my invisible encouragement

I love the control i have over my blog, the control to exercise my own perfection. The fun in blogging for me is the slicking of gloss over lipsticked lips -the final touches of perfecting my entry before i click the publish button. The editing of spelling and grammar (because i'm anal about such things), the search for that nice accompanying picture, the addition/deletion of a line or two that makes my writing more structured and so on. So when you visit my blog, you get what i set out to create.

A manufactured glimpse into my soul. But still, this is me. And to anyone reading this, you are my invisible encouragement.

You read but you do not see my furrowed brows in concentration, my eyes glancing and lighting up at the photo in front of me as my fingers dance over my yellowed keyboard. You do not hear me talking to myself, my prayers..my loud and very unfeminine laugh when i read something funny, reverberating off the four walls of the safe haven of my bedroom. I can't sleep if my door is not closed, the unknown darkness that peeks through intimidates me. Even in my own house. You do not taste my lips, the ones i press on my own palm now, trying to remember how it used to feel on something even softer than my own skin. You do not feel my parched throat, swallowing compulsively, frustration building up when my 20 year old vocabulary fails me.

You do not know how it feels like to scrabble around for words and superlatives, in a grubby pursuit to heap them one on top of the other until they reach the sky, when i'm already soaring above them with joy or despair.

I imagine if i write everything i feel all the time- about how i take you for granted, how i lie my insecurities away, the things i resort to doing when i think nobody is around. I want to write about the times i feel so small and foolish. About how i think i can't make my parents proud of me, about how i can be discontented at times, wishing i was smarter, more talented and wanting more in everything i already have but lack. I suppose it will be beautiful somehow, to be so vulnerable to strangers, my soul bared to the white of my bones with nothing to hide, my heart presented online for you to crush. At times, i really want you to know everything about me, to understand that i'm someone real, just like yourself; i have mannerisms, cadences, real curves that extend beyond the M in my name. I want to be the girl whom you think is brave and pure-hearted, i want to be worthy of you who has taken the time to read what i want to say. But i know i can't do all that. At least not yet.

Meanwhile this is where i write in magnified emotions sometimes like everyone else, because it is easy to feel alot behind the monitor. But this is also where i will always write in truth and with love...and in hope that you go away telling yourself to come back again. It is self-denial to say i write solely for myself, i write for invisible encouragement, i write so that someone like you can remember me.

M # Saturday, September 24, 2005.