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Sharing my 
humanity

Here, you will find works uncovering and confronting a wide range of personal and shared experiences. Some through an analytical lens and others through emotional, each piece is rooted in healing matters of the heart. Sharing our experiences captures the essence of what it means to be human, and by exploring these we are able to find understanding and connections that remind us of the power in being both different, and the same. 

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The Best Loves Are Those Unrequited

9/30/2023

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The things we love often don't love us back.

To be more precise: the things we love often cannot love us back.

Your favorite painting in your favorite museum, the short poem you have read obsessively on your mass printed page, the weather that most makes you want to spend the day outside- these cannot love you. Your coffee mug with the perfectly placed chip that your grandma gave you, the sound that comes out when your favorite person laughs, the smell of salt water and sunscreen- all of the things that fill your heart with a fire only love can light. These things cannot love you.

​Many times, there is a person that has given us this thing to love, and we can love this person. They may even love us, too- but the melody of their uneven, and wonderful laugh feels no affection as it floats through the air between. It does not hope you get home safe, despite the sentiment coming from the same source. The poem you have read a thousand times will never have a heart that swells when you're near. The clay coffee mug you refuse to leave behind does not smile when it thinks of you, because it cannot think of you. Although, if this silly, but loved little cup could feel a feeling or two, I bet it would be pretty fond of you.

The care we tend to give the things which cannot feel affection for us often goes beyond that which we give those who can. It is selfless to protect something that does not care for you. To be willing to sacrifice a part of yourself, sometimes small and other times big, to keep a thoughtless thing alive sounds bizarre, but feels easy.

Even though these things may not love, they give the sensation of such. The glorified, all-consuming experience of joy, sorrow, pleasure, confusion. This is what these things give in return. Perhaps, this is how they thank us. They give us the chance to indulge in this universally sought feeling. To be able to love something, without the risk that of not being loved back, or the love suddenly being lost, is an experience like no other. It grants the ultimate freedom to feel. It eliminates the fear of falling. It lets you love recklessly. It breaks down any barriers stopping you from falling, and lets you embrace the fall wholeheartedly, instead.

To love a person is vulnerability personified.

The book by your bedside will not scream at you for misplacing it. The letter that your best friend wrote will never take back its kindness, and appreciation- though your best friend may. The paper, and its inked words, will forever love you. Even if she does not. The couch that reminds you of your first kiss will never spend a week in the hospital, only to never leave. These things cannot love us back- but they can save us when we have lost love. They can remind us that we have had it. They can remind us how to feel it.

There is a special kind of salvation to be found in the escapism of loving the inanimate.

It is the only time we willingly embrace unrequited love. We long for it. These one sided feelings protect from the pain that can come with reciprocation- both failed and successful. In the moments you are not ready to face the risk of loving, or being loved by another- cling to the thing, whatever it may be, that will let you keep your love alive, anyway.
​
So, where do you place your fragile heart when there is not a person to hold it?

You place it in the painting inside your favorite museum. You store it in the short poem you have read obsessively. You leave it in the weather that most makes you want to spend the day outside. You hide it inside the coffee mug with the perfectly placed chip that your grandma gave you.

But who knows? Maybe there actually is a tiny heartbeat inside of the beaten down book by your bed. Perhaps its yellowing pages love you unconditionally. I don’t think it matters much.

Sometimes it is enough to simply have the chance to love, at all.


​
© 2023 Niki Christine. All Rights Reserved.
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You Grant the World a Greater Life

9/21/2023

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The world would be smaller without you in it.

There would be one less soul to experience its existence. There would be less ground covered because your feet would not be there to find it. There would be fewer colors to see because your eyes would not be there to see them. The oceans would begin to shallow without your weight. There would be fallen trees that never got the chance to be heard. Everyone, and everything deserves the chance to be heard. There are sounds, sights, touches, feelings- and an infinite number of things more- that exist solely to be experienced by you. They were born for you. They are written in a language that can only ever be read by you. They do not exist the same for anyone else.

Your experience of the earth, and the earth’s experience of you, cannot be replicated. It can not be recreated. It cannot be understood through any recollection that is not your own. Should you not be there to claim these moments meant for you, they will cease to exist. They will cease to be. The world would be robbed of these moments. This loss would vibrate throughout the earth. This loss would be felt. The world will always notice- because even if the moment is missed, the knowing that it was meant for you will not be forgotten. The loss of you is a loss of great magnitude. You are of great magnitude.

People will die, memories will fade, and seasons will change- but you will never be forgotten. Your essence is woven into every stitch that binds us together. 

You grant the earth something that no one else can. You offer it the honor of your experience. Hated or loved, scared or fearless, curious or content- it does not matter. This life of yours is one that is intricately intertwined and perfectly crafted. It is meant to be. It is meant for you.

​How special it is to know that a universe, with an infinite expanse, needed you to feel whole.

The world will alter by your being in it. Good or bad, the depths of its self-understanding will heighten, all the same. Its self-awareness will deepen and its roots will expand- and there is never harm in understanding. There is only the blessing of promised growth. Should you leave- should you have never been- the lungs that breathe life into our universe would weaken. There would be fewer footprints on overly-watered soil. There wouldn't be enough finger prints on freshly wiped windows. There would be one less hand to feel the tiny heartbeats inside of baby-blue flowers, or hear the screams that come from thorn-ridden roses.

Should you have been born with a different nose, smaller hands or bigger feet, straighter teeth or a less crooked smile- should you have been born without any of the traits you have wished to trade- you would effectively be stealing a bit of life from others. You would be limiting the possibilities of experience, and wounding the potential for one to diversify their world. You would make every life on earth smaller. There would be one less experience- and you are a beautiful experience.

You were born needed. You have always, and forever will be needed.

You change people. This is an inarguable truth. No matter how brief the interaction, or how vast the connection- you grant them a greater life. A larger life. For another to experience you is to get a glimpse into another world. To experience others is to expand. You give them a thing that cannot be found anywhere else. You will heal them. You will confuse them. Perhaps, in some moments, you will scare them. You will hurt them. You will make them angry, and they will make you cry. This is okay. This is proof that you are alive. This is proof that you have lived.

