Out of order

So, the whole week I'll be pretty much scrambling to do anything at all. The software I need for fulfilling my job is on maintenance for the whole week. So in the meantime, I help move our office to a smaller building just behind the one I am in.

I found a sample of perfume in the bathroom of my service. It belongs to no one here and has apparently been here since last Friday. Hate how it smells but kept it in case I can find out whose it is.

***

For a while, this morning, I was putting papers in two cardboard boxes for destruction. Esme helped me until she had to go. We talked for a bit. I learned that she's never been excluded from class nor has even got detention, just warnings and had her parents be called to school because she got into fights a couple times with a boy. 

Me? I was excluded exactly once, on my last year of high school. My philosophy teacher hated me for some reason (given though what I learned later through an email of an ex-girlfriend who sent it to all parents and said that she was, at forty-six, dating her barely legal female students out of high school, she might've been attracted to me... which would've explained the charge I felt when alone with her, though it was honestly unexpected as I heard her say she was married with kids to a man). I was listening to the class, doodling at the same time, something I have always done and that disturbs literally no one. Suddenly:

Hi'iaka, now you take your things and get the out of this class!

I remember how shaken I was. I was not only completely taken aback, the whole thing seemed absurd to me. I got up, started to gather my things, and said, trying not to let my voice betray how terrified I was:

It's not my fault if you're in a mood today, ma'am. 

Then I got out. She sent an absolutely incendiary email to my mom soon after. It was fairly memorable, but I'll never know what made her hate me this much. 

***

I don't like the fact Esme will be leaving soon. I like her. She's not the most demonstrative one out there but I enjoy her presence. At some point the conversation steered towards crying and helping. I mean, I do sense that she is keeping silent, but that she has something heavy inside of her. Plus she's going into a regiment that is in a city I really hate and that is straight on the journey to my mom's place. I do hope I never get an affectation there: imagine the painful irony. 

If I have problems in my head, I talk to my mom and dad.

It's not always about problems though... sometimes it's, you know. Emotions. 

I almost told her I had no one to confide in. But those words always stumble in my throat. I can never quite say them because I always feel like I'm being self-pitying, and self-pity is something people will hate you for. 

When I'm not feeling good, or if anything's going on, I cry, then get back on the saddle.

I never cry.

Oh, but you should.

I haven't cried in a year, you know.

Grabbed more papers to put in the box. Took off staples, tore off plastic pouches from the covers.

You see, I used not to cry at all when I was younger. Then in 2024 I had a huge... I don't know, anxiety period? And I cried, and cried, and I think this was all the tears I had accumulated since I stopped crying. It frees you, really.

Where I'm from you don't do it like that.

But you're not where you're from.

Where I'm from, it doesn't work like that.

Esme. 

I also have trouble understanding her sometimes. She appears to hate being in the army. Hate doing admin work. Yet she stays. She asks to go back into a regiment even if she knows she'll be more constrained than she is here. She misses Guyana terribly at the same time, just wants her mom's cooking, but then remains here. 

Esme be Esme, I guess?

***

Then, later on, when she went away and the throwing away of stuff was over, I decided to go say hello to the team upstairs. I was afraid of bumping into Hopoe, especially after what happened at the recital, but I thought, don't shrink yourself just to please her. You also have the right to see the others. It's not all about her.

But to my surprise, no Cassiopeia. No Cepheus, either. They said they'd be back by June 8. I didn't realize that given that they were away for a whole week (almost everyone, that is), they have a lot to catch up on, and that many are on the phone or at meetings. Was probably why Hopoe wasn't in her office: I only saw Libra.

Libra was happy to see me. She had a good weekend. Did rugby with her son, spent some good time. I told her about the recital, omitting Hopoe. Telling her that next year, I may be at one... but on the other side.

It's good that you do that. It gives you an activity.

Oh, not just. It was something latent in me... that finally came out. 

Hahahaha...

Through multiple ways. 

I think she knew what I was referring to. She doesn't seem uneasy with it. I guess perhaps she knew, at the time, that it wasn't just me flirting with Hopoe. It was real. Still is, even if...

I saw a Lilo funkopop on Hopoe's desk, where an upright rugby ball used to be. I guess she took many of her decorations to her new home. Given how much there was on that desk and on the cupboard nearby, she probably didn't have nearly enough space in her room. I have a similar room to what she had, after all. I even remember seeing a personal mini chest of drawers in the background of a picture she sent me. That of Vaimalama Chaves' book, when I was still curious about reading it... until I realized I found Vaimalama incredibly unpleasant.

