i have brief moments of clarity, like the smoke screen is lifted for just a second.
they haven't been happening as much lately. i chalk it up to all the 'otherness' demanding my attention.
it's not just attention, it's energy and general mind space.
i. want. my. mind space. back.

give it to me.
it's a tug of war.
me on one side.
and life on the other.
and right now i'm acting like a two year old who is desperately losing and throwing a hissy fit.

the present realities weigh me down. they empty me of my previous selves and my future selves. i lose sight so easily. and then something like this morning jars me. it reminds me of where i've come from. ah, how i have forgotten where i've come from. it's so easy to do here. this world is so disconnected from everything i've known before. to fully be myself now requires remembering who i have been.

people that i know now. here. know me better, more fully, than i've ever been known before. i am free to be who i want to be. that is the beauty of the east coast. freedom. but with that freedom can come great listlessness. i'm finding when you aren't grounded in your past, the present feels random and monotonous, without meaning and very little sense of progress. the past, it still leaks out. but it's not nearly as obvious when the people around you don't know it. and when your present circumstances are so far removed from anything you've ever known before.

i was totally dumbstruck riding home with a friend at 3 a.m. from a rooftop party in brooklyn. i think exhaustion removed the filter of hiding where i've been. to him, it wasn't strange. he's from brooklyn. we drove by the hospital in which he was born. and words failed me. there was absolutely no way for me to effectively communicate how drastically removed this life is from anything i've known thus far. no way. the sheer shock and how out of my element i felt. that is something i still feel many, many ordinary days.
if my childhood friends knew me now. what would they say?
this adel is nothing like the one they knew.
and if my current friends knew me when i was a child, what would they say?
would we even be friends?

i am such a product of that with which i surround myself, immersed in the experience.
addicted to experience. often wondering if i'm lost in others' experiences.

maybe as artists we are just meant to provide people with a backdrop to see themselves.

‎"People [always] think you are better than you are or worse than you are no matter who you are. So don't EVER let your identity exist anywhere as easily corrupted as the mind of another...messes with your head."

just need to sit for awhile.
sit and be.

show me please who i am supposed to be.
show me please how to be me.

who can i lean on?
who will save me?

keep and sustain me.

I'm struggling with this dichotomy,
not that i expect there to be an answer.
but always valuable to state a paradox.
to fully hold one in tension with the other--
if only for a moment.

exhaustion.
what is the cause?
when is it good?
when is it bad?

when is it a sign that one is forcing something that shouldn't happen?
when is it a sign to quit?
when is it my own fault, fighting a fight i shouldn't fight?
when is it to be ignored?
when does one push through, persevere, etc?
and when do i say enough?

what do you do when you can't say enough?
when there isn't an option to say no?

how long is too long?
and how long is not enough?