It can be overwhelming, but I am being brave about it and moving forward with the kind of faith that could rival the most devout nun. There is less a sense of identifying with something solid and more like surrender to something that you're already flowing with. I believe there are energy streams, actual paths our consciousness can travel. Something like what was depicted in Donny Darko - these tunnels of energy that shoot out from the center of your body before you decide to get up and go somewhere. When a piece of art, music, literature, film etc. connects so hard to you you feel like it was written for you, or even by you in some abstract sense, because the things expressed are so particular to your innermost thoughts and feelings, the way you have never before seen... And it's not just that. It can also be places. Going to a foreign city or country and being awestruck by the strangest sense of belonging, wondering why the hell you were born somewhere totally different. Why your hometown has never felt like home despite all the memories and experiences you've had. And it can be a person. A person you have never met, like a historical figure, or someone you know. In their presence there is something real and rare. It's not that you don't like other people or can't connect to them. You can love and hate and feel strongly but there is always something missing, something deep that you cannot name. But a few times in your life, quite unexpectedly, you will meet someone with whom you feel an uncanny connection. They have that something you cannot name, and what's even more amazing, is it is mutual. You know these aren't just words - you feel it. It is something you just know will never go away. This kind of connection can feel very intense and it is imperative to handle it gently and carefully, depending on the context. I say this more about myself because the instinct to completely identify myself with a real human connection is overwhelming. It's amazing, the force with which it takes over. But the most amazing thing is that I do not lose myself - I find myself. I become deeply certain, brave, motivated, inspired. A lot happens and it can be great but this state is also very unstable. It requires an enormous amount of self-control and self-awareness. There is a strong tendency to delusion and fantasy and projection. I have no idea what my center is, how I have not been swept away by a cult, a psychotic partner, schizophrenia or some other nonsense. I actually think it's remarkable I have made this far without ruining my life or my body, no unhappy children, no addictions or dependencies. It's just me and my thoughts and vivid dreams. Progress & improvement goes at a snail's pace but I thank God I'm not going backward, not falling behind, not feeling pressured as if I'm running out of time (I used to feel like that in my early 20s, like I was gonna die soon).

I guess what I am saying overall is... along with peace, I want to invoke faith into my life. Not fantasy, not delusion, not ignorance. But trust in that quiet, inner voice I have denied so many times before. The voice that I can't hear when I'm anxious or overwhelmed or too excited. That voice is faith itself, because the things it has always told me were so strange and mysterious... I want to believe that things will be alright, to move like it already is, even if it might not be. Even if disaster is immanent, having faith is being stubborn in the belief that every single thing that happens will work out in your favour. It's all good.
There is something beyond identity. It's the soul. And it's the only thing that matters in the end. And when I love you, that is what I love.

Current Mood: good
Current Location: Under the crescent moon

I'm thinking about progress and how far I've come in the past year but it's still not good enough. I'm not good enough, not even close. It's like I'm racing against myself and I can barely catch my breath. My sense of self is unstable, it shifts whether I want it to or not, and I'll have to wait over a month before anyone can tell me why I'm like this. I focus on peace yet hatred, disgust and anger are knocking on my door again, and this virulent ache that makes me want to fucking scream.

I want to dissolve. I want to forget I exist for one damn moment. I'm so sick of myself.

Amsterdam has been on my mind. I have to go back. I have to. I want to get away. Every day I drive somewhere away, farther and farther. Filling up petrol is becoming a nuisance. For brief moments beauty and peace find me. It's like coming up for air after drowning. The way the light shifts, the fog rolls, the wind smells, the trees whisper, the crows fly. I love driving on country roads because I'm alone most of the time, but my mind is full. Full of garbage that weighs me down. I hate the chatter of the others, their questions, their awareness of me. I'm tired with humanity - the animals comfort me, relieve me. I want to run away, disappear, leave everything, sell everything, start a new life. Maybe that's it, that's the leap. It sounds so cruel and selfish when I think about my family and friends but honestly, deep inside, I can't stand it. I always hated "community" as a concept in general. I feel like I'm being pulled in so many directions, at the end of each one is a duty and an expectation. I feel things so strongly and my aching intesity is amplified in the presence of others, how much like a creature I am, not a person. How alone I feel around others. How I always feel on the verge of letting something inside me snap the chains of sensibility and coherence. How I wish to be wild, my hair windswept, my cheeks flushed, my boots dirty. I need an outlet but it's all so methodical, so mindful, I can't surrender. I weigh my heart like a pound of flesh. There is a sore spot in my mouth and my tongue keeps pressing against it, feeling its unfamiliar texture, as if expecting a hole or a tear to open up, as if I'm made of paper.

I saw a wild rabbit today. I saw a wild deer. In the ruins of Baltinglass Abbey there were signs of Morrígan about, guarding the dead. I drive a little too fast, at times recklessly. Within a year I'll probably know this country like the back of my hand. It feeds something in me I don't have a name for yet. One of these days I'll go for a drive so long I won't come back home. That's my secret fantasy.
At night, I'm going to drive to a secluded spot in the mountains far from civilization and scream until my voice fucking breaks.

I want to talk about astrology. Rant about it, more like. It's something I know a fair amount about. I know about the zodiac signs and their traits. I know about the “houses” and what areas of life they govern. I know about the planets themselves, including asteroids, and what they mean. How different placements interact. I even know that the old symbol for Scorpio was actually an eagle, which even most astrologers are unaware of. Western astrology – the twelve zodiacs we are familiar with – are literally lifted from Greek mythology, which for some reason millions of people believe in without realising it. Continuing with the Scorpio story, just for the sake of it, it was a scorpion that was sent by Gaia – the ancient Greek personification of planet Earth – to stop the warrior Orion from killing a bull (no doubt a direct connection to Taurus, the opposing sign).

In China there are also twelve zodiacs, but they're not based on constellations. They're based on the lunar year and an ancient myth about some animals racing each other. They all have elements and they rotate every turn. 2026 is the year of the Fire Horse, apparently.

I have a longtime friend. Dear, dear soul sister. But there are things she does that really piss me off, things she has no idea irritate me so much. I don't judge her for it at all. When you love someone you let them have their fun, if it's harmless, even if you don't really want to join in or understand why they're doing it. So she's really into astrology.

According to the traditional Western zodiac she's a Sagittarius (her sun sign, the zodiac everyone says they are even though it's more complex than that... it basically represents your ego or your core identity, the source of gravity that everything else revolves around and ultimately answers to). Now, I've known her for years. Almost a decade. I know she doesn't (or didn't) relate to being a Sagittarius until we came across the concept of Sidereal zodiac. This is where it gets convoluted.

Unlike the traditional system, which hasn't changed in thousands of years, “Sidereal astrology is a system that uses the actual positions of the stars and constellations to determine zodiac signs, accounting for the Earth's axial precession. This contrasts with tropical astrology, which is based on the seasons and a fixed zodiac that does not adjust for these astronomical changes.”

This configuration means that the sign you were born in is technically the one before that. So if you're born a Virgo under the tropical system, you're actually a Leo in the “more accurate” sidereal. And so my friend forced herself into one box when she couldn't fit into the other - though I see her using the two systems interchangeably so I guess it's like an expanded box.

Yet no one gives a fuck. Everyone uses the old tropical method that isn't even reading what's physically actually in the sky. They're just fixated on specific dates forever. The planets they tell you were there in the sky when you were born weren't actually there!

There's also something called the Draconic chart, which is a type of astrology that tells you what your birthchart in your past life was somehow. It's calculated on your moon sign - the zodiac and house your natal moon is was apparently your main/sun sign in your past life. Because we are so sure reincarnation can not only be calculated but described... The moon's South Node also tells you about your past life, it's always the opposite of your North Node which is interpreted as your destiny in this life, which is also your main thematic challenge or karma...

Then there's Ophiucus, the proposed thirteenth sign, also known as the Serpent Bearer, apparently situated between Scorpio and Sagittarius, but not incorporated by most astrologers for some reason. And just to be clear, the zoduac signs actually represent constellations of stars. The idea is which constellation was situated behind the planet on the day of your birth. If they were lights, for example, the planets would be casting their shadows. The deeper spiritual idea is that the signs and houses and planets are placed for you to grow into them or develop them, carrying on lessons and challenges from a past life. Or something, it's really not an exact science. People just accept what they're told without delving deeper into the why behind the how.

We are said to live in the Age of Aquarius, or transitioning into it. It's been said by the likes of famed occultist Aleister Crowley since the 19^th century.

For my part, I could never find in my birth chart what everyone else was raving about. Neither in the tropical, nor sidereal, nor Chinese. I was more focused on what was different than what was relatable, I saw so many inaccuracies and generalisations. Even as I studied it out of curiosity, even as I got into the nuance of what it means to have a moon in this sign, or what the ascendant means for how people perceive me etc. I thought I was doing something wrong. So many of my friends were so into this, swore by it, dedicated study to it, some even charged money to interpret birthcharts and got glowing reviews. I started to see how astrology related to everyone else but not me, and so I felt left out, like maybe I was born under a different star. Where is my meaning and order? It's so satisfying to see your whole identity, your life, your destiny laid out in a literal detailed chart, every nuance explained, every layer dissected from the deepest levels to the most mundane. There's synergy charts, which lets you examine how your birth chart relates to your romantic interest. They're progressed charts – which I never got to fully grasp – which basically take into account how the current planetary alignments affect your birth chart, or how your own chart has changed over the course of time? There's dozens of systems, each one claiming to be more accurate or more relatable, and when you find one you think “ah, this is it! Now I can understand everything about myself.”

I tried this experiment from 2019 for the next couple of years.

I chose to relate myself to a different date as like my “spiritual” birth, if you will. I chose a specific date for this, which was actually very symbolic and meaningful, a few months after my birth. I do genuinely have an uncanny ability to vividly recall the earliest memories, and I remember that day.

I went to check the exact planetary chart for that day (tropical) along with the exact time of “birth” et voila! For the first time I saw a chart I could connect to. It was dynamic, passionate, idealistic, deep, full of intensity and the elements of water and fire battling between themselves, which I knew was literally me. From then on I interpreted every chart, every bit of astrological insights scattered throughout the web based on this fake birthday and thought “wow yes that is so me” and it went on and on and it was so fun, finally I could play with all the other girls (because, I'm sorry, way too many women take this shit seriously it's so embarrassing). I began to believe this was my order in chaos, my meaning. And it's kind of creepy how it creeps up on you, this programming. You truly begin to believe it's real, that it was always relatable and accurate, and you start to see it everywhere like a pattern over everything. To an outsider it sounds generalised but to you – it resonates, it makes sense, it feels right.

But it's not. It's like an NPC running a script. A system which is infused with the belief of millions, who are well aware it has nothing to do with science – nothing to do with astronomy or astrophysics. Objectively, astrology makes no sense whatsoever. Planets and stars and asteroids dictating human destiny based on the specific moment they were pushed out of their mother's womb sounds like someone in an insane asylum would come up with. Someone knowing what each planet does to the psychology of humanity.

I do believe in esoteric truths, such as the “As Above So Below” motto. The direct parallels between the microcosm and the macrocosm is undeniable and can be easily observable in science and mathematics. The fact that the spiral in your morning coffee reflects the shape of the Milky Way galaxy you live in is inherently mystical and awesome without ascribing any meaning to it. Nature is full of wonder and mystery even without meaning or answers, maybe that's precisely what makes them so beautiful. It's actually an extremely fascinating area of study once you start to look at it objectively. But we are indeed fools if we do not verify this for ourselves, with our own reason, common sense and gut instinct.

Astrology is a fable. They tell you “it's just for fun” until they start adjusting behaviour, following a pattern, subconsciously aligning themselves with what they've been told they are. This is how people become boring and predictable. Yet I sincerely understand the appeal. I needed it, just like so many other beliefs I've had and tried and discarded. When your life is full of chaos and uncertainty, and your pattern-recognition and creative problem solving skills are in overdrive, you cling to these symbols that were literally designed with you in mind. I know this because I actually chose to believe in it, against my better judgment, against what I knew to be true, I started to see what they saw in everything and everyone around me like putting on a new pair of glasses. To be the odd one out who cringes every time someone talks about astrology is an alienating experience, frustrating too. They think you're the weird one, because it's so widespread and to question it is rude. It's like trying to take away someone's favourite toy when you know they're too old for it. They know you're right, that there is no logic, but when you corner their delusions they insist it's just for fun.

The Gnostics had it right. They openly blasphemed against Hellenic philosophy and religion. They considered astrology to be a prison – each planet was presided over by an archon or a lord, who ruled that planet and the destinies of humanity, nations and events (because, believe it or not, countries and events also have birth charts... USA is Cancer for example, its birth is equated with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. July 4 is Cancer season.). Each planet was a layer in the trap. They were to be defied, fought against, liberated from. The Hellenics, meanwhile, considered the cosmos to be perfect as clockwork, a harmony so exquisite that to defy it was the gravest sin one could commit. Astrology wasn't just a fashionable personality guide like it is today, it was a guide on a balanced and correct life in accordance to the cosmic order and it was taken to be as legitimate as any science or philosophical treatise. What does it mean today? When a myriad of different belief systems are wrestling for attention, where occultism is a soup of Western and Oriental traditions from chakras to Biblical angels? There are so many filters people use to experience reality in an inauthentic way. What is everyone so afraid of? Afraid of facing the unknown? Afraid of realising they have to make their own myth? That's what one of my favourite artists said, Salvador Dali. He said it was essential to mythologise your own life, your own birth. He didn't mean in it a sense of following a pre-established system which has already expired centuries ago. It's about looking deeper into your own life and starting to see patterns and symbols unique to you. That's why I never look to a dream intepreter to understand what my dreams mean, for example. Because my symbols are unique to me. They come from my waking life, and can mean something completely different to someone else's symbol. To weave your own myth, to bring your own chosen symbols into your life, that takes creativity and effort and a level of individualism that most people are incapable of. While everyone else is clinging to Greek or Chinese myths, running on neatly packaged systems, I choose to create my own archetypes, my own myths, my own stars which do not exist in the sky above me but the one within me. I seek a narrative, I enjoy patterns and things that are coherent and eventually aligned. There is a world in each one of us, so why are we always looking outward for meaning and harmony?

Yesterday Neptune entered the sign of Aries, according to mainstream astrology this is a “generational shift” now. People attribute popular disillusionment with social media on this. They point to how the last time Neptune was entered this sign there was a Civil War in the US, so they wonder if it's going to happen again. Which also reminds me how, despite the fact that the tropical astrological system runs on Greek myth, the planets themselves are named after Roman gods. Aries, for example, comes from Ares. Aries rules Mars. Ares was the Greek god of war, Mars is the Roman equivalent. So if you have Mars in Aries it's like. God of war rules god of war.

Oh, and let's not forget Pluto. Astrologers didn't even account for its existence until the 1930s yet they pretend like it was always there. Now it has the sign of Scorpio attached to it somehow (which is also associated with Mars somehow, like Aries) and Pluto rules generational shifts. So like Neptune. Yeah, the planets after Saturn are considered to have more “broad” effects, to be more social or spiritual in nature.

And you've probably heard about the Mercury retrograde craze. Every time that happens people swear every little problem is because of Mercury retrograde. They'll tell you don't travel because that's a riskier period. Watch your words because it's miscommunication season. Oh my god, shut up! What of the exceptions? What about us people who have a completely normal time? When you tell them “I don't relate to my zodiac” they'll insist it depends on the “rest of your chart” oh really? My mother and her childhood best friend were born on the same exact day in the same town yet they couldn't be more different as people. Astrologers would insist it depends on the exact hour and minute, like that can make a huge difference... my mother also dismissed astrology, it was too unrelatable even when generalised. How far are we willing to go? It's honestly Biblical at this point. Cherry-picking the Old Testament or misquoting the gospels or misinterpreting Jesus. It never ends, this cacophony of symbols and archetypes and everyone looking outward for meaning and depth. What is it costing us? Is it worth it?
The truth about astrology is that people choose to believe in it, they choose to filter their lives and live according to inherited and invented archetypes, myths and symbols. Who decided what Jupiter governs? Whoever decided the current state of astrology, there is no authority, no way to prove it like you can with the scientific method. It's a collective and they say that's proof enough, because it endured and people still believe. It boggles my mind, how in an age where the living universe is explained in detail along with the human body, where the wonders of scientific discovery are at the fingertips of every mind open to learning, people still choose to believe in made-up stories full of holes. Ancient dreams are borrowed from extinguished civilizations and passed off as spiritual truth. I am honestly so tired of "ancient wisdom" so often it's not even real.