You are love personified. ​

You will make someone's heart skip two beats instead of one. You will meet people with a matching pulse. You will cause laugh lines to deepen- and what better compliment is there than to be a part of the reason someone has smiled so much, or laughed so hard that it has left a mark? There is love in this world that cannot be comprehended without your mind, without your body, and without your soul. It would be wasted if not for you- and wasted love is a terrible tragedy. Life is much better when you are wasted on love, instead.

There are hearts in this world that cannot bear to beat without the beat of yours. There are veins that would bleed themselves dry if forced to endure a life without you. ​You are the blessing of learning, understanding, and of growth- both your own and others. Your vulnerability, and your existence has an immeasurable impact. Share yourself shamelessly. Believe in yourself unabashedly. Bask in the knowledge that you give the world a greater experience- that you expand the life of every person lucky enough to come across you.

You cannot strike your impact from the earth.

To live means to change, but there is one thing that never will. It will remain forever true, no matter the efforts you may make to deny it:

The world would be smaller without you in it. ​



© 2023 Niki Christine. All Rights Reserved.
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The Erosion of Empathy

9/13/2023

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​I worry that I will not be worthy if I am not in pain.

If I am not hurting, how can I be capable of helping?

I used to know the right thing to say. When I sat beside someone tired and trembling from tears, I did not worry about saying something that would cause the sobs to grow louder. When I was met with a person whose face was raging and red with anger, I knew how to scream with them- and I knew what to scream. To create a sense of harmony between myself and someone overcome with emotion was a skill that, at one point, I thought I had. Conceitedly so, maybe- but I would be lying if I said that saying the wrong thing was a common fear of mine.

I can feel this ability slipping away. It began slowly, in coffee shops across the table from friends, then in smoky rooms at crowded parties. I had nothing to say, and when I did, it no longer felt right. For the first time, I could feel myself falter every time I spoke. I felt the words swirl around inside of my chest and bang around my brain before coming out. The flow I once felt in conversation had turned into a foreign sensation. All of the right words seemed to have moved into a book that I have not read- that I cannot find- and should I ever be lucky enough to figure out where it is hidden, something tells me that it would be written in a language I do not know. The hope that I can learn, once again, how to make someone feel seen when they speak feels farther away each day. The inconvenience of second-guessing every sentence I form has begun to encase me. It is cutting my tongue. To be mute has suddenly become appealing.

I did not know why I was losing my ability to converse. I still do not know why, really. Though, I am beginning to guess that it has something to do with my own emotional overwhelm- or lack thereof. I have worked hard to develop a sense of inner peace, and to ground the difficult parts of myself that have spent years torturing me. I am proud of this. For the first time, I feel peace in places that have only ever known chaos. I can sit silently, without a feeling coming forth and taking center stage, as it decenters me. I do not hurt as often now. I do not feel so angry anymore. For this, I am grateful. However, I have begun to wonder if the only reason I was ever able to help others in their most difficult moments was because I was, also, experiencing difficulty in that moment.

There is comfort to be found in knowing that someone else feels as strongly as you. There is understanding. I may not have always understood the situation being presented, but I understood the emotional consumption. When I was most hurt, most angry, most overwhelmed with pain or panic- these are the moments I never questioned the things I would say. All the words fell into our space between with ease. They did not strain. They did not stumble or stutter. I knew the right thing to say because I knew what I needed to hear. I could speak to the terrifying intensity of feeling. I was living it.

I feel less overwhelmed nowadays. I have been lucky to avoid the big emotions that tend to disorient and damage, and thankfully so- but I worry that I have forgotten how exactly, and how strongly these feelings feel. Have these emotions left no scar deep enough to remind me of their impact? This cannot be the case. They have stained me, I know it. I feel them in my memories. I feel them when I recall shattering the mirror on my dresser, because there was something inside of me that I could not bear to confront. I feel them when I remember the December morning in my senior year of high school, when I made the hour drive to campus, only to turn around and drive home with blurry vision and a wet face. I can feel them when I close my eyes and remember the scent of my childhood bedroom, or the perfume of my best friend at sixteen. I can feel it all, and at times the sensation is so strong that these moments seem to be resurrecting and living, once again. I remember these moments. I remember their pain. I feel they're hurt- but they do not consume me the same. Instead, they only sting. They are only memories. These feelings are no longer at the forefront. When I need them, I have to look for them. They are no longer sitting on the surface, with the immediate ability to empathize in hand, ready to connect with any person in need of connection.

So, when I now find myself in a moment where I am expected to respond, I pause. I try to look for these feelings, any of them. I search and beg my body to bring out even the slightest semblance of this intensity again, but there is not enough time. There is never enough time. I would have to sift through all of the debris and disarray that comes with living. I would have to find and untie these feelings from the anchors of healing and time. I would have to let them surface. To find the right words, I would have to relive the moment I once needed them most, but there is not enough time. There is never enough time.

So, I say something else instead, and the words never make much sense, and they never feel as right as they once had, and I do not remember how to make the person in front of me feel understood. I am afraid that if I am not in a state of emotional overwhelm myself, then I am of no help to anyone. How can I help others heal if I do not feel what they feel? Leaving pain in the past comes with the loss of instant understanding. I do not know. I know very little right now, other than the fact that I have changed. It has been good, it has been rehabilitating- but with change comes loss. I am mourning many parts of who I have been, recently. This is simply one of those things.

As I re-read this, I feel as though I have said it all wrong. There is no point in re-writing it. I would never find the right words, anyway- but I think that’s okay.



© 2023 Niki Christine. All Rights Reserved.
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To Be or Not to Be - A Life for You or Me?

8/28/2023

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​To give my life for yours is a decision I don't have to decide.

