I constantly feel like I'm waiting for something. Preparing for something. I'm almost always preparing myself for 'something' that might happen at moment. As if I need to be ready, at any given moment.

Like something is wrong, and the alarm won't just stop—constant red alert. Always scanning for something. Something that might go wrong.

I have all these roads laid in front of me, and it feels like I'm walking on needles.

This impending doom that might happen, but it never does. It feels a little stupid. The walls are always closing in, and the sky is always crashing down... when in reality, it's just an illusion played by the mind, and I always fall for it.

When I was little, I used to watch kids play this game, which roughly translates to 'ice water'. It involved running around. One kid would be 'it' and run around trying to catch others. The moment they touch another kid, they are frozen (lol turned into ice hence the name) and can't move unless another kid touches and unfreezes them. I suppose I suddenly remembered this because I feel like I am frozen in place, and I'm waiting for someone to unfreeze me. I keep forgetting myself. I keep forgetting it's merely a game, and I can walk out at any moment possibly. This reminds me of the quote "The cage is open, why are you still here?"

Why am I still here?

I can't remember the reason anymore, but I always used to watch kids play rather than participate. It's odd, but I remember them asking me to join, and I would refuse. I refused, and I no longer remember why. That feeling, however, has now seeped into my adult life. I always use the same analogy when describing this feeling. This feeling of sitting in a train station. Everyone is rushing about, busy trying to catch their train, trying to reach some place, while I sit here waiting. All these trains pass by me. Each and every train I could have gotten aboard, but I never do.

I am always watching the world. I am aware, to some extent, but I can never step in. Almost as if I am exiled, but it is I who did it. I blame myself.

I realize being self-aware doesn't mean being able to change. You can't disect something to heal it, you can only tear it apart in order to understand.

Last day of November.

It's finally dawning on me, the year is ending. The next time I wake up, it will be December. It is a strange kind of feeling. Of dread, and relief. Everything that happened this year is laid bare in front of me, and I can't help but find relief that it is over. And that I hope a new kind of light shines for what's to come.

But to me, hope is the small flickering lamp I keep on the corner of my desk, shrouded by piles of memories and emotions I am just too afraid to touch.

Maybe that is why I love the end of a year. It gives me a sense of ending. A feeling of finally closing a long... and rather dreadful book, but glad I have finished it. I also love the feeling of days getting shorter and colder. I feel like a small creature hibernating. Hiding away from the harshness of it all.

Lately, I've had no desire to speak with people. I am not sure if this is a form of self-punishment or an act of self-preservation. Is it isolation, or solitude? But this kind of withdrawal only comes when I am not doing well. My mental health has always swung back and forth like a bridge with no railing... and lately it's been swinging a bit too much on the wrong side.

But I will find a way, as I've always seemed to do. The lamp on my desk is still flickering; however dimly lit it is.

Prompt- Write a short description of an object that reveals something about the person who owns.

I have been staring at it for a while now. I can almost believe it stares right back at me, seeing the depths of my being. So acceptingly so, the only thing it wants is to pour my soul right back into it.

I am quite unsure how long I have had this diary with me. The cover is a faded shade of blue-ish gray. Inconsistent entries only filled half of its pages. You would think why an old diary like this has so many unwritten pages. I wonder that too. I have many diaries, notebooks collecting dust somewhere here in this room, completely neglected from their purposes. But this one only lives under my bed covers, hiding itself from the rest of the world.

If you flip through the pages, you’ll find cute doodles scattered here and there in some pages, while others are scratched and wounded like a battered soldier standing on its last leg.
Some pages remind me of hope and little joys. While with some… it takes a little restraint from me to not rip it apart from the shame of having my heart laid bare there.

Some pages are written by someone who has the exact handwriting as me. If you can believe it. Her words, her feelings, and her existence feel much further, yet as close as the gaps between each line.

Some are only half-finished thoughts I can no longer trace back to me, while others are like incoherent scribbling, as if some toddler with anger issues just learned how to write.

The blank pages, however, are calm and serene. An ocean of endless possibilities and unsaid words. They stare at me, and most days.. I can only stare back.

I love it when I read a book and I see a little reflection of my own. When I can relate to its words and experience. It feels cathartic, a kind of solace. And now, I have to write about it.

Diving into white nights, I didn't really expect myself to relate to the narrator or the story that much. But here I am. The whole idea has been circling in my mind, intertwining with my own experience of daydreaming.


A dreamer, that is what the narrator calls himself, and quite proudly so. On the 2nd night, the narrator goes on to elaborate to Nastenka about his dreams. At first, it seemed he romanticized life in his dreams as he knew all the beautiful places in the city that no one else knew. How fickle real life is and how grand his fantasies are. But then his tone shifts. Shame and anguish start flooding in when reality comes bashing on his door (his unexpected friend). And then resignation settles in when he realizes all of these were mere fantasies, that they amount to nothing. He had never lived. He shall forever remain this way.

And I just can't get over this? lol. Since I was a kid, I had imagined a world beyond my own, and it remained with me for a long time. Everything in my house was alive and conversed with them in my mind. Growing up, I'd write countless stories in my head and live countless lives. Inspired by songs, TV shows, or stories I've read. I could sit for hours on end, staring out the window while disappearing into a world that never existed. I can relate to how the narrator felt he never really lived his life; I feel the same. I always felt stuck. A quiet observer witnessing the ever-changing reality. And I lived in dreams that felt secure; it was in my control. I could be anything and everything.
But as I started growing up, I concluded, my dreams will forever remain dreams. The unrealistic way I hoped my fate would turn out just like my daydreams crumbled and crashed. And to quote a passage from The Book of Disquiet, written by Fernando Pessoa-



I know they'll never come true, the way I dreamed of life and future. And hope is a knife with no handle. I'd never be a big professor in a famous university, I'd never live in a big mansion in the hills, or a small cottage located in the woods. I'll never meet the one I had loved in my dreams. They are all just sand, mere nothing.

