the aftermath & everything i know about boxes

22.11.2022

Song For Zula – Phosphorescent

November 3rd, 3 pm. First time coming to Information Commons (University’s Library). Had to get out of my flat; flatmate’s in Nottingham. Whoever you are, wherever you are, I used to think we were a lot alike; emotions, laughter, patience – with each other – car rides, the sun, staring at the flickering fluorescents, singing in the shower… These are the only things I can think of when I reminisce about how I was spending my summer. Back then, my worries were about bursts of loneliness and melancholy, missed moments of sunrise, and how I felt like there was this wall between other people and me. And for the first time in a long while, I tried to make them like me, by making jokes or simply laughing at their jokes, but it never really felt like anything was coming back from the other way. That’s how I usually felt about friendships I made this past year.

Moved back to Sheffield. Went on a date, and bought some second-hand sweaters. I got a shoebox, cut a small slit in the lid with a knife so that I could slip a piece of paper in, and kept putting notes/mails to myself inside, hoping when it was full, I’d let everything go. All the questions I had, anger, moments of disappointments, the notes I secretly took during my online therapy sessions, and texts from boys that I overanalysed for way too long that kept me up at nights. On one side of the box, with an old board marker, ‘’This too shall pass.’’ Then came October.

When a new problem arises, it feels like all the other issues seem to walk themselves out the door. Someone should explain to me what an analogy is, but if it’s “a thought with another thought’s hat on” (Britta Perry from Community, 2011), Life’s almost like you have a bunch of books you’re reading at the same time, and somehow, you’re managing to keep up, not because you want to, but because you have to. Then, from a height of 300 feet, a massive encyclopaedia, which in this case, A PROBLEM, a big one, lands on you, smothering you to the point that you can’t even open the covers, let alone read the pages of the other books.

But then you adapt, again, not because you want to but because you have no other choice. That giant encyclopaedia slowly becomes another book on your shelf. Now you have new books to read. This time around, they are about great yearning for family and home, struggles with sufficiency, low self-esteem at times, and emotions of inadequacy, desire, and loss. Still, you put on a show, try to wipe your eyes, slap on a smile, and don’t let them know that you’re not doing fine cause, eventually, you’ll be fine, right? Right.

Anyways.

A while ago, when everything started derailing, I decided to make a folder on my computer called ‘’documenting my 20’s’’; I wrote down basic things on a piece of paper such as ‘your age’, ‘where you’re living at the moment’, ‘how happy you are’, how it’s going with the parents’, ‘professional life’ ‘boy situations’, etc. Then I opened my laptop, turned the camera on, and I hit record. Talked for about 13 minutes and finished it off by sending love to myself, just like how I do with those mails and notes I put in my shoebox. There were two significant reasons as to why I started recording myself every other month throughout my 20s. Firstly, I really want to experience 25-year-old Mert reacting to his 22-year-old self and making fun of him for the hell of it and secondly, which fills my eyes with tears for many reasons but maybe, just maybe, as I sail through my 20s, I might become the person I needed when I was younger. And friends, I can’t think of a more divine feeling than that.

Signing off, love you Mert.

-M