Inkprilled - Blog Posts

I'll do it on Monday. I'll do it on Tuesday. I'll do it on Wednesday. I'll do it on Thursday. I'll do it on Friday. I'll do it on Saturday. I'll do it on Sunday. I'll do it on Mon–and the cycle continues and nothing changes.

Why do you watch me so forlornly? Don't think I didn't notice, I know many of you, I've gazed at your cities with their twinkling lights, the ones that dim the stars to you and I've listened to every secret, every heartfelt want or desperate wish, you tell me your worries and have questions you think I can answer. But mostly you cry, and so very often. I don't have the answers, but I can sit with you, when your sad or lonely at night, when you think your alone.

If the moon could talk what will she say?

There's a girl with my name, we don't look the same but we both huddle under covers when it rains. There's a girl who is almost my age, yet we have the same moon sign and we always forget the time. There's a girl reading what I write who comments every night and I can only hope that life treats you kindly, this girl will one day be in the ground and so will I, but I hope as you age you'll shed those debilitating fears that hold you back and hopefully we'll have lived a life of joy and mostly happy tears.

Me waiting for life to throw me a plot twist, because it seems my main canon event is being a depressed lonely woman/person in her 20s who lays in bed every day and just ......waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and waits and for what? I couldn't tell you, probably waiting to evolve or wake up to a more hopeful tomorrow.

Hope wins every time the sun peaks over the horizon after a long dark night, it softens the day and baths the ground, it warms the air and we breath easier and maybe our souls uncurl a little from that protective crouch we've grown used to, maybe we let our limbs loosen, maybe we let hope sink into our skin, maybe we let it melt our misery from within.

I drag this hope in hand

I pull it along

Shouldering past

all of my mistakes

I hold it up to the sunlight

I call it radience

I don't let go

The book so far consists of messy notes and pieces of different plot ideas that don't fit together built up over two years. Most of them are my frantic half asleep scribblings that don't make any sense lol. Now i just need to build my Frankenstein.

Screw it , I'm going to write this book.

Screw it , I'm going to write this book.

These where the random notes/doodle from the first idea stage for my WIP 'Dead above'. Does anyone else begin brainstorming by thinking of pieces of dialogue first and then creating characters and plot around it.

Sometimes people drift so far away. Friendships that used to be sleep overs and chasing each other around the park after school, are now liking each others posts every once in awhile. Friendships that felt more like a sisterhood now feel like barely a friend of a friend from work you once knew, memories of us are so much sweeter than this distant present us. We've turned tepid and bland. We've faded.

I love your writing and I just read your "Dead above" snippet/excerpt and I'm so intrigued and interesting in your plans for it as a whole, is this a snippet of a book your writing or another project.

Thank you! Dead above is the title of the book I'm writing and the post was a snippet from it, I intend to finish the first draft and be on the second by the end of this year and hopefully (fingers crossed) publish it. I have very limited knowledge about how to get published, but at the moment I'm just excited about the writing process. Thankyou for taking an interest, it's very motivating 💛

Excerpt from wip Dead above

Sometimes, I go to the store at night, just because the streets are empty and there’s a kind of loneliness that feels almost comforting. But sometimes I’ll see girls, laughing, glitter in their hair sparkling as they spill out of pubs, all bright-eyed, all full of life. It hits me hard, that ache in my chest, that longing for something I can’t quite name. I wonder what it’s like, to have a group of people, to drink and laugh and feel part of something.

Okay so I'm not American and I don't live there but I still decided to download xiaohongshu (rednote). The only social media I actually use and post on is Tumblr but I wanted to have little nosey lol.

First of all it was really quite funny and heartwarming to see the interactions between the Americans and Chinese rednote users, there where so many Chinese internet slang cheat sheets and memes being exchanged and taught, like the American tiktok refugees where so ready to learn a whole new language so they could participate in meme culture and I love it, lmao not to mention how there's a Chinese saying where it basically means cute aggression, but for when they see a cute cat and when you translate it to English it reads as I want to lick your cat and that was definitely a bit of a funny misunderstanding lmao.

But overall I kinda love how petty the Americans from tiktok where, they literally said we are going to go straight to the supposed source. ngl not the finest moment when asked for help on English homework the answers given where wrong lmao, it's apparently being agreed upon that when asking for English homework help on rednote, it's best to ask a British user instead of an American one lol.

But it is nice to see people exchanging culture and joy even with a language barrier and the Chinese users where and are so welcoming.

I emptied the photo albums and all the pictures from the frames. I took them with me, because life moves fast and time fades most of the past, but those childhood memories I dare not try to erase, least of all your face. Even though alot of the memories are filled with fear and tears I still cling to a time when you where clearer than a faded photograph.

We connect with people without words everyday, some hold a door open, you share a smile with someone at the bus stop or  when passing by each other on a walk, we say I don't know you but I see you, here we both are living together on this little rock, living this little life that is all to fleeting but so worth it.

