some days are just like that

some days you just gotta label as bad days. not because they're not good, but because they're really, exactly and explicitly, not good.

you have no words for it, because the elements that make up that day are all small. so tiny in fact, that mentioning them would seem petty. so you grit and grin through a day of that and you're tired out and are probably feeling down as well and eureka! you decide to use one of your lifelines and call a friend.

so you call a friend who might understand the situation and then you get told, in a nice, roundabout manner, to "suck it in and take it like a woman", followed by "it's probably because you didn't do this, this, this and this".

why, what else can you do but take off your hat and say humbly, thank you very much sir, for listening, then hang up.

do you dare call another friend? nooo

who's there to call anyway? words would have dried up like an exhausted pot of tea left in the sun for far too many days on a day such as this.

plus nobody likes to have to begin with "hi" and then have to end with "well, thanks anyway" and come away feeling like you've made a bid for that swing when you're on the trapeze, air-clawed for the one you're meant to catch and hang on to but missed instead. it feels like you've huge grains of salt stuck in yon tearducts but you can't cry it out. so now you know how it feels to have salt crystals in your tearducts, only it's not salt: it's the fact that you took a nice long fall and hit more than just your face on the ground and you couldn't even cry.

you're too proud and too logical to do so and yet you can't deny that there is the desire and need to let the floodgates open. then someone asks, "are you okay?"

what may you say, really, other than "no. no, i'm not, but i'll be alright. thanks for asking" while you dust yourself off, all the while bleeding from the nose and a bruise actively spreading across your person?

you're not okay. you know you're not okay, it's obvious. you're not okay. and no, everything's not alright, why do you ask? is it because of the nickname that clearly reads "FUCK OFF", or is it the blood that's dripping from your metaphorical nose onto your metaphorical shirt? someone - you, namely - 'd just missed the trapeze and hit the mother-fuckin' floor, for God's sakes.

"are you alright"??

Gawd.


don't you have something smarter to say, like "i'm here for you if you need me" or do you say nothing at all and well, "let it run itself out", like you usually prefer to do? and it won't be your fault because she probably needed some space, anyway.

well y'know what? when someone's bleeding, the last thing anyone else can do is to leave it alone. worse if you know about it: it's almost like witnessing a car crash but not calling the ambulance "because someone else would have called" or worse yet, "ah don't want no trouble".


the next thing you know, two years have passed and all parties realise: you don't care like he or she - whomever that friend may be - doesn't care and work's always such a wonderful excuse. you're sorry about that but are even sorrier to know that that's the way it is. and it's not touching you anyhow like it's not touching him or her in any way.

it somehow makes you look at the situation and nod, resignedly to yourself in understanding and you realise that welp, life goes on. "c'est la vie," you say. then you turn off the lights, shut down the computer and go to sleep.

and what's changed? it's been like that since three years ago, before you realised the farthest you have gone to is "hi" on instant messenger.



---
walk away from it loren, walk away from it. improve as you must, and leave the worries behind. clichéd as it sounds, pack up your troubles in an old kit bag and smile, smile, smile.

because you're the only thrash-hauler in your world: if you don't throw the rubbish away sooner or later you're going to living in thrash. being happy is not a choice. it is survival.

being strong is not a character trait; it is a by-product of survival/happiness.

and i must be happy, cause that's the way i choose it to be.