RÜFÜS DU SOL’s track Innerbloom begins down in the dirt, music dragging along the asphalt, scraping and jostling along a dry, cracked surface, until the underlying synth melody lifts, suddenly, takes my breath away, and soars up with the sudden abstractions of synth chords, vibrant samples into the cosmos, where we begin our story.
Feels like I’m waiting
This story starts in Astana, in Kazakhstan. I am about 15 years old, and I’ve just put on a random playlist on Yandex Music at 2AM. Four minutes later, I’m crying my eyes out for no apparent reason. There’s going to be a lot of that sort of thing coming up. Tears I couldn’t explain—urges and emotions I couldn’t understand.
And the music that played in the background of it all.
Like I’m watching
The first two lyrics of Innerbloom remind me of my teenage years. This whole song reminds me of being a teenager, in the inexplicable way only music can. Music is the voice without words, emotion without speech, and my adolescence is characterized by this voiceless and speechless striving. I am always waiting, watching.
When I move to Astana in 2015, I lose all my friends and connections. I become an observer. At school, at home, within myself. I read and play videogames for tens of hours a day, I rarely talk to anyone outside my family, and watch the world pass me by in excruciating detail.
Watching for your love
I am attracted to people who will never be attracted to me, and the distance between us looms large and impassable. I am taught, surrounded by, a language I struggle to think in. This distance, too, separates me, singles me out.
I have my first crushes in those years, surrounded by people who barely know me, in school, where I’ve learned to act convenient and invisible. At home I help my mother how I can and try to be convenient for her, and invisible when she is angry and lashes out at me for any tiny reason.
Dreams, where I’m fading
Fading
I learn that when I desire something, when I want to fit into the world, it’s easier for me to build that world in my head, find it in a book, or a video game. Around the time I first start listening to RÜFÜS DU SOL, I begin to write fiction. For a long time now, I’ve been distancing myself from my previous obsession: programming and computers. It’s all too difficult suddenly, full of so many expectations. But I just want my own little corner of the universe where I can be left alone to myself, where no one can see me. I’m comfortable here. I have an international language, international friends on the internet! I can express myself by writing, I can write about anything! Any magical, futuristic, perfect world I can imagine.
But…
Every time I listen to RÜFÜS DU SOL, I cry, I cry bitterly, angrily, pitying myself, gloating at the self-loathing I feel, relishing my loneliness, licking up every last bit of the painful isolation surrounding me and swallowing it with pleasure.
So free my mind
I think that the solution is more writing. I’m 16 years old, almost an adult. I talk to people at school, they talk to me. I’m not an outcast, after all! I’m intelligent in my own right, I know this. I spend almost all of my time on the internet. I watch videos, I read books, I start taking walks around the city—the only physical activity I can bear.
I may not be a hardcore anti-feminist at this time, but I’m an avowed rational skeptic and “meninist”. My friends online make fun of me for it but I don’t understand them. At school, I still get crushes on guys who are obviously straight, and don’t really appeal to me. I feel nothing for them, but they attract me sexually, viscerally, and I can’t understand why, I can’t help myself.
I am terrified and disgusted with my own body, which everyone in my family is constantly “worried about” and “thinking about”. My diet, my habits are policed and “remarked upon”. I send my first nudes to a guy from Europe who I know through a video game. On the internet, I feel like an adult, I am rational, intelligent and free.
All the talking
Wasting all your time
I spend a lot of time arguing with people on the internet. I pretend as though it’s stimulating my intelligence, but it only makes me more anxious. I check my phone for replies neurotically, when I’m not at the computer I am constantly thinking about what is happening on the internet, and dreading that I’ll discover I’ve been publicly humiliated when I log back on.
Even as my friends gently guide me into more left-leaning political views, my arguing on the internet continues. I become even more outspoken, if anything. I want to draw more attention to myself. I write inflammatory comments in subreddits where I know they will get lots of replies. I try to argue with people who post walls of text at me, trying to “convert” them to become good, like me. I believe I have the upper hand, that they are “bad” and I have to fix them. I become more anxious, I can’t bear being online, all of my attempts at arguing, at rationality fail until I can’t bear it anymore and delete Reddit. For good.
