Its Just The Touch Of Your Hands.

It’s just the touch of your hands.

- Hanif Kureishi, from "The Buddha of Suburbia"

You’re starting to deceive yourself with insincere smiles and forced laughter, until suddenly you remember how truly dull and meaningless your existence feels.

In an instant, you find yourself pulled into the depths of your own mind, like a powerful vortex of thought that leaves you feeling trapped and unable to break free. It's as if you've been twisted into the gravitational pull of a black hole, and there's no escaping its indestructible grasp. Your thoughts swirl around you in a chaotic and dizzying display, leaving you feeling overwhelmed and disoriented.

No one around notices the many fragments you have been broken into, each filled with an overwhelming sense of shame, regret, and disparity.

Despite your self awareness of the darkness that has plagued you, you smile and you laugh hoping you reach a point where you not only deceive others, but also deceive yourself.

douleur-douce/douxsouffrance, the deceiver

Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus, originally published: 1977

Jane Austen // Bao Phi

Often, I don't feel like I am inside the moment. I am crowded with a sense of detachment that throws me into a transitional state—as if I have been suspended into a space that exists outside of the sync of time and reality.