my flatmates are packing their suitcases. i can hear the couple giggling and pulling off their luggage from the tops of their shared closet. my own suitcase is frowning at me from under my bed at this very moment— i don’t dare to keep it atop my closet, in fear of being under its accusative glare all the time. i haven’t touched it in months. i likely won’t touch it anytime soon. i neglect it and try not to think about how neglecting it is, in turn, neglecting myself.

i can hear them walk and talk excitedly around the flat as they get things ready for their vacation. i’m not listening with intent, their happiness is simply seeping through the thin walls and getting to me. i think they are possibly also getting things ready for their house-move that will come soon after their vacation. they are renting a big house out of the city— a while ago they told me, delighted, that they ‘even have a front lawn!’—just the two of them and their own private space to do whatever with. i am happy for them, they seem like the kind of couple that’s a team and can do whatever they set their minds on. now they have a place to call their home.

i used to have a space like that before i moved here. it was a small space, much smaller than this room i have right now, if i’m to be honest. this is a matchbox, yes, and it feels empty. but my space, ergo a similar matchbox room, i had filled it with so much life that it could breathe by itself. i had shoved everything i loved into every crevice, every corner, onto every wall, every bit of floor and ceiling i could reach, and made it mine. my very child, i had birthed it and fed it all the love i had absorbed from the world. i made it a museum for my experiences— you could walk in and see exactly who i was when i was 13, all the way to 20. it’s a gallery of thoughts and feelings i could visit anytime. a monument i could keep adding on to. a living art piece. an ever expanding space within four walls.

it was my space.

and yes, maybe (read: certainly), i have a hoarding problem, because there is no logic behind collecting the pull-tabs from the cans of sodas i’ve consumed; there’s no need to collect the wrappers of new things i’ve ate and enjoyed; the bills to places i’ve eaten at, with people whose companies i enjoyed; scribbling date, time, and place, on a napkin i wiped my mouth with ages ago— 2019, bricks cafe, 20:34 pm, with mamu and papa. and the napkin paper still has a stain of whatever i ate on it, and the pull-tabs are just tinfoil rubbish, and at a glance to anyone else it is ugly and unhygienic, but when i look at it myself, it’s a feast of memories waiting for me to come to it with a hungry stomach and an empty soul that has forgotten all the good times it has lived through.

i’m not in my space now, this is not my room, i merely inhabit it. i tried to make it my space but trying to live minimalistic has taken the whimsy out of my soul and i think it was a bad decision (i know it was a bad decision) to ever think that my soul that thrives on a feast can live on crumbs. i know now that i am not made for the minimal, i can never be full on less, can never live without the feel of my soul tightening at the seams due to the pressure of how much happiness it stores. and maybe it is making me sick because i haven’t felt that feeling in a while.

my room has always been an extension of what i feel. from the state of it right now, i’m in shutdown mode. the curtains are drawn down. the light is turned off. the daylight knocks on my window and i ignore its presence the same way i’m trying to ignore the absence of tightness at the seams of my soul. at this point, my suitcase might even be begging, crying at me to find a place that feels more homely and less lonely.

i miss having a home. i miss my space.

i want to paint every wall a different color and make nasty murals on it again. i want to hate what i’ve created so much that i create something else on top of it to hide the original creation, and hate it a little less. i want to have things to work with again, my hands are creaking, they’re in need of wanting to do more, make more. i want to strive for originality when there is none left. i want the desire to come up with new things, knowing that i am the very result of two different people— i am not an original being, hence, i cannot create something i have never known.

being an amalgamation, a mixture, how can we ever dream of being distinct, or original? every thought is secondary, every development is an idea that was birthed by someone in another corner of the world already. the fruits the trees bloom come from the soil which derives its nutrients from the death of many rotting things that were once alive.

it is a cycle. it refreshes, yes, but it is never born anew.

so even if my dorsal vagal system is taking a break right now, it means that it’s nothing new. people have experienced this before, heck, i myself have experienced it before. it’s nothing new, it shouldn’t be this serious. but who’s to convince my deflated soul that happiness will come again soon, when it thinks that the very act of deflation will lead to its demise?

writing makes me happy. writing anywhere, anyplace gives me a temporary illusion of being blanketed in a safe, sturdy, productive environment and it feels like a home. as i write this, i am thrumming with the things i want to say, my neurons have finally fired up because i’m writing, typing. the tips of my fingers are tingly when they make contact with the keyboard and lift up to reach for another letter. this kind of tingling sensation— 15 year old me used to dream, hope, beg, i would get to feel when i meet ‘a soulmate’.

i was wrong, clearly. because soulmate turned out to be not a living, breathing person but an action. it turned out to be the act of writing—anything, whatever, it doesn’t matter as long as i write. as long as i write, i am dissipating and receiving love. my soul is inflating a little. it doesn’t matter if any of this is original, it doesn’t matter if i am not the first person to feel this way, or talk of the act of writing as a lover this way.

even if unoriginal, it stems from passion. i will teach myself to ask every time i am berating myself for being unoriginal now— how does it make me feel? if for any moment i think that the answer might be legendary, alive or anything similar, then it would be worth doing.

honestly, maybe i’ll draw up my curtains now. writing has made me feel like this space is a little more my own. even though there’s barely any objects that account for the same feel, at least i have successfully rejuvenated the vibes with a quick write-purge session. i should pull the curtains back up. the sun here sets at 8:30 tonight anyway, i can still greet the daylight. maybe my soul will thank me for it. i still won’t be looking at my suitcase, though.