What Love Is For Me...

You never really know someone until you've seen them at their worst. Seen their most desperate plea, or see them realize their worth and rise against adversity. I thought I knew what love was but in the end, its what we do with that love that really counts. You would always be prone to hurt once you allow yourself to be completely undone by love that you are stripped of all your defenses. But there is no other way but to succumb to that fate, to be molded and marked. To allow yourself to feel the heat and let it wash over you.

When love is lost there is no victorious side. Regret would always leave its bitter taste and nothing can ever set things right until you find that balance. That extra nudge from the universe that would remind you that the world is still spinning and that life goes on for all of us.

We all want what love brings, its what we covet, its what we seek. Its what really keeps us warm, its how we measure loyalty and worth. The world is full of people looking for love. For a chance to a share a life with someone, to have someone you could dote on and in turn shower you with attention. Looking for someone to take that dive with you to an abyss of uncertainty and fear, knowing only that this has every potential of being the most life-changing ride of your life. Even if it goes awry, even if plans and dreams are ruined. Those memories are yours and it would last you a lifetime.

Love is forever hopeful and its worth the wait to find that perfect mate. To be so taken, as to say to someone else, 'Your life touches me.' Your heart beats synchronous with mine. Your world blurs with my tears, and every hurt you feel, feel as real as mine. I will bear witness to your every triumph, champion every cause you take upon yourself in this struggle. And when you falter, when you lose faith, when you feel as ever alone- I would be a comfort.

Someday, all that I've done, all that I ever would be would be inconsequential in the vast scheme of things. The world would still know chaos beyond my undertakings. The world wouldn't miss the prose I pen, the poetry in the beauty I see. But maybe when I am gone, someone would shed a tear for me. Maybe in this lifetime I would know that I was adored.

Being here feeds on my restlessness...

I rest my heavy head looking at the draperies, looking at the patterns moving them with my mind like the soft and subtle movement of the clouds. Something like casting a sleepless dream.

My mind swimming in thoughts, I try to replace them with my fancies, instead of the predictable reliving of treacherous events and unleashing the phantoms of my mind.

I wish for inviting slumber, that sort of mood a gentle rain induces and vaguely hearing the cacophony, the rhythmic tapping in the roof and the gust of wind, that certain abandonment of noise that so often drills into your head whenever you went about your day. Somewhere out there a flower is in full bloom, and in this desertedness I fancy hearing a hummingbirds wings.

I wish for a break from the monotonous routine, to partake on something profound. I think silence in itself is profound. I'm its lover waiting in patience, worshiping its fill in the empty spaces.

I follow the cracks in my walls and ceiling, trying to connect them as a cause of several events. The earthquakes, the typhoons, and time in its slow destructive form are evident in my walls.

I think some people are like that, survivors of the tragedies, events, and what experience time had amassed. Some cracks are a cause of a single event, while others are deep, carving itself in unison forming a story of events. They don't always show, they don't bleed out to the exterior, and yet its there.

Something tells me I should rest my tired eyes one night, I keep telling myself I just need one, I fancy sleeping a hundred years yet, I fear the hundred years of nightmares in my sleep and when I wake.

Pushing through the day, pushing the hours, making sense of it all and my existence, I think I keep myself interested in what should be done, wishing for droplets of hope when there is drought.

I raise my hands and doing as I have ever since I was aware of them. I see them slicing through the air, waving, clasped and closed. My reflection, I think sometimes it betrays me but the vision of my hands somehow appeases me in certain ways that could only be vanity.

I tried it a million times, looking at the reflection in the mirror, trying to acknowledge it as my own, dark curls, prominent forehead, the frown, two pools of brown, the rounded nose, full lips and undistinguishable chin. The mask and its numerous faces, Is that what people see? Tired rings of black and heavy eyelids are my newest tragedy. In my opinion, just a shell, almost pleading, wearing that smile very loose, rare on that round face.

Still in my bed, resting my head, aware of the buzzing, swimming in words. Tired as I am, sleep-deprived, merry in my reverie, I am aware that Im always here, always here and never alone. The phantoms in my head, they lurk, they loom.

A world in your hands...

A friend asked me if he could use my writing for a momentous occasion in his life and needless to say it brought me some sense of pride, that he thinks there’s something in my writing he could find useful. Writing for me, not only is some form of escape, it allows me to see things clearer and maybe arrive at something logical when I mostly can’t decipher from the noise in my head and the torrent of my emotions.