I have this constant, nagging urge to sacrifice my life for the sake of someone else's. It has gotten worse with age, and it gets unbearably worse in the moments I am most gratified. It is especially heightened on the days I find glimpses of the pleasure I have spent and continue to spend much of my life looking for. These blessed feelings always seem to slip out of my grip- stuck in an endless cycle of being caught and being lost. This is a universal experience, the push and pull of good and bad. An inescapable consequence of life. That is okay. It is what lets us know what makes these great feelings so great, anyway.
​
However, this urge does lessen at times. It disappears slightly, though never completely, in the moments I am most in love, or most happy. In these moments, I am overcome with that beautiful, drunken sensation that only true emotional wealth can create. These are the things, the moments, the people- but especially the people- that are most intoxicating. These are the things that force you to hold on tighter to something than you ever have before. In these moments, you cling with the strength of an iron grip to the thing keeping your vision straight- despite being unable to overcome the dizziness and disarray of being wasted. In these moments you also make decisions that you do not decide. In these moments, on these days, these months- or if you are one of the luckiest of the lucky, these years- every path in front of you, that would be the one you took sober, becomes nothing more than a maze full of funhouse mirrors. None of the things you might have done yesterday make sense anymore. There is nothing that could convince you that there is a choice better than the one that keeps you from ever letting go of this moment- that could let your grip on this thing, that is keeping you standing upright, risk even the slightest slip. There is nothing more important than this life-line of a thing that is holding you still enough to see the funhouse-filled maze, at all.

In these moments, I hold on for dear life. There is a salvation that comes with finding, even just a semblance, of the happiness you have spent your life searching for. It makes you selfish. It makes me selfish. It makes me new. I do not know how to live in these moments without some guilt banging around inside of me. Without the unwanted toxin of shame constantly threatening to seep into my bloodstream and poison the arteries that let a happy heart beat. To feel guilt for good feelings, I imagine, is not such a universal experience- nor is it a natural consequence of being alive- but I do imagine that it is still an all-consuming truth for many. Simply just to feel this guilt makes me selfish. It magnifies this already irrational condemnation and triples its size, all to create an even greater self-centered being that, especially in these moments, I despise.

Love makes you stupid- but how beautiful it is to be forced into foolishness by something as delicate and marvelous as love, and happiness.

It makes life wonderfully, ragingly simple. Yet, it also makes you a little empty-headed. A trade-off worth making, I’d say. The battle between self-preservation and selflessness is one that is a bit dumb, anyway. The guide to balancing giving and taking, to embrace some well-deserved hedonism while practicing the compassion that comes with self-sacrifice, would be much less frustrating should it be better defined. Nothing is defined enough in life. This is no exception. There is no promise to let you know that you have done it right, that you are doing it right- but oh, how I wish this could be the question, just this one, that could be the exception.

I hate the guilt that comes with the blessings of being happy.

On the days I am most at peace and overcome with nothing other than contentment, I do not make the decisions that decide to give my life for yours. I would do it blind. However, I would also make this same reflexive, instinct-driven decision while intoxicatingly happy- but in those moments, there is an undeniable switch from all to one. That thing- that person- becomes the ultimate object of my sacrificial affection. These are moments where I would also, without hesitation, give my life. To feel something so profoundly good has a special way of making the already inconvenient guilt of a good day worse. Sometimes the shame hits me only a little, but it mostly just slams its entire body unapologetically into mine. Is it selfish to narrow down the greater half of my altruism to a single person? I ask this in the name of being truly honest in my questioning- because it is hardly ever a thing that could make me feel such an unwavering, dedication to its protection that I would exchange its life for mine- it is usually, if not always, the life of an admired other.

Sometimes I imagine it to be my mom, and I can feel the useless tears begin to fill my eyes. In others, it is the face of my best friend. If these moments ever came to be, I would, without the slightest sense of hesitancy, let myself fall. I would take this fall, even if it meant I would never get the chance to fall again. I would take the loss in moments much less serious if it meant giving a glimmer of the warmth born by happiness- that I hope is felt wholeheartedly and purely, with any notions of guilt far gone and forgotten. Perhaps it is the chance to see the world outside of a hometown for the first time, or to buy the last book left on a tired store-shelf.

Let them buy the book. Let them take the last train ticket, or have the last piece of cake at a boring birthday party- and one day, someone will step aside and selflessly hand these moments back to you. That is the cycle of life I pray for. I believe in karma, I suppose, more than I believe in much else. Sometimes, I think that my faith in this unprovable idea borders on religious- but all faith is absurd, so place it wherever you please. Place it in the place that lets you embrace the absurdity of faith, at all.

It is selfish. To think my good actions may be pointed back at me someday seems hardly altruistic. It is not always why I make the choice that sets me in second place- but I cannot deny that, at times, it is- but should they never repeat and circle back my way, it would be alright. It feels good, anyway. I guess this might be fine. I suppose being selfish every now and then isn’t the biggest sin one can commit. We all deserve a good life. We all deserve getting to experience some of the little, and some of the big things that make for a good life. I feel selfish writing this- but I know I am not the only one struggling with the guilt that comes with having a happy moment. I have read enough books, studied enough films, and binged enough T.V. shows to know that there is an abundance of characters who feel this fear of being undeserving of a good thing. Maybe as a result of a particular pain point from their past, which has yet to be evicted from their mind, or perhaps it is the side-effect of a life spent around people who steal the happiness of others for the sake of their own. Either way, these characters are all the same- defeatedly unable to accept that they are allowed to let good things come their way. It is not unheard of, is what I am trying to say.

I will admit that I have yet to heal well enough to truly feel what I am now about to say, but I want to end this with something I know, without doubt, to be true- and with that, I hope that I will, one day, be able to indulge in this truth, too.

You are inarguably, undeniably deserving of a good life.

If there is one thing you must hold onto forever- that you must cling to in the moments you are wasted on wonderful feelings and the times you are a sunken ship in a sea of guilt- please, hold onto this:

To have a good life is not a gift you must earn, it is a birthright.



