My parents raised me believing smoking was a kind of sin. Well really it was part of a more general belief that deliberately befouling the body (ie God's likeness) was sinful.

I feel like there's enough judgement in the world, and I really don't want to add to it with another sermon about smoking being selfish and sinful and demanding people quit and putting smokers down and on and on and on. Especially since I see the act of smoking cigarettes as a decision that an autonomous individual made. And I respect others' autonomy, because I'd like more of my own.

So I've put my thoughts here - because I don't want to tell my friend that the fact that she needs to smoke makes me sad.

Everyone today knows that there is resounding evidence indicative of a direct correlation between smoking and decreased life expectancy. For my parents - for quite a few people - this is why smoking is bad: Why would you knowingly do something to shorten your life? They just don't understand it.

But this is not something I question, because it is each individuals' life, and their decision to make.

Everyone who smokes now, does it - not because it's fashionable, as it was until my grandparents' generation; but to self-harm. It might not be conscious self-harm, but everyone knows smoking is physically unhealthy, so they are choosing to harm themselves. And what makes me sad is that there are people who are hurting - people I love who are hurting - enough to seek the relief of it.

A boy I was close to for a while last year smoked at least a pack a day, and they used to make me sit upwind so the smoke wouldn't catch me (self-harm is never r/Romantic btw). And it made me so sad to think of the pain they were in: That this boy I loved hurt enough inside for it to manifest in a form of self-harm so routine as smoking.

And what's bad about it for me is that I couldn't tell the boy, and I can't tell my friend, and I can't tell the people I love who smoke that it makes me sad. I can't tell them, because I can't bear the idea of them feeling guilty for the way they feel, just because it makes me sad that their pain demands to manifest in such a way.

So to smokers; to self-harmers; to everyone: Be gentle. Be kind. I love you.

When there isn’t Time there is Limbo. And there is nothing there, but Loud and Quiet: And the thinnest of needles prick the hard-worn, calloused places; and the jagged blade barely marks the most sensitive.

You wonder when Time will return, even though with it comes The Avalanche. The Avalanche, and then the silence after.

And The Birds are closer than they’ve ever been, but not this time not this time not this time you don’t let yourself.

You can’t let yourself, although you haven’t yet decided whether it’s because you care, or you feel guilty. But they do it to you, no? They do it, and it hurts it hurts and you become The Bird make it stop and you want them to hurt but they already do of course but you want them to hurt it hurts it hurts -

I am more and less of a child than I want to be. And Time coming is an inevitability. And the Limbo, this time, has Consumed me.

#journalarchive

We rented a new-fangled car with a start button and surround-sound speakers, but the parents wouldn't approve of the music I listen to, so we're stuck with Toby's playlist. And Dad is too used to being a driver, and Mum unnecessarily says "Careful, careful!" a lot, and grips the dash over the AIRBAG engraving.

We slap all the sandflies that come within our reach, even though they're just as awestruck as us. I mean, they make tiny replica mountains on our skin. And at night they exclaim: "I know, I know!" right into the caverns of our ears.

And Toby and I walk one tree off the track because it makes us feel like wilderpeople. I mean, we only walk on the easy, under-2hrs-return trails, because both Mum and Dad have old knees. But when we sit in the diner at 3pm, with a 5hr car trip to our motel for the night, I finish my bean nachos before the bowl cools.

We start early to beat the tour busses, though there's always one just behind us (even though they all stop at every lookout). We feel more local than the tour groups, but I've been told my accent is dismal. And when we all return home, they will have thousands more photos to connect themselves to this land, and to prove they've seen all the sightseeing hits.

I've seen more kiwi plushies than I imagine real ones have ever existed, but only one fake fern. I want to start a garden in my bedroom when I get home, although I'm starting to feel that this wild life is more genuine than that one ever was.

Two women on bikes struggling up the glacier we're cruising down signal to us, and yell: "Is it worth it?" - and I don't even know how to answer.

I am fine, just fine; breaststroking.

Well, isn't that what they teach kids to do? I mean when you're stuck in a rip. Apparently it's the most energy-efficient stroke. But you're still fighting it, you know.

I am thoughtful and thought-full; I am tired of feeling ashamed for having interests; I am boredboredbored; I am sick of avoiding things that are just a tad hard but feeling too guilty to do any of the things I actually want to do.

I feel like the cones in my eyes are degenerating because occasionally one eye sees everything with a red tinge and the other with blue. So it's like watching your life like it's a 3D movie, which I find pretty ironic.

I am afraid that I have been caught up in this current and I'm being reeled out along a path that I'm not sure I want but I can't remember what I wanted and I'm kind of fighting it? But not really?

Just breastroking, you know.

I swam into it.

I know, I know:

It’s so much easier

to be hard on yourself, right?

But don’t, and I know

that’s easy to say: but don’t, because

you are so, so precious.

And the world wants you here

and some of the world expects you.

Be gentle friend

because the world loves you

And don’t tell me it doesn’t,

because the world is unfathomably big

and I love you and I know

God loves you and you should never

underestimate love. And

I know you want to say

you don’t deserve it.

I know that it hurts more to hear

that there are things that are just

granted to you. I do know.

I mean of course

there are bigger things

in the world and out of it

than you but why

should that make you

any less significant? I mean

flowers are more precious cut

because they cannot last.

There are whole burning stars in us.

I had not thought musicality could corrode a person. But maybe anything felt deeply enough has burnt its own path there.

