on the train track emoji🛤️

it’s so intriguing to me for some reason. i found it a couple weeks ago, at theatre rehearsal, while discussing useless emojis with my friend- there’s so many random objects that nobody is realistically going to use, and it’s so funny to me tbh- and it immediately stuck with me.

unlike the other ones i sent her, that i don’t even remember anymore, it kept showing up in my head. i did try to use it as kind of a “random reaction”, but it didn’t feel quite right.. then today, i had a free period (which means a couple hours of sitting around and doing nothing), and i couldn’t focus on what i was reading. so of course, i decided to get my thoughts out of my head by writing them down. 

i have never been good at expressing myself, especially while feeling less than good, my thoughts keep escaping me, like trains i keep missing (title reference???) and when i do manage to catch them, they never feel like enough to be kept on paper, too trivial, plain, uninteresting. i was once told that it was impossible, or at least pretty hard, to have deep conversations with. i still remember it, even though time has passed since, and sometimes it still stings. sometimes it feels like it’s true, like my speech is too simple to convey real meaning, like my mind is too unserious to understand real meaning, like i’m too self-focused to see real meaning.

anyway, back to the train track emoji. i had the idea to title the note i was going to write with it, to avoid cringey titles like “thoughts” or “idk”. and somehow, it was like my mind decided that those dumb pixels, a tiny image of a track on a screen, were enough to get my thoughts in line. and let them flow, with no fear of judgment, even from myself. they’re like a liminal space, a passage. they don’t feel like a destination, but a journey (because, you know, you use trains for traveling). and empty tracks, in an empty field, evoke a feeling of wait, anticipation that allows me to really get it all out. it was good, i think.

it almost makes me laugh how much meaning i can find in things that i know are meaningless. but are they really, if i feel the need to write about them? that’s a question for another time.

shrimp out, like and subscribe for more rambling (maybe)

🛤️🛤️