I shall try a new experiment now. Make up my own mythos, my own seasons, my own zodiacs. It's whatever. I am already aware I have internal weather systems. Maybe one way to understand, predict and prepare for them is to turn them into symbols of my own. The only thing I worry is when is my patience with astrology gonna run out. It's so hard to avoid when your friends are into it. Ugh.

Current Mood: annoyed

The video footage appears blurry at first, pointing upwards. Cool fluorescent lights shine in the spaces between the square ceiling panels. The camera shakes a little - adjusts, steadies as if being fixed onto something like a tripod. But the vantage point is unusual.

As the camera lens focuses and clears, the view appears to be from the top of a naked female body, lying pale and motionless upon a metallic dissection table. The portable 2007 Sony camcorder is actually balanced between the nose and chin of the deceased. Her breasts are spread apart, pooling like drops of wax on either side of her chest.

A white figure glides into frame from the right side, her heels clicking on the cold tiled mortuary floor, positioning herself down by the feet of the cadaver - the vanishing point in the center.

"Have you ever felt like your life is too boring and ordinary to be considered beautiful?" The woman asks the camera in a deadpan British voice. Her hair is cut short, bleached blonde and dishevelled. Sleek rectangular shades balance on her long, narrow nose, above which pencil-thin eyebrows recall the likes of 1920s opium-smoking flappers. Her dark blood red lips would be visible even in 144p quality, deliberately bold.

"Do you find yourself spending hours scrolling through the internet," she gesticulated, "watching other people's lives YOU'VE decided are more beautiful and interesting than yours, because they're filled with high-rise apartments, the perfect "that girl" workout routine and interesting cities? You probably keep telling yourself that when you have more money, when you meet the right people, when you have a brand new apartment that you'll be beautiful and interesting too." She then procured a facemask out of her labcoat pocket and secured it over her lower face - an imprint of her lipstick was planted on the outside of the mask, right where her lips would be positioned.

Her next words were muffled and quieter; she made no effort to speak louder or use a microphone, and the effect was both amateurish and unnervingly casual given the visual context.

"You've spent so much of your time waiting for your life to begin that you're missing what's in front of you right now." She gestured her hands at the corpse, but her eyes remained fixed at the viewer, peering out from her glasses. Following an uncomfortably drawn-out pause, she momentarily left the frame and then returned with a pair of latex gloves, both of which she dramatically snapped as she put them on. "And the secret is (snap!) you don't have to keep waiting."

She spoke as if giving a tutorial on how to conduct a proper autopsy, but the content of her words did not match what she was doing or where she was.

"In this video," she said, casually gripping the leg of the dead body, "I will be giving you tips and tricks and realistic ways you can actually begin romanticising your life, start seeing yourself as the main character and stop waiting for your life to begin."

The woman then moved towards the camera and took it in her left hand to film her right hand touching and examining the cadaver's skin.

"Usually," she pointed at a small heart tattoo on the wrist, "my life is not very aesthetic. I have ADHD, so I procrastinate a lot and struggle to get out of bed in the morning - romanticising my life has literally motivated me to study, go outside and have hobbies."

The woman continued to talk as she went around the corpse, showing herself touching and checking the skin and every body part for any injuries, markings, wounds or signs of previous medical intervention.

"Now, when I talk about romanticising your life, I'm talking about how to make the little things special. As a doctor, I've seen first-hand how short life can be. We need to grab life with both hands and squeeze as much joy from every single moment as we can." Despite the things she was saying, the woman spoke without emotion - she was professional, cool, serious. Momentarily, her face flashed past the screen of the handheld camera; she was looking around, searching for somewhere to prop it up again. She opted to place the camera on a nearby table but immediately let out a quiet, displeased grunt when she realised the table wasn't high enough to give a proper view of the cadaver on the opposite side. She needed to find something better.

She continued talking.

"Don't wait for happiness. I'm a Capricorn so I'm all about being realistic here, so I'll tell you about some small, budget-friendly changes you can make that can make a huge difference in your life." The delivery of this line was irritated, she was frowning, then straightened up so her head was out of frame, only the view of her crossing her arms, thinking. "Some things shouldn't be romanticised, of course... Not everything can be perfect and within your control, so take or leave whatever you want from this video." After saying this, she walked away and appeared to have left the room entirely.

The seconds passed, which then dragged into minutes, forcing the viewer to watch the dead body lying on the dissection table opposite.

So still, so quiet.

There was no transition, no music, no special affects to distract from the raw reality. Death was waiting to be studied.

About thirteen minutes later, the doctor returned - and she wasn't alone; in tow was a young man with dark features, also in a labcoat and facemask. The video quality was too low to adequately show his expression as he followed the woman. He then went around behind the camera and took up the role of cameraman, giving a proper view of everything that was happening.

"My first tip," she said, taking up the knife for cutting into flesh - she pointed its tip upwards, like a finger, in her hand, "is waking up more peacefully. I switched out my alarm clock about a year ago into one of those that emit faux sunlight thirty minutes before I need to wake up. It sends signals to the brain or something. You can set it to, like, make bird sounds -" as she said this, she began to make a slow and careful Y-incision onto the cadaver's chest area, "you can set, like, a little tranquil song. It can make such a difference."

She proceeded to peel back the layers of the corpse - revealing musculature, abdominal wall and ribcage.

With each layer she gave advice.

"Learn to make your favourite drink at home, something that you can enjoy and kind of look forward to in the morning. It can be literally something as simple as a matcha or a tea."

The camera panned to a view of her looking down at her work, zoomed in slowly. Whatever she was doing with her hands now was not interesting to the cameraman. Or was he nervously averting his point of view away from the dissection?

"I am somebody who LOVES vision boards and Pinterest boards," the doctor continued, unaware of the shift in focus, "I love making Pinterest boards for every single season, but you don't have to use Pinterest. You can physically print out pictures you found and make a little collage dream board or write into a manifestation journal. I know this sounds silly but it made me look forward to life so much more. I live in England where it rains a lot; I dreaded going out every day it rained and it used to make me so sad, upset and mad at the rain..." She turned to look at the camera, realised it had been pointed at her for a good minute, and glared while posing with her cutting instrument as if to threaten. The cameraman was subsequently intimidated back to filming the corpse whose ribcage was now open with the organs exposed and glistening pink and red in the fluorescent light. He zoomed out a bit as the doctor continued speaking and pointing at the different organs.

"... But about three years ago I started making Pinterest boards for every single season, including our endless English rain, and I was like oh hold on a minute this is actually quite cute, and now I genuinely look forward to rain and I've fallen in love with each season."

The camera zoomed in as the doctor began removing different organs, weighing them, measuring, inspecting them and sectioning them to assess their internal structure. Liver was the first organ.

"It's not just for seasons - I make aesthetic moodboards for work too. Whenever I feel unmotivated, I will scroll through or add aesthetic images to my work moodboard. Pinterest is really good for this; sometimes it really takes seeing through another person's eyes to realise the beauty in something like the weather or a place." The liver was weighed and measured. "It can also help you create like an alter-ego to step into. When I'm feeling really unmotivated with my work, I look through my rainy weather moodboard and think about what I can romanticise about my work to trick myself into enjoying my day." The liver was sectioned and examined. "Being super medical and lobotomy chic girly for a few months really makes me look forward to getting work done." Once finished with the liver, she then proceeded to move onto the spleen and kidneys, also moving onto her next point.

"There is this mantra I use for romanticising life - find the joy in everything you do and make everything you do joyful." As she said this, the camera zoomed out and slowly panned up along the length of the cadaver. Right when the view almost revealed the face of the dissected female, the doctor swiped at the cameraman; the footage shook, and after a grainy hiss switched off to a blank blue screen.

"Make your spaces more personal to you." The doctor's voice returned abruptly as she fiddled with the camera, her voice still professional, still muffled behind the facemask as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The mortuary and the cadaver was back in frame, and it seemed the assistant was no longer present. Unable to properly prop up the camera or rely on another person, the doctor had no choice but to continue filming the autopsy herself, awkwardly going through the organs with one hand, putting the camera down only when sectioning them off for inspection.

"I've done this in my life with all the vintage and thrifted things that cost under £5 and are also things I've collected over time. Once you start curating your own life, your space feels so much more meaningful and adds this romantic aspect to your life."

It was time to study the gastrointestinal tract and there was simply no way she could properly do it with one hand.

"For aesthetic makeup storage ideas, I love using vintage teacups and a little crystal heart to store my most used jewelry. It's all about gradually and intentionally adding the little things that are more personal to you, especially the vintage touches." She put the camera on an adjacent dissection table and adjusted the frame to show her taking out the gastrointestinal tract out of the cadaver and plopping them on the weighing scales. "My boyfriend got me this vintage jewelry box and it's my pride and joy."

There was a brief moment when she simply stared at the guts, as if almost breaking character over how absurd the whole thing was. Then like a robot with a minor refresh she resumed her work to finish off with the gastrointestinal tract.

"You can make music playlists for every season, like a soundtrack to your life..." Strangely enough, her words started to quicken and her cool manner faltered, sounding slightly nervous. "Write gratitude lists every day or once a week... Eventually, I want to make a video about discovering your personal fashion style. Life is too short to be dressing for the approval of other people. There's nothing silly about wearing an outfit that makes you happy. Finding ways to let go of perfection, I think, is key..."

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

The camera captured the doctor moving over to stand next to the corpse, leaning over to study its face for a long time but her figure obstructed the view of whatever it was she saw.

It was a long time before she spoke again.

"That's not fucking possible." She mumbled, barely audible, her character cracking from some kind of disturbance. "It can't be- this can't be real..."

Suddenly, she turned around and rushed towards the camera. The audio clicked and tapped as her hands grappled to hold onto it, to focus pointing on the cadaver.

She slowly approached the body - even her heels were barely audible, as if scared to awaken the eternal sleeper. As she approached she focused the camera on the deceased woman's head - her face zoomed in to show eerily familiar features: messy bleach blonde hair, pencil thin brows - only her lips were pale and flat. But the nose was unmistakeable.

"It, well," the doctor held her breath, mustering up whatever strength she had left to maintain composure in her voice, "it takes a fair amount of practice to laugh at - at yourself."

Her nervousness yielded to a giggle. She the put down the camera one last time and in the frame showed off the rose tattoo on her own wrist as her laughter turned hysterical.

"I love you all so much! Thank you for watching and I'll see you all on the other side!"

The rest of the video was her laughing so hard she collapsed on her knees - out of frame - and coughed several times from the force of her laugh. It sounded maniacal yet oddly infectious, as though she was reacting to the funniest joke she had ever heard in her life. She even screamed with laughter, which at times could have almost been mistaken for a pained wailing.

This went on and on.

"Know when to put the camera down." Her voice finally sounded through, exhausted but still shaking with laughter somewhere on the floor. "Some moments simply cannot be captured."

My entry this morning - which I've privated - said nothing new. I guess I only wrote because I haven't in a while. I've been researching and I thought I needed to get my thoughts together, but they didn't need to be said.

Afterwards, I decided to get in my car and go anywhere. No destination. I just wanted to go away somewhere new.

I sit here typing on my phone. My car is shaking from the raging wind outside. It's raining and massive, foamy seawaves are crashing and spraying about 25ft away from me. For nearly an hour I've been driving down windy country roads and green hills of Leinster, dotted with hedges, ancient mossy stone walls, medieval bridges, bare trees with snaking branches, farmhouses and sheep huddled together. The landscape is muted colours - dark greens, greys, browns. I am moved by this sombre beauty, this bleak January. As usual, my soul rests in the things people hate, dread and reject. This stormy, cold, watery howling - the softened outlines of every stone and blade of grass - I adore it. The sky and the seawaves are white as snow from here.

Driving through the landscape, I can almost hear history and memory murmuring from around every corner. The blood that was shed, the songs that were sung, the dreams that were lost. Éire is older than old. Before it was even called Ireland. Its myths so strange and specific, no one knows how much of it is historical account and how much a mere fable.

The huge waves crashing against the cliffs - they may as well be crashing against my soul. My mind tingles, satisfied, seeing its likeness in nature.

"These bleak skies I hail for they are kinder to me than your fellow creatures." - Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: Ennereilly beach

I began this research project with the intention of basically figuring it out what it means to be a woman, mainly in the Western hemisphere. To start off, I was going to look at Judeo-Christian religion, I was going to go over the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s and how it got us to today. But my intentions did not quite go according to plan, despite my detailed notes, my neatly presented plans, my list of reading & watching material. There was about a week between Christmas of 2025 into the second week of January 2026 where I was very sick, I couldn't focus due to irritation, pain and nausea. The best I could do is let my ideas brew, the concepts turning over in my head as I turned over to sleep on the other side. As I read Sylvia Plath's poetry, I already felt like my trajectory might change, or the meaning might. Then I went looking for something, I don't know what, images. I came across images of women. Women who had something special in my eyes. Who seemed real. Not performative. I began to realise something else; the concept of the divine feminine dissolved right before my eyes. I already knew it was an illusion, and I have noticed a growing trend of other women who are realising how silly and damaging the concept is. I thought I would arrive at this revelation through rigorous study, logic, rebuttals. I thought this was something I'd have to argue and fight for, given my personal history, that I'd had to take a hitherto undiscovered side or potentially controversial take. But what I saw in these women was… Humanity. Being a person. They are attractive, alluring, beautiful and fascinating not because of what they look like or what they're wearing or how they want to seem. It's because womanhood does not define their personality, their mind, their heart. Biologically, they are female - that is a fact, not a tool nor a privilege nor a curse. It is what it is. I have struggled with my gender identity, from the extremes of dysphoria in adolescence to a simple frustration regarding social expectation. I never met any women who were like me, and I went to a girls' only Catholic school. I wasn't even a tomboy, per se. I just felt like I was the wrong shape, psychologically, to become a woman. I was obsessed with my body, my reproductive functions, my sexual organs, my psychology and whether I was privileged or disadvantaged. Was I a victim of the patriarchy or was that a false belief, a self-fullfilling prophecy? How many feminine traits I reject because of what they're associated with, how many are authentic - or is it all a psy-op to keep men and women and everyone in between separated? Was this an attempt to force social order, whose price was the sacrifice of genuine connection beyond barriers and identities?

I'm still going to go ahead with the same plan but I think I'll have to change the tone or the narrative a bit. This is not turning into an argument or a fight for "true womanhood" as I assumed. It's so much deeper than that. It's about being a natural & free human beyond social constraints, expectations, limiting beliefs and fears. This does not feel like the victory I am seeking, rather a liberation of a different caliber. Not sexual. Something I cannot yet name, but it's something that I already am and always have been, something I couldn't see about myself, how pointless it is to entangle myself in gender constructs. I am a woman but that does not mean I cannot be exactly who I want to be and how I want to be, or care about how I am perceived.

There was another major thing.

As I was looking for the sources of these artistic images, I accidentally stumbled upon a Japanese account on X and got a psychological whiplash so strong it made me nauseous (and it's not my medication this time). I was deep in my thoughts about these women I could relate to, that inspire me, that I resonate with and idolise. I was excited, on the verge of a breakthrough. And I opened X to look for more art and beauty and instead I was hit with a well-endowed woman who was publicly bouncing her tits (fully clothed though) on video, smiling, putting up a peace sign. More photos revealed her showing off her tits some more, her sweaty armpits, she was getting a lot of attention and seemed happy, but it made me sick. It seems to stand against everything that these other admirable women embody - the artists, muses, intellectuals, scientists, activists, fighters etc. it's like a slap, an insult to what it means to be a woman. Or, hell, human.

(this is made by a Chinese artist, Guta2046 or 古他里 pronounced "Gu Ta Li"... the image whose source I was looking for before being bombarded by bodacious boobzzz)

I sought to understand this sickness and I could barely keep up with the thoughts that were rushing into my consciousness.

Sexual revolution, feminism, sex-positive rhetoric - those are the things I seek to understand because of how irritating they always seemed to me. I couldn't exactly find the right words, or why they felt so wrong to me, since I'm no conservative or religious person. I knew I'd arrive at the truth during my research because that's how my brain works. I feel something I can't name and then suddenly, unpredictably, it clicks and everything makes sense. This was one such moment, and it took me off-guard.

