Seashore and Sad Sonnets

You had plenty of ideas about what it’s supposed to look like, feel like, and taste like.

A tiny hint of ache, just enough to inspire you to keep vomiting words out of your fingers; smells and tastes like fresh nectar to keep the butterflies around and alive; robust enough to protect you from the occasional windstorm; and just as earthy as the pétrichor to remind you the comfort of home.

But it’s not always like that, is it?

Sometimes you’re offered too much that you no longer have an empty vessel to accept it all—and you’re tempted to blame yourself for seemingly not appreciating how much you’re given.

And your front yard garden is filled with scattered remains of rotten petals, all from the dying trees you can’t keep saving, and it’s quite a conspicuous display for every passerby to see.

Those passersby that would try to convince you that you should stop seeking. That your clock has run out, and the bed was already made. That you can’t roam outside past midnight, and your sleeping gown was not meant for strolling outdoors in the muddy grassland.

They thought your house was a glasshouse that they could peek into whenever they wanted. But it was merely a fort with perplexing facades and multifaceted entrances, and they could never interpret its quandary—because even we, cannot.

I had plenty of ideas about what it’s supposed to look like, feel like, and taste like.

And it was a compound of different faces, histories, recollection—yet never one with them all.

It’s a little sad that some are no longer, maybe for the better, but I’d be lying to say I haven’t thought about them since.

Even if it’s just a random band name nobody else recognizes in the middle of a hall, or an unlucky year of never having the perfect chance to say hello.

But my clock has run out, and the bed was already made.

So I would probably sleep inside tonight.

What a funny concept, I thought to myself. No matter how much I genuinely believe that one road leads to an objectively better destination, there would still be a haunting curiosity to look back, and see if the other road brings a more scenic route, or a generally more pleasant drive, perhaps. There may not be an exquisite turquoise lake at the end of it, nor endless white sand beaches with crystal clear inland lagoon – perhaps even just a rugged cliff with the rocky valley at the bottom of it. Leaving ones with no options but to turn back to where the roads start diverging, or jump into the cliff and end it all for good.

We’re now halfway on the first road – and it gets annoyingly bumpy now. I don’t know if shortly, we’d be in a shimmering metropolitan city with the world’s tallest skyscrapers that are featured in those box office movies, or in the middle of a lush hill with fall-coloured trees overlooking the vast ocean. I hope it’s the latter, because no matter how majestic people said the first was, I never had an appetite for a bustling city anyway. It was never for me, no matter how they’ve advertised so hard to convince me that I’ll find my true calling there.

We played songs from the radio as you drove, and I hated what they reminded me of. Although subconsciously, I actually enjoyed it. It just makes me feel guilty, because there you are, trying your best to get us to the destination you promised us, yet here I am, silently relapsing all the sequences where I used to feel thrilled, high on life, and nervously excited, while that particular song played in the background.

But you weren’t in those frames. Those memories belonged to me and anyone but you.

I have bid my final farewell to whoever involved, I really did. Out of politeness and my devotion to what the two of us have built together over time. But I could apparently still tap into those memories to playback the feelings I had – the feelings that are no longer, that are now largely absent in our atmosphere, and yet quite frankly I’ve missed so fucking much.

I felt a surge of transient joy, but now there’s even more guilt. From even daring to watch those clips back – although I had promised myself to lock those tapes up for good. And from wondering why our memories can’t produce the same pleasure – even though we did everything as we were supposed to. Correctly, carefully, and calculatedly.

Or is it because we’ve played everything safely by the rules thus far, and I was never one for a sense of security?

Or that I do still wish I had used up all my allowances to rebel out and damage that part of me in all the hopeless places when the time was still ticking, before the call arrives for us to act like two responsible adults?

My mind had attempted to lure me into resorting towards anything that might offer me even the slightest bit of non-numbness.

But I never thought of the idea of adding others into the equation, still. Because even in that desperation, my priority was to protect you, always. Regardless of songs that came into mind, awkward memories that were only shared between two, faces that resembled my pills of ecstasy, scattered ruins of chances not taken, and all the possibilities that were ever so endless.

It embarrassed me that my journal from years ago was filled with stories of others but you. And that I, shamefully, miss them today. I’m supposed to be safely anchored to you. Even in this sea of confusion and temptation, I was supposed to praise you like I never did others. And aren’t you supposed to make me certain that our ship sails towards home? Or is it all my fault for wanting to feel happy again?

Am I just confused, temporarily, or permanently out of passion?

Why did I replay memories that are not ours? Why do I so badly want to feel something, anything? Why am I suddenly scared of heading into the eye of the storms although the sky seems perfectly clear?