Hi, I’m not Nice.

I really am not.

When I was growing up, the idea was put into me to be a nice person. Nice people don’t talk back, they don’t yell, they don’t sit hunched over or with their legs spread if they are a girl. Nice people don’t question authority, they don’t sneer, they don’t resent anyone. Nice people help everyone. Nice people don’t talk to strangers. Nice people raise money for charity. Nice people don’t give away their parents’ hard earned money. Nice people believe in God, but not every God otherwise they won’t go to Heaven, and Nice People want to go to Heaven.

It got to a point where I started hating the idea of being nice. Nice people did nothing if they followed everyone’s rules, and ended up not being nice when they did try to follow everyone’s rules because at some point, you’ll give away money that your parents will deem a waste. But that wasn’t the only reason. I just couldn’t like myself enough to be nice.

So, I decided to check up the word in the dictionary; try to get to the basics of the word to see if it would help me embrace it. Nice, initially meant gullible, naive, foolish. It came from the Latin word for not to know, ignorance. Declare me displeased. It evolved to its present meaning of pleasant, agreeable, and/or satisfactory in general. Knowing the original meaning, I can’t help but feel the current meaning is in line with the original to some extent. And that the current meaning doesn’t mean one can in fact, counter anything put forth to them even if they’d be right.

I don’t like myself enough to be nice; be it in the original sense or the current one. People are generally displeased when you point out something off about them, or their ideas and opinions. This irks me because I still want to be a nice person. Old habits are hard to kill; or leave behind. But moreso for the people around me, than myself. I want them to experience having niceness in their lives; or in hanging out with me. But I don’t want to be the nice that is taken advantage of. I don’t want to be the nice that agrees with everything, questions nothing, and doesn’t set people straight on whatever wrong, or one dimensional idea they put forth as the only thing to be. I am not satisfactory, not to myself, not to the general public, not to my family. I don’t feel enough.

So, I’m not nice; and I wholly accept the displeasure that comes with it, no matter how hurt I am by it, or frustrated. Sometimes I don’t even care.

Love, and Things People Don’t Ask

Often, people don’t ask me what it is to love, and be okay with not being with that person. They ask if I’ve ever been in love, and I tell yes, but it seems adding that I didn’t like that person ceases the conversation for them. It doesn’t for me.

Every time love comes up, and the wonders of how can one live without their love, I think of the simplicity in doing so. Literally, just stay away. Don’t communicate, don’t interact; just don’t involve them in your life. Does this men you don’t love them? No. It means you don’t have anything to do with them beyond feeling for them.

Most people find this strange, and the opposite of loving someone. I have observed their ideas on this through their analyses of stories they read, or watch. They believe proximity denotes intensity of emotions; and ridicule the idea of someone being able to love someone else without using any of the five senses in regards to them, that is sight, touch, hearing, taste, or smell. But it happens. People love other people without seeing them, without hearing them, without touching. They do it through having love within themselves.

A lot of the time, people expend too much effort to promote an idea of love being evoked in someone, instead of love already existing in people, and only finding an object of desire when its energy crosses their path. They make movies, write books, preach it in religious spaces and life coaching seminars (which really are religions by themselves), Too many cultures have a binary, cause and effect approach to every aspect of life, which leaves a lot of things deemed unnatural as they can’t be explained for what they are when the mentalities of the cultures refuse to consider what they are as natural. So, ideas like love is inside everyone regardless of an object of desire or affection are deemed ridiculous, and dismissed.

Doing so doesn’t eradicate their existence, however. It doesn’t take the love out of existence. One still loves, one still feels for to whomever they direct their love. They can despair the feeling, or enjoy it, but they don’t have to interact with people to do so. It doesn’t mean that they don’t love the person; but it’s a good option, especially when being close to that person is dangerous in a tangible manner.

I prefer to enjoy the feeling. The warmth it brings, the headiness, the cheer. Despairing has such a lonely taste to it, and hopelessness. That isn’t what one should feel along with love.

