Past Times

Last month was hectic, so full of everything. I directed my very first short film and it was the most amazing experience, I loved every second of it, even when I hated everything and everyone and just wanted to lock up and cry. I spent Christmas in Tamaulipas with my family for the first time in many years; it was warm and sweet to be with them again.

New Year’s Eve was spent in Tulum again, it’s becoming some kind of tradition, it felt good to be with my tribe again. I was afraid of travelling there because I thought I wouldn’t want to leave, I’d regret moving to Mexico City and try to stay on the beach. But that didn’t happen, I enjoyed and appreciated it all: the place, the people, the life, but I also knew that I am where I’m meant to be right now. I’m not going to lie, of course there were moments when I was by myself on the beach, feeling the breeze on my skin and the soft sand between my fingers or dancing with my friends until the night became day, all laughing and living and loving, or that night in the pool under the Caribbean stars, I didn’t want those moments to end.

But now I’m back in the city, back in school and it’s wonderful. We’ve been editing our short films and sometimes I love it and others I hate it and think its garbage. But overall everything is peaceful and the year is starting the best way it could. And somehow I’m not writing, I feel a bit uninspired and apathetic, a bit empty. It’s like everything is too good, there’s no drama and I try hard to look for it. And it scares me that I might be creating some kind of dependence to not being good in order to create.

There was a time that my life was pure chaos.  Nothing made sense; I had an ocean in my head and oil in my veins. Fernando and I had just broken up and the pain I felt on my chest was unbearable, I watched the days go by and I couldn’t do anything but cry, I really thought I was going to die. I couldn’t eat, sleep, not even talk. Everything hurt and I just couldn’t imagine being happy again, don’t even say to love. I’d wake up in the middle of the night screaming and crying because the nightmares felt too real, but I’d only wake up to the loneliness of an empty bed. Everyone was worried about me and I had to take pills to calm down. Being alive was too much. Every time I thought I’d finally get out of that dark hole, I’d sink again deeper. Life was running away of my hands and fear paralyzed me.

After several months like this, I kind of dried out, I couldn’t cry or feel anything anymore. I was empty, like a ghost, all my energy had been drained and I had nothing more to give. I was so miserable it still scares me when I think about it. Fer and I used to work together; it was the hardest thing to see his face every single day.

After some time, the night life became my scape; I’d work all morning, sleep all evening and party all night, every day. I had ephemeral romances with people from different places on Earth, some of them became great friends, and others were gone with the sea to never be named again.

There was so much music and fun and things that one shouldn’t do, I felt again, everything was madness and everything was real. It hurt but I wanted it all, because I could write and be passionate, and now that everything is so well balanced I’m not sure I can. A few days ago I found in an old notebook something I wrote during that time, and it scares me that I couldn’t recognize myself, how different I think and feel nowadays. And I kind of craved it, but no, because those kinds of feelings are only romantic and poetic when they are gone.

This is the text I found, I didn’t think I would ever post it when I originally wrote it, but for the sake of sanity I will today:

The ashtrays are full of cigarette butts, the floor of junk food packages and the bed of papers, cables and cigarette packs. The plants are dying of thirst and the walls of silence. There is no one here but my thoughts. I don’t want to go out because I don’t want to smile and have small talk. I’m not interested in looking for love or happiness. I don’t want to think, just feel. I just want to write, to bleed emotions. It’s weird being like this, sometimes it feels like I have many people inside one body, thousands of stories in one lifetime. And I know who I am but at the same time I don’t. Sometimes everything is too confusing and I feel like I live in a whirl and everything happens too fast and too slow at the same time. It’s all too much. I’ve always been searching for something but I don’t know what it is. What will happen if I find it? I’m not sure if I’ll be able to recognize it. It’s hard to know if what I feel is real or just a product of my mind. What if that’s the only point of it all? To feel and keep searching.

I know I’m a mess and a hurricane of doubts and emotions. I don’t know what I want and many times I don’t know what I am. I’m blessed and cursed, woman and man, darkness and light. I’m lost and lonely but on the right path and with company. I don’t understand life and I don’t know if one day I’ll surrender to not trying to comprehend it. I’m stories and memories, dreams and illusions, hardships and suffering. I like to write and tell things but I hate talking and prefer to listen. I see everything and it fascinates me, it’s a mystery and a drama. I love love and I hate it. I love pizza and salads, yoga and tobacco. I’m a thousand one contradictions. I live in an odd world, surrounded by ants that think and creatures that I can’t see. I like the music that makes me write and I prefer sadness because it makes my heart explode and blood made of ink run through my fingers.  Some of us only destroying ourselves little by little can feel alive. Maybe we’re just too fucked up, too broken.  Light is pure white, darkness is total black and blood is crimson red, everything that’s real is intense. Even love, sadness and happiness.

It scares me the thought that what my mind says is not real, it’s terrifying not being able to trust in your own brain. Like the world  truly is just something subjective and there are many parallel versions of my life, all of them happening at the same time, not being able to distinguish which one is the one that I’m really living and which are not happening on earth. Sometimes I feel I’m going crazy trying to figure everything out, then I worry too much and everything becomes even more confusing and it makes me dizzy. And suddenly I can’t breathe anymore; my head is spinning and my hands shaking. And I need to take one of those pills that make me calm, even if it’s just for an instant. But later I realize I can’t undo the fists I have or take off the armor anymore and I need two pills. And when everything is fine it gets scarier because it doesn’t feel real and I’m only waiting for the moment that the storm will hit. Then everything becomes dull because I’m not feeling, and if I don’t feel then what do I live for? So I go and look for another accident.

Sometimes I find myself saying things that I don’t think, things I don’t believe at all, but I say them anyway just to be against everyone. Like if instead of trying to fit in I wanted all the opposite, and there’s nothing I reject more than people. But I know how to play my part really well and smile when I have to and say the right words, so I censor myself. Because I don’t want them to think I’m crazy, I don’t want them to think there’s something wrong with me and worry. Because I don’t really care about hurting myself, but it would kill me to hurt someone else, especially the people I love.