No it's not. Nothing is ever how it's supposed to be. As I was making space for writing, the chaotic objects on my desk brought me back to before I break.
My desk is a mess. The tarnished handwriting across the edge of the desk of what I thought I deserved, "Please please please let me get what I want this time." I almost forgot how hard I pleaded until my guts hurt. Whoever I thought was listening, might have marked it 'spam', because none of these things that I craved for has happened yet. But by and by I have reached the checkpoint of understanding that sometimes people think they want the biggest strawberry but they really don't.
My desk is a mess. A white shoe box full of my tools for art lessons when I imagined I could grow more kinds of flowers in the garden of the visual arts' field. It turned out the only thing I grew was sorrow, and I was no more than just a little bug in it that couldn't change anything. But then it started raining paper and the caterpillars on my fingertips reminded me that my next draft could be expressed through words, which was also a form of art. That draft was a masterpiece and those caterpillars have become butterflies and some of them are still alive.
My desk is a mess. Next to the box were fragments of an old copy of Teen Vogue that I'd torn up into bits. The self-image issue got across me pretty fast. Somewhere between the shattered mirror pieces on the palms of my hands, I learnt that trying to be the person you're not is wasting the person you are. Besides, nothing can hurt you when you accept yourself completely.
My desk is a mess. Under the postcards from a far side of the planet, something caught my eye – two key chains I bought for a boy I loved so much it made me sorry but still, I wouldn't regret a single day. One for myself and one for him, "Bring it to me when I come back from England, yeah?" but he walked out of my life before I had the chance to. I got him a fucking adorable key chain and the only things he got me were red eyes from last fall. Before I met him, I was this person who's always getting ready to leave when she finally felt at home. He walked through my door and I didn't want to be a nomad anymore, I wanted to go back. But it wasn't really my choice because he was the one who left. Most nights I just wanted to tie him up with a rope so tight that it cut off his circulations and I would auction him off to the promises he was meant to keep. Even until now, hearing his name in someone else's mouth still makes me shy and it makes me feel bad for feeling this way. And I thought the only meaning left of the key chains was that love isn't enough. But now that I have picked myself up from tripping over Cupid's shoelace, everything's crystal clear. No, love isn't enough. But I can be.
My life is a mess. Those mornings when you've awoken with nothing and no one, the nights when you wonder what it feels like to use your premium credit card to get a piece of beef unstuck between your teeth, but fall asleep being convinced that nothing will ever be what it's supposed to be because the things you would die for haven't really occurred even once. Tell yourself that it doesn't matter, because you are pregnant with the fondest memories and they are the "future" that's not supposed to happen but somehow they did, and it's what keeps you from driving your car off a bridge. Before we break, keep in mind that our future is always, always late.
Out of the huge mess I didn't expect would happen, the passion for writing knocked on my door and turned my house of regrets into evergreen – a forest that never goes dry. On the shelf above my messy writing desk, there's a line which I decorated it with two years ago: In all this chaos, we found safety.
