Television static 📺 🖤✨

Before you start reading it. I’ll like you to know I’m dedicating this piece to those split seconds of insecurities that I feel when I feel…..nostalgic. I know. I also have not much to work with but that’s really what my brain does best. Leaving important details behind~

Oh well. Do enjoy this one folks. Cause there is more where that came from. Hehe~

Seeing stories of other brown kids in my Instagram had me feeling old. And I’m only freaking 21 years old.

It appears that it’s taken from a pretty old phone. As I squint my eyes, it seems the visuals on those stories aren’t very clear. According to the video quality in the stories, I’m guessing the owner has a pretty old model for a phone to have such a bad camera in it.

Those grainy pictures hits me with a tad bit of nostalgia. Totally brings me back to a time where YouTube is still hardly a thing…….

I’d always wish to make a “cool” video to share to the internet one day. My phone had the same exact graininess on everything I filmed or snapped.

As I would carefully survey the videos and pics I’ve took, I was seriously considering a video of me “professionally” massages my aunt as potentially good content. It was a pretty weird time, so as it’s to share your bits of life to close friends and strangers hope who relates as instead of using it to become famous.

Well. Yes you will. But it’s more seen as a by-product. YouTube was promising, but still slowly growing.

I’m having so much fun recording moments of my life and wanting to become a YouTuber as well. It was from being a joke with friends to slowly being serious about it.

One day. My phone got lost. And everything felt like it was over.

Those tiny little dreams that I’ve clutched on to seems even further away as I soon learn people like me don’t usually end well.

They struggle bad. And it’s best to stay in our lanes.

“It’s hard to thrive in this place if your lazy.”

“Thinking you can earn money just by doing so little.”

No future I heard. Teens being addicted to games and feeling helpless is obviously the trend I’m sensing from my friend group around primary.

Some of them gave up long ago. Ready to get out there and start working for that minimum wage like a boss. Some hesitant, really wanted the couch life they have been chasing ever since. So they buried themselves with books and frantically hopes for the best.

And I remember none of those two choices made sense to me. I challenge it and try to see if there is a middle ground. Cause I don’t want to either get a dead end job or a dead end career.

I don’t see why not but I do not.

Felt like it’s not what I wanted.

“What do you want to be when you finish school?”

“I don’t know. I’ll start to work I guess?”

“Any career goals? Like being a doctor or being an Athlete or something?”

“I….want to…. Be a doctor I guess. I’m a little good at chemistry. And I’ll work and save up if it didn’t go as plan.”

“Sounds good. Then good luck with it.”

I don’t have the courage to say I want to be some kind of an influencer. Maybe a songwriter, an art producer. I want to do that. Rather than wasting precious time in education just to get a high wage and live my entire life with regrets. That I didn’t try learning how to do edits, make drafts and record bits of my life that I’d like to share.

Until I did. Dad’s face sat on a gloomy mood that day. I spilled about the sadness I felt remembering the fire. That I think it was all my fault.

He was also a musician once. But I kinda burnt all his “labels” and music.

But he still has like some few CDs left. It sounds like…..African. The beats are homing my mind into the stories he use to tell me about Africa. Never was I once there.

I’m always alone with my thoughts. And my dad feels all too far away. It’s like nothing. The air is as thick as it can be.

“Wow. You’re old enough now.”

Everyday I’m saddened by the numbers in my bank. What have I become? A walking meme about working class just could never get enough salary to pay for a living? The only joy in my life now is to purchase any sugar and continuing disabling myself slowly with all these cheap fast foods designed to take us all out gently. Both our wallets and our body.

The grind feels grim. I deeply felt it. And with this dreadful cut I’ve received upon caring? It’s too much. I’m too far gone and directionless at best. I don’t think I could find my way out of it.

I might die with it. And I hope overthinking could maybe stall it a bit.

I don’t like to get involved. But I’m always involved. Even if I don’t wish to.

I’m blaming all on my parents but deep down. I know I’m too tired to face it.

Dramatic? Yes. But still valid, cause most of the time I’m mentally fatigued. So lots of questionable decisions are made like here and there. I simply can’t have both, and I’ve learnt it the hard way.

Misery has it’s ways to make people bended. Twisted. Lost. Belittled. Ignited.

Even worst. To commit.

All irrational behaviour worth a thousand years to look back to all the moral codes and philosophies and clinical studies just to make sense of it.

And I was given the luxury of being ignorant.

Usually. When I feel frustrated, I’ll snap a pic around the playground. And admire how the picture looks as lovely as ever. How the light just soaks through the objects around it. And those grainy dots feels almost natural. It’s almost like that split second when you try opening your eyes after a long shut eye.

Weird black dots makes a Silhouette for all the scattering lights. It feels like a hug to your eyes, telling you to take in allllll in. The blue and gold intertwines as I’m sinking deep to my playlist.

It’s perfectly calming. For a second, it’s was very quiet.

Merely a distraction from my parents.

But it suddenly meant the world to me.

Maybe it’s that sense of safety and comfort just hitting me like waves.

And the reason that it feels old would only be the long amount of time I’ve been holding on to it.

When I look back. At least years has gone by. And by the time I’m back to the present……I realised. “Huh. Is this how it feels like to be 21 with good memory?”

For us. Everything is grainy. For each split seconds.

🌿 📺🖤💙✨