When one is raised to believe physical proximity is the only way to experience love, it may seem downright invalidating to love from afar. Despite growing up with parents who were apart due to work commitments more than living in the same house, I still thought interacting with my love everyday was the only way to be in love. I missed out on 2 years of enjoying being in love because of it. I wasn’t supposed to interact with them, though. I tried to do that in the 3rd year of loving, but it didn’t work out. I hate physical proximity. Familiarity breeds contempt with me, and so, the love feelings started dying. I had to let it go for the sake of myself, and feeling good. It wasn’t easy. It hurt a lot, but accepting that was greater relief. It was worth it. A little practise, and a lot of resolve made it happen.

trigger warning, depression

It’s a day in which waking up is an inevitability, but unwanted. I can’t sleep for more than two hours this week, and getting to sleep is a struggle, although I am sleepy all the time. I want to hate it, but the effort is too great. So, I’m in this limbo where nothing is happening, and I’m whining because there are options I should take, but I won’t because I’m too tired, or apathetic, or watching a series and unwilling to turn it off for a few minutes to deal with the insomnia.

It’s a day in which the ground is firm, the sun is hot, the air is dry, and my hair is glossy because the sunshine warms the lotion in my hair, and makes it work the way putting my hair under a drier for a few minutes would if I tried to go near a hair dryer. My skin is dry, my nose bleeds, and my eyes water a lot because of the air. So, when I feel like crying, I have an excuse.

The world is going on with their plans around me. There’s a pregnancy, a loan, a renovation. People are getting jobs, and promotions. Income. People are doing things they want, or as close to it as they can get.

My world remains the same: try to sleep, try not to wake up and fail. Write the story, and keep writing no matter how much I hate it. Listen to music that doesn’t make me cry, or curl up in myself. Listen, and watch shows that will keep my mind from thinking that it’s a good time to google what types of drugs I can overdose on that won’t destroy my organs. I figure contaminated blood is a loss worth the rest of my organs being viable for donation. Or run away from home. Leave and say nothing to anyone. And never return.

It’s been a day; the kind that I will put down as one I found at its end with me still in existence.

Truth Be Told

The year is drawing to an end; at least by the Gregorian calendar. People in China, and Ethiopia have more weeks to theirs, and utterly different year numbers. For the purpose of this post, I go with the UK fronted calendar, and it’s coming to an end. What better way to mark it, and depress myself than by thinking on what I have achieved this year. Truth be told, it’s nothing to write about, and that’s why I’m setting this down.

This year, I have been 27, and depressed.

I have been lazy, and unwilling to get a job.

I haven’t finished my thesis, and collected data by not engaging anyone face to face.

This year, I have met my friends less, I have thought of them less as friends, and even dumped some former friends.

This year, I’ve had less headaches, and more toothaches, less money, and more frustration than I remember. Though not more than 2013.

This year, I gave up. I had planned on publishing books on Amazon, get a job that I would hate, but keep at nevertheless cause I will inevitably hate everything, but commitment is my greatest challenge.

This year, I sucked, and I don’t care enough for it to be a shame for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried to make it a shame. I’ve used all the tactics including what my parents think of me, what I think of myself, my family, my friends, my 13 year old self. None of them are enough to make me feel so ashamed that I change.

This year, I had less suicidal thoughts; and those that I did have weren’t overwhelming. I suck so much that even the thought of my death does nothing for me anymore. No elation, no pity, no motivation to change; nothing.

Truth be told, I’m a woman who works everyday but gets no income; I take care of my grandmother 6 days out of the week, most weeks out of the month; and I am too tired to fight when the world makes me angry.

I’m not the story that people tell to amuse, or caution, or uplift. I’m not a story to anyone but myself, which is why I write this.

One day I’ll come alert and regret these days, and weeks, and years that I have wasted. One day, my mind, and my will will gel, and I will do things again. One year, I’ll sit down, and tally up what I have done with those 365.25/366 days, and they will constitute of tangible things like saving a life, making a life, leaving lives lived. This is not that year.

And if I die before that year; well, it’s a good dream, and a good intention to have.