Know, or don't know.

Who do I turn to? I don’t know. Or rather, I don’t… I don’t know, yeah, it should be “I don’t know”. 

I don’t trust others. How do they know me? How can they know me? I don’t even know me.

I know who knows me. But that person can’t know. It will break their heart, and I don’t want the only person who lives for me in this world to have their heart broken, especially not because of me.  

So I write this. Not really for anyone to know, but more for me to know — to know what I don’t know, or rather, what I am scared to know.

I can only confide in myself. 

Maybe “can” is too strong a word. I only confide in myself. 

I am different. Not different from others, but rather, different from the version of me I want to be. 

You would expect that I know what this ‘ideal’ version of me is like. But the truth is I don’t always know. Some days it screams out at me, and it becomes crystal clear what I want. Other days, it screams, but not at me. I don’t know who or what it is screaming at, but basically the gist is, it is definitely still screaming, just that I didn’t hear it. Maybe because it got drowned out by other even louder things screaming at me? Or maybe, because on those days, “screaming” didn’t mean what “screaming” normally meant. 

But why am I chasing that version of me? I don’t know. I truly don’t. Society’s expectations? Social stigma? External validation? 

Maybe — no, definitely. 

But what more? I don’t know. And I guess I would never know. Because I foresee that when I become that version of myself I so desperately wanted, the version of me that I would then be chasing after, would’ve already changed and evolved to yet another version of me. (Wow, that was a mouthful.)

I have experienced that. 

I wanted to be skinny. (I can almost hear you say, "Boringggg, everybody says that.")

I did. 

But I never saw that I did, until I looked back in hindsight. But it was too late, I didn’t feel the “joy” in the moment it lasted. The “joy” I thought would come from being skinny. 

And now I know that was because I was never skinny enough for my 'perfect' me.

“The grass is always greener on the other side.” But who knows that, unless there was grass on the other side to begin with? 

I once accidentally said this phrase instead, and it stuck with me because... because it was blissful, “The grass is always greener than the other side”.

I knew I had said it wrong, and I paused. It was wrong, but yet, it sounded so right. 

Even now, when I think of that phrase I mistakenly said, that warm fuzzy feeling still stays. I hope everyone will always say this wrong phrase instead. For then, being wrong will be right.

So maybe all I need to do… is to turn to another side. But who says there are only two sides? Maybe there are three, or four, or five, or maybe even just one. Maybe life is just an asymptote. We approach and get so close to it, but we can never really reach it. And by the time we do, it may be after death.

But a dead man can never live to tell the tale. 

So after all, I guess we will never know. 

But are we even meant to know? Maybe it is better left unknown.