It reminds me of a friend I had in school. Diane moved from Russia when we where 13, she didnt speak much English, and the few Russian speakers at our school where so much younger than her that she barely saw them. I remember seeing her in the corridor outside our first science lesson, she was leant against the dark green tiles lining the walls, her school uniform brand new and her hair dyed auburn. Everyone had already grouped up with their friends, talking and laughing so loudly it created this mass of sound that only kids can make just before a lesson. My science class was rather chaotic and hyper. Diane stood silent away from everyone.

I wasn't known as the most outgoing in our class, if anything most would have described me as shy, but really I just never had much to say. Seeing her there though, I knew I had to say something, I knew none of the other girls would try and bring her into their social fold, so I went up to her.

"Hi, are you new" she looked at me hesitantly as she tried to piece together bits of language in her head "Yes, I'm Diane" 

"I'm April" there was a beat of silence, neither of us knew what to say and I wasn't the best at small talk, so instead I just looked towards the rest of our class and said "they're a little" and I made a large frazzled gesture with my hands, trying to encapsulate the chaos. She looked from me to them and laughed nodding.

After that we'd sit with each other in all our shared lessons, at the beginning I would write her work for her and I know I probably shouldnt have. but when your 13 and your friend is freaking out over homework being due or not having her notes written down you just end up doing it. Eventually we realised she could write her English assignments in Russian then put them into Google translate, and then I'd re-write them  grammatically correct. This wasn't perfect but it's not like she had a language aid or anything so we made do. Our jokes usually consisted of calling each other suka or using our made up gesture - a sideways palm from the centre of our forehead down to the table. It meant get a load of this nonsense, ffs or I'm an idiot, usually used when someone was making a fuss in lesson or when we'd make a silly mistake.

We didn't need words, not when we had laughter and silly little gestures, sometimes I felt closer to her than with friends I'd had for years. I guess what we have now is a language made up of vine and tiktok references, that you could giggle with someone over even when your language didn't translate. And in some ways we're more connected over those trends and references than anything else despite the language barriers. We connect over joy, humour and humanity.

Diane moved back to Russia before we turned 16. I don't know where she is now or how much she remembers of me, but I do treasure our friendship. Wherever you are suka I hope your okay. I miss you.

I haven't really got much outside of this, and this is just me speaking to everyone and no one all at once, it feels shallow. I was going to say I felt just as shallow, almost empty but that's not really true, if anything I feel like I'm about to burst, I'm filled with so much longing and hope and just want, I just want so badly. For more laughter, more connection, just more. There really is nothing like the small moments you share with your loved ones, those inside jokes that leave you folded over and cackling loudly, while strangers judge you at the social absurdity, but it only makes you laugh harder. Or those times at school you'd ask me to draw on your hand because you liked the sensation and then you'd play with my hair, you'd braid it. I feel ravenous for those moments. So maybe what I really feel is hunger.

When I think of you I think of red, the red of our kitchen walls, the red that you always chose to colour your lips with or wear with your clothes. I think of my red blood rushing past my ears, I think of the sound it made.

Having a creative hobby or goal honestly keeps the serotonin present. Keeps me mentally present and reaching for tomorrow.

I'm living on the breadline, in fact I'm so far past the breadline its a dot, its a crumb(couldnt help but add a friend's reference). Most days I don't even know how I'm suppose to pay all these bills, because when I do I'm left with minus the amount it cost for even a week of grocerys, and if you've ever done a weekly shop you release that the end total adds up far too quickly and far too high. So you end up living off porridge, beans and what ever hope you still cling to. But sometimes the hope runs out, so I do this, this being tumblr, or I'll picture the little future aspirations actually happening, maybe I'll write that book or buy those paints, maybe I'll do something other than just this stagnant waiting.

It feels like sitting in a waiting room but your number keeps getting pushed further back, like that scene in beatlejuice, so I sit and I wait. But while I do I hum made up songs, I'll doodle on napkins with the last of my ink, I'll ramble poetry and memories on tumblr. I'll try to remember why I wait.

Even though I'm literally falling through the gutters of society I have this one thing that can't be taken away, that remains mine and for now that's enough, if anything it's the end goal. I'll remind myself to live not just survive.

I worry

I stress

I am a pylon

I am tangled in cables

I am no longer connected to the grid

Energy is lost

It's falls through a sieve

And all I'm left with is dust and static lint

I barely rinse

I Repeat

the same defeat of sinking into my bed

I am animated meat

suspended over my own stupid once avoidable mess.

I'm teaching myself a new skill, its going as expected, I'm running into a lot of walls and I'll find myself tracing paint marks or picking lint of the carpet than actually making an effort.

So I keep reminding myself that in five years the time will still have past anyway. Or that sixe months ago I would have had a little foundation already, if only I stuck to it. So yes you'll feel frustrated at the beginning or halfway through, yes you'll have days or months of procrastination of feeling like there's no point even continuing, but the time will pass regardless. So in a year you could have bits and peices of a project, or you can have nothing at all, you could have a baseline of understanding for a new skill or none. It doesn't matter if you think that the payout won't be much, because it will be something as apposed to nothing. Rome wasn't build in a day as people say, so don't measure your own progress to harshly, just continue to build at your own rate, but if you believe in your project don't give up, progress is still progress.

