CATHARSIS

cat har sis

do you have things you want to say?

i i q c c n L t v c v c e d a q i s m i n l i i o c e c a f i d c q c c

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metaph I’m always in the strangest of places. In a span of three days, I’ve had a Hemingway cocktail, twirled on a dancefloor covered in broken glass, and gone to a room full of extraterrestrial figures. Sometimes it feels like I’m constantly opening doors in hopes of finding a portal to another world. Who knows?

One day I might be transported into a different dimension.

My ideal life is a life where I get to spend each of my days differently. Honestly though, I have zero idea on how to attain that. Routine plays an integral role in the workforce, and time and money are often a luxury. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that glass ceilings can be shattered. Nothing has stopped me from doing so before. Nothing will stop me in the future as well.

hysical

ghost stories

1. I always treat myself to a cup of tea every morning. Coffee is too complicated—I can’t make it exactly the way I want it to be. Tea is good as is. I only have to add milk or honey if I’m feeling fancy.

It’s quiet during this time of day. Usually, my mother has already left for work and my sister isn’t home yet. I’m only one in a dining table for five.

Sometimes I have a planner with me and I map how my day will go. Sometimes I stare at walls for minutes. On far and few instances, I hold a book.

2. I used to own books full of stories about ghosts.

I would devour them alone into the night and end up with no sleep, fearful of the beings I have read about.

Ghosts in particular, it said, are the dead who haven’t attained peace yet. Their endings may have been abrupt, saddling them with unfinished business; or morbid, leaving them with a hunger to exact the same. Regret and revenge are two powerful things and sometimes they are enough to change how the world revolves.

3. A world can revolve around many things. These days, my utmost priority is my well-being. It’s easy to be nice towards somebody else, but why is it so difficult to be kind to yourself?

One thing is for sure though: the world doesn’t stop for anyone. It has ended for me many times and yet it remains moving.

one hundred and twenty-two, one hundred and twenty-three My life lately consists of endless attempts to find quiet.

I’m always in my head: absorbing, processing, remembering, overthinking.

Science says it’s impossible for the human brain to run out of space but sometimes I just get so overwhelmed.

This is why I write, still. I may have grand dreams of publishing books and short stories, but at the end of it all, it’s about not keeping everything to myself. one hundred and twenty-four, one hundred and twenty-five I recently discovered that counting overrides any thought I have at the moment. It’s a good enough distraction, and so now, I spend most of my days reciting numbers in my head. Eleven, forty-four, three hundred and nineteen.

Five, seventy-one, two hundred and fifteen. The farthest I reached was four hundred and eighty-eight—in descending order from nine hundred and ninety. one hundred and twenty-six, one hundred and twenty-seven Today, I’m counting again. Until it goes away. Until they all go away. •

you can’t destroy yourself beautifully. to self-destruct is to get rid of everything, including your need for conformity.

issociativedissociativediss vedissociativedissociative dissociativedissociativedis “Do you mind?”

She’d recognize that voice anywhere. She recognizes it too well that she doesn’t bother looking up or answering the question. She stretches her arm toward the crystal ashtray to tap a Marlboro red. She feels the smoke in her lungs—one, two, three—then she blows, her lips a perfect “o.” A sound of a chair scraping against the floor echoes inside the room. The seat beside her is now occupied.

No one talks. They don’t have to. Oftentimes, she is unnerved by how much knowledge this person has on her—things her parents have no idea about, things her friends would judge her for, things she doesn’t know herself—even before she says them, even before she thinks about them. All of the people around her are trying, passing, fleeting. This person is the only one who is constant.

sociativedissociativedissoc edissociativedissociative di ssociativedissociativediss I want to claw my skin off, she begins to say. It’s always the same person in the mirror, no matter how many times she changes her hair or her nail polish, and this bothers her because she is different now. Everyone says so. She is different now, but why can’t she see it? She has killed her old selves so many times, and yet she’s all of them at once when she’s at her most vulnerable. She has buried them in the recesses of her mind, only to feel like the same person despite all of her efforts to change.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes.” “You always get me.”

She faces the person she’s been talking to. Same hair, same sweater, same knee scar. She’d recognize that voice anywhere, of course, because it is her.

tell me anything. zine by hannah bagain Š