flashbacks splashbacks

You know what's really disgusting about memory flashbacks?

The same thing that's so disgusting about bulimia.

You think you're done with something, you got it out of your system, it doesn't matter if the enamel of your teeth is completely worn off, it doesn't matter if everything stings and hurts and aches, you got it out, finally.

But then the splashback hits you in the face.

And your entire day is marked by that mixture of disgusting water slapping you in the face. A cold shower you never even knew you needed.

That's what's so disgusting about memory flashbacks.

random book quote of the day

"Randomness - events occurring unpredictably without apparent cause - has been seized on to rescue the nervous system (or rather our view of it) from being a machine without volition or free will."

- Richard L. Gregory, Eye and Brain

Sometimes I wonder about people's background stories and why they say the things they do the way they do.
I think there's something profoundly sad in the way our lives unfold - it's a closed book with filled pages for one person and the imprint, but absence of a wedding ring for another.
Long sleeves and bitten down nails or plastic-filled lips.
A messy bedroom or a chronically clean kitchen.

Failed intentions and unsaid words or explosions of emotion that leave nothing but dust behind?

We all have stories we don't want to have.

random book quote

"Distorted body images are common and demonstrate that there is a difference between the body image and the body itself. Anorexics experience their bodies as fat when they are on the edge of starvation; people with distorted body images, a condition called "body dysmorphic disorder," can experience a part of their body that is perfectly within the norm as defective."

- N. Doidge: The Brain that Changes Itself

random book quote

Opened first book I saw randomly.

'"No center. It doesn't exist. All of us - look at our lives: We have an acceptable level of affluence. We have entertainment. We have a relative freedom of fear. But there's nothing else." I felt I was getting the bad news I'd been trying to avoid for so long.'

- Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma

Sweetbitter

Okay so every once in a while I think about what my life will be like in 10 years.

Lately, I've been thinking about this a lot.

But every time I daydream about it, or dread it, or fantasise about it, it's never the same. And I can't decide whether that's good or not.

It could be a good thing because it meant all my options are open, life is full of different possibilities and I'll never know what's in store for me until it actually happens.

But it could also be a bad thing because it meant none of my desires and hopes will play out and happen - I'll stay where I am right now and not grow any further as a person.

There's a clear film in my head, involving a big house, a kid, bagels and bananas for breakfast, scented candles and fresh flowers on Sunday mornings, bedsheets with crayon marks and research papers with coffee rings on them, read after the night light has been plugged into the wall of a messy but heartwarming room down the hall, cuddles on the couch with a glass of wine, making stupid remarks about an even stupider movie.

Sweet?

But there's another very clear film in my head, involving planes and hotel rooms and fruit and rigorous exercise regimes. Presentations, computers, constantly missing someone but being fulfilled by who I am as a person and by my impact on the world. Again, the research papers with coffee rings on them, but it's a different kind of coffee rings, a serious kind representing the discipline and strength that went into re-reading things long into the night.

Passionate talks and whispers and lipstick stains on hotel sheets bought in upscale department stores, no strollers in sight and whenever possible, long nights of talks and drinking red wine.

Sweet?

The only reality I'm actually afraid of is that I'll become stuck in between these two.

Bitter?

I like how people (including myself) tend to restart everything - over and over and over again. 

I honestly do like this - it signifies hope and belief in better times ahead. Why would anyone restart anything if they didn't believe things will turn for the better?

(because we were programmed to survive)