reflections on the disintegration of my world (last night at home)

my world is disintegrating before my eyes

tomorrow:

the physical reality which currently encompasses me collapses away forever.

photos from my last evening at home

i always reflect during moments like this. i did so at the end of my ten months in india, about which i’ve only written one post so far, but here i will add some further details about two experiences i had in india:

💗 once in mumbai, late at night by the seaside, i was sitting with friends and they were talking but i could not pay attention to a word they were saying because i was completely mesmerized by the sky. for months afterward i thought about the sky that night and i still think about that sky all the time. it makes me so happy. 💗

in india: a sense of unreality (memories & photographs)

💗 then there was my last night in kolkata: i intend to dig up the journal. i wrote something that night, something long. i actually have a lot of writing from india in notebooks i need to find, but that is the last time i remember writing a reflection like this. i hope i can find it and share it with you. 💗

butterfly rising #1: joy as an act of resistance (7 weekly readings)

in these moments, i always realize something about the true reality of the world i am leaving behind.

when i left germany after a year there (another final night i will write about at some point), all i thought about were feelings: all i remember are feelings.

all i can think about to this day are the feelings i feel for those people.

but here, tonight, i am overwhelmed by the disintegration of material, and the disintegration of this material seems to characterize my experience.

i realize how much my whole world has been defined by the objects surrounding me. all my physical books (no longer), virtually all my clothes (most of them are my old boy clothes haha), all my furniture, all my little trinkets collected over the years from the countries i have visited: somehow i just don’t need these things anymore.

all i really need is the sky, music, art, the certainty of being loved for me (i have it and it’s always my super power), my friends, and my son.

and now all of this together? with the restraints that kept me from you all cut up — you being my beloved audience and other writers?

i’ve never felt this way before.

as i gaze back on the last twelve years of my life, which produced this world around me, i can see the nothingness of accumulated material: furniture, chairs, couches, books, vacuum cleaners, televisions, dirty blankets, propped up ladders, disconnected cabinet doors, broken door knobs, splintered picture frames, unhinged shelves, carpet stains: all the material has been disintegrating in front of me the whole time, and now it’s leaving forever. once the feeling departed, and once the feelings that were there were revealed to be delusions, well, the motive to tend to these objects vanished as well: and i have watched as my whole world has decayed into nothingness.

i have sat here writing this blog as all around me, my reality crumbles, day by day.

i have often been overwhelmed by deep sadness — and anger.

and yet somehow, sitting here surrounded by these objects which i will leave behind and not have to worry about anymore, i feel completely at peace:

i have the sky and i have love.

and i also feel at peace because i have a different final night to look back on:

my final night in freiburg, a topic still to be written about: freiburg is not gone. freiburg lives on inside me because freiburg is feeling, while this world will be gone, because this world is material, and material is nothing.

the people who tear down this world always tell me:

we have no issue with your identity, only your behavior.

but then it turns out that my behavior issues are not merely the anger i feel toward them for not listening, nor are their issues restricted to the manner in which i express my anger: no, my behavior issues are also the new personality traits which i present before them because i am no longer performing in order to please them (new to them; and simply much looser / happier manifestations of me to my true friends).

they don’t like it when i giggle and act like a teenage girl. they don’t like when i laugh in their faces and mock them as they tell me i need to get treatment for saying things like i believe i am a spectrum of bracelets. maybe they don’t like it when i say i am a goddess. maybe they don’t like that i believe in reincarnation and astrology and tarot cards (all in a literal way). they don’t like me sharing my dreams of yakshis. they don’t like me posting videos of myself eating gummy bears on linkedin.

maybe they don’t like how after so many years of identifying as a strictly materialist atheist, i have gone to being spiritual again: as if i didn’t spend a huge chunk of time studying christian theology!

i don’t want to defend myself to these people anymore.

i understand now:

it’s not just my anger; it’s my “erratic” behavior, which includes laughing in their faces when they tell me to see a doctor, being silly about topics they take deeply seriously, mocking them when they try to explain why i can’t make fun of “professionalism” on linkedin. they believe “professionalism” is a real thing and that a doctor would be able to help me understand why i need to stop acting like a teenage girl and begin acting like a professional (at least this is my interpretation of their delusions).

they don’t want me to post on substack about how you should tell your family to shut the fuck up. they don’t want me posting on my blog about my trauma unless i clear it first. they don’t think i should prioritize buying gummy bears over learning the purpose of linkedin.

they believe that this post is disturbing:

fuck your parents: 5 reasons why

another example of what they find disturbing is my linkedin.

here is an overview of my linkedin at the moment:

these people tell me that these types of posts on linkedin indicate that i need to go into a mental treatment program. they say i do not understand the '“true purpose of linkedin” and they say they want to help me learn “what linkedin’s for.” i suppose they believe a doctor would be able to explain to me why i shouldn’t have fun on linkedin.

i think: they believe that these doctors would be able to convince me to stop acting like a teenage girl stuffing her face with gummy bears and laughing at them as they desperately try to make me understand the “true purpose of linkedin.”

but i am not going to adjust my behavior on linkedin, or in their presence.

how many times did i say that i was a teenage girl in her 30s?

how many???

i am not going to stop acting like a teenage girl.

i know what they want now, and that is why i bury the name.

they want andrew back, but i understand who andrew is now:

a performance.

my name is eloise,

and i want to focus on feelings now.

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i have a thought that sometimes enters my mind and about which i will soon write a post: the propagation of teenage girl culture, by all people of all ages and genders, is a powerful antidote to the mindless materialism of capitalism, and that is why:

teenage girls are taking over the world

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7 songs to tell your family to shut the fuck up

the high priestess of babylon (art chronicles i)

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in india: a sense of unreality (memories & photographs)

phoebe bridgers and the music that blossomed my queerness (retrospective diary: 2021-2024)

the dream world is the real world

from snow leopard to butterfly: making crystals in my soul (or am i a flower?)

eloise rising: something happened in the sky last night