Also, I learned through Libra the reason for Oria's absence: she's not working at the moment because... she's pregnant! I wish I could tell her I'm happy for her. But given I have six months here, it's likely I will see her again. 

***

In all, not many were here. I talked to Austral, told her about the move, and where my office would be. There was Bootes also but he didn't really talk to me. I had some words with Grey, who is renovating his house, and Cygnus, but it was fairly brief. I guess it's not so much that I was intruding, but perhaps I came at the wrong moment.

Then, I went to see Megara, Gill and Chin, who were busy with Old Major. Of course, I showed everyone the perfume, but nobody is their owner here.

It's only as I was about to leave that I saw Cetus in the Cetus-Libra-Hopoe-Oria office, back at his desk. 

Oh Cetus! How are you!

He didn't look well. 

...I'm here! he replied.

I think that hides a whole lot.

No, but... I'm here. I'm working, and that's all that matters.

I knew I didn't have much time to try and find the right words. I just... I wanted to tell him something, to try and comfort him. But the moment was gone in a few seconds, before I could find them.

He got up to go to the printer.

Who cares about mood swings when you function and you can work, he said.

Oh, someone does care.

Mmh. Better not. 

I'll see you later, then! I signed off.

Yeah, later.

He's always like that when he isn't doing well. I guess one of the signs Cetus isn't well is that he stops joking around, and he shuts up, and seems to avoid talking at all. 

When I came down the stairs, I was overcome with a sense of sadness. I wondered if I was too much, or if... it was his pain that I was feeling. Because objectively, I guess I wasn't a whole lot. They're busy, that's it. But I'm so sensitive to... intruding on others. I mean, I should've first gone to Megara, Gill and Chin, since outside of Cassiopeia and Cepheus they're the first on my right-hand side, but they were busy talking to Old Major and I think Gill was on the phone. 

***

I still feel too fragile to eat at the mess hall. I just wish eating in public, even alone, was not this stressful for me. If there's no food I'm craving or if I'm just uninspired by it, I'm not going. My throat literally closed off at the idea, so I went to fetch a wrap at the snack-bar. After all, if it's too much for me, I can put it in the fridge. I might do it with the pear pie I took as dessert. 

The wrap was quite a bit, but at least, my stomach is full. And it's not like it's industrially made: those are prepared on-site. Healthier than say, Mickey D's, which I kind of hate anyway save for McFlurries.

As soon as I get out of my office, I feel I'm dying from grief. This may seem hyperbolic considering the intensity of my emotion is rather low, but it's not like dying from a stabbing wound. It's more like, you are languishing. You're wilted, and wilting. I do hope my leave for Friday is approved because... I think I need to rest. 

Getting up in the morning with six hours of mostly light sleep because your hormones are messing with you. Feeling still like your ovary hurts when your bladder is full. I genuinely think there's an adhesion or at least something of the sort. I don't think it's normal that it's not just the bladder that hurts when it's full, but also whatever's nearby? 

Yes, I'm wilting. I've resumed wilting. I can temporarily not wilt, but at the end of the day, I guess I'm a flower that is wilting slowly. 

***

I guess someone would say "bUT iT'S ThE cAsE fOr EveRyOne!!" like I've been told so often, for so many years, by so many people, including by Hopoe herself. That "I'm not the only one" and that "everyone has trauma/wounds". 

But I think what people don't get is that yes, we all are slowly wilting. But some... some like me, are wilting harder, on the inside. "Some people die at twenty-five and aren't buried until seventy-five" type of ordeal. Everyone has trauma: some are broken. Everyone has wounds: some, like me, live with a gaping hole in the middle of their chest that they know can never close. They live with cuts everywhere. In fact, when they feel that nobody will believe them, they cut their skin open, literally, to prove it to themselves.

Why must people say that it's the case for everyone as if you think you're special? Because that's what I hear underneath it. "You're not special". But where did I even say I was? Or think I was?... 

Do they truly misunderstand, or am I truly this self-absorbed?

I just know I have zero vitality. I play my part fine at work, smile and be sweet. Act joyful. But I know that underneath that, like so many, like Cetus himself, like... Hopoe, I only have vital signs because my body works to keep me alive. Deep down, I'm so exhausted by life, already not even at thirty, that I could die in my sleep.

But that'd be a shame. I want to be on the other side of the recital. 

Yeah, no.

I'm just out of order.

I take care of everyone, but who's here to take care of me?...