12:02am

05. 07. 20

7:02pm~

Okay, I'm not mad anymore. You can come closer now.

I've had a lot on my chest a few couple of days, so I just had to burst but, yeah.

I'm...better now.

The sky still feels half sunny and half cloudy where I am, but, I'm calmer as of this moment.

The truth is, most of the time, I don't usually say what I feel when I'm angry. I only do it when it doesn't offend anyone. This has made me resistant to conflict, and learning from my mistakes over time, definitely.

As a child, I was a bit more sheltered than I'd like to admit. Sometimes, I've said to my friends that I have a wicked secret past where I was super cruel to everyone else, but then I've changed. However, this story is fortunately not true. I only said this to people only to look "cool".

(As being bad is apparently "cool" as a teenager.)

In my deep dark shadowy past, I was in fact a big softie, ever since I was young.

The only thing I don't really like to elaborate to people was that the worst I was, by far, was bad at being sociable.

I've learned over time that other kids may have just have been as bad as a liar as I was, though I do admit, I was an exceptionally compulsive liar. Even so much as to drive away one of my best friends back in elementary.

Though, I don't think I lied because I wanted to deceive people so much as I wanted to just be accepted.

When I was in elementary, I vividly remember telling fibs about a couple of things to my classmates, just so I could relate to them and we could play together. 

I said I played soccer, when I didn't, I said I played Pokemon, when I had never touched a card in my life, I lied about getting a new iPhone, when it was my Dad's and I also said that I owned tons of dogs, going so far as to post jpegs of random dogs from google images on my Facebook page.

The truth was, that I never had many hobbies, so much as playing with stuffed toys, running around my yard, reading, Club Penguin and studying. All of the other kids at the time had so much "cool" interests they've accumulated, whereas I not only didn't have those things, I had no friends.

People eventually called me out on my lies and I don't think I ever had a close friend in elementary that I could be fully myself with. From grade 1-6, I don't think I ever acted like "myself". Being that invisible average kid sitting in the corner was my job.

Now that I think of it, probably the reason why I'm typing my thoughts on the internet is because I had so much to say over the years about myself, but I never really said it. (Perhaps, starting this journal is a start?)

It's still hard for me nowadays to form relationships with friends, even as I don't lie anymore. Conversations are brutally difficult to start, criticism is extremely difficult to learn from, social commitments seem impossible to keep and I still sleep with my stuffed toys.

I know that after scrolling through countless subreddits that I am not particularly unique. Perhaps, people haven't lied as much as I did to get friends, but being somewhat introverted seems to have its special place in online culture.

Now people are talking are "having no friends" and "being a loner" as if it's something we all experience. With the technological culture nowadays, I'm not surprised it is. We are living with one foot in the real world and one foot in a non-material meme universe in this day and age. The question really becomes, who should we really connect to? Who should we trust? What will our close friends look like in the future, people from another country rather than in our own neighbourhood?

However, I do think that there is a limit to how we can use "having no friends" as a stamp of relatability in teenage behaviour, just like being 'bad' is cool. Because, as someone who has always had trouble trusting even the closest of friends, I don't think we can throw this term out without implicating what it really means.

Loneliness/isolation is an epidemic, sure. But, if you are comfortable talking to at least one person you love about the deepest of things--if you feel like you have a deep connection with them--then are you really that lonely?

In other words, when you feel like "no one really understands you" but you in fact, have someone that really does, will you say that you're lonely? 

Being someone who was 'lonely' for quite a while back then, I would never have looked over those people, I would be freaking grateful they exist.

Anyways, it's no wonder that often, I still look back to my past and think: what if things could have been different? But the fact is, as my nonexistent internet therapist, Youtube says: "don't spend your entire life changing the past, it's never gonna happen child." 

So, I'm trying my best not to live in the past, and I admit, it has made me a better person.

Again, one day at a time. One day at a time. That is all that matters.

Anyways, I'll leave you with a poem/lyrics I made to the tune of The Lover by OKDAL (Rooftop Moonlight) so that maybe it'll make you (and me) feel better when you do feel alone:

I'll be right here my dear,

Both your hands,

Wrapped in my palms.

My gaze, gently longing,

Only for your safe return.

Not one thing you need,

Not one thing to do for me.

Just one day at a time.

I'll always be right here, once more, my dear.

My curious child, of spangled heart

The pearly night laughs in your eyes

Even when there's another sigh.

"You know the stars,

They're not so far apart you see,

One string,

Smiles between their rays."

The sky clothed in a deeper skin,

A sunset's curtains close.

~So soon called your time to go.

"But in the blue,

Alone in blankets of doubt

As soon as time escaped

I never left, just like before"

I'll be right here my dear,

Both your hands,

Wrapped in my palms.

My gaze, gently longing,

Only for your safe return.

Not one thing you need,

Not one thing to do for me.

Just one day at a time.

I'll always cast my string, once more.

Even if tears must fall,

More than a second time.

Shining through the window,

I'll be waiting right there.

Once your eyes meet mine,

In a midnight sea of unknown.

One more day at a time.

One more day at a time.

I promise, we will make it there, my dear.

<>

This is Cal, signing off.

~8:04pm