Poppywriter - 𝑷𝒐𝒑𝒑𝒚 🍁

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There was a long break between the time I wrote the first entry and this one. So I decided that after this opinion piece about writing in a foreign language I will probably in the near future publish a longer and more personal entry that I wrote in order to “catch up” on my mental health :)

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❀ Pansy n°2 = I love English.

It is true, I do love the English language.

In fact, today I am in my first year of college and I follow a course in English Literature and Civilisations. So basically I am studying this language in depth. It feels great as, when I started this journal, it was the only thing I was wishing for but it is a lot harder than I thought…

Anyway, it is definitely not what I want to write about.

What I want to speak of, to let my mind wander to, is how I find it easier to express myself, my thoughts, my mindset, my feelings in English rather than in my mother tongue. I find it so strange yet fascinating and a bit logical. Actually, I have been told (or I have read somewhere but can’t remember where) it is a fact that bilingual people describe their emotions and communicate in their learned language with more ease. I find it quite logical as we have learned precise words and ways to express peculiar and specific events, feelings,... We have a whole new and fresh vocabulary imprinted in our minds so it feels like we have more words to clearly express something. Moreover, it creates more distance between us and the problems or feelings we’re facing.

I personally relate to this a lot.

I think it might be enhanced by the fact that I read more in English as well. So in a way, my literary vocabulary is more extended in English. I consume a lot of English entertainment. Songs, books, movies, series, fanfictions…

My mind even works in English. I think, speak and dream in English. Weirdly, it just comes naturally.

When I write or read in my mother tongue things just feel cringe and wrong, like there’s always a better way to say those things. Sometimes I think of sayings and expressions in English which are perfect for what I am trying to say but, it has to be in my mother tongue and it either doesn’t have an equivalent or even if it has, I feel like it loses a bit of its meaning. It is truly complicated, especially when I talk with people and only English vocabulary comes to my mind. Moreover, as an aspiring writer and translator, I cannot and do not want to lose connection with my mother tongue. I have to practice it and feel more comfortable with it. And when I successfully write in my native language, I cannot express how proud I feel. It just is awesome to see that I am capable of writing beautiful and meaningful things in this language that I feel so uneasy with.

Yet, I feel that sometimes it is an enormous struggle to communicate with others when I can’t speak with them with some english words and expressions. Like I said, more than often I have english words which come to my mind and it is hard to find how to say it in my native language. The worst is, when I struggle and people tell me to just say as I think, they end up mocking me and saying things like “Oh excuse me ! Madame only speaks English !” It makes me feel awful as people clearly think I am trying to expose my good english. Like I am pompous, conceited, arrogant… And it is very much what I don’t want people to think of me. Even though I am, in fact, proud of the quality of my English - written and spoken - I don’t want people to see me as someone who thinks too highly of herself.

ANYWAY. I enjoy writing in english. I enjoy speaking in english. And I will not stop practicing this language.

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🔺Original work, please do not steal or copy. Thanks.🔺

- notify me if there are typos ;)

from the bottom of my fucking heart. how are we supposed to live under these conditions.

let's go on a date (lay on the floor together and talk about anything and everything)

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This chapter tackles subjects that can be sensitive to some readers, please do not interact if you are uncomfortable.

⚠️ Warning : depiction of depressive behavior (depressive thoughts, suicidal thoughts,…).

Read at your own risk.

- Beaucoup d’amour, Poppy.

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❀ Pansy n°3 = “I’m tired.”

This quick, short, simple sentence is quite interesting. I like it as much as I hate it. It can be seen as meaningless whereas it is possibly quite meaningful.

“I’m tired.”

It is the most mundane way to express a physical state of fatigue. It is not too tiring to say it because of its shortness, and it is easily understandable. Everyone knows and understands what being tired is, right ? It is a state that everyone suffers from almost daily. Everyone knows this feeling in the morning, when it is difficult to get up because you’re still tired, you haven’t slept enough and your body is begging you to stay cuddled up in your warm bed sheets. The horrible pain that comes with having to pry your eyes open when they can’t help but stay closed. How helpless one can feel, as it is like fighting against your own body to finally get up, to finally wake up.

I also think that everyone knows the feeling of fatigue weighing down your eyes, as if you can physically feel your eyebags because your exhaustion is so present that it has started to weigh you down.

Personally, I know what I’m talking about, ‘cause I have quite the messed up sleep schedule (thanks to insomnia, never ending anxiety, and maybe a bit because of my excessive screen time… :/ ).

