Eel

Tepid

married with a master’s degree. my words have become less sophisticated. though i dug up my own personal records and found that i was noted to have an interest in effective communication when i was younger. i wonder what drove it - i largely think it was the need to be understood. i am still very literal, logical, and concrete. every time i want to be an effective communicator, muki reminds me that i have not been effectively communicating. especially with my family. it has been 2 years since i moved back to my hometown and i still have the same regrets.

i call it lukewarm indignation. wanting to be angry but knowing you can’t be, and the subsequent frustration i feel moderating my own natural feelings. nothing feels just right or just wrong anymore. everything has an outcome or a consequence, and i have been balancing it all inside of the three pounds of electric pudding buried in my skull. i always miss writing like this, without the need to filter or revise. even now i catch myself wondering if i’m using the right words, as if there ever was a right way to express my own thoughts.

words cannot do these feelings justice. i am sleeping inside of a bedroom that is directly under the bedroom i spent the first year in chicago. the building layout is very similar on every floor. it feels like i’m back in a cramped bedroom, even though now i have much more space. they say feelings can teach you about yourself, but i fail to acknowledge that you could learn anything that comes from self. if it did come from self, maybe i knew it all along.

i also have come to understand that socialization is a form of polarization, and where i live differences are emphasized much more than similarities. diversity is a buzzword nowadays. it is meaningless if “diverse” people share the same ideas and values, because that ruins the entire point of diversity. opinions can and will diverge, and we must be quick to assimilate the information or reject it and move on. like a line of code compiled, it either succeeds or fails.

some regrets are hard to forget.