The enemies of my enemies are still my enemies (sigh)

Wow. So like. I don't know what you think of my song-writing and lyricism, but you do need to know that a bad memory is a bad memory. A bad friend is a bad friend. Getting hurt is still getting hurt. The processing and the feeling of it always has to wait until after the pain sets in.

And if you wait too long to process the pain, you get a very strong and bitter song like YELLOW PAINT.

I mean the truth is, I can't talk about the women that inspired this song as much as I can talk about the men that hurt me in my search for true love because ... friendship. Friendship is a very, very real thing. Relationships, flings and hook-ups are real too, but they need some kind of suspension of beliefs (and morals). I mask up way more when I am trying to get with men for romance or other forms of pleasure. It's not the real me.

Friendships are so different. Actually, you know what. Fuck it. Here's what YELLOW PAINT is about:

There's a poem about Van Gogh by Ashe Vernon. Here is how it starts:

when they talk about the tortured genius, somebody always brings up van gogh— how he swallowed yellow paint because he wanted to put the sunshine inside himself. how his psychosis was probably the result of lead poisoning. they call him a miracle, but what i see is a man who was so sad, he found a beautiful way to kill himself.

Amazing. Amazing, amazing, amazing. When I first read it, I re-read it until I cried. I even read it during the launch of my first book of poems. I was in love with how you could rewrite actual psychosis into a poem that just made so much sense.

I was also deeply depressed, so same see same.

I knew someone who loved Van Gogh the way Ashe Vernon wrote about him. I deeply treasured our friendship, but at the same time, I also deeply treasured my professionalism and work ethic. At the same time, I also loved the memories we shared as young girls very much. Still at the same time, I was falling out of love with the version of her I was seeing every day. I don't really remember the exact details of our falling out (I do) - but it just reached a point where I couldn't understand how a person could romanticise their pain into such a blasé way (word: cringe).

When you grow up with someone, you see each other change. We were growing in different ways, but because she was beautiful and not at all shy about making things be about herself - I had front-row seats to this performance. I did not like this new version of her, and she did not like the version of me she saw. So I did what I do best, I left. I left without a confrontation, and I left without talking about my feelings. I felt, and I still feel, that I didn't need to. Because what I felt was deep betrayal and hostility towards someone who would run to the same friends we shared for solace while I was left alone.

She tried to offer an olive branch once - something about going to an art market, shielded by means of hanging out with another mutual friends. But the wound was too fresh, and I just wanted an apology, or maybe, space for accountability. None of our mutual friends would ever try to mediate.

So I became an island. I don’t blame anyone anymore because perhaps, the individuals in that friend group had the good graces of being a part of my youthful memory that was beautiful and naive.

I often beat myself up for not trying harder to patch the friendship up. But friends who don't reach back out are not friends I am meant to keep. It takes two hands to clap, and my room was very, very quiet.

Today, I'm me - very fully, me. I am also dating someone with a law degree - which makes sense because I guess I have a very strong sense of vindication and morals. I expect my friends to fight for me, and to stand up for me when a situation calls for it.

art is a coping mechanism. van gogh is good because when he had nothing, he had paint. when he was empty, he had paint. when the world was awful, he had paint. when he hated himself, he didn’t hate the paint. he whitewashed over his own masterpieces, because it was never about being famous, it was about doing the one thing that made sense when everything else didn’t.

Back then, I was only an artist. I painted my pain and the pain of my friends into beautiful videos, beautiful songs, beautiful memories. I painted the walls bright yellow, I attracted beautiful girls who also sought out the same colours as I did. I thought I had wanted tenderness, patience, a knight in shining armour, the bad boy who would fix me up. But I am not all that - I am hard as rocks, impatient for things to change for the better and I do so much to save myself. I also have tattoos and occasional daydreams about illegal activities - so I am appropriately bad myself.

She wanted... I don't know what she wanted. Support? Constant validation of her feelings? Friends? Honestly I get it, but I don't care. There were things that happened post my departure that made me glad I did what I did. I sometimes see these old friends around town and feel nothing. Not a flutter of my heart. No ache for the good old days.

I think I owe myself a lot more than to be disappointed by friends who on hindsight, weren't very good friends to me.

That girl was not the only one to make a dent in my sanity. I would go on to meet many other women like her. People who were drawn to me for my energy, my openness when it came to life, my ridiculous sense of humour. Some of these women did not start out like this - one or the both of us changed.

One of these women would tell me that I should be lucky my mother didn't prostitute me out as a child. One spread lies about me being a racist on her own public social media while still we were still working at the same company (not my first rodeo facing workplace cattiness, but hopefully my last). One asked me to be her bridesmaid but arranged for dress fittings with everyone else but me.

(That best friend fall out was truly life-changing. I could write a movie about it but I will never forget putting on a chiffon dress and being told I didn't need to come for the gatecrash. I arrived later than everyone else in a dress I didn't bother to measure the size of. It was humiliating and I was really heartbroken that my best friend would treat me that way. I went home after that wedding, cried for days, got a new tattoo, then decided I wanted to get laid. Amazing! Amazing that the bride is always right.)

I did with these women what I do best - I moved on. And er, blocked or removed from social media. Woman #2 I even blocked on WhatsApp and Telegram, cause that's how much I never want to see her again.

I've had a lot of bad friends. It is not to say that good people are hard to come by. It is also not to say that a friend to one is a friend to all. Many things can be true at once, and in coming to terms with the grey, I've had to give up the yellow paint.

and they say, “without his illness, we never would have gotten all—this.” because they value his art more than his sanity because god forbid you lead a happy life and leave nothing to remember you by." — VINCENT, by Ashe Vernon

Although, do not misunderstand me. I feel nice when I see my aggressors suffer. Not from my hands though, I don't need that kind of guilt. I'm still a bitch, but I am also a lot of other things.