Part of me felt pity for this woman. The other part of me thought "good for her, it's a free world, let her do what she wants if she is happy with herself" but this latter statement tasted bitter, false like an artificially flavoured gummy. That's what made me nauseous. That's what I was told over and over and over since forever. It's the same disgust I felt as a child watching women like Britney Spears and Beyonce and Lady Gaga look like hookers and strippers while dancing and singing aggressively sexual vapid songs. Something I just didn't see men doing in equal measure, something that felt deeply messed up but I could never find the words to justify my feelings since I knew my feelings have absolutely nothing to do with praising modesty or restraint or anything like that, something unnamed was disturbing me. It's been a splinter in my psyche my entire life, one of many different splinters I aim to pull out in my new series of essays - searching for answers and truth out there, not within... I always enjoyed looking through Playboy magazines and did not feel any disgust at the women I saw, and this again mystified me. Was I a hypocrite? Was I jealous or insecure? Was it "internalised misogyny"? Or was I seeing something that I hadn't yet heard any woman mention - at least not any women who were young, liberal or apolitical, non-religious.

One source of disgust I was able to describe, in the flash of revelation that it followed.

Ideologically, I believe that there is a line between erotica/sensuality and sexual appeal targeted towards the so-called "male gaze" - to extract attention, money and desperation from them purely by jiggling tits and ass. The most base, vulgar thing. And yet it is a thing that takes on an entirely different nature when this sexuality is exclusive, privatised, maybe even hidden. Maybe repression - the kind I had - has made my sexuality especially potent and difficult to control. When you are a single woman who is looking for attention or affection, walking the line between being a temptress and a woman simply secure in her own skin is a line I didn't know existed until I crossed it. I did not realise the effect this would have on the men around me. I spoke a language that wasn't mine, even if it meant what I wanted it to mean. I never blame anyone for misunderstanding me, it's my responsibility to understand myself first or nothing clear or solid will come out of me.

I was disgusted at that Japanese lady not because she was showing off her body for profit. It's the concept that such a thing can be profitable, shared, published. I still strain to explain why, tears are threatening to pool into my eyes and I don't even understand why. Because I believe that there is a line between obviously trying to arouse strangers and eroticism - which is artistic, mystical, sensual, detached, both human and transcendent. Uninhibited lust attracts perversion while sensuality invites conscious desire. They are not the same, but neither is exactly better or worse than the other, which I'll try to explain later.

This reminds me of a Chinese neighbour I once had befriended. She was engaged to an Irish photographer based in Dublin whose specialty was nude photography. Not like that. I went to his studio, I saw his work. They were art. The classical kind. He chose fit, athletic models where you could see the muscles, tendons, the shapes of peak human strength - and they were all women. He was an extremely intelligent person as well as kind, not a creep or pervert of any kind. Last summer I went to an art gallery with my uncle - there were paintings of the naked female form, stunning pieces I'd actually buy. They invite and arouse a completely different part of the mind. Not separate from animalism and lust but not bound to it, eroticism is a higher state, and it's also strangely innocent - because the naked body is not inherently sexual, only in certain contexts. A contemplation more than anything. Ultimately, what it comes down to, is my belief that eroticism and sensuality is what can and should be shared and publicised - as art, beauty, contemplation, idealism. Photographic classicism. But carnal arousal? Very obviously working to give someone a boner? That should be aimed at someone close, personal, private. No one should have easy access.

I don't have an opinion on OnlyFans, sex work, strippers etc. people who get paid. It's pointless to moralise because selling sex is known as one of the oldest, if not the oldest, professions in human history. The only thing I want to do is encourage a different kind of sexuality to be celebrated in our culture/society - the kind that feels like holding your breath while yearning for more, rather than rising heat that ends up making you lose control because it's so aggressive and in your face. It's the difference between pressing buttons and simply... stroking them.
In my teens I had a phase that pretty much changed my life. I became obsessed with Japanese geisha. They are a representation of everything I am trying to express here but struggle to. They were female artists - performers, entertainers. But the exact opposite of what you'd imagine - they were not courtesans nor prostitutes. Their bodies were not for sale (this is a myth that began spreading after WW2) but their sensuality was. Their mystique. Their otherworldly charms and playful flirtations. Men had tea and chats. They could become patrons, if they were rich, they could conceivably have a geisha as a mistress but that was not why men went to geisha houses. They went for company, entertainment, banter and beauty - I was completely gobsmacked when I found out about this, because geishas sold something that had nothing to do with sex, even though sensuality was present. Everything about geisha is designed to invite hidden desires not because of what they reveal but because of what they conceal. Even their make up - the white face paint - is carefully considered - the back of their neck is always bare, and the white make up neatly forks around natural skin. To the Japanese, this was erotic. It was erotic because geisha were not to be touched or loved, they were part of an aesthetic tradition in Buddhism known as the Floating World - they were representations of otherworldly beauty, love and desire... Now they are almost an extinct establishment and mostly exist to entertain tourists. Go back further in history and you'll find that, like so many things, being a geisha was initially a male profession. Anyway, my research into geisha as a 13-14 year old was the moment I became intensely fascinated with Japanese traditions and history. It had a profound impact on me because their modesty was not like the oppressive repression of Judeo-Christian culture I grew up in. Though modesty is not the right word either, because prostitution was legal when geishas were in operation. You could choose, as a man, which road to take. Meanwhile, wives had no reason to judge their husbands or feel jealous if they went to see geisha. It was a common understanding that geisha existed outside of mundane society and were not bound by the same rules - they were artists and they were meant to be unattainable.
This industry - of selling beauty, romance and attention - has evolved in Japan into cafes and clubs, catered to both men and women by choice. I don't have my notes with me right now, but they do have a term for it, and it's pretty popular. The concept is similar, but the spiritual aspect is swapped for materialism. They will give you a good time, of course, but they will do everything they can to keep you spending as much money as possible and get you as drunk as they can while making you feel like a king/queen. No touching or kissing, just attractive people doing their best to entertain you whether through music, performance, games, jokes, playful flirtation or stimulating conversation. Even this version is difficult to imagine in a Western country, unless you count Hooters or something.

Final note is a very dumb one.

I was once a fan of something called The Cancer Crew on YouTube circa 2016. The key members were George Miller (then known as Filthy Frank or Pink Guy), Idubbbz, Maxmoefoe, Anything4Views, How To Basic, with honourable mention of Ethan Klein. They have since all gone their own separate ways, with George Miller completely leaving his old persona behind to become a successful musician. But one member, Idubbbz, has done the opposite. He's become something called a lolcow. Why am I talking about this? In case you don't know anything about this, Idubbs - Ian - started losing the public's respect after he declared that he is "fine" with his girlfriend (later his wife) having an OnlyFans account and making money off of her sexuality. His self-respect, confidence, creativity, energy - everything that made him famous - was gradually lost and chipped away while evidence of Anisa abusing him, mocking him and controlling him became more and more obvious to the point that even trolls started feeling sorry for him. I was fascinated by his downfall being so obviously associated with his very public relationship. Anisa really did ruin his career. It's not "woman-hating" for me to say that, she's genuinely a terrible person and she humiliated Ian beyond redemption at this point. The worst thing is that he allows his humiliation, encourages it, and considers himself a feminist for doing so, for allowing her to do what she wants to him, say the most nasty things about him on stream. He's dead inside. I was obsessed, because he is nothing like he used to be before her. NOTHING alike.

You cannot love someone while selling your body to strangers. Nor can you respect yourself while your partner sells themselves to strangers. I'm sorry, but you can't. That's some kind of narcissism or humiliation fetish or something.

There is something about monogamy I want to say, but it's again difficult to describe right now because I don't want to sound conservative or traditional when I am most certainly not. I don't judge swingers or people in polygamous (consensual) relationships even those sound like chaos that never ends well imo. But there is something beautiful about mutual possession in a relationship. Having exclusive rights to your partner and their body, and them to yours. Possessiveness gets either romanticised or demonised. People say it's either a red flag or they go feral over it, especially women. I never cared for it. But now I think it's beautiful. It feels safe, like coming home. Home is where your guard comes down, when clothes become loose, words are unnecessary, energy is relaxed. That's the ideal, isn't it? This is the perfect energy in which to let loose. Strangers could never give this, no matter what they give or what they promise. To seek approval and attention from them, therefore, is to attempt to empty a cup of water into an ocean. It is self-abandonment too, because desire and confidence should always come from within first. And now I worry, parasocially, what will happen to that big-boobed Japanese lady when she gets old? Not only that, but I know for a fact that having breasts of her size is a burden no woman should ever go through. Especially the smaller than average Japanese frame - I guarantee she has back pain, can never find a comfortable sleeping position, struggles (or has struggled) to find the right bra and fitting clothes. Not to mention the harassment from men and hate from women. If those breasts are actually real and not augmented, she was absolutely bullied in school by other girls. I don't know her story, but these are the kinds of things thirsty dead-eyed men ogling at her and giving her attention wouldn't even consider. I want to know what drives a woman to do this to herself? If that's something that should be condemned or mocked, I want to be the one to do it. But I want to be sure my pity is deserved, or whether women like this deserve to be bullied a little for the shame they bring to themselves as human beings, let alone as women.

That's part of why this research project is so important to me. To see more than meets the eye. Not to reject femininity, but reject the things that blind us (or me) to the truth of what people go through. Because while our experiences in the world and society and in our bodies can shape us, I firmly believe we are more than the sum of our parts. There is a soul. There is art and intellect. There is something that separates us from animals, even though we are animals, we do not quite belong. It is within that alienation from the natural world that's at the core of my fascination with understanding what it means to be human. Eroticism and sensuality is that which transcends the mere animal - that's what should be selling, what should be revered, celebrated for and by everyone. Eroticism is literally designed to be not only artistic but enticing - inspiring curiosity and exploration, savouring. Not a "fuck and cum" urgency that a big titty or big dick nice abs or whatever hot triggers a person you don't even know personally may try to press against you. There is a time and place, I really do believe that matters. That's why porn doesn't bother me at all. Bots aside, if it stays in its lane I see nothing immoral with it. What I hate is when it seeps into places it doesn't belong, where it cheapens everything. When it thrusts itself upon me without me looking for it. I feel like the 60s and 70s crossed boundaries that we couldn't really backtrack on without sounding like prudes or align with the political right. Maybe it's time we tried. Maybe women should be mocked, if they deserve it, without being able to use their perceived victim status as a shield from criticism and accountability... Enough.

I may not have explained myself clearly. That's what I'm working on. But a thing just clicked and I had to write it down. It's so weird and exciting to explore ideas that I haven't heard expressed before. I only feel them, I see glimpses of them. I know there is something special about Sylvia Plath, the first female creator/intellectual I ever connected to. What would she think about OnlyFans, I wonder? She died in 1963, before the sexual revolution really took off but it was on its way. What would she have to say about third wave feminism? What would she say about Instagram models and filters and fillers and boob jobs? "More power to her" or "what happened to decency"?
Brigitte Bardot died recently. She was coined as the "quintessential sex kitten" and she was quite confident and aware of her sexual appeal, but she was no dumb blonde. She was an activist, who fought against racism and advocated for animal rights all her life. What I see when I look at her is sensuality, the objective perfection of female beauty, but that's because she was authentic. She has a special spark that goes beyond physical beauty. She was outspoken, brave, intelligent, kind, talented. She was more than the sum of her feminine parts and I guess this is where I can sign off. I feel like that spark isn't as celebrated as it used to be. Women used to be beautiful even if they looked "weird", especially in the 70s and 80s. It's interesting to look at how the ideal female beauty changed over the decades when you look at supermodels that graced magazine covers - where are the Grace Jones' of today? She was stunning, an ethereal, almost alien beauty. I think she was breathtaking - but she had an incredibly sharp mind, she was eloquent, elegant, piercing, even intense. I must mention a Japanese model of the 70s/80s era as well - Sayoko Yamaguchi. Her beauty was likewise not typical for the Japanese ideal, at least not the one that has dominated East Asia since sometime in the 90s. Actress Meiko Kaji is my personal muse/ideal, her whole vibe is something I resonate with heavily. They weren't "masculine" they simply represented a femininity that edged beyond easy categorisation - because they weren't soft, not "girly" or maternal or really any of the classical archetypes women can be put into. They revealed a groundedness, a strength, a courage that is more common and unifying between humans, I think; they're merely presented in a different form, the yin to yang. They were women who belonged deeply to themselves first, above anything or anyone else. That's what I see in those images and what I feel is non-existent today - or if it is, those women don't share themselves, they're out there living their best lives and staying away from social media or entertainment industry. Maybe that's what it is. Every piece of your real life displayed online seems performative, exhibitionistic, if you're under the age of 30 at least.

(Sayoko Yamaguchi)

(Sayoko in an Yves Saint Laurent photoshoot in 1977... because ofc it's YSL)

For all its "intersectionality" feminism has become a mess that does more harm than good. Feminists are afraid to be controversial so instead they come off as unhinged. They over-identify with femininity and the fucking MAGA freaks are doing the same, mocking transgender people, lecturing what a "real woman" should be. Young men thinking that saying "your body my choice" isn't horrifying as fuck, and there are women who are like "yes daddy" it's a fucking crisis waiting to happen, I swear. Women's rights are being eroded in the subconsciousness of Western culture - maybe not in my generation, but the ones after me will have to struggle to be seen as people, I already see it happening at least in America (we in Ireland know what a disease their trends can be, unfortunately). Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I am. But reducing a woman to the sum of her parts is something I feel I was born to resist. It's in the pattern of my life, in my psyche, and the reason I need to get this essay done and done well. At the end of the day it's about being human and being free to be yourself more than anything, whether that means being a hopeless romantic and horny as fuck or not.

Current Mood: determined

Can a living person become a ghost?

He was in several places at once; an airport lobby, a forest, a city street, looking over a bridge, an abandoned theatre. In all places, at all times, he felt the same - he was gazing into the distance, nodding off, daydreaming, thinking, detaching. The world passed him by, or did he pass by the world? It was moving so fast. Yesterday he was twelve, today he was eighteen, tomorrow he will be twenty six. It was all the same.

He was a just boy when his father jumped off the bridge. He would go there every day after school, listening to the breeze, waiting for something he couldn't name.

Now at eighteen he sat by himself at a closed-down theatre where his mother used to work. He remembered her as a strong, authoritative but fair woman. She was smart. Even though she tried to treat him and his younger sister equally, he noticed she was softer to him.

On his twenty-sixth birthday he will be seated in the airport departure lobby at 10:24am. The sunlight will disperse his thoughts and he will force himself to stare at it until tears will start welling up unbidden, sleepless eyes twitching, straining against the light whose heat will elude him.

It's not that he was lonely. He had friends. He even had a girlfriend. He just didn't feel like he was part of anything. Social contacts, jobs, entertainment; they were tethers. Methods of survival, an Oscar-worthy performance of presence and attachment. He held onto them only because he knew letting go was dangerous. His mother warned him about it. But she held on so tight it drove her to a breaking point.

Then he was thirty-three, in a far away country, walking through a busy city street. He hasn't spoken to his sister in almost six years. He was wearing a hat and Ray-Ban sunglasses when he saw a huge billboard advertising Égoïste by Chanel, taking up the side of a tall building.

He saw that smug image of himself staring back over the shoulder of an impossibly attractive woman who was shown leaning into his neck. He remembered her as a vulgar bitch with a grating voice, but here she was someone graceful and alluring. Nothing like herself.

Neither was he.

He was pathetically self-conscious, introverted, opinionated, moody, passive. He dedicated his life to a career in the entertainment industry - to be seen, admired, dressed and styled. The public saw his smoldering confidence, his boyish mischief, and a hint of mystique. He used stimulants and caffeine and attended social events as often as he could these days, because the moment he was left alone, his psyche would start breaking down. He often got himself into controversies and pranks in order to be seen as having something brave and true to say, even though he truly couldn't care less. He was emotionally intense and unpredictable, so he played the role of a cool guy who couldn't be fazed while the wit and wisdom effortlessly rolled off his tongue in every interview. Women wanted him and men wanted to be him, meanwhile he had done everything to run from himself, from the ghosts of the past that haunted him. Every day he thought about calling his sister, but he never did it. She didn't know his number or where he lived anymore, but at least she got to see him on television or hear him on the radio or maybe see that stupid Chanel ad.