Have I become addicted

to the sadness,

has it evolved into a hybrid

of apathy

of melancholy.

Will it stitch itself to my eyelids.

Will it clog up my narrow veins.

Is this the type of pain,

that drives my buried hope insane.

The new year feels like a broken clock that speeds up when you want the world to slow down. It doesn't care how heavy your heart is or how you fail to catch the light with your flimsy hands, it just approaches whether you're ready or not.

It spins forward and we spin with it and it sometimes feels a little unnerving, how evrything keeps moving while you’re standing there counting how many breaths you have left. But it's also comforting, It’s like a little nudge saying hey by the way, you can hit reset whenever you want. and you can, there's no universal default start date, your beginning can be when ever you want it to be. Maybe your new year starts when the winter months are long gone and the flowers are in bloom, maybe you begin when the sun baths the ground with new life and the glow of it all makes everything feel easier.

Maybe this year you don't think about beginnings or endings but just let yourself enjoy the middle. Time doesn't care when you start or how, it will push you along regardless. This year will be what it'll be, things from the last year will be carried along and some left behind, we just have to have hope that it'll kind.

I want to live not just survive, here's to 2025.

Each year I have a new resolution and I can't help but have another. For the past four years it was to have enough food to eat, for a bed to sleep on instead of the hard floor, for my mother( where ever she may be) to be okay. This year I want to feel like a bird let out a cage, I want to shed the apathy from me, I want to peel back a layer and expose myself to all sorts of possibilities, I want to feel the heat of it on new skin. I want to live, not just survive, here's to 2025.

If your business is healthcare and you end up with more people dead than alive, because you purposely turned them away so you could take in more profits, then you have completely failed on a human level. Not to mention your entire business is in complete contradiction with its supposed purpose. You say you're in the buissnes of healing but all we see is death and greed.

I've always been comfortable alone. Too comfortable. I'm afraid one day I'll find that the comfort, the years alone scrolling on my phone was slowing rotting me from the inside the whole time. I'll be left with a hollow centre and an empty life. If anything I need to be reminded to be present, to be pushed and pulled into things, otherwise I just wouldn't feel the urge to bother. I need to need people, need to experience the world, because the fact that I don't will leave me unhappy in the end. I just need to practice leaving my house. Or my bed.

I'm going to be honest, I'm not happy. Instead I just am. Just here. Just there. I'm, just. I spent way too long picking the colours for this blog instead of cleaning my house, I spent way too long worrying over my poems instead of worrying over the bills, I spent way too long writing about things that have happened and not about what could. I reply with flowers under comments because I'm worried I'll sound too blunt without them, but sometimes it feels fake, because I'm not that person alone, I don't think in pretty colours, happiness doesn't bloom behind my eyelids in pinks and yellows. Instead my thoughts are blunt and apathy stuffs itself into my ears and covers my eyes. It encases me in a womb, and I'm just waiting to be reborn. Into what exactly I don't know, just more awake I hope, less rotting in bed and more laughing in a field somewhere.

I'm older than you, but you scare me sometimes. I worry about this anger that manifests inside you like a black hole, sucking in all the negativie feelings you have and spitting them out at the slightest trigger. You are better at talking about your feelings now, the black hole isn't as active. I feel like I've taught you alot about it being okay to be vulnerable, we've learnt alot about what we mean to each other and our intentions. But sometimes that black whole starts up again and I'll be none the wiser and that scares me sometimes.

Just before covid hit my brother and I at 15 and 19 found our selfs homeless. I had a choice, my brother would go into care or we could stay together, but only if I took responsibility for him and had somewhere to live. So I applyed for social housing, the guy that processed my case was sympathetic and at some points I was holding it together better than him, do you have any other family? No, Do you know where your mother is? I wish I did, how old is your brother? 15 are you in any fulltime education? Not anymore. He looked at me like I was something tragic and I suppose I was, there isn't a metaphor for what I looked like that works any better than just what his naked eyes saw; a girl abandoned by her mother, her life in a bag on her back completely thrown on how to deal with everything, and all he could do was fill out a form and send it and me off. it's going to be okay.

Somehow despite the odds we where given emergency accommodation and a year later a property to rent, I suspect we where pushed up the list because of my brothers age, we where lucky, some people wait years in hotels or streets all over the country, living out of suitcases and rucksacks.

As lucky as we where, luck didn't cover all the things I suddenly had to know. I had no idea how bills worked or paying my taxes, I didn't even really understand what "taxes" meant until the final notices where piling up in front of us. It's something they don't teach you in school or at least mine didn't. They never taught us how to survive in a world like this, they assume our parents would be there to explain or we'd be much older before it mattered. what's more useful in real life, how to formally address someone in an email or how to keep the lights on or how to find food when a tin of beans is too expensive.

Though I suppose the email ettique lesson was useful for something in the end,

To whomever it may concern, I'm writing to you regarding my payment plans and how I'm choosing to fork over alot of money and won't be buying enough food to live off this month. My regards.