sediment.
[Warning: This text contains intense depressive elements and existential angst. If your mood is fragile, you may want to postpone reading.]
Sediment.
Translated from the original Turkish.
“What I felt was not hopelessness, but a profound exhaustion.”
I adore strangers who know me better than I know myself. Because they are right.
I feel tired. So tired that I cannot walk to the kitchen, even though my lips are parched from thirst. Too tired to be sad. Too tired to have fun. Too tired even to rest.
I am too drained to listen to my family trying to save me from myself, too depleted to hold the hand of the friend trying to pull me out of depressive thoughts. It is as if what I need right now is not a glass of water, but an eternal sleep. To leak into that “nothingness” where no worldly thought can reach, never to wake up again.
Just like that thick, dense part remaining at the bottom of the un-drunk water: Sediment. It will remain there until someone comes and dips a spoon in. Don’t muddy the water. Let me stay in this state, settled at the bottom.
Today, I am writing my own apocalypse. Since I cannot go forward, I am rewinding everything. A voice inside me says “stop.” The other laughs. “Why should you stop? It never should have existed anyway.”
I know, it feels like I’ve gone mad. Maybe I have. But this is a brilliant madness
The holy books told it incomplete. The story did not end on the seventh day.
And on the eighth day... God did not rest. He looked at that pile of blood, bone, and screams He had created. He didn’t say ‘It is very good’ this time. On the contrary, He shuddered at His creation. And in that moment, He showed the greatest mercy the universe could ever witness: ‘Enough,’ He said. ‘This much pain is too much. I am taking it all back.’
He didn’t rest on the seventh day. He got to work. On the sixth day; first, He erased that chattering mistake called human. He destroyed their ego, their wars, their lies, and that endless “search for meaning.” The world took a deep breath.
On the fifth day; He erased the animals. He ended the fear of the gazelle, the hunger of the lion. There was no more blood. No more pain. On the fourth day; He removed the plants and that green noise. On the third day; He dried up the waters. On the second day; He turned off the lights. He extinguished the sky. And on the first day... He erased even the darkness.
All that remained was that peaceful, that silent, that perfect nothingness.
This is the paradise I seek. Neither houris nor rivers of wine. Just silence. Do you know why I am so in need of this nothingness? The answer is hidden in that entry I fell into my notebook when my fingers had no strength left. I am leaving it here, unchanged, just as it is. Maybe then you will understand why the clown wiped off his makeup.
I guess the greatest honesty is having no strength left to lie.
01.09.2024
⤳ Dear Diary,
I wake up in the morning with a hope, telling myself that no matter what, I woke up. You survived another pitch-black night and woke up, I say. Then I continue, continue to live my life where every second resembles the one before it.
I used to think about my future on my own. I always imagined good things for myself. I buried myself so deep in dreams that I never noticed time passing. Every single minute, I am approaching the ages where that imagined future was supposed to happen.
But unfortunately, not a single emotion has changed. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I actually knew that life consisted of such empty dreams. I knew, but I continued to make mistakes, constantly. Making mistakes has become a state I have embraced.
Wherever there was a wrong person, I stuck to them like a magnet. I was very upset and left myself alone with thousands of “if onlys.” Yet, it seems I am not regretful. Since being happy was impossible for me, I wanted to satisfy myself with other emotions.
Being sad made me feel alive most of the time. After all that, I still don’t know what I should do.
Anyway, diary, that’s just how it is.
This was the truth I couldn’t admit to myself. Pain, at least, made me feel alive.
That’s why... Goodnight, mommy, daddy. Your killer is sleeping soundly in the next room. And you were the ones who gave him the gun he will one day point at his own head. Don’t worry, he hasn’t pulled the trigger yet. He is just talking to his reflection in the mirror.
What’s up, Ness? That know-it-all, arrogant man who has a comeback for everything, who analyzes people and reads them like a book... I created you.
I stitched you together from the garbage of Istanbul, from disappointments, from the betrayals stabbed right into the center of my heart. Do you know why? Because Enes was too vulnerable. Enes was a fool who upset himself just so people wouldn’t be upset. He was the one who carved from his own flesh to give to others just so someone would love him.
That’s why I summoned you, Ness. “Come and stand at the door,” I said. “Let no one in. Bite, tear apart, humiliate.” You did your job wonderfully. Everyone applauds you, “How brave, how dark” they say.
But I see the cowardly child hiding behind those words. You are my armor. The problem is; this armor has fused to my skin. I cannot take it off. I cannot breathe.
People admire that dark charisma of yours, but the one staring at the ceiling at 3 AM is you, it’s me. Those laughters, those “La commedia è finita” airs... They are all lies. The comedy isn’t finished, we just got tired of acting out the drama.
Tired? Don’t fool yourself, Enes.
You play games for hours. Until your eyes dry out. Because you’re having fun? No. Just to numb your brain. Because that primal part of your brain is begging for a drop of dopamine.
“Well done,” says the game to you. “Look, you couldn’t do it in real life, but you achieved something here!”
Do you think virtual victories are enough to cover up real defeats?
Do you remember our 18-year-old self? That bespectacled kid with wavy curly hair, full of hope? Back then, darkness wasn’t an aesthetic, it was something scary. Now you wear that darkness like a coat, showing off. I’m not angry with you. You went off the rails to avoid being crushed by that train. I know.
But I have one request from you, Ness. Tell those people, those followers whatever you want. But to me... Don’t pull those tricks on me.
When you get into bed at night, take that thing off. Let me bleed a little. Let me be a little “helpless.” Let me take a sip of that poison called hope that you despise so much.
I want to live, damn it. Just to live. To be stupid and happy.
Maybe when morning comes, I will see just Enes in the mirror, not that clown. Though I highly doubt it.
Drink that poison, Enes. Drink it down.
But know this; that ‘happy’ child died in that room long ago. The hands pulling the trigger might not have been his, but he was the one who died. I am just shouldering the corpse that remains. Do not be angry with me.
Because I am not your armor. I am your tombstone.
“Now, what do you think is left? To flush all this garbage, all these experiences down like a toilet and leave?
You are naive, Enes.
Remember what you stayed silent about to reach those ‘certain positions’ in life, to be loved, to be accepted. You endured those ego trips trampling over you, those humiliations, saying ‘let me get through this too.’ You always told yourself the same lie: ‘Just a little more... Once I get there, once I pass through that door, everything will be beautiful. I will attain that peace I dream of.’
So, do you have any idea who is waiting at the end of that road?
When you reach that place you dream of, when you arrive at that moment you say ‘I have become’... What will be left of you? When the pieces you cut from your character, those compromises you made to ‘get by’ take over your soul, who will you be looking at in the mirror?
Let me tell you: Not that innocent child who once dreamed of these days.
You will turn into those who put you through these hardships.
You will be a copy of those faces you hate, those who crushed you. Because you became a monster to enter that forest. You thickened your skin and killed your feelings just to walk that path.
Halfway through the road, those experiences riding on your shoulders, those residues (sediments) you will never forget will weigh so heavy on your soul that you won’t even be able to breathe at that summit.
You think you are winning, but this is actually your greatest loss. You are not turning into freedom, but into your executioner.
Here I am, the very embodiment of that transformation.
I am not your victory. I am your conscience that you threw down while climbing that hill.
Now sit down and celebrate. If you can.”
~e/ness
To take off our armor and bleed a little more... Or to drink one more sip of that poison called hope together. I am here.
Don’t wait on the tracks, come inside.