© 2023 Niki Christine. All Rights Reserved.
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In Memory, We Surrender 

8/16/2023

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​I leave for you.
Isn’t that crazy?
I left for you once,
and now I do it again daily.
1,762 days later, I can’t hold my hands straight
enough to keep from drifting into the street,
and nearly every night I witness death with
a gruesome and gut-wrenching repeat.
All of my efforts to forget you are forgotten when I sleep,
so by the time I lay in bed,
I prepare for this fated, nightly, defeat.
I picture your friends
and suddenly their mine,
and your hands are tied around my neck as
my fingers begin to lose all sense and sign.
My feet press down on both sides at once
and losing control becomes personified.
But I don’t worry,
because it is you that guides me
back into the center of the lines,
where I stand alone under shaky city lights
that don’t exist in the back roads back home,
that don’t exist in the streets that watched
me collect all of the years that contain childhood.
These are cement lanes built by men
that chose to forget the colors of concrete
in favor of escaping the peculiar punishment
that is upheld morality.
No guiding sight exists in paths painted by people
who opted to turn off the lights.
Those streets I once knew
were built by men who would
rather pronounce their principles blind
than admit them dead.
They would choose this even if their life depended on it.
They would choose this even if their life was life defined by it.
In these dreams, the cement is smashed into
my tiny run down bit of metal,
which so violently makes the monster
of rusting mass go flying.
In this moment, the emptiness begins somehow
filling a void we can all see
as it slowly begins to consume its own self, endlessly.
The debree falls to the feet of our earth, crashing so quickly
that it flies right by the eyes of a god,
the one that watches from down below
where observance is free but his recognition a privilege
not granted to those so obsolete.
But don’t worry,
my hands stay so tightly wound around this steering wheel
that the tendons are turning white,
and I feel nothing at all.
Nothing in the slightest,
nothing but the grief that only burnt leather can lend
as it melts and molds to your wrists.
A scent of erosion and iron carefully untangles my fingers
and reaches for the end of my grip
where it rips quietly into my skin and makes
a home out of the caves behind ribs,
placing itself so perfectly that I am sure,
I will never forget.
And you promise me, like always,
you’ll be back tomorrow,
and the day after that,
and I won’t remember why I can’t get my hands off this steering wheel
and I won’t be able to recall why I am on this street.
Or better yet,
why it has become a mix of both you and me
and why my mind spends its time in sleep,
a place meant for peace,
writing horrific eulogies in honor of this memory.
My own voice wasn’t even convincing
the first time I tried to say
I left for me.



© 2023 Niki Christine. All Rights Reserved.
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In Death We Do Not Part

8/15/2023

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There is a corpse living under my bed.

The air is stiff there. She does not need much to survive, but she needs the immeasurable to die. I see glimpses of her when I pass by the right side of my bed to open a nearly empty closet. The wine-colored nail polish, that I wore for the three years after my fourteenth birthday, will catch your eye first. The blue shoes I threw away nine months ago, as I packed for a cross-state move with impairing uncertainty, will demand your attention next. There is little else that can be seen. I do not know what has cemented her to the past, yet keeps her impossibly alive in the present. I have never found the wound responsible for her unsettling stillness. I have never looked. Perhaps it is not a wound, at all- but instead the weight of an unyielding anchor. Either way, I do not wish to know. If I found the cause, I am afraid that I would try and fix it. If it is fixed, she might learn to move. If she is healed, she may decide to leave. As of now, she does not move, and she does not see- but she hears. I swear, she hears.

She must- because I hear her. A small voice that begs to be louder echoes throughout the room at night. The sound bounces off the walls and pierces the part of my brain that does not understand silence. Her company is familiar. It is comforting. There are times of sudden, unexpected quiet, however- and in these moments of absence comes my ungrounding. So, on these days that her voice has lapsed, I look for it. I walk in tireless circles around the places I heard her last. I flip open the books she loved and endlessly scan the pages for her favorite words. I let the songs that ripped her heart open begin to pull apart mine. I let the journals, where all her most sacred confessions sleep, confound me once more. I grant the lines permission to settle inside of my wrecked mind- all in hopes that she will not be able to resist the nostalgic draw. I try to lure her out and keep her awake. I do not let her sleep. I search for her when she tries to hide. I cling to her when she wants to leave. I convince her that she is not ready to go. I do not admit that I am the one who is not ready. I hide the expression of terror that comes with the thought- but we share a heart, and I know she feels the pulse quicken when she is quiet. There are too many missed beats to go unnoticed.
​
I do not know where my past lives, I only know that it does not die.

I do not let it. If the past begins to fade then I tighten my grip. It is what exists behind you that can keep you from returning. It is the truths borne from the past that ensure you do not repeat it- and any semblance of repetition will be innately new, no matter how similar the scent or seemingly identical the color. The touch will be pure, and unknown. The sound will be unrecognizable, and the taste untraceable. No two experiences can be born of the same palette. It is only you, who woke up six months ago, that knows the sensation which left you bedridden on an unnecessarily sunny Wednesday. It is only you, who lived a mere minute ago, that will know the curiosity which led you to this incoherently written rant.

I struggle to reconcile with the fact that I am forever barred from returning to what I once was. My body refuses to accept that it can only be what it is now. Nothing more, and nothing less. It haunts me to know that, in the space between this sentence and the last, there was a loss. A part of what was once me is gone forever. She will spend an eternity in the ether where our past selves go to die- or perhaps she will continue a life outside of my own. I do not get to ask.

When she leaves, I fear she has taken the thing she was meant to give. I worry that she missed the opportunity to divulge the secrets she was meant to tell, or touch the people she was meant to touch. What if she did not leave the mark she was meant to leave? What if her impact becomes nothing more than the ghost of a chance untaken? Or, even worse, what if I repeat the mistakes she made? She is not here to remind me of the depth of their consequences. Will memory serve me well enough?

