A Dead Cockroach

 I often forget how to live through my body, how to really experience the world through my skin. In my head, it is usually “I am lying down” and I have to take effort to truly feel the bed beneath my back and the comfort that comes with that support. The softness of the pillow under my neck and the relaxation that comes with being able to lie down and close my eyes. “I am walking outside” more than taking time to admire how blue the sky is in the morning, not a cloud in sight, the only things in the sky are high reaching branches, full of green leaves and red flowers. Birds chirp from different angles and their songs echo in the distance. There is a bush full of beautiful flowers. They adorn my path and greet me as I head to my classroom.

 Opened up Tiktok for the first time in weeks and I was embarrassed by the strong feeling of envy and want that overcame me. I had to close the app because feeling these emotions left me so confused, especially when I had been boasting of feeling so content just yesterday. 

The days following the end of my exams have been some of the worst. I have not begun or begun to begin any of the plans I had made. I have run away from writing in my diary about anything for days, acting as though ignoring my emotions would make them dissipate; I write here to scream to anyone who bothers to read so that I can find  people who can relate and feel less like a dead cockroach left behind the door. I feel just that way right now, laid on my back with twitching limbs and a slipping conciousness. 

I have not taken a walk since March or so, and the man with the twisted loaf lips who made me stop them does not feel like a valid excuse anymore. I have not seen whether or not my favourite flowers have made it to June, whether new ones have sprouted to welcome the new months, or whether the river is now full from the recent rains. I have not even done home exercises to make up for the walking and my body shows the signs: my stamina has worsened and my legs are stiff. Summer is here and I have not picked up my exercise mat once, I kid myself into thinking that jumping to my favourite songs is enough, and Snapchat memories are torturing me with snaps from last year when I was my fittest. I want to take a walk outside, I want to leave these screens alone but laziness has set in the bones and I have no motivation. 

I think about fashion a lot, I have read about fashion a decent amount, I listen to people about fashion, I look at the way people fashion themselves. I think that fashion is very interesting. One thing that is said a lot about fashion when you hear about it and read about it is that it is very personal, that it has a very close and intricate relationship with the wearer because it is, essentially, second skin. Fashion is viewed as different things by different people, but irregardless of how it is viewed, it is always used as non-verbal communication. People communicate, or try to communicate, to others their beliefs, their social standing, their age, their social groups, how hot/cold it is, etc., whether they intend to or not. Nowadays, it gets harder to successfully communicate with clothing because people take clothing or an object from their original meanings and completely strip it of that and change it to communicate something else. What I have observed is that people usually go two ways: people may use a piece of clothing or object to communicate ideals and behaviours that are completely antithetical to the ones that it had been first intended for (for example, the way that punks are known for their deviant use of safety pins) or people may use the clothing to mimic a group of people that they aspire to be, who first used these pieces or items, therefore muddying the meanings because those in the group could no longer successfully signify only to other members of the group. 

I think about the idea of social groups and their uniforms a lot. It may sound much more formal and rigid than the way it is, it sounds like a person may need to be registered and initiated lol, but it is truly just is a group formed where there is more than one person with a certain set of ideals and interests and behaviour. Most of the time, these people would dress similarly because they are using similar beliefs and attitudes to navigate the world; they are watching and listening to the same musicians, shows; they are reading books that discuss the same themes and concepts. There was no reason for this, I just wanted to talk about it.

Thank you for reading ❣

- M