Living while being tired is very difficult. How can one be expected to work normally when their body isn’t at its maximum capacity. It’s normal to ask yourself this type of question, but sadly, because today’s society goes so fast, and everyone has to work their asses off to survive, you have no choice but to overview your own physical condition to go on. This type of difficult living is, today, what we can call “common-knowledge”. It bothers everyone but nothing can quite be done…

Yet, it can be even more difficult than being physically tired. In fact, it becomes worse when being physically exhausted is your everyday state. When it is like this constantly, you cannot help but also be emotionally tired. And that’s when the meaning of this simple sentence changes.

“I’m tired”, becomes a simplified way to express an emotional, moral and psychological state of fatigue. I would go even as far as saying, a state of depression.

In this specific case, I don’t think everyone knows how this feels. It is so particular, peculiar, distinct. This precise state can be depicted as a constant feeling of being numb. Emotions are tiring so you can end up not feeling them anymore, you literally seal them away to not waste the last small bits of your energy on them. On the other hand, you can end up feeling them as if they were multiplied, which tires you out even more. Both of those cases are terrible for your mental health. In this peculiar state of psychological exhaustion, thinking can become tiring, any little event or responsibility can be seen as a humongous activity which will inevitably steal away all your energy. My point of view and explanation of this physical, psychological and emotional state can be biased by the fact that I am quite subject to anxiety. So, I may give away a more “exaggerated” version of it (I am also hypersensitive, so everything feels multiplied).

I, personally, feel exhausted by these constant overwhelming thoughts, responsibilities, changements and the inevitable passing of time which gives me less time to process and get through all those things which overwhelm me.

As I grew up, this simple sentence totally changed its significance for me. It is as if it lost all of its raw meaning. I feel a bit guilty of this… Let me explain.

When I was younger, everyone knew me for being a heavy sleeper. I mean, it happened more often than not that I slept in until 2pm. I just needed a lot of sleep, and also felt inevitably safe in my bed that on so many mornings I was just too lazy to get up and get breakfast. But as time went by, it was revealed that I indeed slept late, but that was because I fell asleep late (mostly because of hyperfixations, screens, sometimes books, fanfictions or, of course, overthinking). So even if I slept a lot, in the eyes of my family, I kept on complaining that I was tired, obviously. But what was not so obvious, was the fact that I slowly started to use this excuse of “I’m tired” to express a lot of other things.

In fact, I started answering to every worried plea towards me by, “Don’t worry, I’m just tired.” Even though that was not the only reason… When I was feeling down, I said “I’m tired.” When I was down right sad, I said “I’m tired.” When I was annoyed, I said “I’m tired.” Et caetera…

I just thought that it was easier that way. I did not have to bother and try to explain what happened in my mind to people I was sure did not care and couldn’t help me. Plus, I just didn’t know what truly made me feel so down, so tired. It was also easier for me to reduce all of those conflictive feelings to just tiredness. And it was not entirely false. I, indeed, feel exhausted.

I am tired of being tired. Tired of working, of talking, of moving, of socializing, of thinking, of pushing through, of going forward, of making efforts, and more often than not… tired of living.

Everything just feels like a humongous burden. Every little thing weighs me down like it’s a matter of life and death. I can’t help but overthink everything, anything. I always analyze things too much, I always think too far ahead, I’m a pessimist… And I’m just tired of it all.

Everything feels helpless when you can’t help but just be tired.

It makes living an exhausting, never ending effort. The worst is that most of the time this fatigue passes off as laziness. People just criticize you because you’re “lazy”, when in fact you’re just internally exhausted. And I hate it. So many people just don’t understand this state of mind. Because it is one. As I said before, it becomes a real state of physical, psychological, emotional and moral exhaustion. And it is overlooked more often than not.

It is a real state of distress.

I have no solution to this because I am very clearly suffering from it. But I simply want people to know that they're not alone. I am sure we are thousands out there feeling helpless. I know so because mental health has become a much more talked about subject these past years, especially on social media. Still, I don’t think it is enough.

The mental distress of teenagers is particularly overlooked. I personally think it is because the adult/parent generation of today is made of people whose feelings and mental health have been overlooked during their entire growing process. How many times have we heard from our parents or grandparents “At your age I had to deal with things on my own” or stuff like that. And we know that in the past, mental health was clearly not cared for or seen as important and impacting on people’s lives. So how can they teach us that mental state and emotions matter when they haven’t been educated like that. I think it can be qualified as “generational trauma”.

Anyway, I might have gone too far into thinking again. I feel like I am stating so many obvious things but I like getting it out of my system. I really enjoy writing those pensées… It helps me be a little less confused about my feelings and honestly…

It makes me feel a little less tired.