I remind myself that this cannot be. I walk in tireless circles around the places I heard her last. I flip open the books she loved and endlessly scan the pages for her favorite words. I let the songs that ripped her heart open begin to pull apart mine. I let the journals, where all her most sacred confessions sleep, confound me once more. I walk by the right side of my bed and bask in the relief of wine-colored nail polish. She is stuck there, under the mattress, collecting memories as they come. She has not died. She cannot die. She is everything that I become, and she is all that I have been. We look eerily the same and feel disorientingly different. She remembers the distaste for coffee at seventeen, while I remember the obsessive flavor from twenty minutes ago. I exist in a loop, where I fear losing what cannot leave. In death, we will join together and relive everything- once more- at once. We will feel the varying sensations of every breeze, and embrace all of the confusion that is human contrast.

Our puzzle will be completed, and for the first time, we will be one. I will be the official culmination of an existence- my existence. It is only in the end that we become whole. The missing parts I longed for will collide with the things I collected in life. I will find that they have never been more than what I already had. In that moment, I will miss nothing. I will know nothing more than what I had been, and it will be enough. It will be more than what my current mind can imagine. It will be everything.

Death will bring all who I have been together. The six-year-old, who just got off her first bike, will hold hands with the woman that spilled tea all over her shirt, right before the meeting she thought meant everything. My fear of losing what I have been will die with us. It is unfounded.

​Your past cannot be erased, it cannot be killed. Your existence, in its entirety, is eternal. All that you have been cannot die. You cannot erase yourself from the narrative, and no amount of effort can strike your impact from the earth. You are an amalgamation of every lived moment, and this offers the beautiful blessing of reflection. It is the personified chance to continuously recreate and ceaselessly, unabashedly grow.
​
You live infinitely through the immortality of your untouchable and promised past.


​
© 2023 Niki Christine. All Rights Reserved.
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The Complexities of Being Sane

8/4/2023

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The moments our humanity comes through most are the moments it is unjustified.

​Justification, though the word may sound slightly odd here, encapsulates the confusing depths of human emotion. It creates a clear pipeline of experiencing an unaccountable thing and attempting accountability, anyways- but how can you hold a table accountable for crashing against your big toe? How can you force accountability upon the wire that tripped you? Or the sink that won’t unclog? Is your anger fair when the person next to you breathes a little too loud for your liking? Does this disrupt your sanity? Are you sane, really, if it does?

You are. You are undoubtedly, immensely sane- because you know that the answer is no. Your rationality lives within these questions. It does not die, even if it is sometimes overridden with a bit of instinct. It lives on in these answers, and in these questions. There is no accountability, truly, that can be applied to these occurrences- despite the, often irrational, annoyance they induce. None of us, though, are entirely immune to breakthroughs of madness. We cannot avoid the occasional emptying of the hidden compartments which contain our insanity. They are rooted deep down, circling through our gut and darkening the shades of our blood. To be purified we must purge. We must release some of this madness in exchange for our soundness. There is no sanity without this implicit insanity. It is the reason we know the word at all. It is the reason we can comprehend its meaning. We can understand it, and all of its unsettling implications, because we know its opposite. There is no knowing these words without knowing them together. The meaning dies with us. You understand both sentiments because you feel both. They play tug-of-war in your body, sometimes working in tandem and sometimes not, but you feel them all the same. One more intensely than the other, depending on your particularly favored word. Our complexities are what make us great. It is what makes our mortality immortal.

We cannot always contain the parts of us that are unreasonable.

We are irrational by nature, just as much as we are reasonable. There is seldom a person alive that can experience a life void of the inherent inconsistencies of the self- that is safe from the inconvenient outbursts of the nonsensical. We work through it, and we try to soothe the budding emotions before they can take a greater hold. However, make sure to let these senseless moments live. Let them breathe for just a second. Let them remind you that you are real. That you are not, and never will be, immune to the grounding and gravitational emotions responsible for humanity. Indulge in the unsoundness of existence and all of its varying, unpredictable experiences. To be irrational, unreasonable, illogical- to succumb to your madness for just a moment- that is what lets you truly embrace the bliss of sanity. It is what lets you understand it. To be sane allows you to create a life- but to be insane reminds you that you are alive.
​
Bask in the knowledge that your sanity will not be stolen by madness. It will be grounded.


© 2023 Niki Christine. All Rights Reserved.

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My Heart Beats in Death

8/3/2023

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I died in Boston.

I was born in this city. I died in this city.

I was born in California. I was not born anywhere near the famous cobblestone roads, or the starless nights that come from streets that never sleep. It does not matter. My life did not begin until I stepped out of a freezing cold plane and under an eerily gray September sky. There was little before this time that felt real, that felt alive. I survived in California. I lived in Boston.

There was change beyond comprehension during these years. I made the shift from a small, arguably minuscule, high school town to a city-embedded college. I lived with roommates that I found both fun and frustrating. I obsessed over classes and grades. I drank on weekends until I became bored with the sadness that always seemed to follow. I tried to fall in love. I ignored the parts of myself that overwhelmed me. I sought to indulge in the years that seemed appropriate to not heal oneself- but rather destroy. Though this destruction is sweet and meaningful. It does not ruin you the way other determinants of life tend to. I felt the relief that came with letting go of trying to become a person who understood the world or understood themself. I embraced the few years of ignorance that I knew would never last long enough. I refused to relive the years I had lived before. I was adamant to live a life that was far from my other. I drained the water I had been stuck swimming in. I stopped the whirlpools that spun me around endlessly, that found pleasure in my drowning- that found delight in resuscitating me just to repeat the pattern. The cycle was infinite. Boston cut the ropes which bound us-

but it is not always the worst thing that kills you.

It is not always the moment that, on paper, seems unconquerable. It is not always the experience that left you in the hospital for weeks or the pain that sounds insurmountable when repeated out loud. It is not always the injustice, so unnaturally cruel, that it should not exist in your delicate world. It is not the thing that you were told was unsurvivable. These are never what is written as the cause of death on your self-made doctor's note. It is not the implications that can be inferred from the carefully phrased sentence on your headstone. No, it is hardly ever these things.

