Where I Am Right Now

I know I want to write. But I am not quite sure how — not typing the words. I know how to do that. I understand the mechanics of that; I know how the flow works. I typically start these out with a joke, a reference. However, I can’t think of any right now. I am not sure if this has to do with the fact that over the last few months — nothing less than six — I have been working non-stop and haven’t entirely rested for even a weekend. I am also not sure if the issue is that my mind has largely been ill at ease, many traumas and triggers seem to have been poked in such a short time, and I feel a lot rawer and more vulnerable than I usually do. Perhaps both, perhaps some other reason. I know I want to write, and I know what about. I am just not sure how to do it. All this is to warn you, this is going to be a lot of random thoughts, feelings put into words without care for structure or rhythm or flow.

I didn’t care for the Grammys this year. Not enough of my favourite artists released work in the past year, and a good number of the ones who did didn’t get nominated. On the day of the Grammys, I was going through it — personal issues — but I remember coming across a clip of Olivia Rodrigo performing her hit song ‘drivers license on Twitter live [at the Grammys]. And she sounded good? That was somewhat shocking to me. I had her classified under my list of new-age singers with rabid fan bases but meh vocal abilities. I was pleasantly shocked to realize this was not the case. As the universe had it, the day I listened to her for the first time, I was going through a lot of personal and mental turmoil of some sort. It seemed very serendipitous for me to have come across her when I did. The next day, I played her album ‘SOUR’ at the gym — a weird choice but one I stand by — and I am pleased to say every song on the album is a masterpiece. I personally really connected with and fell in love with ‘jealousy, jealousy’ and ‘enough for you’. It took me perhaps a few weeks to finally realize why these were my standouts.

I have written extensively about my body, attraction, and physicality and I have written or at least alluded to how my sexuality — not my identity, more the physicality, the sex part — is intricately linked to my body and my perception of it. A negative about documenting things digitally and sharing them on the internet is there is almost an expectation on your journey with things like your body being a constant uphill journey. I wish this was the truth. My journey with my body has been more or less like one of those stock charts that go up and down. During the best periods of my body journey, it is generally headed towards a rise in how I view it but even then, there are days I feel like shit. Where the body I am in disgusts me for not functioning or looking or feeling the way I would like for it to. And even during the bad periods, there are days when I do feel good about my body. Days where I wake up convinced I am that bitch, even in the midst of all the unhappiness I feel about my body. It seems a lot of people don’t understand it — or perhaps I expect them not to understand it — so tweeting about or talking about or generally communicating a dislike or unsatisfaction with my body after previously sharing that I liked it at certain points in the past just seems like an inconsistency I would rather not have even if I want to share it.

I haven’t quite felt happy with my body in a while. Over the past few weeks, I have been battling with a lot of feelings of not being enough while being jealous of people who look the way I want to look. I think during the first year of my journey with fitness, I gave myself a lot more grace because I wasn’t constantly comparing my body. I wasn’t looking at what other people looked like. I generally liked who I was. Now I feel like I am expected to look a way I don’t currently look. I feel like I should have exceeded my current level of sexiness or hotness. I should be fitter, with abs, a tiny waist, bigger arms etc. I don’t know if I necessarily want these for myself; I don’t know if I want to look this way I have envisioned in my head. I just feel like I should look this way. I feel like it is expected of me to look this way already. And when people, especially people around me who I love, show a preference or even an admiration for people that look that way I feel I should — a tinier waist, a fatter ass, a bigger chest — it feels like confirmation. It feels like I am hearing a voice go, “that’s the proof; they’ll like you more, want you more, desire more if you look that way. If you had left your current level of hotness into a higher level.”

On some level, perhaps what hurts the most while feeling these feelings, while going through these mentally, is that I feel like I am supposed to get over it. There’s an impatience in how I speak to myself about these, and me constantly telling myself that I am not supposed to dwell on them. I don’t have the right or luxury to dwell on them. I keep trying to make jokes about them, to dismiss them. I should have gotten over it. I don’t claim to be blind or an idiot. I see the compliments people give me. It is all flattering. But that’s how they view me; that’s what they see. I struggle with aligning what they say and what I see. It has, over time, caused some level of distrust for compliments and even, on some level, a refusal to meet with people who know me online. There’s a part of me convinced that the me that people see, the me that they compliment, is a me that doesn’t exist. And if that is true, I am unsure how I would react to watching their face crack if they meet me, and I am not all that.

It’s not that I think I physically distort my photos. I think I do the basics. I like good lighting, and I take pictures when I feel good. The basics in our digital world, I believe. But I find that because the digital version of me gets so many compliments, I have convinced myself that it can’t be the real me, they say. There must be a dissonance between the real me and the digital me that I am not aware of. Because it can’t be the real me that exists that people compliment. Writing it out, I realize how stupid it sounds, but sadly, a concept sounding stupid isn’t enough for you to not believe in it.

This impatience isn’t just from me. I feel like when I talk to the few people, I do want to talk about things like this to, there’s an underlying tinge of impatience. A tone that implies I’m being needy and ungrateful. It makes it harder for me to have my moment. It seems I have said ‘this too shall pass, I’ll be fine las las’ so much that it seems many people believe it’s true. Everyone around me believes I’ll be fine ultimately, so why not hasten the process? If you will be fine in the end, why not rush to the end. I wish I shared in that confidence that I would be fine. That I’ll always be fine.

I think I am also really tired. Not just physically and not even just mentally. I think there’s deep tiredness in me that goes beyond just physical or mental exertion. A spa day or even a vacation isn’t enough because there’s a near-permanent pressure on my brain that I can almost physically feel at every point. Just pushing at my brain, in my head, against my happy memories.

At any point in time, I feel I am expected to turn out great work in my career, look my best, be the best friend that I can be, be the best lover, be a great son and brother, a provider, a nurturer, and maintain a decent social media presence and be grateful for all I am while still constantly not be fully content with where I am. I also need to be pushing for career and personal advancement, and I need to want and go after better and bigger wins even when all I want to do is to sleep. I need to be great and perform amazingly at the level I am at while also working hard to climb to the next level with alarming speed in a way that shows I am special, hardworking and amazing. All these, at the same time. Not on different months, weeks, or days. All at the same time. A typical day in my life includes me waking up early enough, working out, trying to eat healthy, working on nothing less than three projects, making time to call my mother — probably to send money or provide some sort of advice, making time to text friends because I need and want a social life, making out time to work on future projects and goals — this is separate from the projects in hand — or at least lay the foundation for them, go on social media where I see nothing less than five tweets from people performing better than me much more consistently than me, also think about and even try to watch TV or engage in some form of pop culture to ensure that I keep up. Few things quite feel like not working for me anymore. I feel like I need to be exceptional in every aspect of my life, and that pressure is killing me. If I win at seven out of ten things in my life, I feel like I have failed. And failure feels worse than death at this point.

I really want to sleep.