Your brain is split into a series of compartments of information, a lot of which is secretive and/or personal. These compartments are the most interesting and the ones that we try our best to ignore – you think “I’ll just put you in a little box and keep you on the shelf in the back of my mind.” They are the buried compartments and this is how I break them down.

Embarrassments

This does not refer to the fact that you like that Bieber song (but only because of Luda’s part) or how you have been told to sit “properly” by the manager of  every coffee shop in Hamra (you can’t help it if you like to sketch while sitting like a pretzel without taking your shoes off). This refers to deeper embarrassments; ones that you’re not ashamed of if you were having a discussion with yourself. But when it comes to telling a story at the dinner table, you’re not about to giggle and guffaw over that time you wrote names on a love-lock in Paris, locked it on the Pont de l’Archevêché bridge behind the Notre Dame Cathedral and walked away crying as you threw the keys in the Seine. Well, isn’t that cute but it’s wrong. Some anecdotes should just stay at the bottom of the river.

Song-Snapshots

Song-snapshots take you back to a moment when a song was playing and a memory was instantly seared onto the soundtrack of your life. A Ferry Corsten song takes you back to that night you were cruising and you had your right hand sticking out of the passenger window making the swimming-fish move; all you’re thinking about is aerodynamics and how your heart is so content it could explode. You had the right elements for a song-snapshot: perfect company, weather, and bass. Every time you hear it, you go back there. Every time you hear it, you remember. Sometimes, it sparks a conversation for those who want to share, like when your dad has to tell you that Toto’s Africa takes him back to the summer he spent in the village on the border when he was 17 or how he once left Fresh on your mom’s answering machine. However, if these song-snapshots are in your compartment, that means you keep them to yourself. You listen to them when you want to go to that place in time without anyone else knowing about it.

Self Truths

These are the things that you mock poets and songwriters for because they have the courage to write them down. Real poets and songwriters, not that awkward turtle who scribbles on napkins at McDonald’s and not Nicki Minaj. These are feelings, insecurities, and confessions. The facts that you keep to yourself because they are weapons. They are the wounds, the gaping holes, the weaknesses. The things that can be used against you if told to the wrong ears. Or they can make you a shitload of money because you’re Taylor Swift and Kanye was right.

Desires

As discussed in former posts, these are things that you want. The complicated part here is that you may want them but that doesn’t mean you can have them. Placing them into a little box is your brain’s way of coping with an unsatisfied need that you are knowingly depriving yourself of. Maybe it’s illegal or disgusting, maybe it’s something morally unacceptable, or maybe it’s just something you can’t have in your life right now. Due to the “circumstances and powers that be”, you want it but you’re saying no. Welcome to the internal daily battle of full-fledged pseudo-adulthood.

People

…Or who they used to be to you. No one is frozen, people change and, for whatever reason, your relationship with someone may change too. Now, they’re just somebody that you used to know but you can’t help but wonder: “have they changed or did I just not really know them to begin with?” You want to hang on to the person in your head, the way they were with you, and the way they made you you. And you can do that for as long as you want but that’s all they’re ever going to be: someone in your head. Imagine how many obsolete versions of you are floating around in other people’s heads. Just blew your mind, I know.

These are some of your compartments – the thoughts that keep you company on your solitary nights in while you play ping pong with all the tidbits you’ll never say out loud. Enjoy your Saturday night. ❤