At forty-two he will drive into a forest in the deep winter. He will get out and wander.

He didn't bring gloves because these days he had a habit of denying himself comfort and pleasure. Pain was superior - it was the only thing that truly forced him into presence, forced him into his own skin.

He found a freshwater stream and cupped his palms under the icy current. He drank from his palms and wanted to yell from the pain. His breath rose as steam as he sighed.

There was no logical reason for him to be here; he just wanted to be lost, in total silence, far away from everyone and everything. He spotted a white mink running across the snowy plane along the treeline. He had heard they were an invasive species here. Gentleness belies killers' true nature.

He stood in the middle of an open field and looked up at the sky - when did it become clear? Why was it always sunny whenever he thought about escape? Was it mockery or hope?

Could a person trick everyone they were alive and get away with it? Nobody suspected he was a ghost, but he never let anyone close enough to see through him. Not until he fell in love, truly in love this time. This was a love that threatened him and also relieved him of himself. She did not know the affect she had on him.

Vapour swirled around his head with every exhale - each one was deep and slow. He was adept at calming breaths; it was another survival tactic.

He felt his love was real but he knew that everything that was real needed to be painful or he couldn't grasp it. She needed to know.

At an unknown time and in an undisclosed location, he found heaven and he forgave.

I never considered myself a hoarder nor sentimental. I have moved more times than I can count, so I've gotten used to getting rid of stuff from an early age, whether or not I wanted to. I believed it was always my destiny to arrive while being in a state of departure in every facet of my life. The older I became, the more detrimental this belief became.

But what I never considered was that collecting digital information, files, history and bookmarks is actually a type of hoarding. I store my documents and files in at least three different emails, Dropbox, and an external drive. Every year I create a new folder on my computer, simply titled as the year, and in it I store everything I accumulate during the year, mostly images, screenshots, videos and text documents. I've been doing this since 2019 but that was just the organisational part; I've been storing digital data long since before then.

I was looking for something specific (it might be on another computer) a file where I wrote down what kind of things I wanted to photograph. The new phone I purchased doesn't take great photos compared to the cheaper old one I had which I purchased specifically for its photographic functions. Long story short, I'm planning to get back into photography. I have an old digital camera that doesn't turn on for some reason but if I can get it working I could resume my hobby without an unnecessary expense.

I haven't found the file (I don't even know if it's labelled tbh) but what I found might be more valuable. Notes from a Brazilian friend of mine I knew between 2015-2018. She was sometimes remarkably wise beyond her years, she would surprise me with advice and reassurances that seemed to come from another life, since she was otherwise quite emotional, frivolous, lost in fantasy worlds and being the biggest hopeless romantic I've ever met in my life. They say we are merely an accumulation of all the people we have ever known. I used to be nothing like her when I knew her, but now we would surely have much more in common I think. Though it still takes a lot for me to cry in front of people or even in private...

These were the contents of the simple text file, titled “to remember 2.txt”:

1. When you work hard at something you become good at it.

2. When you become good at doing something, you will enjoy it more.

3. When you enjoy doing something, there is a very good chance you will become passionate or more passionate about it.

4. When you are good at something, are passionate and work even harder to excel and be the best at it, good things happen.

naryamirie

"(...)all of these have a common problem: to reach their own illumination, they don't want to pay the price demanded by it - the price of pain.

It doesn't matter if you're a Hare Krishna, a monk or anything, the spiritual journey, in any age, has always demanded and will always demand a deep and necessary state of pain - in this case, the pain of retirement, the pai of loneliness, of the isolation within oneself."

naryamirie

"Of course I'm not talking about a 'spiritual weekend getaway', with a spirituality workshop included. I'm talking about the necessity to pass through the lonely crucible that's the process of discovery of oneself and that by itself generates pain, because it means to walk a totally unknown path, negating every and any morals, abandoning any principle coming from others, and obeying only the voice of one's own soul."

be perceptive, strive for the ugly truth, don t settle for the seemly, learn to trust in the something greater, learn to trust yourself, face your fears, journey through the loss of ego, don t tolerate less than you deserve, come to know how to transmute, the ultimate rebirth, break barriers that keep you from intimacy, understand that intimacy is not only between bodies, explore your body and trace every silver-lining, know that you are here for a reason, accept what is beyond you, recognize fault and injustice, admit your wrongs and learn your truth”

This is serendipitously relevant because it's something I've been thinking about and talking about for the past few days.

I cannot remember the exact context of our conversation, but seeing it next to steps to “making stuff” it clicks. It clicks because creating, for me, is not just about performance. It's not just about seeming impressive, intelligent, talented or like I've got something to express that hasn't been said before.

Creation is essentially spiritual and deeply existential, unconscious. To share it with others is opening your heart, your mind, to scrutiny.

There is a tactic that abused people have. You have abandonment issues so you leave before someone else leaves you first. You expect mockery so you mock yourself first, hide it with jokes. You are proud and confident but you know the fragility of your own ego, you've seen too many times how people fall victim to their own delusions of their abilities, so you act humble when praised or acting bashful when you've just shared something you know is good – but just in case it isn't, your mind says, I've already criticised you thoroughly before anyone else could do worse.

It's a sort of meat-grinder, taking a pure idea or vision, expressing it – and during the expression and sharing phase – attaching your own ego to it.

It's funny because you know better than to judge the artist by his art, whatever the case may be, but when it comes to you – to your creative impulse – suddenly you're reading what you wrote or regarding what you've sketched or photographed or filmed or whatever – and you're thinking “is this good enough? What does this say about what kind of person I am? Will anyone find this valuable?” And the questions never end.

I guess this is the closest to parenthood I can get to.

Something you created seems to be made of your own mental and emotional essence, but once it's out, once you share it, how much of it is truly yours now – copyright claims aside – now that it has entered the consciousness of other people, does it not have a life of its own now?

But even with children, people often judge parents more than the child, whether for good or bad things, even if the child has a certain level of autonomy. Even in adulthood parents can take credit or blame, even if their influence is not as ironclad as they may believe.

Taking on so much responsibility for a piece of work is a desire to control the outcome. But take a look at the greatest works, especially in modern times. Music hits, cult classics, classic literature and even poetry or plays or viral videos. How many of them were carefully constructed, poised to become great? Only the ones that had millions of dollars and promotional content pumped into them. The things that become great, once they leave the comfort of your consciousness, are not dependent on whether they're polished. There is no formula for greatness. And this void produces a peculiar kind of ache in the soul whose greatest source of despair is to be nothing. To be acutely aware of a nebulous sense of purpose, but spending a lifetime looking for it and then fading away in a miserable life of half-finished projects and halfway relationships. To break through the sea of noise is an exceptional feat. How do people do it? If there is no formula, who picks the next big thing? It seems greatness is a matter of fate. Accepting it sounds like the sensible thing to do but the fear of having something important to express, working hard at it, and never getting results is literally my worst nightmare. It sounds dramatic but it seems like my entire purpose in life is founded on this principle. My whole life I had a sense that I was meant to do something important. I knew normal life wasn't for me. Even as a child I had this weird sense of destiny. I would look at people, families, careers, hobbies, everything other people had that made life comfortable, stable, interesting, linear. I thought “I'd love that, but I'm supposed to sacrifice that in order to do what I was born to do.” It's funny remembering this now. Part of me was unconscious, but part of me knew exactly why I did what I did. Why I made the choices I did. Why I refused to follow the linear path, why I insist on existing outside the system one way or another. And maybe it's all leading to this moment right now.

I'm trying something new with my creative projects. I'm tired of these games, of nothing ever working out, yet I never give up trying. My mind is a puzzle I'm determined to figure out. I know a part of my problem is my psychological affliction which I have yet to address but this year is the year. I don't have the luxury of substance abuse to smooth out the edges of my work, though different options are on the table should things not improve.

I guess for now all I can do when creating something is do it in whatever way that distracts me from my obsession with perfection and worth. But even thinking about it frustrates me because I think, if it's not good enough and it's not worth much, why would I share it with anyone?

I swear, social media has co-opted and perverted the very concept of sharing. Everything is sharing and it seems what is more valuable is what is private and difficult to access. But as a creative person, as someone who wants to be in the public eye – to fucking contribute something – I can't be shy about it. To believe that the right people will notice what's real and what's performative, to have faith in your magnetism, because stranger things do happen. Like the time I became friends with Kristen Pfaff's nephew (she was Kurt Cobain's friend, died a few months after him, and was the bassist of Courtney Love's band Hole – I am a fan of Kristen), or was liked and followed on Instagram by the art director of a famous Japanese musician.

This reminds me of a stupid fucking problem I've been struggling for the past 10 years, but have since gotten over. I had countless social media accounts all across the web but I always deleted my accounts if they got too many followers or too much attention. I made some viral posts on Tumblr, which I will not divulge. I've gotten my tweets liked by several famous people over the years before I deleted my account. One stupid video I made on YouTube last year got 20,000 views, the most I ever got, and it's just video game footage. These things are both reassuring but there is a sort of panic that takes over me when I get what I asked for. It's the kind of person I am. I am much more comfortable dreaming and yearning and hoping. I can't handle being blessed and maybe that's my issue.

I dream of greatness yet greatness also terrifies me.

You see, there is no going back.

Greatness is transformative. And in today's age, people will be digging up your past, if you get great enough.

When I was a teenager I imagined myself getting famous and disguising myself like Daft Punk. I was intrigued by Gorillaz, Burial and Banksy. Especially Banksy, especially now that I actually went to see his genuine exhibition in Amsterdam in 2025. There were signs he had been there, he had written on the walls, made little marks among the various memorabilia. I wasn't allowed to take pictures, interestingly enough, and bags were claimed by security. Recently he made a new piece in UK, he's unpredictable and it's always special when someone recognises signs of his activity scattered throughout the world. Anonymity despite fame is a fascinating combo and a part of me believes that this may be the only real way to divorce yourself from public backlash or public worship, in case either happens. I'm on the fence about whether or not to reveal myself online in the future, whether to use my real name in a published work or some sort of pen name. I go back and forth with selfies on Instagram and X, upload them then delete them at some point. It's like I want to be seen but sometimes I wonder if that's a good idea. I envy my friends who can be all normal about it or even romanticise themselves with dreamy filters and cinematic edits. There are advantages to being unseen as well as seen. But in an age where exposure for attention is such a major trend... Maybe being a public secret would stand out more. Or maybe it will sink further into the background.

I know I'm rambling a lot, but sometimes I need to clarify some things through writing. Sometimes I don't really know what I'm thinking until I write it down.

Persist because the pain persists. Maybe, eventually, it will start to feel like pleasure. And maybe that's all that matters.

I have so many other files scattered throughout different drives and devices. It could become a new theme now, where I still talk about the past but now it's about the things I've forgotten I had or knew about? There has to be some value in all that mess. I kept it for a reason.

EDIT: Something I somehow completely forgot to mention is deepfake AI, and how especially disturbing it is. A close friend of mine already warned me about it a few years before the recent issue with Grok came to public attention - how girls and women can be undressed with a simple AI prompt. I have been relatively guarded with sharing my face online and I hate taking pictures with my family because so often they go on to publish them on Facebook, which is foolish to me. I used to think it was just me being self-conscious, and that's certainly a part of it, but the other aspect is how easy it is to catfish people, fake identities, and the pornographic deepfakes I mentioned. If you are anonymous or use an alter-ego that can't be traced back to your real identity, people might pay more attention to the work you put out, and judge you on that. Not who you are, where you're from, what you look like, what your history is. Additionally - how can you cancel someone you can't even name? I wonder how Banksy did it. How Burial did it. I'm sure there's obscure corners of the internet that have figured out who they are. Burial has a bunch of photos that were leaked of him, and people know he's from the UK, but that's about as much as I ever found out about him. But what I don't know is whether there are any women who have created something and remained relatively anonymous. A woman is more easily marketable if she is pretty and sensual, aesthetic. Maybe a little weird. Or if she has some unhinged "feminist" or socialist takes. There isn't a path for me to walk but that's okay. I can make my own. And maybe there is nothing to envy my female friends for. Social media was never a place for me to show off my appearance or my life. I want to bring something more real and meaningful. The lost art of old web anonymity brought to reality, maybe...

Current Mood: artistic
Current Music: trip-hop kinda stuff

For a moment, her eyes reflected the sky from which she had fallen. A soft, fluffy cloud passed from one eye to the other. Tears welled up as the ocean waves lapped at her broken body. She blinked, hard, and when she opened her eyes the brilliant sunset hues of the heavens faded into monochrome.
“As is thy will, Father.” The fallen angel whispered, smiling with gratitude. Even now, she received punishment like it was love. He will forgive her someday, if she was very good and pure, she believed it with her whole being. This was a lesson, not exile. Right?
A cold, salty wave crashed over her, shocking her into movement. She coughed, spat out the water, and crawled further towards the rocky shore, her tattered off-white robes dragged behind her like seaweed.
The fallen angel did not know what to do next. She was no one, all alone, on this rocky beach somewhere on God’s Earth. The wind was cold, the seagulls were loud, and the rocks were sharp on her bare feet as she tiptoed over them. Her wings were gone, her powers were stripped, yet her faith did not waver. Something must happen, someone must give me a sign, a nudge, she thought.
Then she was haunted by flashbacks, the things she had done prior to her fall. Carnal things, sinful things, selfish things, uninhibited and violent things.
She fell to her knees and threw up pink slime. It smelled sweet and floral. Brilliant sparkles could be seen in the fading light of the sunset, in her angelic vomit. There it was - and she was forced to look at it - the personification of her sins. Her dark hair was stuck in wet clumps, moved like stiff snakes in the breeze. She picked up a handful of sand and with it covered the slime, then dumped a bunch of rocks for good measure. Confronting the sight of her body ejecting sweet sin reminded her that she wasn’t entirely grateful for her punishment - she was bitter, as all fallen angels are. Do I even want to go home? What if I never belonged in Heaven? She pondered as she continued walking.
The last rays of the sun hovered over the ocean like a final goodbye, and she realised nothing was going to happen - unless she willed it. There would be no signs - she would have to find her own way. Readiness is not something you wait for - it’s something you decide.
She decided to stop walking along the shore.
There was no boardwalk, but there was a set of zigzagging stone steps leading out of the beach and up over to dry land. She listened to the wind - beyond the crashing of the waves, somewhere, there were whispering trees. She longed to touch one, to watch the leaves dance and soothe her heart. She would go there.
Each step she took was slow. Deliberate. She was familiar enough with her humanoid form but now it was her permanent vessel, and she needed to get used to that, understand it as an entity she would need to care for. Understand, too, that she was a woman with a womb, with hips and breasts that could be both a weakness and a power in ways angels do not fully comprehend.
This female form was the vessel she wore to commit sins.
This body is the vessel of shame.

The fallen angel - the woman - found a path to follow onwards from the top of the steps. There were walls on either side, a few cars, and of course - trees. Streetlights turned on, flooding the street with cool light, reminiscent of moonlight. Would anybody see her? Is that what she wanted? She was aimless again and stood in one spot, hugging herself from the cold.
“First time, huh?” A man’s voice addressed her. A match struck. She saw a little warm flame being cupped by two hands over a cigarette hanging from between his lips. The woman tilted her head uncertainly as she scanned him - he was at least six inches taller than her, with skin darker than the night. His hair was longer than hers. His bright white eyes looked back at her from the shadows as he moved toward her, holding out the burning match in his hand.
Without even thinking, she moved towards it, towards him. She was entranced by the flame - its light, its warmth. It reminded her of something she struggled to remember now. The flame progressed closer to the man’s fingers, burning them. He dropped the match and let the flame die on the ground beneath them.
Different scents mingled as they entered her nostrils - smoke, wood, tobacco, leather, and something human, something artificial but pleasant. A warm, spiced fragrance.
“You… Saw me fall?” She asked in a low, uncertain murmur. She did not yet know how quiet or loud she should be.
The man nodded. “You know, I could make a joke about this, but I doubt you’ll laugh.”
To his pleasant surprise there was a mischievous smile that flickered across her lips. She knew what he meant, she heard the joke before. It was always funny to her.
He was no mere mortal, she saw recognition in his eyes. She did not expect to see anyone so soon, let alone a fallen one like herself.
“What do I do, my brother?” She asked him.
“There’s some people staring at us. Hug me and then let me guide you to my car, or they’ll get very suspicious.”
She did as he told her and put her arms around him, feeling his body heat warm her through his clothes. It felt good to hold another body again.
The man did as he said he would, pulling her to his side as they walked away.
“You’ll feel better once you meet the others.” He assured her. “Don’t worry.”