But I still dream, I still disappear in worlds other than my own, and I still hope despite being unconvinced. Like a moth drawn to flames.

On a pure utter whim, on a friday afternoon, I thought to myself I want to read a different book and white nights has been on my list. So, I started reading it. I finished in about three hours. I am a slow reader.

Before I start writing about this short story, I wanna talk about 'Bobok', another very short story written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which I was utterly confused by. It was at the end of the book, or rather pdf of the Penguin Classics edition, and I didn't know it was a separate story. I kept trying to find a relation to white nights lol. I finally did some Google and I found out it was a totally separate story XD. But I had fun reading that too. It was an interesting idea of what happens in grave and was humorous.

With that out of the way ... Huge spoilers ahead? Pardon my messy writing.



I really enjoyed reading white nights. I really loved how it was written. I could feel the narrator's loneliness. It really struck me at beginning how he felt everyone was abandoning him, because they were moving on with their own lives. There was a sense of pride and detachment when he talked about his dreams? How his inner narration after talking with Nastenka showed he was in pain and gloomy. He seemed to have a cheerful outward appearance while having a gloomy undertone? It felt like he was masking. Maybe. idk.

When she said stuff like 'I know you', on their first meeting, I found myself screaming at my screen lmao saying 'YOU DONT KNOW HIM!! you JUST MET him." I suppose it bothered me how much they clung to each other in such a short time. The narrator was enchanted and bewildered upon speaking with a girl for the first time, and Nastenka is a teenage girl in distress because she thought the love of her life had abandoned her.

I am not sure if I can be too critical of either character, although, to me it felt like she used him, but she may not have done it intentionally? She was young, didn't know anything about the world, and was very vulnerable. She was lucky the narrator wasn't a manipulative old guy. I saw a comment or post saying the narrator really fantasized the idea of falling in love with an ideal woman, so he would have fallen in love no matter who it was. Nastenka didn't really have anything special for him to be that madly in love.

But personally, I found it very cruel of her, intentional or not, the way she kept saying the narrator should love her. She knew the kind of love the narrator had and wrote in her letter to keep loving her in a brotherly way???? In the heat of a very emotional moment she said perhaps she could love the narrator and forget her lover. But it was such a hasty thing to do, they even thought of moving in together. Then again, the narrator broke his own heart, or set himself for a heartbreak when he was imagning Nastenka might fall of him instead. It's so crazy how this story written 200 years ago is still relevant in todays age, because this does happen in a lot of circumstances. We hope, we expect and project our imagination onto another person.

Anyways.... aside from that, maybe not to his extent, but I do relate to the narrators way of dreaming. Maladaptive daydreaming has been one of my favorite form of coping mechanisms, especially more in my teenage years. I have lived many lives in my dreams, and I could really feel him when he was talking about his reality; that how all those amazing moments he lived were just dreams and mere... nothing. How he never really lived life, he didn't have a real life. The torments when he has to face reality, and how empty his life is. You look around and see how everyone is living reality, almost as if leaving you behind while.. You are stuck in a dream. The narrator never gave us his name, either. I wonder if that points to the fact that he didn't have a proper sense of self.

This short story has a lot of psychology and philosophy packed in it, that I really don't know much about. Maybe one day I might return back here and realize something entirely different. It proves how much of an amazing writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky is, and I would definately try and read and dive more into his works. This was just one of his early stories. Can't wait to read Crime and punishment or his other works.
But that's all for now.

I feel like writing today. I haven't been updating my site lately. Between university and housework, and my mental health towering over them, I haven't had the time to sit down and learn how to code. I found this cool site a few days ago called 'roadmap.sh', and it's a pretty amazing site. I like to have some kind of direction, because I have been jumping around ideas but no clue how to do anything.

Fun thing about coding is it feels new and shiny to my brain lol because there is so much to learn and discover. It tickles my brain in the best way when I see my messy code turn into a neat little webpage. That "ah-hah!" moment when I figure out a solution.

But lately, my attention has drifted to books and One Piece. I am horrible with long series because after a while, I get tired of it. Last year I binged-watched watched whole 200 episodes of One Piece and then dropped. Why? I have no clue lol. But last week I picked it up again, and I am obsessed. I usually watch in between chores, or studies, or uhm.. when I am eating lol.
My love for books has been rekindled as I have been reading "The Guide". I had never heard of this book until I saw it on my syllabus for my Literature major. It's a good book, an awfully easy-to-read book, but it has some nice humor which I am enjoying. Rather than the book itself, the act of reading consistently made me fall in love again with reading. There is a different kind of joy that is tucked between the pages of a book. Not to forget, I finally picked up Atomic Habits; it's been collecting dust in my mind for a long time. I make a point to grab the book and read the pages to develop 1. good habits obviously, and 2. to read more non-fiction.
Aside from all that, my laptops screen has been glitching and I need to the shop to repair it. So until then, I'll be a bit away from working on this site.

My days are busier, and I realize how much a blessing it is.