Why do we find comfort in playing expired scenarios in our heads, as if sighing would expel all the bad in ourselves, as if living in neither here nor there would help us evacuate the present. As if. As if. As if. "What if you die?" is a less frightening question than "what if you live? (and live as if you're waiting for death)". Nobody thinks about life as much as when an expiration date is set for you. If we avoid food because it would go bad someday, we would starve to death soon enough.
I try not to think about it, but I don't try hard enough. I always wonder how I got to this state, this stage. I dig up all the unhappy events in my childhood and wonder if all those things added up. But it only leaves me more bitter and angry. The triggers are more than ever, and they've taken their positions all over. I was watching a drama series on Ch 8 tonight and the last scene broke my heart. I have never cried over a local drama before. I was watching my childhood on TV. If the script had been my own, I wonder if the family would ever reconcile. The present state of things are not as they were before, but the past leaves a stain you can never wash off. No amount of tears can wash a stain buried so deep within the fabric of the present. Why do we gravitate towards playing expired scenarios in our heads? When you grow up and you learn to function as an independent being, you will never forget how painful growing up was. You will never forget trauma. And if you're not careful, you blame every bad thing on the past.
I don't mean to sigh a lot, but sometimes I have to remind myself to take a deep breath, I have to fill my lungs with air. Butterflies have made my gut their home and they steal all the oxygen in me. I find myself with the funny feeling in my stomach at random times of the day. When I'm crossing the street, when I'm waiting for my train, when I'm watching a movie. I suddenly feel nervous as if I'm stepping into foreign territory for the first time. It's like my gut is a sampan without an anchor, stuck in the middle of the ocean about to be swallowed by the waves. Almost, always almost, but never completely consumed. Maybe I believe sighing would expel all the bad thoughts in me.
I am afraid that if I were to think of death, I would be admitting defeat. But sometimes I have to remind myself that there is a possibility that I would expire young. It makes me live very differently. I know I once said that your expiration date should not alter the way you live your life, because the last page has always been the same. But I don't know how thick my book is, what if I'm a cheap brochure, being handed out in a dirty tunnel where no one frequents. What if I'm an instruction manual of what-not-to-do. But is that how I value life? By its longevity? Is my worth based on how long I live? If I die young, does it mean God loves me any less?
I find myself in the afterlife and in childhood, but seldom in the present. As if living neither here nor there would help evacuate the present.
I'm not sad, I'm not happy. I'm just sobering up from whatever I was consuming.
If everything were predestined, I cannot complain. Looking back, I was in the perfect condition to house this cancer. It's going to take a lot to spring clean and claim the life I was supposed to live. Unless this is how it's all supposed to be.