Neon lights from storefronts and takeaways zoomed across the car’s windows and mirrors as the fallen angel relaxed in the backseat. She had opened the window, the breeze felt good, liberating. No longer salty and sad; it was alive, human, vital. In that moment she felt herself joining a new energy stream, one of new possibilities. She would no longer be merely dipping her toes into mortality. She would be just like everybody else - one of God’s beloved sinners.

Before June 2025, I felt essentially imprisoned and alone. In my life, in my head, in here. My thoughts and feelings were like flies flinging themselves into a glass window, trying to get out of an abandoned house. I always loved abandoned things, I relate to them at a deep level. This website simulated the experience of the early 2000s, a nostalgic period for me. I think what I wanted do was find an alternative to Tumblr or WordPress, which I used before. I had a WordPress blog where I wrote "articles" mostly my thoughts about mainstream society and social media. I was very withdrawn, no friends. I loved it, even though I wouldn't go back to that now if I could.

Finding like-minded people has gotten easier for me as I got older and became more expressive and confident. Though I've always had this aura where people told me things they didn't tell anybody else, that it's easy to open up to me. But it never went both ways. Never. Not that people didn't try, they just couldn't understand what was going on inside me, what I needed. It made me seem cold and distant. I was never responsive to gentleness. It made me feel coddled when I wanted the truth, the motivation, the teamwork. Now, it's different, and easier. It's easier when you accept that most people will never really know you or understand you, that they will never meet you at your level of depth. And that's okay. Not everything has to be deep and meaningful.
But when someone comes along and is genuinely on the same frequency as you? That's a crisis situation. That's not funny. Not if you're someone like me.

I have a few subscribers here for some reason (hi) not sure if I should interact with any of you, since one of you abandoned your journal, and one is empty. Maybe I will... Anyways, I remember my very first subscriber. I checked his account first and saw he had written a few things himself, which were charged with depth, honesty and intensity. It was pretty cool, so I thought I'd send him a simple "thank you" message, for being the first person who committed to watching this burning trash heap of a journal.
Sometimes a simple thanks can go a long way, as it turns out.
It had been a secret fantasy of mine to have myself found out here, my journal read with curiosity and attraction by a random soul. It finally happened one day, to my surprise.
It reminds me of a line from some prayer, asking God to bestow wisdom to be able to hold onto the thing you wished for. Getting what you want is terrifying, actually, because you know how rare and exclusive it is. It's like catching a falling star. Here one moment, gone the next. I was never prepared.
It sounds so simple, and it is, but when you grow up in so much solitude as I did, spending your entire fucking life internalising so much because socialising is so alienating while being so different is immediately pathologised as "neurodivergent", meeting someone you click with is catastrophic.
It's embarrassing to admit that it has taken me this long to process what being seen has done to my psyche, which has gone an entire fucking life having an invisible secret self. I wrote here because I didn't actually believe anyone would ever read anything I wrote; I merely wanted the illusion of being seen. That's why I don't keep everything in my notes only.
What does it mean when an invisible, hidden self is seen? Not just seen, but recognised? Not just recognised, but liked? Not just liked but disliked too? It can never be unseen.
It should have been a celebration, but as usual, I was a bit guarded. I wanted connection, but not ready for it. What I needed more was comfort. And it is strange to admit, when I had just said that gentleness is not effective, but this time was different. I sought comfort in a person I had no right to seek it from.
A second catastrophe struck - I got what I wanted again. Beyond what I could even hope for. It was the most twisted, unexpected thing.
This was the beginning of the end of my existential loneliness, something that tore down the boundaries, the limits, the definitions I had so carefully constructed around my identity. The sense of being completely alone and forlorn in the world that I've always carried in my heart was suddenly gone. I had grown accustomed to it, I believed it was my fate, and anything counter to that an impossible fantasy. But here was someone who made me feel seen, exposed, and worst of all - encouraged more authenticity, more honesty, more trust. Someone who seemed deeply invested into making me feel safe to be who I really am. Up to that point I could only be myself *with* myself, and even that was difficult at times because of how harsh I am with myself. This was an insane experiment I've never tried. It inevitably escalated into insanity.
The second thing that embarrasses me to admit is that only today did I realise the cost of emotional entanglement. Boundaries were crossed, even if I don't really understand which ones, it feels like it was all of them all at once, intensely, passionately, rapidly, selfishly. I feel burned out but not drained. It's just like that time when I was in Spain and had so much fun at the beach for a few hours, that I had a horrible sunburn that made me hate the sun and the beach ever since. Even though I was the reckless one. I was a kid so what I learned from that was not "be more careful next time" it was "don't ever go to the beach on a sunny day in a hot climate." This is similar to that, but thankfully I quickly realised now that removing myself from joy entirely because overdosing on it has caused a lot of long-term discomfort isn't a solution. The solution is to get over it and take better care next time. Which is harder to do than saying "if I can't go completely crazy, I never wanna go crazy at all", extremes are always easier than moderation, at least for me.

I changed and forgot who I was before the heat, what I wanted from my life and myself. What thoughts and feelings are exclusively mine and should remain so. That not every burden needs to be unloaded, not every thought shared, not every feeling expressed. It's an entirely new learning curve for me - to go from complete restraint to no self-control back to self-control and yet... What I know for sure is that this time my self-control will be balanced, thoughtful, disciplined. Not excessive and guarded and individualistic like it always used to be. I've experienced two extremes so now I can feel where the middle is. I'm still adjusting.
I've used words like "crisis" and "catastrophe" in reference to meeting someone you deeply vibe with but I mean that from the perspective of ego. I have yet to process the exorcism that took place, but all I know is that my goals now are back to self-improvement and original ambition. Only now I can handle the idea of someone else being beside me, seeing me do these things in real-time, from the beginning.

Why did I get so personally entangled? Why did I look at it so seriously like it's a matter of life and death? I honestly don't have a clear answer because it never happened before, not like this. I think it's a combination of psychological triggers and lifelong beliefs being shattered. It's a complex concoction of fears, hopes and desires that results in the need to control, test and demand. I allowed myself to be controlled by my own impulses, I gave precious energy to phantoms that made everything seem like there's pain right around the corner. I could have been giving my energy to something else, continued on like I had before, but I couldn't. I was enslaved by my own mind, gripped in a way that drowned out independent thought.
All because I no longer felt alone.
But I am remembering now what it was like. It's true that it can never really go back to the way it was, but that doesn't mean that I lost myself either. Being finally seen for who I am as a whole - the good, the bad and the ugly - felt like a catastrophe because it shook the core foundation my identity is built on, something I held onto quite tightly. I needed something to cling to because I had nothing to stand on anymore. I latched on like a parasite because the old ways I used to sustain myself were gone.
I'm rebuilding something better for myself now. Something with a foundation based in alignment, not individuation. I no longer relate to the idea of being isolated from humanity, separate, forlorn in the world. I no longer wish to base my identity off of that. Individuation is incompatible with genuine human connection. All those occultists and fringe philosophers (especially Gurdjeff) seem like cowards to me now because they sought escape and separation, no matter how edgy they thought they were. Occultism is literally about power over others. I'll talk about Satanism another time but it is vile in its own way while claiming to be "truly natural", maybe I'll debunk it once I'm done with something else. Who fucking cares about living according to nature. There is no such thing and it is futile for humans to even try. We're all freaks.

Current Mood: embarrassed

On Thursday, I was lucky enough to see my doctor, who is fully booked until after Christmas. It wasn't Dr. Campbell who saw me, but it made no difference to me.

I sat down in her office and told her my purpose - a short, practiced line: "I need a referral to see a psychiatrist so I can get a diagnosis of my mental state."

I knew a psychologist and psychiatrist were different things, but I aimed for the latter because I need medical treatment, not a conversation with someone.

Well, it turns out that in Ireland psychiatrists only work with people with severe mental issues, people who are a danger to themselves or others. My own life overall seems extreme enough to me, like it's a matter of time before I truly lose my mind. I just need them to tell me what's wrong with me and give me something to sedate me. She sent a referral to both.

She had me describe everything to her, trying to pinpoint how delusional I might be. I told her I came so close a few times. When I was 19 I refused a brain scan appointment when I told people I was seeing floating orbs and colourful sparks that no one else saw. I was scared of the truth - I believed I had unlocked my "third eye" that I could see interdimensional entities. Something science wouldn't understand or condemn as insane or turn me into a guinea pig. I wanted to feel special, uniquely gifted. I no longer feel that way, thankfully, but I don't judge my past self either.

Truly, the war raging inside me has always been between realism and idealism. Not good and evil. Not whether I'm worthless or worthy. I try to shout through the noise, reminding myself there is no such thing as truth, that I should just take things as they come and let them go as they leave. Buddha's teachings about attachment as the root of all suffering never connected to me so viscerally. But if I let go, then I'll feel nothing at all. So I let myself suffer while I figure out a practical way to rewire my brain.

Because I exhausted every option to "be normal" and "stabilise" myself. I did everything to make sure my emotions don't overwhelm me - through therapy, medication, psychoanalysis, self-acceptance, self-improvement and commitment to things that are important to me. All it got me was more responsibilities, more pressure, more stress about managing myself. I became controlling of things that didn't even need it. I am constantly managing myself because the moment I let go, I destroy everything I care about. It's not intentional, it's not malicious. It's a consequence of surrender.

So I told her the important details, which started in my late teens. I use this journal to frequently go back to the past to reflect and figure myself out because that's when it started going wrong. That's when I lost myself. When one day in my early 20s I realised I was shattered, no longer whole. I had many selves, like egoes or personalities, and I couldn’t pick one - they picked me. I'd cycle through them and after every switch I felt like "myself" again, like I'm normal, even though I was just adopting a persona. They used to be so clear, now they're more subtle and coherent. Because now I'm a committed person, even if it's not in my nature. I can learn. I want to. I will. I am...

I thought art and writing would show me who I am. I thought this journal would. Yes, this journal is the most accurate archive of who I am. A woman lost in herself, in her memories, longing for some kind of salvation, either through herself or through another. No one is coming to save me from myself. I know that's not how reality works and yet I am so obsessed with this idea. I don't know why I'm not religious. The doctor asked me about it. I told her I cycled through various beliefs like I did identities. That's the heart of the problem - I identify myself with things too much. Not material possessions, but ideas, certain kinds of people, interests, how I express myself. I sink my teeth into them like a vampire; I absorb parts of them into myself. I'm obsessed with managing myself because, deep in the back of my mind, I look at myself and ask "am I real?" It doesn't help that even my physical appearance is elusive. Even people who know me have noticed how completely different I can look, especially between months of change. I avoided looking at myself through pictures and video until this year because if I saw myself I'd be thrown into a crisis. But now I stare back at myself as a whole, and the question has started to shift from "who am I?" to "who do I want to become?"

I told her how my life is in constant cycles of stability and instability. How it impacts every facet of my life and that I need professional help.

Ironically, this period of my life is the most stable I've had in over ten years. Maybe I've become lucid enough to realise I don't have to carry myself like this anymore. I'm done ruining everything I care about.

I agreed to let her take four samples of my blood to test for any abnormalities. I worried about low iron or a deficiency of some sort. I can't remember the last time I ate a proper meal? Probably two weeks ago. Eating is difficult sometimes. I have no desire for it, don't care about the taste, and afterwards feel kinda ill. I am force-feeding myself at this point, I'm grateful I can at least do that. I never thought I'd have an eating disorder because I don't do it on purpose, like denying myself pleasure or trying to get thin. I just genuinely don't give a fuck about eating anything. I only want to drink coffee, tea, water and coke zero. And I just remembered next week is Christmas. There will be dinner, I'm meant to sleepover at my parent's house. My mother will be working hard to prepare everything. If my appetite doesn't improve in the next few days, I will have to come up with an excuse or a lie to avoid going. Because if I don't eat or eat very little she will worry. She already knows I have been having sleep problems. I tell her it's just stress, I'll be fine. My family wonder why I'm not more successful in life. They have no fucking idea.

2025 was a year of dramatic transformation for me. Incredible things happened. But I was very much trapped in my head - because I actually shed spiritual beliefs. I had exhausted even Gnosticism, even Satanism. I had nothing to project my fears and hopes onto until an unfortunate soul crossed my path and I looked at him like he was sent by God, even though I know the reality is much simpler. Still feels like a blessing all the way, even though I could offer nothing but my worst demons and sins.

What lies before me is 2026 - a year, I hope, will be of gentle growth, of revelations that feel like a rising dawn not the tearing off of flesh from bones. I'm rather optimistic, regardless of where I am now. I believe in myself. I believe I'll be okay, once I stop identifying myself with things I cannot control. Starting with myself.

Current Mood: artistic

"I will drown you." Said the ocean.

"I'm a good swimmer, I promise." Replied the injured sailor. "Let your storms crash against me; I was built to endure."

The ship rocked with increasing force as the shoreline faded. The wind and the waves induced sickness. In the shelter of his cabin, the sailor tended his recent wounds but everything he touched slipped from his grip and nothing seemed to help. He was dropping everything - it seemed nothing could go right and it irritated him.

"Give yourself to me." He heard the voice of the ocean battering against the window pane. "I will take away your pain forever."

A jolt of realisation pierced through the man's heart. In the flickering candlelight he searched for a compass and a map as the ship rocked even more violently. A bowl of seafood spilled over on the floor, reminiscent of guts, and the sailor instantly gagged - he's been eating the same damned thing for months; he'd rather starve than take any more. He suddenly yearned for solid land - for tall grasses swaying in the breeze, for the familiar taste of citrus on his tongue, for the sound of horse hooves clicking on the pavement. The ocean that had once pulled him away from the shore was now the very thing he wished to be saved from.

"Why won't you dive into me?" The ocean stormed louder. "Give me your heart and I will give you my treasures; you will be a rich man."

Every time the ocean spoke, it stung his wounds, made them throb. A pain he thought would have eased by now unfortunately showed little signs of improvement. Examining himself he started to worry about a possible infection, which he could not afford to suffer. It was obvious now what he had to do.

Eventually, he located his exact co-ordinates - he was not too far gone, thankfully. He sighed, bracing for the strength that will require him to steer the ship back towards the shore.

"I want to return to the land." He finally confessed. "I cannot endure this any longer. I'm sick of your food and I have no desire for your treasures."

The wind blew louder at first, but then the ocean listened, and sent its heavy reply in a flash of lightning:

"I see where you are." The thunder rumbled throughout the ship. "I will aid you. I will rein in my mountainous waves and silence my raging storm. I will blow a gentle breeze into your sails, and disperse the fog so you could reach the shore smoothly and see the lighthouse clearly. No harm shall ever come to you."

The sailor squinted as the second lightning flashed, one that was too bright to be merely electric, no sound followed it. As the rocking of the ship gradually eased, he could now grip onto his medical equipment properly, which helped ease his pain for the moment. He would have gone home one way or another, but as he finally sank into his chair and closed his eyes, all he could feel was relief and the promise of brighter days to come.

He heard the call of seagulls - was it all just a dream?

Every day I get notifications from Substack like it's my morning newspaper. It's not often that I actually sit down and read them, not all articles pique my interest. But whoever runs the Nietzsche Wisdoms account is an exception, and this morning, I read something that seemed to be written specifically for me:

"The will to change is not something you decide one afternoon.

It is not a resolution, not a project, not an identity you adopt. It is a pressure that accumulates until remaining the same becomes more painful than destruction. Those who truly change do not announce it. They arrive altered, often unrecognizable, and are accused of betrayal by those who stayed behind.

Most people never experience this pressure.

They confuse restlessness with depth, boredom with destiny, dissatisfaction with strength. They speak of wanting more while clinging to the habits, beliefs, and resentments that keep them intact.

They do not want to change. They want life to justify them.

But change begins where justification ends."

Then I read a borderline woman's unfiltered honest article that's literally just her thoughts on an average day, meant to demistify women with the diagnosis. It was genuinely interesting.

I don't think about what I do, that's the problem. Every time I try, it's like running at full speed while being waist-deep in a pool of water. I can think about the future but not about the present. The two are different worlds in my head. The past is the only thing I trust, but it is also the very thing I'm actively trying to let go of. The future is full of possibility while the present is more often than not a miserable prison on many accounts.

