Reactions.

The things we don't tell people because of the reactions we assume we will get.

Like how I don't tell Jona that, perhaps he is right. In a way, he does influence me. I put smileys where I wouldn't have had before, places where I'm simply neutral. Just to feel like I'd masked a little more of myself, like I want others to think I'm cheerful when I'm feeling nothing.

Like how I don't tell my parents straight how much I love my boyfriend & plan to stay with him no matter what.

Like how I don't tell.

Quite a few other examples, but I'd forgotten. I forget about unhappy things quickly.

Maybe that's why I always say I'm fine when people ask me if I'm tired & if I'm okay. It's almost automatic.

The crazy falls I experience are quickly forgotten. I used to think it was a great quality of mine, but now I realize, it's probably why I don't seek refuge or solutions to my miseries. I wave them off too quickly. So when they come around again, I am still unprepared.

Is it sadistic to have a mild desire for experiences generally deemed negative by society? I don't know. If there's a blame to throw, I'd throw it on the stories I'd read & lost myself in. To get drunk, to club, to live in slums, to drift in life, to get soaked by the rain, to get my heart broken, to befriend thieves, to be hated by the respected, to dress shabbily, to start talking to strangers wherever & whenever, to chalk sidewalks, to gamble, to get in a fight, to slip & fall in public.

Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe I don't know better. Is it that I've been so sheltered, I have not learnt to appreciate what I have?

I know that there's an infinite number of things that I don't know, & that's why I doubt so many of the things I know about. I doubt my own abilities, I doubt other people's abilities.

Nevertheless, no one can claim to know everything. Not me, & not the ones who are telling me things as though they know for sure.

My parents are quite against me being a boy's girlfriend. But I don't remember them ever claiming that we are not going to last & get married blissfully. Maybe it's because they don't dare to. Do I dare to claim that we are going to, though? I think, I can safely say I am stubborn enough to stick to that belief. Only five months, but it has been intense.

Concerning my longing for things that are unorthodox, my experience is that, I'm not so eccentric that there's absolutely no one who doesn't relate. In fact, there are people who shock ME with their eccentricity. It deflates me a lot, but it's fact. I guess everyone wants to feel special.

How would we ever know, who amongst us are the strangest ones? We never tell of desires that will seem out of place, or wrong. We only make known the eccentricities that we are sure people will be surprised at, but not against. We hide the most disgusting, vilest, weirdest, most unacceptable thoughts & feelings we possess.

Because we know that other people's reactions will be to shun us. It's not an assumption. We know. We don't want to be shunned, or condemned. If it's something we actually enjoy, we don't want to be forced to change. All the more if it's something we don't think is wrong at all.

I see glimpses of individuality in people sometimes. Something that looks like the potential to be one of the strangest people I know. A boy in my class is one of them. The girl from Sarawak too. One of my best buddies.

But I'll never know for sure, will I?


Signed, Carmelia.

Feeling, melancholic.
Thinking, maybe someone needs therapy.