What others call “friends” feel like tourists in my mind.
What others call “friends” feel like tourists in my mind.
―
Atrona Grizel
Cosmos offers
only different forms of subjugation and nothing else at all. And yet, humans
still chase after the mirage of casual freedom. Because what else is there to
do in a prison but draw maps of imaginary exits?
―
Atrona Grizel
In the first
years of my lovelessness, I experienced the unpleasant sides of this feeling
very intensely. I remember moments when I would sit or lie on the floor all day
long, doing nothing but staring at the ceiling and crying; how it would
continue with a fit of laughter stemming from exhaustion accompanied by long
self-conversations, and how it would end not with a sense of “relief” but with
a sense of “postponement,” for lovelessness was persistent. The walls felt as
though they didn’t let sound through, because even if I screamed, even if
someone heard, no one would understand. I was surrounded by people. But what
was the love they gave me? It wasn’t love. Between a school filled with the
same shallow and indifferent people and a house occupied by two parents whose
very existence felt uncertain, I was stuck in a cycle where there was no one I
could love or be loved by. I haven’t even experienced casual touches, let alone
hugs or kisses. “Love” was always an abstract thing for me. Sometimes it felt
so suffocating that I experienced loneliness and powerlessness at their deepest
point. Back then I was reactive, of course. But as the years went by, I didn’t
become reflexive; I was “forced” to become reflexive. What I mean is, there was
nothing outside myself I could take refuge in, and independence was not so much
a form of power or display as it was the only option. Thinking of anything
other than handling everything on my own was forbidden by my own mind, because
such a thing wasn’t even possible. In this way, my years passed, and a self
shaped around lovelessness formed. That is, lovelessness had turned not into a
permanent pain but into a kind of wave that seized me at certain moments. More
importantly, it had turned into the bricks that built me. There was a threshold
where I chose power and control over love and closeness, and from that point
on, I began to desire power instead of love—a power that is not necessarily
external but internal, such as the power to live without love. I even forged a
“record” that turns being unloved into an “endurance test,” adding each passing
day to its tally as if it were an accomplisment. If I were to receive love,
this magnificent chart could be ruined right there, reduced to zero. And for
nothing, too, as it mostly happens, because people don’t stay. And now there
was only one question in my mind: “If I were to be loved, wouldn’t these bricks
topple and collapse one by one?”
―
Atrona Grizel
I frequently
enter and exit dark periods, yet I never stay in them for long. They’re more
like a distant relative I visit often. To grieve or rage deeply over anything
appears to me inevitably as a kind of deception, because such states arise only
when one forgets the cosmic perspective and shrinks down into the merely human.
I do not possess the arrogance of experiencing a feeling permanently for long
periods. I see myself before all things, yes, but not as “superior” to all
things. If I did that, I would see only myself. Yet I, though not out of
humility, do not “see” myself at all—and my pride comes from precisely this,
not the opposite. For this reason, it’s impossible for me to experience any
feeling—whether good or bad—in a prolonged and consistent way. Except for the
term “dissociation.” Because I know very well how to dig into existence down to
its deepest points, bending and twisting reality, even annihilating it,
rendering life lifeless or existence nothingness. I am inclined not to what is
called “depression” but to what is called “psychosis.”
―
Atrona Grizel
Even suicide
should have its own pride.
―
Atrona Grizel
Even if I lose as
many comrades as an army, the ones I’ll question will be themselves. Only them.
Always them.
―
Atrona Grizel
There is a
feeling inside me that I “should not” be alive, as if I were meant to have died
long ago. What surrounds me isn’t presence; it’s aftermath. Life doesn’t feel
like existence, but more like what comes after death. I see beings but I see no
person; the world feels completely emptied. It’s as if I ought to have already
passed through and moved on—as if everyone else has gone on while I am left behind,
not in the sense of abandoning or ignoring, but simply due to forgetting. I
feel as though the civilization I belong to departed Earth in vast crews and
set off for the farthest, deepest reaches of the universe, leaving only me
behind. When I dream, I feel as if I’m forming some kind of sizzling network
with them—my lost ancestry.
―
Atrona Grizel
If the question
“why?” is repeated again and again, only an all-eating void awaits the one who
dares to dig that far.
―
Atrona Grizel
Those who embrace
the void lying beneath everything shed the narrow, limited, self-made reality
of humans, and shift into another dimension. Reaching them as an outsider now
requires entirely different instruments, or none at all.
―
Atrona Grizel
There are no
reasons—only excuses and justifications.
―
Atrona Grizel
In the
interactions between average people and other average people, I observe this
persistent implication: “The world is wonderful. Everything is
flawless—perfect. We’re living in absolute paradise.”
―
Atrona Grizel
People whose
minds only start “working” when they read specific texts are desperately
dependent on books—not because they are especially smart or knowledgeable, but
because they lack the kind of mind that can generate its own internal novels
and encyclopedias without relying on outside input. They cannot build
ideas—they borrow them, then decorate those stolen fragments to make them seem
“self-forged.”
―
Atrona Grizel
The sophisticated
writings I scatter here and there are never read by people who ask questions
like, “What was meant to be conveyed here?” “What kind of person could have
written this?” or “What is the purpose here—or is there even one?” In other
words, they are not read by diving into their depths. If I write “black,” they
perceive only the colour itself, never considering that I might also mean
darkness, silence, or pessimism. The responses I receive are either from those
who seem to believe I care deeply about their opinion—saying things like, “This
isn’t really like that”—or from those who assume my intent was to exchange
views through discussion, replying, “I don’t accept this as an argument.”
Others send me mere “messages of affirmation,” ostentatious and shallow at
their core, disguised as philosophy, meant only to keep me as one of their “subscribers”
by creating a deceptive illusion of engagement. Some even send random Quranic
or Biblical verses, utterly unrelated to both me and my writing. In essence, no
real message ever comes. I feel as if I am writing symphonies for ears
accustomed to notification sounds. At times, I find myself wondering: have I
gone too deep in my attempt to purge the superficial from my mind—only to end
up banishing even the profound?
― Atrona Grizel