They keep telling me to write to-do lists but that never works. Is that what life is? Completing to-do lists?

I tried writing in a diary a few times, literally describing my day and what I did, but that became boring eventually, and I didn't experience any benefit, never reread what I wrote, didn't want to remember everything. So how is this different? I believe it's what's unsaid that creates my life.

Because my conscious thoughts almost never result in taking action. I don't think - I do. That's how my anxiety was like. Not thoughts - raw feelings. Sometimes feelings with visuals, with no narrator explaining or commanding anything. It was hard to describe it to psychologists and even my therapist. It sounds like they've never heard of such a phenomenon, they had no idea what advice to give me, the usual methods didn't help. I have a friend who does not have an inner monologue, which is fascinating. I have one but it's not constant, more importantly it doesn't affect my emotions or actions. If I do have an inner monologue it's mostly about philosophical questions, my creative projects, or maybe opinions about some media. Harmless stuff. So when I am overthinking, for example, I'm literally imagining and feeling things as being imminent. They're not arguments or ideas presented by an inner voice, so they're not things I can debate or calm down the regular way. They're not logical and thus they are not silenced by reason. Yet somehow, I can overcome them. Seemingly by just deciding to. I grapple in the dark for a few days before I find the right switch, and that's it.

I remember how terrible my anxiety about driving a car was. I've always wanted to do it but when it came down to it, I was going through a panic attack almost every time. I dreaded driving, hated even sitting in the driver's seat. Sleepless nights, gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles were white, holding my breath. On the first day I even burst into tears, I couldn't control my emotions. I imagined losing control all the time - intrusive thoughts like driving into oncoming traffic, into a wall, damaging the car, speeding until I crash, turning the wrong way, killing someone's pet etc.

Now, over a year later, driving is my greatest joy in life. Genuinely the one time I feel truly happy. How?

Driving is an example, and in this example, what helped the most was asserting control, understanding I can choose differently to make myself more comfortable. From manual car I moved onto automatic. Instead of practicing in my instructor's car or my mother's, I worked my ass off and bought my very own vehicle. Mine. A daily reminder of what I'm willing to do, that hard work does pay off and it's not all useless grinding. Then I finished my lessons with a different instructor and realised how terrible the other one was. This one I clicked with immediately. Choices matter. Irish Road Safety ads are also some of the most brutal, graphic in the world and they'd insert those even between children's shows, so yeah they traumatised me too. They're all based on true events as well (except the one where a car violently crushes like ten little kids, I'm pretty sure that was just for statistic purposes but still - it's considered the most extreme ad in the industry).

There are times, however, when your choices are not only yours. It's not about only what you want. People aren't like cars, even if relationships fit the analogy, there's not one person driving unless it's dysfunctional. Which is actually disturbing that I need to say this, it's quite obvious, but I lost touch with my heart a long time ago.

I don't empathise with people anymore, it's all intellectual now. People act like empathy is a personality trait or an inborn human instinct when that's not at all what makes it valuable. Pity, sympathy, kindness - those are easy, performative, not disagreeable to the ego, if it wants to be perceived as good. Even Hitler felt great pity for animals in abattoirs, though not for human beings in gas chambers. Now pigs are killed the same. It's easy to feel sorry for animals because they don't ask for it. You can infer a lot by recognising a living being in pain or poverty or whatever else. I remember the moment it clicked, when I was a child who thought animals were things with no souls (because of the way society treated them) something I saw in the media made me realise with horror "what if I was born as one of those animals? What would I feel?" And ever since then I empathised not only with animals, but people too, and nature as a whole. How can I hurt those I claim to love and cherish? It even gave me a reason to speak up, to get involved, to fight for something I believed in. Empathy connects you in a way where their joy is yours, as is their pain - and everything. You're not projecting your own ideas, you're feeling with them, because the ego has stepped down.

Somewhere along the way, as these things usually go, I lost my heart.

Oh, but I remained kind. Generous, warm, understanding, respectful and generally a good friend to have. But the creepy thing is there's no heart. It's mostly transactional, mostly because I'm bored and need stimulation and validation of some kind. Where is my heart? Where did it go? It's like my mind is filling in the blanks, playing the role of heart, tricking the audience that there's a soul in there.

But one audience member noticed something scummy. The lighting was off, as if to purposely obscure something. The dialogue was more like a mimickry, the way AI sounds so human these days but if you're keen, you can tell the difference. Only someone who knows you better than yourself can dare to expose the truth in your face like that...

There is a disfigurement in my psyche. I'm not sure if it was done to me or if I did it to myself, but at some point I stopped empathising. I think there was a number of reasons. One that comes to mind is a misunderstanding of what empathy is, and how I felt it unconditionally during my most depressive period. I tried to see my exhausting compassion as beautiful, poetic and Christ-like, not personally harmful. But it was indeed personally harmful - vampires flock to that kind of stupidity, they bathe in it knowing there's absolutely nothing they need to do but exist in my life. I think that did it, my lack of discernment and boundaries. I didn't realise that empathy is valuable precisely because to see through another's experience is a choice, one that takes effort because 1) you're not prioritising yourself 2) you're exposing yourself to feeling someone else's experience, which may then require a conscious shift in behaviour. That kind of work shouldn't be given away universally, it should be exclusive. Because now you've made that connection, you see yourself reflected in another's eyes, and the last thing you want is to be a cause of unhappiness, to become a monster of some kind.

Shifting perspective can be hard sometimes but I believe it's a cumulative skill. If it can be lost, it can be regained, but there can be no such thing a selfish love. There must be something better, purer, higher than this.

"Among the naked gods and goddesses who amuse themselves there with nectar and ambrosia, take note of one goddess who, though surrounded by such joy and amusement, always wears a suit of armor, a helmet on her head and keeps her spear in her hand.

It is the goddess of Wisdom." - Heinrich Heine "On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany"

I want to map WHY spirituality and religion was necessary, that it was a form of internal rebellion. Growing up secular, I was bombarded with media, magazines and cultural and social expectations of womanhood, with no positive role models, no woman I could respect. My instinct was never to blame men/patriarchy, I merely saw women as too eager to please, that they misused their freedom, and saw them often competing with each other and be jealous of each other - basically that emancipation is an illusion and we're still oppressed - psychologically and spiritually. Now it was on us to recognise it and overcome it, to learn how to handle freedom wisely, instead of demonising men for doing what they've been used to being the norm. They have their own programming to overcome - even Kurt Cobain was painfully aware of it. I did not see hedonism as empowerment - I saw it as confusion over the meaning and value of what it means to be a woman, especially in an egalitarian society. Yet I also knew that reducing a woman's value to her reproductive capacity was also deeply wrong - after all, no one judges a man if he does not want kids or if his libertine behavior might someday be an embarrasment to his future child. No one pressures men like this over behavior, fashion or life choices. The worst a straight man might get is being accused of being gay if he strays too much outside the harshness, vulgarity, emotional detachment, intellectual barrenness and boring fashion that was sold as stereotypically "masculine". But I'm not here to talk about men and their social programming.

Can women be both respected as humans and desired as such? Can you have filthy fantasies of the same person you love and admire? Why is culture so focused on exploiting women's sexuality but not men's? Why don't women objectify men to the same degree? (They kinda do now but not back in the Y2K era) These were questions I had as a little girl, trying to imagine myself as a woman someday.

I did not want to shrink myself for anybody. I did not want to become an object of desire; I wanted to be seen as a person first. But my romantic sensitivity seemed incompatible with my strong sexual drive; the wide variety of activities I did and/or fantasised were at odds with the nobility and depth of my emotional yearning. I was torn, I couldn't ever have both. Neither did I want to wear uncomfortable shoes or dresses or sit in front of the mirror doing elaborate make up and hair, like my mother did every single morning for at least an hour, while men can just get a buzzcut and look hella cool. I understand grooming and looking good is important, but all I ever saw was women's excessive need to look good for other people, not for themselves. I always thought women don't need much to look beautiful, I didn't understand the constant pressure for perfection that didn't even look worth it. I didn't understand this need to paint the face or wear clothes that are revealing far too much or is too tight or has flimsy fabrics. Most of the clothes I wore as a child were handpicked by women and I hated almost all of them because of the fabrics. Did I complain? No, because I had no choice but to dress well. I was rarely allowed to be casual or messy, even as a kid. I was trained not to get muddy, dirty, not to spill anything. The only times I had a little more freedom to just be a kid was when I visited the countryside to be with my grandparents. The same goes with hair. Whether it's my mother, grandma or babysitter - they were fixated on my hair. I was like a doll almost. Always tightly braided, tied up, curled - you name it. I bore it. I had to because I was a girl and girls are supposed to look pretty. I quietly vowed myself that when I grow up I'll always wear my hair down because of how fucking good it felt at the end of the night - I associated loose hair with finally relaxing and being left alone. And how nice it is not to have tugging and pulling and the gross texture of hairspray to annoy me.

The truth is, I'm not against beauty, I envy it and wish I understood it better. I only reject the idea that it's feminine, same with hair and fashion. That's art, that's aesthetics and self-expression. It can be conformity or rebellion. It can be individualistic or part of a movement or trend. It took me a long time to see that because it was so enforced upon me, I had no choice.

Then came strict Catholic school with its obsession with dictating the uniform code. It went from one extreme to another for me. From adult women dolling me up in the latest fashions, to wearing the most dull grey uniform that was literally designed with conformity in mind. Make up was regulated, hair was regulated, nails were regulated, footwear, accessories and piercing were regulated - all were punishable if they did not fit into the fine print of the code. They did not fuck around either. I was once ordered by a teacher to tie up my hair because it was in the rules, and I felt severely wronged and was seething so bad it made me cry, after which I refused to go back to school for at least two weeks. What does my hair have to do with my education? Why did appearances matter so much even in school?

Eventually I gave in. I simply began hating the fact I was female, and the physical changes in adolescence didn't help. I had no role models, no women I could look up to. It fed my deep-seated resentment to the very concept. Going to a girls-only school during this time when I also became separated from male friends I had since childhood made me feel even more isolated from who I really was. Since now my appearance wasn't regulated because of "male gaze" it was fundamentally because of what I was defined by, something unchangeable. And I went to a school that prided itself on its "sisterhood" spirit. Individuality was actively repressed from every direction while I was being taught about women's rights in the same breath.

The contrast between my early childhood and my teens is so jarring when I look back, it makes me sick. I had no room for self-expression - I was always being controlled and regulated in one form or another. I did try to rebel in little ways but it wasn't worth it - anyone who ever tried was either reduced to tears and embarrassed in front of the class or had to waste their time in detention and have their parents called. I told myself when I graduate, I'll wear whatever I want and they will definitely not be fucking skirts. But by then I genuinely had no idea what my style even was anymore or what would suit me. I wore whatever felt good only to end up hating it later or realising I look like shit. I never had a chance to experiment and the one time I tried sewing I hated it (though I think I have no choice but to learn now because the clothes for sale are still SHIT ontop of being ill-fitting). I only wore what was comfortable after school. I didn't go out often but when I did I was uncomfortable in my "party" clothes.

The only place I found some relief was online, which I was getting more into. Exploring visual aesthetics, sharing content, designing digital spaces and presentation was cathartic to me. I cycled through different aesthetics and identities every few months for years but nothing satisfied me. Eventually I spiralled into an identity crisis that came to a tipping point in 2019/2020. I understood aesthetics conceptually but was completely at a loss as to how to apply it practically or if it even matters, if surface presentation means anything. I envied anyone who was coherent and consistent. Honestly, I still struggle with it, but I've decided to try building a unique aesthetic from scratch instead of joining a pre-existing trend. I haven't figured it out, it's difficult...

Who am I and why is being a woman the one thing that seems to throw me into such a crisis? I used to wonder if I might be trans or something, but I've never wanted to be a man. I just like the wider freedom of expression and acceptance they have, how they're allowed to be rough and mischievous and passionate and as intense and aggressive as they like. I also think having a penis is preferable to having a vagina ANY day of the week, but I digress.

The female experience is defined by having to constantly perform for an audience because you're always being watched and judged and desired and projected on, for better or worse. There is no avoiding it. There is no escaping it - the only solution is to face it and continue being radically expressive and authentic as possible. Those who see you as a whole, see you. Those who do not probably never will.

In those severely restricted environments, I had no choice but to turn inward to preserve my independent spirit. I refused to be moulded - I would bide my time. I couldn't prove it but I just knew society was sick on many levels, including women. From the twisted sexual objectification on one hand, to the chaste domestication on the other. I felt I was caught between growing up to be a "Madonna" (wife/mother) and being a "Mistress" (whore/temptress), and I needed to figure out if this was a legitimate choice, a spectrum, or something else entirely. Not once did I consider feminism or socialism as places to find answers - instead I asked what's hidden in the collective consciousness? What myths about womanhood have we been carrying? I wondered what women actually believed and what was imposed or inherited. What lies outside Judeo-Christian programming? Is there a different version of femininity that I can identify with? Is femininity and masculinity (i.e. gender expression) a cultural construct that can be deconstructed or defied, the way the moon is masculine or feminine depending on which culture we look to? What's healthy and what's sick when it comes to female sexuality? I went on a quest to find the "divine feminine"...

My icon currently is a cropped picture from a painting of Mary Magdalene and the crucified Christ. Her bare shoulder is exposed; she is wiping his bloodied nailed feet with her hair - a callback to when she bathed his feet and dried it with her hair. The symbolism is meant to be both erotically provocative (for the time) as well as achingly devotional. Mary Magdalene was a prostitute who was taken off the streets and into the fold of Christ. Through him, she learned devotion - no one else mattered anymore but Him, all that she was before was forgiven and forgotten. Though still, her sensuality did not disappear, it merely changed form. Jesus ended up having an unusually close relationship with Mary Magdalene, which is written both in canon Bible and the Apocrypha. She was the first one he appeared to after his resurrection. He treated her with such exception that even the apostles were envious and they did not count her as one of them (despite the fact that she was also technically an apostle who has her own gospel, but she was a woman...). In the Apocrypha (gospels redacted from the Bible) she received knowledge and wisdom from Jesus that he did not share with the others. Though this may be interpreted in different ways, it is undeniable that a deeper bond existed between them. It fascinates me. Is Mary Magdalene the Middle Way? The one who can be both the Madonna and the Mistress? Was she the first Nun - the first of God's brides? Did Jesus love her more than all the others - why did he have such a preference for this woman? Did he desire her both as the son of Man and love her as the son of God? I need to know, for some reason.

Hence this rant, which I needed to get out of my system before I can detach myself enough to do objective analysis and research. I can't be the only one who has questioned what it means to be a woman... while having that question be entirely divorced from any association with the gender concept specifically (that is, whether biological males can be women). This is about what THE PROGRAMME says women are "supposed" to be, and digging through that to understand what the fuck I've been fighting against (or aligned with) this whole damn time.

Current Mood: lazy
Current Music: Russian witch house ig

I didn't think it would happen, really happen, but I'm here. My history is a dissolved dream. It's no longer a wish.

For as long as I can remember, I've lived a double life with my psychic twin. A dream-self made out of dreams, fantasies, longings that could not be satisfied nor spoken of in real life. I nurtured them, I hid them from the world the way a dragon hoards gold. It was my companion, this subconscious dream version of me that walked beside me since childhood, meeting me at a depth that nothing and no one else could come close to. It was the thing that held my existential loneliness, fed my imagination, made me feel otherworldly instead of mundane, whispered stories I needed to believe in, the thing that kept my inner world alive when the outer one was lifeless and disappointing. The thing that shaped my identity, the one I never got to embody. It kept my spirit alive.

And now, I have outgrown it. And I feel grief, the kind of grief that comes with the loss of a lifelong companion.

All these years, it carried the parts of me that weren't allowed to exist. My real desires, my real personality, the person I couldn't be in my life. It was my childhood refuge, my adolescent sanctuary, my identity-layer. Leaving my dream-self behind is like leaving my birthplace forever. We made worlds together, it protected me, lifted me, filled me up, devoured me. Made me feel at home in a life I didn't recognise as my own.

I've gone through a lot within the Active Imagination world. Journeys, characters, creations, stories and archetypes. I've built buildings, gardens, groves, rooms, forests, castles etc. I've used places from my actual dreams, like a cliffside domicile of an ancient vampire, who was no more. Jung cautioned against bringing real people into this inner space, so I never did. Everything was a symbol, mostly completely unrelated and subconscious.