It is the cup you dropped the day after.

It is the chilling silence you got from your mother, as your desperation forced your helpless soul to seek her comfort. It is the cool and collected eyes looking back at you as your pain forced its way up your throat and out in the open, where it sat terrified- and rejected- between you and another. It is a dismissal in the moments you needed kindness most. It is the sock sitting carelessly under your bed that belonged to the body that, only moments before, brutalized you. It is the audacity of this useless, unimportant, and menial meaning piece of fabric to continue to exist in the after. It is the inconsideration of the things that cannot consider you. They are steeped in memory. They shamelessly remind you of the violent, yet disturbingly quiet murder you have endured- the fatality you are unsure you can overcome. It is the irremovable and remorseless pain that has bled into all of its intricate seams. It is a reminder of all that is now tainted, and you know that you will never be the same again.

You do not die on the scene. You die at the wake.

In the moments where every ounce of guard, you had spent your life building, suddenly becomes nothing more than unrecognizable rubble. This is when your heart stops. Not during, no. The mind has a special ability to stay alive during the fatal moment itself. The one that, really, should kill you. It blesses you with the savior of detachment so that you can push through to see the next fateful page- where you will watch, with your body frozen, as the cup falls gently off the counter. It will shatter violently, but the world will stay silent.

I do not remember the moment itself so much as I remember the moments after. They count the most. The founding instance is blurry, the following ones crystal. They define the path forward. Will you begin to heal your fractures with a surgically correct cast? Or will you tape over your wounds, unstitched and infected, with shaky hands? How do you proceed after surviving such pain? Though it is a bit unfair and unjust, so much of this answer sits in the hands of those you interact with in the immediate succession. Kind words or cruel, a hug or low blow, a whisper or a scream- these are what define the level of struggle your journey forward will entail. It is not their fault if they only add to the obstacles rather than aid. It is their fault for hurting you. It is not their fault for failing you. It is their fault for failing you. Pick an answer, neither is wrong because neither is real. The fault does not exist. It is a concept that allows you to feel safe, and secure, in the exclamation of your slights, in the declarations of others' wrongdoings- it gives you ground to claim that this pain has been forcibly imposed upon you.

“Do not live guiltlessly,” our bodies beg. “You have hurt me,” it says, “you have irreparably changed me.”

"Admit it." you will say. “Please, admit that you have hurt me."

This is all you want, a confession. At first, you might even think this is all you need. A confession will cure you. It has to. You cannot imagine another way- not yet. You want to be seen in your pain. You want this intangible, crushing weight that has been placed on your chest to be acknowledged. You want what has wronged you to be aired out. You want to be believed, and you want what has caused your pain to be noted by others. You want them to understand that you have changed, and it has been against your will. You want them to love you despite the fact you will never be the same, because you are unsure if what you will become after is a monster. You are unsure if you will ever be good again. The truth that matters most, however, is that you will live on. You are one of the luckier ones if the killing thing itself did not kill you. In spite of all that is inside you wanting to become nothing, you continue. You pick up the shattered clay cup. You burn the sock. You look in the mirror and force yourself to see a loving look in return. You force your eyes to replace the memory of cold ones. Then, life becomes something new, somehow. The eyes staring back at you are warm, once again- or maybe for the first time, but they are warm all the same. The remnants of this death will not disappear entirely. You can still smell it when a memory passes through. You can still feel the rage when you come across a mirror piece of the wreckage. You will still, in fleeting moments, become blinded by a piece of lasting memory- but it is fleeting. It is survivable. The thing itself, the weapon that made the first fatal cut, lives within this new world. It does not dissolve, it integrates. It becomes intertwined with the good moments that will inevitably exist after. It does not become all that you see- all that you feel. You become more, and the pain becomes less. It is not what kills you that defines you, it is what revives you. It is what heals you.

You are not the moment of your destruction, you are the collection of moments after.


​© 2023 Niki Christine. All Rights Reserved.
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The Lover's Paradox

7/26/2023

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​
​Love is big and small at the same time.

I read that in a book once, though the name is far from my memory. The words placed roots in my mind immediately. I have not shaken them since.

There are many things we encounter in life that we do not understand. Some with a specificity, so specific, that it leaves the mind reeling. You are left with an incurable begging to know. Yet, almost involuntarily, you carry these disorienting, or maybe misunderstood, meanings with you. You hold them tight until, one day, you realize why your body has been holding them, all along.

Predictions or prophecies, maybe an intuition guided by pre-written fates- it does not make much of a difference. We hold onto these incomprehensibly sticky things with an iron grip, all the same. Their touch on your being remains nearly unnoticeable as they attach to your insides. They are soft in stature but unbreakable in body. They are paradoxical, and they do not ask for recognition- they demand it. These unclear artifacts sit within and wait to burst out in the moments divinely made just for them. The nagging grows greater as their birthday comes closer. Their cling to your consciousness becomes tighter, minute by minute. Next, this inevitable understanding- your impending moment of epiphany- begins to make itself known. It starts slow, but once the impatience kicks in, there is no stopping its rapid racing to the front of your mind. Finally, their feet make the final step up the self-built staircase, and thus, the moment you were meant to understand, is born. The thing once anticipated has arrived. It now resides in your memory. The wait has ended, and there are no returns on its impacts- wanted or unwanted.

I have had these moments often, and as I grow up, their frequency seems to grow, as well. Sometimes they come out with a raging cry, and other times with a deafening silence that feels endless- but whether it is booming or faint, these first seconds of life instantly stop me in my tracks, all the same. These moments used to bother me, but now they come with a trail of intrigue. As I have aged, I have learned to take these things I cannot seem to put down, despite my little knowledge of their meaning, and assess any hints that might be hidden. They still annoy me, don’t get me wrong, but they no longer drive me mad. I recognize them as the tiny easter eggs they are, placed ever-so-meticulously in your path. Small gifts to give you a glimpse into your future, I would surmise.