I’m giving all
That I’ve got
I go to a doctor and am told I am at risk for diabetes. I am put on an incredibly strict diet and lose thirty kilograms in three months. I walk outside more, I’m more physically active and eat less junk food. I am well. I am good.
But my anxiety is always there. Even though my Russian is getting better, I am terribly unsociable. I spend lots of time reading. Always reading, or watching YouTube, where I watch the same videos over and over again. The same creators over and over again. I know them intimately, as closely as my friends.
I try going to one gym, which I hate, then go to another gym, which I hate just as much. Nothing lasts too long, I can’t form habits, I can’t commit. I can’t motivate myself to exercise every day. My mother is constantly reminding me how precarious my situation is. I could gain all the weight again. If I do not exercise, if I spend too much time on the computer, if I eat sweets or junk food, I could again become unwell. I could go back to being bad.
Feels like I'm dreaming
I write a lot, too, during this time. I have notebooks upon notebooks full of fictional histories, languages that I’ve made up. Sketches, maps, logos, all populating gigantic fictional worlds.
I feel comfortable in these worlds, they are so beautiful, I am so, so proud of them all. I am proud of the effort I put into making them, into the intricacies, the societies at war, at peace, and all the people populating these worlds. There is fantasy and science fiction, there are dystopias and utopias, magical and religious societies.
I am so comfortable inside them, they are so easy to understand. I am in control of these societies and I am the one working their inner mechanisms. They are mine alone. They have a fixed resolution, like a book, like a videogame. An ending I will one day get to writing.
Although I write a lot, I don’t write a lot of endings…
Like I'm walking
Walking by your side
My sexuality rages and storms inside me, desperately and violently. The characters in my novels kiss and “make love”, but I don’t write sex scenes. I write about love, about desire and desperation, about striving towards something seemingly unachievable. Sex is beneath such grand topics.
One night I have a particularly explicit dream. I write an erotic fanfiction that morning, my first personal, intimate writing project. Even though I never touch that text again, I talk about it with my friends. I let one of them read it and he says it’s really, really good.
Keeps on repeating
Repeating
I’m approaching 18, and being an adult. Things are changing so quickly around me. I’ve moved back to Almaty and I’m going to school online. I’m making new friends, I talk to people, I go outside, I try to eat healthy, I read. I dress flamboyantly, garishly, drawing attention to myself. Trying to, anyways.
I still play video games and I write, although not as much. I have taken a break from building huge, intricate worlds. I try to write a character drama, but after writing 60,000 words I am shocked to find I’ve written an autobiography with the serial numbers filed off. Around this time, I start writing poetry.
My mother is constantly reminding me that I don’t have a job. She is worried about me, worried I am in a dead end, that I will never escape, that I will never stop being lazy and begin working. Otherwise, I will fail, I will go backwards, I will retrograde, I will become bad, I will become fat, I will become dependent on her for money, I will become a grown-up child.
I am wracked by anxiety and guilt, but I am angry at her, too. I am as angry at her as she is apparently angry at me. But I try not to say anything. By now, I’m used to the fact that the best solution to her rage is to say nothing. Endure it. In silence, leaving her with the last word. I don’t always manage to hold it in, but I try to.
But…
Every time I listen to RÜFÜS DU SOL, I am still crying. I am crying just as desperately and self-pityingly. I am even more angry and even less certain of why I cry. Innerbloom is searching for something, just like me, striving for something that I think can never be…
So free my mind
All the talking
I turn 18. I install Tinder and Grindr. For the first time, I talk to men who I know find me attractive. I hope so, at least. For the most part, I am disappointed. But at least, I’m over the moon to be here, to be an adult, to be having adult conversations about what I want and what I’m looking for.
I go on my first dates. I find that people are a lot more open and vulnerable than I was expecting. They’re irrational, they’re too quick to commit, they talk about uncomfortable things and don’t give me time and space to think, to quiet my anxious brain and figure out what I want. Most men I go on dates with turn me off, but I’m still desperate, I’m still striving, aren’t I? I’m always trying to make it work, somehow. Even if I have to sacrifice some of my own desires and comforts in the process.