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🔺Original work please do not steal or copy, Thanks.🔺

heartbreaking:

girl has sooooooo many ambitions and ideas for projects but can only get 1.5 basic tasks done per day

❀ Pansy n°1 = F*cking writer’s block.

I really enjoy writing.

Like a lot.

I think it’s because I have a lot on my mind and I thrive to get it out of my head. Like I don’t want to lose the ideas I have so I try to write as much as I can somewhere, everywhere. I literally have a note on my phone titled ‘Story ideas’ , and up to this date (the time I’m writing this) I collected twelve ideas without counting this book, or whatever this is. I have some ideas that are way more developed than others and some that are just fun things I thought about, but I feel like I could do so much with each of them. And I want, I really want to use all those amazing ideas and make them into the novels they deserve to be, but sadly… It always ends the same.

You see, dear reader, there is some sort of pattern that seems to come back in my life as a wannabe writer. Most of the time it starts with me having a dream or a daydream about whatever came to my mind this day. Then I realize that I really like what I’m imagining, that it’s actually really interesting and maybe it could grow into something more. So I continue to think about it for days, weeks, months, sometimes years and I end up with a full on story of ten novels and even a sequel (I may exaggerate a bit, but only a bit). And here I am, attached to this universe I created, to these characters I watched growing up and all the important events of their adventures I want everyone to know about, and I’ll be heartbroken to just leave it at that. To just leave it as a simple fantasy, a dream, a figment of my subconscious. I cannot possibly let it be forgotten, because I’ll inevitably forget it if I do not act and do something to keep it somewhere, anywhere. So comes the time to write, to finally put into words this story, this scenario that was entirely made up by myself and my creative mind.

Yet, when I finally have the motivation to write something, anything, this so-called motivation never comes alone. It always comes with it. You might be confused as to who or what I’m talking about dear reader. Well, I am talking about this horrible realization that writing is difficult as f*ck.

In fact, I always end up being lost in all the details of my stories. I always end up realizing that I thought of things, but not everything, and that I have now to choose the right words, the right grammar, the right phrasing to accurately depict the world, the characters and the adventures I have created. And this dear reader is so very hard.

Then I also have to think about all that’s in between the big events of the story to tone down the dose of action in the script, to show the character development, to exploit the characters' relationships and make the readers like them as well as relate to them. At this point, writing seems like a chore, a big task that is too hard for me to actually be able to finish.

Admitting that I actually started something and didn’t give up just messily writing down notes on a random notebook, I never seem to end up writing things that I like. Writing becomes stress inducing because I constantly think about what I have to write down after this exact moment for it to make sense and how I have to make some details pop out but not too obvious for the reader to notice them but not understand their importance. All in all my thoughts, ideas and anxiety create this jumbled mess in my head and I am incapable of writing.

To this date I have three started and unfinished projects. One that I started when I was like 12 or 13 and actually finished (well at least the first book or season because it was written as a screenplay) after having started at least four or five different versions of it. But as time flew by I ended up hating what I wrote so I decided to start it all over again this time as a novel. Yet I didn’t get far because I started questioning the originality and interest of this story that was in fact kind of childish. It was very important to me because it was the first ever thing I wrote down and I loved it dearly, but I inevitably left it aside.

Then much later I started thinking of this thriller based on a nightmare I had. So with one of my sisters we wrote everything down about the plot, the characters, the universe, etc… I even started writing but I never went past the first chapter. I was just unable to. I wanted to, really, because it has a lot of potential and I wanted it done but I dreaded writing about it because I couldn’t come up with correct phrasing and ideas of filler chapters. I was also so far ahead in my mind, already thinking of what could happen in the second book of this saga. I’m always thinking too far, too fast. So I have a second draft lying around on my computer.

Finally, recently I decided that I wanted to truly finish a book, that I was going to do it, and in order to do just that I thought of a simple love story which could fit in a tiny and single book. Like that no thinking ahead and finishing with ideas for an infinite number of books. So I took notes of ideas as they came, created the characters and found their visuals, all of that in a very short amount of time and I loved doing it. I was thrilled! It felt good to be able to do things so fast and smoothly. Then I started writing, it went well, I was inspired and I liked how I wrote, but came chapter 7 and I stopped completely because I was once again starting to complicate the task at hand. I was either distracted or not inspired or just lazy. So I stopped and a third unfinished draft joined my computer.

Whenever I want I could go back to either of those drafts and continue them, because deep down I know I am capable of doing it, of writing but I can’t seem to do so. I am just stuck with overflowing ideas but the incapability of fully writing things down. It s*cks… And it makes me feel incapable.

So I just have one thing to say: f*ck writer’s block.

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🔺Original work, please do not steal or copy. Thanks.🔺

- notify me if there are typos ;)