The dissolution of this Primordial Dream-Self was preceded by another cataclysmic event from a few weeks ago - the total collapse of the world I had built in my Jungian Active Imagination project for the past three years. Everything is gone. In one fell swoop, without any warning or reason. There was no way I could resist it, I had to let it play out. This was important. Whatever happened in Active Imagination always manifested in reality. Whether it was a prediction or a self-fulfilling prophecy is not for me to say.

The whole point for me has always been to get to a city off in the distance, that only occasionally appeared, like a mirage. A city like a metropolis, like something out of Cyberpunk 2077. I associated that with home, I knew I had to get there, that's where truth lived, that's where connection to the stream of life was. Not the desert I always returned to or the chapel I often prayed in.

Over the years I have tried to imagine various ways to get there. That's what the journey was about – getting to the city was my ultimate goal, I knew that's where the real story was, where I would truly start to live and find the answers I was searching for all this time. I knew I wasn't where I was supposed to be, only where I needed to be, what comforted me.

Today, I was home.

Deep underground, in a place apparently designed by the ghost of H.R. Giger, with metallic pipes, valves, grids, knobs, grimy, alien, post-apocalyptic and biomechanical - my sanctum. Faint light filtered from high above, giving the space an almost oceanic ambience. Tubes carried bright green liquid. The place was cool and airy, smelled of oil, metal and incense.

I was hovering inside a glass tube, and despite how narrow it was, I did not feel claustrophobic. I was totally nude. I felt aroused, excited, happy all at once. I kissed and licked the glass that contained me. I waited. Then I experienced something graphically sexual, ecstatic, which I cannot describe here without blushing, but it felt amazing. The definition of desire and love and warmth - it was my welcoming ceremony. I was then released onto a water bed, surrounded by ornate incense holders that hung from the ceiling on chains. I observed the space. There was a huge carving of an entity I identified as Shiva. The walls reminded me of the massive Hindu temple I visited earlier this year - full of geometric patterns, mandalas, figures and stories carved into the walls and ceilings. The wall around Shiva seemed to glow like embers at times. I stepped off of the water bed and a white silk robe manifested, invisible hands dressed me, covered me up. I walked a little distance on these metallic catwalks when suddenly I fell through, down into the darkness, where a green light manifested and swallowed me up, inside which was a honey-like amber that in turn swallowed me up more, and in the core was a yellow glowing gem. I felt like I was encased in thick jelly but I could breathe perfectly fine. I embraced this glowing object that was as big as my body - then I woke up.

And now, I don't know how to feel, but H.R. Giger's works keep flashing in my mind. That and the music video "Stinkfist" by Tool, though not as ominous. The art gallery I went to last year that had these otherworldly biomechanical post-apocalyptic themes too. Clay figurines held by electric wires, plugged into an unknown matrix. I wish I still had those pictures. Something profound is developing. Something neither wild nor civilised, neither of the hells nor of the heavens, but a secret new thing. The seed I held dormant in my heart has received the electric spark.

Attempt at Jungian analysis:

In Jungian terms, my underground sanctum represents the Collective Shadow + the Deep Unconscious Matrix.

It’s the place where instinct meets machinery, ancient meets futuristic, flesh meets metal, the erotic meets the spiritual, the human meets the inhuman.

My erotic welcoming ceremony symbolises of the union of unconscious and conscious, eros as a psychic ignition and the Self “touching” me to wake me up. In Jung’s terms, this is the coniunctio, the inner marriage. My unconscious is not threatening me - it is claiming me.

Shiva is the God of destruction and creation, dissolution and rebirth, cycles, cosmic transformation.

The white robe manifesting to clothe me is part of the initiation. White is purification. My unconscious is placing me in a new role.

Me falling through the floor is my ego self surrendering.

The yellow glowing gem - something underived from my past. It is the “new seed” Jung described - the thing that wakes when the old psychic structure collapses.

Finally - Giger's aesthetic is the perfect symbol of the psyche growing beyond human categories.

Something is about to sprout. Not the realisation of the dream - the one who dreamed it.

Current Mood: good
Current Location: H.R. Giger's Imagination

They say the quietest people have the loudest minds.

I have a complicated relationship with language.
One the one hand, it helps me understand. On the other, it detaches me from the present moment. Thoughts become a filter rather than a tool, a crutch instead of an option.
I was here once before, saying I'm done journaling because of how hollow it made me feel. So why am I still doing it? Did I betray myself? Or was I simply embarrassed? Or is English the wrong language for my temperament? Like the kanto and kansai dialects of Japanese, which are as different from each other as night and day; one reflecting the sophisticated and emotionally stiff culture of Tokyo, the other the friendly and emotionally colourful culture of Osaka. I had been learning French but ran into a similar issue with all the dialects that exist, and the learning curve was too steep for me. Japanese is much easier, some of the kanji aside. Russian as well. I've never learned a language fluently because you need to use it frequently to get good at it. I learned Spanish and Gaelic Irish in school and forgot all about them, apart from a few key phrases and the Our Father prayer. Like so many hobbies, I never had the patience to pace myself. The real reason Japanese is so easy for me is because the culture is so rich and fascinating, I'm always engaging with it one way or another since my early teens.

Unless I'm caffeinated or impassioned, I'm a person of limited conversation in real life. I don't talk about myself, I'm very guarded. I prefer to listen. Even with family and friends I know well, I prefer to be low key and to listen instead. How to bridge the gap between my online and offline persona has been a challenge I thought I had long overcome, funny that it has come up now. In reality I'm quiet, stiff and sometimes rehearsed. I can go months not talking to someone until I feel like I have something to say to them. But more often than not, my attentive demeanor traps me in conversations with people who crave to be listened to. And God help me if I engage with a man between 25-40 years old. They do not know when to shut the fuck up.

But now I'm in a situation where, for probably the first time ever, I'm the one who puts too much importance on words. I keep trying to say something without being able to say it directly, using a myriad of expressions to dance around the point as if it will cut me. My words feel so hollow coming out of me. Too logical? Too safe. Trying to make myself seem more in control than I am. I think I am a little afraid. Afraid of saying the wrong thing or afraid of being misinterpreted, so I compose and polish and refine until there are no cracks or creases that I can perceive. I want every base covered, every potential question answered. But by doing so I discourage conversation; I become an echo chamber impossible to connect to on an emotional level.

Just because I'm trying to take it easy doesn't mean it's easy; overcoming persistent and useless thinking is a process not a switch. The attitude is the switch, it is the determination to be free of limiting patterns of thought. The tendency to be excessively verbose is the mind's attempt to protect my heart or psyche. That's what it was always about, of course. There are layers to this thing and even though my mind is totally calm, it still leaps to defend when there's no actual threat. Some fears are too deeply embedded. They're locked in their bunkers and vaults, believing there's still a war going on. Language is the bridge. It's the phone line. Some lines are censored and composed as if at gunpoint. Diplomatic, measured, final. My thoughts no longer trap me like before, but as I feel my way around, I sense parts of me have developed a kind of Stockholm Syndrome - parts of me don't want to be free, or they don't know they need liberation. "These walls aren't trapping me, they are keeping me safe." They seem to say. I am reminded of The Handmaid's Tale all of a sudden. This and the line about the difference between freedom to and freedom from. So, I ask myself - what am I keeping myself "free from"? I'm not afraid of being misunderstood or causing negativity or being disliked.
The answer was instant - I am afraid of hurting someone else. I am afraid of my own sharp edges. So, I soften my roughness. I know I mean well, that my intentions are good, but what would become of my gentleness if I allowed myself to be cruel, even for a moment? I seem to take a measure of pride in my curated nurturing persona, even though that's an illusion. Like the moon, I soften my deadly craters with a sunlit glow. "I mean no harm or disrespect, please believe me."

When I was eleven years old I entered a talent show at my school. A girl who was meant to go on stage before me was stalling. She had stage fright and started crying about it while everyone flocked over to soothe her and encourage her. Meanwhile, I leaned back, rolled my eyes and said "it's gonna be a looong night." I thought it was pathetic and stupid, like why would you enter a talent show if you're afraid of being in front of an audience? She obviously didn't mind the attention she got from crying. Another girl who was soothing her shot me a venomous look "don't be so mean." It kind of made me feel like shit, I thought maybe she's right. I can't remember if the girl went on stage or not, but I won first place after my performance.

The other day I was remembering a really good book I read and reread a few times, "I Find That Offensive!" by Claire Fox. In it, there was a part where she talked about how schools in recent decades have expanded and redefined what bullying is. It went from physical violence, to mean words, to exclusion from activities. She believes it's become excessive mollycoddling, creating thin-skinned children who grow into adults terrified of challenging ideas. They become easily triggered by words, to the point where Harvard law professors had to make study in rape law optional and heavily filtered because it's too sensitive for some students, causes them to have panic attacks. "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me." Is considered an archaic and damaging saying, when its function is profoundly empowering. But I grew up in a generation where insults can be just as damaging as physical harm, if not worse. Kids kill themselves. Violence in school has changed from getting your head shoved down a toilet to being broken down verbally. And instead of teaching children self-defense, we tell them to "not be mean". I was literally raised to be a people pleaser. Honesty was never rewarded, only punished, unless it was filtered through gentleness and lots of positive affirmation to protect the fragile ego of developing minds. Bubblewrap that shit. But there's a difference between someone who is honest because they know you can be better, and someone who is brutal because they want to knock you down. I think in that moment, when I mocked that crying girl, something twisted in me. I didn't want to be mean. I didn't see her as a threat to me, I was borderline arrogant in my confidence to go on stage. But I did think her crying was a waste of time. Either go perform or don't? Why make a big drama out of it? Nothing personal I just wanna get it over with and go home? What's more narcissistic and selfish than holding up literally everyone with your crying? I saw it as "tough love" but I came across as a bitch. Bitches have no friends, not as far as I knew, and I didn't want to earn a bad reputation while I was still fairly new at this school. Since then I could never be totally honest with anyone except maybe myself. I've always been harsh on myself, I've even been told so by others, though I never saw it that way. The positive self-affirmation shit makes me cringe, I don't care if talking nicely to yourself in the mirror is "backed by science" or whatever. Even when I was getting assessed for depression psychologists struggled to understand that my condition was not because of negative thoughts about myself, not because I actually heard my inner voice berating me or anything. They were literally just feelings, I just felt like shit about myself and my life, whether or not I was actually thinking about anything. They signed me up for CBT which is literally just institutionalised self-gaslighting. It pissed me off. And the only reason therapy worked was because the person didn't shove their ideas on me and let me work it out myself with a little nudging in the right direction. I needed an objective observer, basically.
"If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all." Was another thing I was raised to obey since childhood. So now I do one of two things - I speak nothing of the truth, or I use a lot of careful words to mask it. If the truth is not unpleasant or potentially harmful to anybody's ego, I speak it immediately, however.
At the core of my fear is an instinct to defend my pride, my reputation. School is over but I still act like I'm there, about to be branded a bully because I said what I was thinking. Funny how small things like that still stick in my mind, even after nearly twenty years. If you're going to be so sensitive over everything like that, how can you be truly moved by anything that actually matters?

Current Mood: pensive

I'm irritated today.
Not restless, not impatient. Just annoyed.
And the reason is rather unusual.
Last night before sleep I wanted to reflect on my spiritual path. I was thinking about whether I should spend some time re-evaluating what I've been through, what I believed in and why, what truths I was avoiding, what fears I was hiding from. Or whether I should simply move on ahead, throw my spiritual baggage in the trash and start over on a blank slate.
Why does it matter?
Spirituality has been a thematic or basically essential part of my life since I was a child. Neutrality or moral chaos is a recent development since I exhausted all paths that could possibly mean anything to me or have any use to me.
How do I reconcile or let go of something that's been so fundamental to the development of my psyche?
It's not that I yearn for some kind of meaning, truth or belonging or for someone to tell me how to live or what to believe in - I am fundamentally opposed to all that. If anything, I've been seeking a sense of "alignment" more than anything, but also a sense of curiosity. The same reason I enjoy reading philosophy and psychology, spirituality is another lens through which I can view humanity.
But there is also a frustrating sense that I don't "fit" - my morals are chaotic, my beliefs are all over the place, I highly value empirical evidence but I leave room for subjective interpretations of reality. Synchronicities are real, sometimes things are just too uncanny to be dismissed as coincidence.
I keep trying to figure out if there's some logic I'm missing. If there's a misconception I have of myself or of my interpretation. Thankfully, I'm nowhere near the self-doubting delusional levels I used to be in ten years ago. But there's still always this quietly anxious sense that I can't quite trust my perception of reality sometimes. Like at any moment I might trip over myself. It's not surprising, given how many times I've betrayed myself for nothing, as Dostoyevsky would say. Building trust in my own perception is a tricky process. But this is where intuition or gut instinct comes in. It gets obscured and confused when the mind is allowed to go crazy. After all, how can you tell when you're having a bad vibe about someone because there's really something suspicious about them or whether you're just paranoid? I feel so disjointed just thinking about it, but I've made it this far in life, I can't be that bad at judging people and situations, right?
There are many senses vying for attention. Logic, emotion, intuition, instinct, belief, opinion, external sources... Faith or hope is meant to be louder or steadier than all of these things. Faith is trust despite lack of evidence. Loyalty despite doubt. This is a test that spirituality puts people through but also the thing that traps them. However, ultimately, I think it's a choice. What we believe in makes us safe, and we may choose comfort above psychologically uncomfortable truth or risk it with the unknown. I can choose too. I know what I want, how I want it. But what of my fears? What of the truth?
My problem is I want the benefits of spiritual faith but I am unable to give up self-integrity. Various occult traditions, perhaps most notably Fraternitas Saturnii and Satanism, offer both externalised power and self-knowledge. But then I run into another dilemma. My empathy, or what I believe to be empathy. I look at the world and I wonder if pursuing more selfish aims is really the right thing to do. But as I sit here and type this, I can't see an alternative. To choose a right hand path is to deny my truth. The fact that in my core I am wicked. I'm only angelic and loving to the chosen ones, who more often than not have some karmic tie to me. History preceding this life. A sense of deep familiarity. Like old flames, old friends, old family. Connections that defy norm or the usual way relationships are built between people.
I don't discard everything. At this point, all I can really trust with regard to these things is my own intuition, my own gut of what feels correct. Even me saying things like "karmic ties" that's not a belief. I don't choose to believe in reincarnation. In fact, I have no belief around it and am quite sceptical of anyone who claims to know or remember another life. But there is something in my gut, deep beyond logic or emotion or opinion. It just feels right, it aligns with some internal logic that's beyond explanation. I've always felt this way about reincarnation. It makes sense to me that energy would be recycled or transfigured. Like water evaporating from a vessel, then going to gather itself into something else. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it merely changes form or is conserved. That's the first law of thermodynamics.
Maybe the truth is that I don't understand myself enough and spirituality will never help me in that regard, at least not at this stage of my life. I am more interested in philosophy. Maybe psychology, to an extent, although I have a love-hate thing going on with Carl Jung. He has some brilliant and genuinely helpful ideas, but he can also be insufferable and ignorant as hell. A product of his time, perhaps, or maybe I just feel that way because I read a book of his that naturally invites that sort of reaction. He was weird about spiritual faith as well. Unable to believe in God but obsessed with trying to do so anyway, even if it meant dabbling in Gnosticism. He believed humanity will go insane without religion and that a secular or atheistic society would be disastrous to the psychological development of our species. Jordan Peterson spouts the same nonsense about the importance of "the narrative" even in the face of religious abuse, lies, wars, and egregious ignorance for science and basic logic. Religion and spirituality has caused nothing but grief. And before the reader jumps in with a "BUT COMMUNISM" it was literally designed as a replacement for religion, not emancipation from it. Marx no more believed "the masses" could survive without faith in a higher power/order than Jung.
But I've digressed enough.
Ultimately, I think that I need to reframe my spirituality. Move away from esoteric and occult. Not to avoid it, but neither to give more meaning than it's worth. I've been reading about the Hindu goddess Kali and also Nietzsche, so I think I ought to continue. Kali is a fascinating goddess, especially for a culture that places so little respect in women - the country with highest statistics of rape on the planet worships the fierce goddess Kali as their spiritual mother... Meanwhile Nietzsche is just a fun guy, his thoughts are satisfying to read and make sense to me. No use forcing spiritual faith on myself like Jung. It's okay to have a void, to embrace doubt and the unknown with both curiosity and caution. I need to relax with these things, explore simply...
However, I am going to re-examine my past beliefs before continuing. I need to let that shit go, make sure I don't have some residue that might obstruct my perception.