I consider myself a social chameleon. I just want to please people. I’m happy if you’re content, even if I’m not satisfied. If you’re not content, not happy, then you’re not happy with me, I’m not enough, then I’m bad, I’m a terrible person for not understanding you, for not listening to you…
I go on this date with this lovely guy. After a few hours, we’re sitting in a park, and he tries to lay his head on my shoulder. I don’t react. I don’t know what to say or do. I don’t even understand how I feel about it. I feel nothing. Afterwards, I excuse myself, I think he was coming on too strong, that I’m not into physical contact.
A date later he says he doesn’t want to see me anymore, that it’s better if we cut it off early. I agree with him. As I walk back home, down Panfilova street, I’m shaking, struggling not to cry, listening to Innerbloom.
Some time later, and I’m talking to another guy. The first time we go on a date, he admits to me that he’s broken up with his long-term boyfriend the day before. An hour later he drags me into an apartment building and we make out in the stairwell. A date later he sucks my dick for helping him with his computer.
This is my first time having sex.
Wasting all your time
I stop talking to him. We’ve been seeing each other regularly for a week but I’m not comfortable being around him. I don’t understand what I want from him, what he isn’t providing. I want intimacy but I don’t understand how to get it. I want to feel something but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to feel. It feels like I’m not feeling anything. I excuse it by thinking I haven’t found someone special yet.
A day after I unfollow him on Instagram, he texts me in a rage at 2AM. He orders me to send him back the 1200 tenge for the coffee he got me on our first date. As I try to apologize to him, he berates me and tells me I’m heartless, tells me to never contact him again. He keeps sending me more and more terrifying, angry texts. I block him, and we never speak again. I believe that I have done the right thing, the rational thing.
He was being too forward, he was in emotional turmoil after his last relationship, I was a rebound. He was going too fast. I didn’t feel anything again.
I'm giving all
That I've got
This last episode stays with me for a long time. I talk about it to my friends, trying to get validation, trying to internalize their affirmations that I’m in the right, because I don’t believe it myself. I feel bad, I am wracked by the constant fear of being bad. I realize that I hurt other people, even as I excuse myself, as I tell myself that it’s natural. Natural and rational to be hurt, to hurt others in relationships.
Still, I continue to be as non-confrontational as possible on all my dates.
I talk about my own interests but never engage in deeper conversations, about emotions. I’m scared to say what I want, or to hear what others need. I struggle to show my emotions, to feel anything at all. It’s all-too-easy to rationalize and explain away other people’s thoughts and feelings. Funnily enough, my rational thinking always reassures me I’m right. That I’m good. I’m not bad. I think I can’t fully believe it anymore.
But that’s terrifying to me. What if, this whole time, I have been bad?! The worst thing I could be is bad. I suppose in a way, I’ve built up a perfect defense against accusations of being bad. But it’s strange…
Every time I listen to this song, I still I cry.
I cry because Innerbloom is the song that got me through my teenage years. It is my teenage years, in a literal, physical way. It drags on for ten minutes of beautiful pain, leaving me crying, hoping for something, desperate, but neve fully understood, never fully formed.
I’d like to think that, over the years, I've gotten better at expressing my own emotions. I’ve gotten better at saying what I want, and hearing people and what they need. I don’t try to people-please as much as I used to. Or at least, I’ve started noticing these things in myself. Things I couldn’t even see, or explain, before. I’ve been improving my relationship with my mother. I’ve been doing a lot of work on my mental health.
But isn’t all of it still just a way to become better? To stop being bad?
One day, I hope I’ll be able to figure out this dilemma.
My friend Nurzhan said to me once: when he looks back at himself three months ago, he sees a completely different person. He doesn’t recognize himself anymore. I’m not quite there yet, I think. I’m a little terrified of being so different from myself. I like the fact I can still think back to my teenage years and identify with myself.
Despite myself, I like the fact that Innerbloom still makes me cry.
I cry the most at the last lines of the song. They are my teenage years. They are literally me. They are my desire to please people, my anxiety, my fear of “reverting” into a bad person.
Maybe one day, my trauma will no longer define me. Maybe, that day, I will no longer cry at this song. But for now,
If you want me
If you need me
I'm yours.