To know that love is big and small at the same time is a phrase that my body refuses to release. It is living out its initial stages of codependency and indescribable confusion. I wonder, once its moment has come to pass, what new clue will come to fill its void- but I also wonder if, perhaps, it will never leave. Maybe these hints always remain in their original place- maybe they live inside us forever. Perhaps they become scar tissue, or a newfound freckle on your wrist. Maybe they are made to teach us how to live with a greater aim. Maybe the confusion they once caused becomes an exchange for long-term clarity.

Many of the things I have found history with before such history has occurred are related to love. This leads me to believe that love is an avenue of mine that appears to be a bit more treacherous than others. I suppose love may be one of my life’s greatest confusions. Love may be the thing I will forever need the most help figuring out. Maybe it is love that we all need the most help understanding. Perhaps love is our greatest, universal confusion. To open ourselves up to all of its nuances and facets is both overwhelmingly intuitive and unfairly frustrating. It is an abyss of a feeling. Love is a vortex filled with ideas, beliefs, creations, thoughts and fears- love is all, and it is nothing. It is an umbrella term for so much more- for the vastness that is experiencing existence, and for the immenseness that is experiencing others.

I vividly remember the first set of loving lines that mercilessly meddled with my mind. They live in the book known as Night and Day, by Virginia Woolf. I was seventeen and sad beyond comprehension- at least far beyond the comprehension of a young girl. A loneliness, that I could not name at the time, had me convinced that a life alone was the only life capable of peace. It taught me how to find solace in solitary, but it forced me to believe that it was solitary, alone, that could grant solace. To include others in this small world of mine was unfathomable. I was not raised with hugs to remind me that one could share space with another and remain safe. I was unaware of the beautiful fact that connection could be comforting, and not solely distressing. I did not know that togetherness could be built on a vow of kindness, or a promise of respect. I was not raised to believe that there was both risk and reward, but rather only risk made mistakes. So, for a while, this was my favorite book. Two characters with dichotomous personalities finding connection through solitude. It was a personified paradox. It breathed life into the idea that you can continue to find peace- somehow even greater so- among an other. Though the central theme begins with a belief that being alone is much better than being with others, the pages eventually dissolve into a realization that, with the right people, comfort can continue to be found outside of yourself. This brought me a sense of hope. Maybe I could keep the solace of solitary with another person in the room. My mind wandered into daydreams about this, seemingly untouchable, loving world for years. I found myself answering with, “Definitely Virginia Woolf” when asked who my favorite author was, yet I had never read any other book written by her hand. This particular piece left a stain so great that it was second nature to give her name in the face of this inquiry- and for a long time, staring at those pages felt like staring in a mirror.

“Believe me, Katharine, you'll look back on these days afterwards; you'll remember all the silly things you've said; and you'll find that your life has been built on them. The best of life is built on what we say when we're in love. It isn't nonsense Katherine,' she urged, 'it's the truth, it's the only truth.”

In my freshman year of college, I printed this page and stuck it in a frame. I highlighted the words in pink and put them on the wall right in front of my pillow. These were the lines that involuntarily stitched her book into my heart. Three sentences that hit me in a way far beyond the already impactful depths of the major theme itself. I ached for the reminder daily. I had no real concept of love in these years, or the years before- but, more than anything, I wanted to. I had sorted out, subconsciously, that it was romantic love, and romantic love only, that could fill this void- that could quell this desperate and unbearable desire to sink into the soul of another and find peace. However, my tormented and torn body remained convinced that I could not share my life with another and experience such warmth. I could not let go of the safety that came with believing I was completely content and satisfied by my loneliness. It is comforting, it is familiar, it is secure- but the violent tug-of-war that this contradicting hope and my deeply rooted beliefs played was brutal. The vehement disagreements taking place between monstrous desire and soft-spoken fear was vicious. To this day, I am still not entirely sure what caused every muscle in my body to insatiably crave this sentiment, these lines. It is unbearable at times, the frustration of wanting to understand what love must mean, and how it is you can attain it. It hides behind a locked door that, at times, I am convinced has no key.

The answer remains, and maybe always will, lost on me. I do know, however, that there is a sense of consumption in these lines. A life consumed by love. An existence where all of your best moments are tied up with in this one mysterious, abstract concept. I like to believe that it is love that brings us truth. That it is the things said while we are in love that leaves us in a puddle of honesty- that brings us the cleanest kind of messy salvation there is. When I recall the silliest things I have said, with a wholehearted genuineness, it is only this, often misunderstood feeling, that has been capable of pulling them out.

But love is a weapon just as much as it is a saving-grace.

It is love, and love only, that can make you hear things about your sensitive, most tender points, that you otherwise never would. It is only love that can grant access to the vaults where these vulnerabilities lay. With this power, it is love that has shattered, with ease, a guard in me that I cannot name- that I do not know. In every blissful moment you spend in love, whether with a person or a passion, suddenly there is little standing between your safety and all of its threats. There is no longer a wall that can protect you. All of the silliest, bizarre, beautiful, and wonderful parts you hide will come tumbling out. They emerge in the world unmarked and pure. Their eyes are filled with the innocence of naivety. They will wait to be received. They will hope to be appreciated- and they will wait to be loved. Whether it comes from yourself, or through the understanding of another- they will wait. They will not understand if it does not come. They will not know that some parts of us spend their entire lives waiting. Abandonment does not make sense to them. They will wait, they will hope, they will love- and if it is not returned to them, it is out of love, still, that their hearts will break. The beautiful thing, however, is that you will always have what is needed to give these parts the love they wait for. Let them fall out, and be the one to catch them. Carry them with the care they deserve, and let them love you in return.

When you hide parts of yourself and refuse to let them out, they will hurl themselves with a fury unmatched at the imprisoning walls. They will leave you bruised and battered. Rejection is the fear which keeps you okay with being bruised by these blows, because it is easy to think that there is no pain as unbearable as abandonment- as rejection.