Current Mood: moody

This will be closer to an old school stereotypical diary entry. It's a deep, personal confession. I know I already do that, but this is an objective view of my life as it stands, and where it's going. No opinions, no judgements, no justifications or assumptions. Just the raw truth, just the objective facts.

This has been period when my sense of clarity, logic, and self-command slipped into overcontrol and self-criticism. My mind’s sharpness turned against itself - my own words and judgments were cutting too deep into myself, a kind of masochism. I had become my own prisoner, lost in a labyrinth of personal cruelty. I over-intellectualised my feelings. I demanded truth before allowing softness. I had forgotten that discernment must serve - not suppress - my intuition.
But now - right now - is a moment of liberation, when the cage door opens.
Where I was bound by thought loops, paranoia and outside pressures, I am now beginning to free myself of mental and emotional confinement. Awareness is dawning on me, my blindfold is slipping off, I see movement. I am stepping out of my self-imposed mental prison.
I see the future path before me now. A future informed by the past, teaching me about conscious direction, determination and success. How to steer emotional power and instinct with will and vision. I've experienced the early stages of this theme since spring but I've fallen behind. I've gotten lazy. I skipped lessons, as I've often been known to do. Purposeful movement can only come from self-knowledge. The past will no longer be the driver, she will be a backseat passenger. She will be integrated, I will be informed. I will be in motion - focused, driven. Triumphant and disciplined, confidently aligned with my life purpose. I will experience a personal victory, command over chaos. I will move onto the next level and assert myself in the world.
And what is she informing me about?
That I need to stop overextending myself in my social circles. Stop scattering my emotions into too many people. Sharing myself outwardly has diluted my focus. Fun became distraction, not relaxation. I've been seeking validation and belonging in other people, trying to fill a void that I know only solitude can fill. I've been playing too hard. I actually didn't realise just how social I've become this year - I'm stunned sitting here thinking how it could have possibly gotten this out of hand. Almost all of my focus, time and energy is going into socialising. It's abnormal for me. And I want more friends??? What is wrong with me. I thought I was an introvert but it's like I'm in a competition with myself, trying to prove to myself that I can be popular, that I'm not a worthless nobody. Christ. It's like school all over again. The trap I created in my mind? The word "prison" is too abstract and unrelatable. I created a fucking school and I filled it with a whole bunch of people, half of whom I probably don't even like or have much in common with. I never thought "having too many friends" would become a problem I have to fix. I thought cutting back on social media would help and while it did restore my focus in general, it's apparently not enough because I'm still socialising too much.
And what else is the passenger saying?
That I've cut and bruised my heart so much that even the most gentle truth aches, unbearable in its tenderness. And the truth is that I need to stop striving to deserve happiness through effort and control - I already do deserve it, in fact I already have it. I just won't let myself feel it, I doubt it, maybe even fear it. I need to permit myself to relax into contentment, to open my heart even though I'm restless and impatient. I need to start practicing self-acceptance because happiness wants to meet me halfway. Whatever that means.
But there is a softer truth still, the kind that doesn't hurt, that seems blissfully outside the realm of pain: I need to keep building foundations that feel like home, that celebrate my creativity. Keep building spaces for my interests and passions, that give my spirit room to play - they are the keys to long-term success.

Current Mood: optimistic

There is a quote that goes "Life is a disease: sexually transmitted and invariably fatal."

I don't know why but I feel like I need to re-examine my feelings and beliefs surrounding antinatalism. Maybe it has to do with me watching "Alien", then "Children of Men" then right after a documentary on YouTube about antinatalism because I was craving a moral/tonal whiplash.
"Children of Men" deserves a separate analysis in its own right. It's a film about protecting, saving and delivering a truly miraculous infant life in the most hopeless, bleak, brutal, corrupt, chaotic situations imaginable. Murder, abuse, pollution, apathy, extremism, zealotry, poverty, fascism are contrasted with courage, self-sacrifice, hope, goodness, connection, humour, simplicity, tenderness in the most powerful way possible. It's an astonishing piece of cinema. I've seen it before but that was over ten years ago. Now the world, or at least UK, seems closer to the 2027 depicted in the film in reality than current films depicting present day. It has a fascinating documentary style of filming that adds to the realism - the fact that the presence of the cameraman is obvious doesn't detract from the film at all because it makes you feel like you're there... But I'm not here to talk about the film.
It did seem like definitely a natalist propaganda but with strongly political and environmental messages woven throughout. And while I have loosely aligned myself with antinatalism as a moral standpoint, I was never totally convinced, it made sense to me but this is the kind of person I am. I like to question and revisit things I believe in and subscribe to. Because I'm always learning, changing, considering different perspectives, absorbing different information from new sources.
So I have been reconsidering my stance on antinatalism as a philosophy, but not as a personal choice. Which I suppose was inevitable given my readjustment on animal products a few months ago. That it's impossible to reduce the inherent suffering and cruelty of animals at the hands of humanity. And that not consuming animal products is a personal choice, because I don't really need or want them anyway, but I'm not depriving myself either.
But one thread between antinatalism and domesticated animals, especially farm/factory animals, converges. People creating life for their own purposes, without consideration for what is good and right to the life they are creating. Humans commodifying life, whether it's having kids because you already have a home and a car, or breeding pigs because you want bacon for breakfast. Life is as valuable as any short-term satisfaction. Even as a child, I was horrified at how hellish it seemed, like only Satan could invent a system of breeding animals just to kill them like an endless ritual sacrifice. As I grew older, I sometimes wondered whether humans breed humans for similarly immoral reasons, or whether there was something more sinister at play, like an evil god spawning life just to watch it suffer from all manner of natural and man-made horrors.
But... I realise that is a perspective. An opinion is not a fact, even if it feels true. But that's just it. It's feelings-based. Philosophy is not science. Not like psychology or sociology or anthropology. Philosophy like religion can be chosen when it affirms personal perspectives, ideals, thoughts. But that's not the right way to read philosophy, in my opinion. Philosophy requires constant justification, revaluation, criticism etc. it must not exist in a vacuum. So in a roundabout way I am saying I am open to change my views. Right now it's about antinatalism.
The truth is, I don't actually wish I wasn't born, nor do I really resent my parents. Sure, when things are hard I think about how fucking selfish and stupid they were. And I think about how I should end it all because of how woefully unequipped I am to live. But those are moments that pass. Just like everything does. Suffering is not a constant. It's everywhere but so is pleasure, beauty, love. It takes effort to see those things. It takes openness and vulnerability and courage to experience them. Likewise, a happy and generally stable person is going to perceive pessimism as extreme, sensitivity to socially accepted cruelty as a fragility or overreaction.
Because of this, I truly cannot say that the reason I'm an antinatalist is because I don't want my children to suffer. Joy and beauty in life is guaranteed too. Even if it's short, but sometimes those short moments stay with us forever. The opposite of trauma.
Life is worth something. If it wasn't, evolution wouldn't have tried so hard to ensure sex is as pleasurable for us as possible. Pleasure and love are the keys to survival. It doesn't need to be a "trick of nature" which I think Shopenhauer wrote. Even the animals in the wild, who are in near constant survival mode, can relax and play and have friends and goofy moments. Life is too vibrant and complex for its meaning to be reduced only to suffering and nihilism. But it's sometimes difficult not to see it that way, especially as humans.
This is all to say that I do not believe that bringing a child into this world is morally wrong. At least not in that philosophical sense which places a negative value on life. Yet antinatalists don't really promote suicide, even if some if them are misanthropic enough to preach the benefits of total human extinction. Another prevailing argument antinatalists have is the absence of consent in their own birth. As if existence is the most fundamental violation of their rights, akin to rape, even if asking an unborn baby if they want to be born is literally impossible. Even if babies could consent, how could they possibly make an informed decision? Based on what? The fact that your parents chose to have you instead of aborting you or simply refusing to have sex. I guess I see the issue if you're dealing with parents who mistreated you, neglected you, or because their desire to have you is not meaningful enough for you. Choice is such a slippery thing sometimes when it comes to these big, broad questions. A Zen master might say that you did not choose to be born but you choose to suffer. Does the wind choose to sway the trees? You aren't here to suffer. You're here to be here... Or something.
If choosing to create life nonconsensual with respect to that life, then so is choosing to abort that life. This is why pro-life and pro-choice movements will never see eye to eye. Is it your choice or are you making it for someone else? Why is an umborn life more valuable than the one that already exists?
Which neatly brings me to my next point.
My real reason I don't want kids is the absolute horror, disgust, revulsion and mortal fear I feel at the idea of childbirth. Nothing in existence brings out a more visceral phobia in my mind than me going through pregnancy and labour, or even having to witness it. Even when I'm near a pregnant woman I feel an animalistic sense of danger kick in, I immediately associate pregnancy with danger. Unborn life with imminent death. A body being consumed from within by a parasitic entity. I wonder why we don't just lay eggs like why are mammals a thing? What was the point in evolving from laying eggs to growing a creature in your body for months at a time while it eats what you eat.
Which is a funny thing for me to say after watching Alien. Eggs are really superior to wombs, not to mention is ensures gender equality. Or some animals can lay the eggs, bury them, and then just move on with their life.
There's also the fact that I hate my genes. I don't want to pass them on. I'd feel guilty. We don't know enough about genes anyway - the human genome project raised more questions than it answered.
Though I do admit that if there was a man I loved so much I literally wanted his babies, I would focus more on his genes passing on more than mine. I mean genetic predisposions are basically a random dice roll. Sometimes you're more like one parent and less like the other. Sometimes you skip over both and have more traits from your grandparents and so on.
I have absolutely zero confidence in myself as a potential parent. Even if there's tons of literally, content, classes, entire communities and people offering guidance on parenting.
I suppose the final big reason has a more... revolutionary angle.
To refuse to have children is fundamentally anticapitalist. Anti-nationalist. It's more ecological too. Most parents can't protest or fight or participate in resistance movements. Not only because they have to work to provide for their children, but they also put those children at risk if they're a public figure.
I may not be a protester or a revolutionary (yet? Who knows), but the fact that antinatalism could force our current economic, political and social dynamic to grind its gears to a halt is undeniable. I like the idea of antinatalism as a politically informed decision. It feels solid. Like refusing to sacrifice your baby to a meatgrinder. By infusing antinatalism with politics I feel like I'm fighting FOR something, not against something. I'm saying that I refuse to bring a child into this world and until it gets better, everyone should refuse. This shit sucks and it feels like we're overdue a societal collapse anyway. It sounds crazy, like how could you convince people to abstain from parenthood for possibly decades, but this is one way to fight for the future. No babies, no wage slaves. The only way to actually put children first is to refuse to have them until something in the world changes for the better. This feels like never, but who knows.
The answer is not to say "life sucks this world is a shithole so why would you spawn an innocent baby into it" but to make the world better somehow, maybe even a little is enough, so that even a shithole world has enough hope for the next generation to keep the flame going.

I should also state something kind of obvious and that I am definitely open to considering and very much admire.
Adoption. Loving and caring after unwanted children, giving them a better life. That I could happily get behind.
And if I really really inexplicably wanted my own biological child I'd have to get rich enough to afford a surrogate. Or go through some prolonged treatment specialising in extreme body horror childbirth phobias because holy shit. I would genuinely legitimately rather get shot than go through a full pregnancy and childbirth. It's not worth it. Everything about pregnancy and childbirth and postnatal stuff fills me with disgust and dread and panic. Unless it's an actual horror film. What horrifies me is all the medical and biological stuff. All the endless complications that often arise. How traumatising it is. The idea of giving birth in the same soulless sterile building where people suffer and die, surrounded by uniformed people you don't know (nurses, doctors, patients) is completely insane to me. I would never give birth in a hospital. I'll take the midwives but god. I'd feel more comfortable giving birth in a shitty dirty apartment in a refugee town, like the miracle baby "Children of Men" honestly. And I have nothing against hospitals. I'm not afraid of all that. It just feels too cold, mechanical, soulless and unnatural as a baby's first introduction to the world. Idk. It feels deeply wrong to me personally so I wouldn't do it, but I think there's birthing lodges or something. Comforting accommodation specifically designed for people who don't want to give birth in the hospital or at home. Maybe I'm making shit up, who cares.
There's an old Roman saying that goes "where there is life, there is hope" and I guess this is literally what children represent. Hope, especially for a better future, and maybe that's why people have kids. But I feel like we're fucking up so badly as a society and as a civilization that even the youngest generations can already seem hopeless. But I don't actually believe that. Children are pliable and easily programmable. Only the most extreme damage is beyond saving, and even then it's inexplicably dependent on individuals who can and do defy impossible odds. Like the daughter of Josef Fritzl, who didn't turn into a suicidal or murderous soulless maniac despite what she went through.
Hope is simultaneously the most fragile and tenacious thing, isn't it?

Current Mood: hopeful

Nobody ever gave me a reason to hate them or want to harm them. As a kid, I felt that way toward most people without a reason. I didn't like anyone but I still had a good time.
Then somewhere along the way Nazarene brainrot wormed into my psyche and I believed I was supposed to bleed. To give generously, to help those in need, to set aside my comfort to hold another's heart. Abandoning myself at the altar of human compassion. I want to live in a world where cooperation not competition drives human progress. Where no one is left to drown alone. I wanted to be the light, but all I got was this lousy villain arc.

I have been going through a rough time. The fact that I cannot rely on anyone for any kind of support right now is the harshest wake up call of my life, honestly. I'm reeling.
Part of me is used to redirecting all of the pain and disappointment towards myself. It's what I've done for years. Saying things like I'm the burden, I'm the failure, I'm better off dead etc. When the reality is people are shit and I insist on digging for gold. The world is shit. Being kind to others doesn't mean anything. And it's difficult for me to wrap my head around it because that's not the kind of person I am. I treat people the way they treat me, and if they're good to me I multiply that goodness because I enjoy it. I suppose now I want revenge, pray for karma. At the very least I won't pretend I'm not disappointed, even with basic expectations, and I can't do it any more. I can't be a kind, generous person to those who barely lift a finger for me. Fuck that "unconditional" shit.
I'm not dumb. I understand sometimes it's hard. But the fact that people would rather abandon or use each other in tough times instead of coming together and strengthening bonds is sad. I would give the shirt off my fucking back. Because I know what it's like to be neglected, to feel like you're alone with your problems. I empathise with that. But God forbid I show weakness. God forbid I want comfort and compassion and SUPPORT. I really just played myself.

I'm done.
I'm done with people.
I know I am valuable, I know I matter. I know I'm not a burden because I literally ask for so little, and so rarely. If I could meet myself, I'd be good to her. And that's what I'm doing, that's what I'm committing to. I hate you all, thanks for nothing. When I have everything and become everything you always wanted, you'll get nothing from me, and you'll call me a selfish bitch and I'll laugh and ask why you think you're entitled to get anything from me.
I'm done saying "it's me and my mental illness" actually people are heartless soulless fucking bastards. They're the worthless ones. The sooner I accept this the sooner I'll be free. I can count maybe like three people I know who are worth anything. The rest could die tomorrow and I wouldn't even notice.
And it's always the people close to you that bring you down the most, while they smile to your face and tell you how proud they are of how "strong" you are.
I mean, wow.
If you really want to know what you mean to someone, try having a very hard time. Whether it's financial or emotional or health related. Try asking for help when you genuinely need it. See who actually shows up for you. Notice who is actually trying to uplift you. They're the only people who actually care if you live or die. And if you don't have anyone like that, you have yourself. Don't just lay down and die like a dog. Make them regret leaving you to your own devices, and then feel the satisfaction of abandoning them when they need you. Because I promise, it will come back around.
At least, I hope it will.

I felt like shit, so naturally I'll be valued as much. I'm not tolerating it anymore. Neither from myself, nor from others.

Current Mood: irate
Current Location: Deep

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Gabrielle S.C

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March 2026

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The last shadow puppet show

on the spectrum but it's not autism

Who am I when I am not dreaming myself?

I Find That Mollycoddling!

Opiate Intolerance

Confession of an Era

Pregnant With Hope

Enemies to lovers but it's me with myself

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March 2026

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