it’s what keeps me on track, I suppose; keeps me humble when I’ve done wrong. But it is, next to loneliness, one of the worst emotions to function under. It just hangs over you, almost like the threat of a monday morning deadline on a sunday afternoon - even if it’s wonderfully beautiful out, the late afternoon sun seems to remind you that you’re neglecting something and time is running out; es completamente su culpa and there is just no way around it.

It’s one of those things where you want to scream it out to the world to get it off your chest, but the mere thought of openly admitting to whatever you’ve done or caused is practically sickening. So here I am, obsessing over something that’s otherwise rather trivial in the long run, wishing I could apologise for something one simply doesn’t apologise for. And on one hand, I hate it because it weaves its way into my every thought - but on the other, I am reminded to think more about the consequences of my actions and sort of punish myself for my carelessness. I most certainly would not want to be caught in life without it as it’s necessary to my development, my character.

That’s right, it builds character! And you can never have too much of that, no?

On a side note, the word ‘vergüenza’ is such a great and awful, fantastically multi-faceted word. In spanish it encompasses both shame and embarrassment - and while they’re extremely similar, one is more morose? It just doesn’t cut it to pick one when you’re attempting to convey an entire feeling in only a word or two… and using both is just redundant. So while it’s (quite frustratingly) a word that’s formally unusable in english, let’s just stop to appreciate its gorgeous complexity for a minute. It’s just one of my favourite words.