We reject ourselves. We reject others. We reject pursuits, and we reject the choices that could pull us from the pits where we hide our hearts. Rejection is love's greatest foe. It is the mountain that love climbs in an attempt to find freedom.

To love, and to be loved, is to heal.

To express love, and to accept love, is rehabilitating. It is to live. Self-imposed loneliness is no more than rejection personified. One day, I hope to find myself shamelessly, and maybe even recklessly, embracing every awkward, wonderful, and sad moment that comes with indulging in love. There is an overwhelming meaning and purpose that only love can grant us- and I hope to, one day, let that truth consume me entirely.

There is neither a person nor thing that is truly, and completely devoid of love. It is eternally stitched into every crevice, and every being in the world.

Love is freedom, and we would be fools to spend our lives fighting it.

© 2023 Niki Christine. All Rights Reserved.
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The Sound Heard Round the World

7/6/2023

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​The world touches you everywhere.

It breaks through any barriers built in attempts to cut its connection. This constant bond will inevitably lead to the pain of overstimulation- and when you beg for rehabilitative silence, to indulge in an encasement of quiet, it will tell you no. It is not an option. It was never an option, and it will never be an option. Whether it's endless scents, an infinite stream of sounds, the sting of a cold touch, or the comfort of a warm embrace, the world does not let you leave without knowing it. The planet is vibrant and generous in the gifts it gives to make us hear it. It screams at us in universal languages, dialects that are soaked in experiences both wonderful and wrong. Each touch is personal and perfectly catered. Its trace of your skin, its murmurs in your mind- they are so particular that no two people know the world the same. Yet, when we meet in the middle, and talk of the undeniable, unspoken similarities, we learn that the voice always comes from the same speaker. Maybe with a different tone, or a slight shift in pitch, but it comes all so wonderfully the same. It unifies and divides us, but no matter the impact, it will forever sit within us. We cannot, and never will be free of this speaker, of its sound. It will never be silent. No efforts to oppose it will overcome. We will disappear in the vibrational consequences of our own actions before this world shows even the slightest falter in its reverberations.

The human race is a natural disaster.

An invasive species that wrecks the ecosystem unlike any other. There is no life that lives among us who can compete in this race for destruction. It is this man made, deafening explosion of sound, however, that matters most. How can we hear one another in a world designed to drown us out? To overtake the natural noise in which we, already, tirelessly swim? To break through the world's sound barriers with a sound even greater? We cannot hear ourselves. We cannot listen- not if we must sit within the merciless, overwhelm of clashing sounds in competition, with all who play viciously vying for the reward that is our attention. With hearing none of ones self, how could you ever come to focus? The design of the modern day is dominated by a constant feud for our recognition. Hardly ever does one performer win. Hardly ever is one voice heard for longer than a moment. There is too much noise. Whether it is a digitally personified voice, a point made on a page, a scream through a screen- or maybe even the fall of a tree- there are too many sounds to stop our minds from switching focus at incomparable speeds.

We cannot hear each other. There are too many voices we can't make out and too many faces we can hardly see- we cannot possibly take the time to know any of anything, at all. The noise is everywhere, all at once and all too sudden. The world has become too loud for listening. The mind is strong- but against the combined power of a natural and artificial world, our strength, and our resolve, is reduced to nothing. Read a book, write a story, listen to a faceless voice, observe the narratives of another life on a film screen, stimulate yourself with every man made stimulative you can.
“You will amount to nothing without us.”
“You will know nothing, if you do not know us.”
You will not understand the world enough to succeed unless you indulge in every inundation of our manmade commotion. This is the advice that echoes throughout the chambers where these voices, begging for your attention, sleep. They fault silence, they fault stopping. They are the claimed informants needed to achieve a full and well lived life. What a frightful world it is to hear accusations of not being enough unless you have heard the right echoes, in the right ethers, at the right time. Maybe an intimidation tactic, or maybe a warning- it matters little when each leaves such a dark shadow of discomfort.

What we come to know in silence can hold a meaning far beyond what we come to know in sound.

So, take the time to indulge in fantasies, in the bliss of a boundless and wandering mind, in the endless exploration that is silence. The quiet is healing. The quiet can teach you to hear. It takes the polluted and overpopulated pieces, stuck deep in your body, and removes them in honor of pursuing greater passions. Let the overwhelm of headlines, jarring images, underwhelming sentences, and tumultuous videos be calmed. Let yourself be overcome by the things you find matters most. In the quiet of your wandering mind, look for and hold onto all the best meanings you can find. Not every thought can be explored. Some must be released in the sake of sanity. Take in these unavoidable external sounds, both manmade and not, then let them sit in silent rooms. Let them roam through each and every hall, over and over, until you can finally hear the sounds you need most. Create the internal space needed to let these favorite thoughts prosper. Be calm, be anxious, be overwhelmed, or be ambitious- but protect the space that lets you to feel these things. Find out the max fit- the highest capacity your mind can take- then place a secure cap over it each time the top is reached. If you find it too full, shove out the bad and make room for the meaningful.

How can we drown out noise that never stops?

How can we cover our ears when the world will compensate by screaming through screens? I sit across from friends, and there are moments I cannot let myself hear them. I cannot bear to take in anymore. I watch their eyes glaze over as I speak. I feel my mind become absent as they utter. Not always does this happen, and not always does this disconnect feel good, but it reminds me that we are living in this same, recklessly loud world, together. I am not the only one who can't catch their breath when more is added to the messy box that is a million incomplete things in my head. I want to hear more. I want to hold the hands of the ones I love longer. I want to grasp the unexpected, but welcome words, of a stranger. I work towards this, I want this. I know that the life we are building is designed to kill this. The world is loud enough without us. We did not need to create our own with the intention of being louder. It is good to remember, though, that most people do not want to drown you out. It is just an unfortunate side-effect of the noisy life we’ve been born into.

When we can hardly hear ourselves, there is no fault in hardly being able to hear someone else.

​
© 2023 Niki Christine. All Rights Reserved.

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