I’ve been reflecting a lot these days, and keeping myself busy to drown out the feeling of being stuck. I made a promise to myself to upload more this year, so here I am trying to keep my promise by making sure I allot some time to edit last year’s footage.

My recent trip was quite healing. I don’t know, but the sea just gives me a sense of calm whenever I’m near it. It’s always been there whenever I’m in a state too heavy that I can barely breathe. In a way, I feel like the ocean can sense the baggage that I carry, and calls me back so its waves can wash the weight off even just a bit.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time of brief escape, remembering all my childhood memories and the fragments of some moments that root me back.

the sky bleeds the color of your cheeks.

Enjoying the breeze; enjoying life without the pressure to be the best, to just simply be you. No societal pressure, no inner dreams too frustrating to reach, no virtual persona to keep up with. Just you, and mother nature bonding over biscuits. Overlooking a field of green, the wind cool, the occasional visit from the birds. The butterflies from the garden keeping you company as you sit in the patio with a glass of iced tea.

I have begun to wonder where it all roots down to, this delicate thing swirling just under my lungs. It has started to fester, to crowd my insides that sometimes I feel too full, that I cry the rock salt out of my body and create a sea without meaning to.

I wonder if you’ll ever understand the depth.

in the renaissance of when I will finally resurface, I imagine the sea to be filled with light. just a soup of stars that could swallow up every last bit of me. no longer a weight that would drag me down by my clothes, but a breeze that would carry me up until I can kiss the sun right on its cheek. a brightness and warmth that can chase away all the broken promises, left unwanted in the bottom.

A lot of things happened these past few months off screen so processing thoughts and emotions proved to be quite the challenge. I’ve been wanting to get back into the pace of things since April, but due to some …circumstances, I couldn’t bring myself to write about anyone or anything. Whenever things are in real time, I get overwhelmed and I fail to map out a lot of what I want to write and end up growing frustrated. 

This is the only piece I’ve written in almost five months. I kind of forced myself to write more words down and give context to this entry by the cusp of June – simply because I felt like I should express some of the raw emotions still stirring before I step away from whatever I was dealing with.

Actually, when I wrote [The Ghost of a Parasite], it was originally meant to be lighthearted, but as time progressed, it eventually turned out to be more bitter than anything. It took me another month to morph it into something bittersweet rather than this gaping, open-ended thing.

Instead of calling me pretty, he said my heart is beautiful.

“Kyoto is beautiful, isn’t it? Rizu’s heart as well, is beautiful.”

and so her body floated on the dried up sea
over the broken promises, 
and the names that used to grip her by the ankles.