My mum wrote a paper once on trying not to try, and it’s totally one of those things you don’t think about until you do, and it was probably the best thing that happened. I mean when we stopped. I mean when music stopped being the thing we were trying to do.

When I check up on you you're even in that cavity between air and breath, and isn’t it funny how some days are so easy that you can put out of your mind what it’s like to have to remind yourself of the in out in out in out in and I count these days like I’m trying to stop trying to find you, but part of me knows that as you diverge from the you I've learnt the less I'll squint to see you.

It's funny how everything is brighter with wet eyes. When there is no in or out, when the tears are neither in or out, there just is. I want to say I miss that for us, but can you miss a place once everyone has been taken out of it? I watch people tear themselves apart trying, and I want to say that the darkness won’t wait for you, but the Sun always knows how to find you.

And now when I think of you, when I follow the raw gin burn down to where I hold you, all I know to say is that the birds will always be there for you, and if it will soothe you, I am still looking to soothe you, even though there was only a short time when I was responsible for the shapes your mouth made.

I remember standing on a footpath in the city watching a marathon remembering you saying Do people know they don’t have to run marathons and then you started running and I tried to cheer you on and then I just wanted to get to uni.

Nothing has burnt through me deeper than realising too late that I’m meant to limit myself? That I’ve reached a new level of self-obsession now and I wonder if I inherited that, too. I still catch myself wondering if that’s because we tried music (and it never waits for you), or because you tried to stop yourself, or because I was meant to know when to roll over and float and in out in out in out in out in out in out in I have found that humans cannot sink faster than once they realise their weight.

I live in one of those greenie council areas and one year they left tiny wheelie recycling bins (made from type 2 recyclable plastic) outside everyone’s houses. Mine lives on my desk, and I’m naughty because I don’t just chuck scrunched receipts in it, but also bits of thread and small fabric scraps from my sewing machine, and once even an empty panamax tab.

It’s a bit like fried rice, actually. People don’t always know that fried rice is for the leftovers. The best fried rice is made with rice that has fermented for a couple of days in the fridge. Then add the rest of the scraps: cut up some old beans; whatever cold meats (tofu) are left over; half a thawing box of what might be chicken (tofu) curry; the last of the old eggs.

It’s funny how no one mentions the leftovers from a relationship. Like each person will find an end point and then it’s like you never had anything together. But there are always leftovers. I guess it’s because we don’t see them all the time? I mean, our selves are just funny onion things and the layers are all our experiences, but even then those layers have thinner layers when you look close. And you don’t want to, really, because onions are unpleasant.

I’m hiding a sprouted onion in my closet at the moment. And actually it’s weird because I don’t know where onions come from. I mean, from the ground obviously. But my onion has been shrinking or shrivelling or something, and the shoots have been growing, so maybe when I stick it in the ground one day the original onion will disappear and there will only be the shoots left and then one day a new onion will just appear. The Little Prince style, naturally.

Sometimes I feel like we might all just be small recycling bins full of bits of thread that are the leftovers from a spool that made things that other people care about.

I had a crush on her before I knew I could crush on girls but apparently she did because she wrote me a poem and it was more physical than I expected I guess - it was about lovers - and maybe that scared little-me but in any case I guess my chemicals had already decided she'd never like me as I was which was sad because maybe I could have been there for her and she could have been there for me but we weren't really in an explicit way and then when it all came out at the end we were both hurt because we realised we weren't as close as we thought and that always hurts and also it hurt me because I thought I was there for her but I guess she didn't feel that way and that made me sad and angry at myself and I felt like I'd failed her. And I miss her like I missed her birthday last week, and I hope that doesn't mean a lot to her because birthdays don't mean anything to me, and I forget they mean heaps and heaps to some people (also I deleted facebook). And I still have the poem because I scrapbooked it and in the corner of the page I wrote wo bu xiang shi qu ni (but in characters, because I used to know the characters, and I'd read it in a book I liked) and I believed it and I believe it but now I can go for months without thinking about her. So I named my new sprout after her, because she was Sprout when I knew her, and she reminds me of beautiful things, and bright things, and I miss her: and when you're losing someone you have to invent ways in your head to make them feel closer.

Tell me about your 'big weekend', I want to know about it because I care about you. Except I've stopped hearing what you say about what you've tried and what you want to try.

Tell me, does it surprise you to know how it hurts me to hear you brag about it (and I let you), like you're proud of it? Like you don't realise that the bragging is what concerns me the most, because it means that you've found that this escapism means you don't have to face that you would rather self-harm than self-reflect. (You need to learn to reflect in order to heal the pain that is entirely yours and partly inherited from the internet.) Tell me you've seen enough of yourself to know that it's ironic that you are so scared of losing control of yourself that you have to control when you lose control. Is it an antidote if I can see it isn't working?

You know how they say kids these days reference drugs by sniffng a finger slashed under their nose (And I wonder how they know to do this, because when we were kids we only knew of grown up juice and maybe a joint). I told you I met a 13yo recovering crackhead, didn't I? I'm not saying you're responsible for them, ofc, but we are all responsible for ourselves, and surely then each other.

And so I am sorry, because it hasn't been very long since I started having to rely on you to do your part as a colleague, rather than trust that you will as a friend. I'm sorry I stood by in the past and let you, instead of helping you find a different way.

Let me tell you, it would've been so much easier if we'd done something about it before that curtain rise. When did my inner voice become so cynical? Where did you go? You don't reply, so talking to you becomes more and more like talking to myself.

我的担心让我寂寞。