I remember when I was younger and a friend asked my mother one day why I was so moody. And of course, she could have sighted so many things, my being a teenager and my little rebellion from us moving around all the time. But she just said, “well, she’s an artist.”  Like it gave me license to disassociate myself from what’s happening and be in my own world. So, i thought it gave me permission to walk the halls of my high school being all gloomy and pensive. Because that was what I was feeling, gloomy and pensive. I wore my pain and frustration as a badge. Thinking that this was okay, but not only did I feel like I was ostracized in some way because of that, I think I very well disassociated myself from a lot of people who probably felt as gloomy and pensive as I was only they didn’t care to show it.

I remember when I was younger and a friend asked my mother one day why I was so moody. And of course, she could have sighted so many things, my being a teenager and my little rebellion from us moving around all the time. But she just said, “well, she’s an artist.”  Like it gave me license to disassociate myself from what’s happening and be in my own world. So, i thought it gave me permission to walk the halls of my high school being all gloomy and pensive. Because that was what I was feeling, gloomy and pensive. I wore my pain and frustration as a badge. Thinking that this was okay, but not only did I feel like I was ostracized in some way because of that, I think I very well disassociated myself from a lot of people who probably felt as gloomy and pensive as I was only they didn’t care to show it.

When I was younger, I couldn’t very well deal with not being liked, or being thought of as different. Things like that got to me. I would go to school feeling like there’s a knot in my stomach from not knowing why anyone wouldn’t like me. I always thought that if my parents had sat me down and told me, “You know what, people can hate you and not like you for no reason at all. That’s just how it is sometimes. And sometimes they wouldn’t even care. But you shouldn’t let that get to you.” That it would have saved me a lot of neurosis.

People can not like you for so many reasons. How you wear your hair or how you talk, how you chew your gum. How you rock your knees nervously or whistle to fill the silence when you’re waiting for something. It could lead to extreme dislike and for some people even hate. I remember talking to my younger sister once about being bullied, and I felt like I knew so much about the subject. I told her be the bigger man...person in this. Ignore them, do not let them know that their words have power over you. And those are pretty hefty things to teach a nine year old. How do you separate all those raw emotions and do something that goes against your every instinct. I could have told her to punch them in the face and that would have felt right. And it could have solved everything. But it wasn’t right and it wasn’t acceptable. Adding to the chaos of raw emotions at the height of when we were feeling it by giving into it. But how do you teach a nine year old that when you’re only starting to figure that out yourself.

What’s right and wrong, what’s love and hate. How do you separate what you feel and end up doing what’s acceptable and what’s right.

I remember falling in-love for the first time and not even recognizing it. I always imagined it would be some grand thing and I would feel something, like my hair on fire or something like that. And it was as simple as wanting to be around that person a lot. Liking their perfume and the way they speak.

You’d recognize someone in-love right away because they can’t shut up about you. Then you’d know they are into you. If they mention you to her friends without any cause, without them asking. Then I would say yes, you got them hooked. Kudos.

Whilst some attractions are electrifying, purely chemical, with a simple touch  you’d know that you could be good together. Those are always fun but also very volatile. I’m saying that because if you’re anything like me and you’re susceptible to following your emotions instead of your better judgement then its probably best to ground it with something basic and real if you want it to last.

I always say that falling in-love is easy. And its the best part of it. Fundamentally we all want the same thing. To be seen, to be valued and appreciated for who we are. Like hate, there’s really no logic to love except for seeing things as they truly are. And it requires looking. When we’ve all but lived our lives running into each other but never really paying enough attention to see what’s really there.

Being in-love is very much like painting something, by first catching your eye, glancing at something of note, getting to know you’re subject, studying it, how the light catches it and how it casts it's shadow. And then its depth, its every curve and contrast to its surroundings. What makes it unique. It’s seeing something for the first time, and seeing something you’ve always taken lightly but discovering its beauty. It’s uniqueness.

An artist knows that they can’t take credit for the object or their muse. But they can take credit for shining a light on it.

Sometimes we put our value on how that light shines on us. Who we are in love. How our lover’s see us. But you’ll come to know its never about that. It’s about you. It’s about your light and how you wish to share it.

I am always intrigued by people who fall in-love so easily. And they would say, c’est la vie! you get your heart broken all the time but what is that compared to finding something worthwhile in the end.

I often speak about the holy grail of love and relationships. The love that transcends and survives everything despite or in-spite us. The love that is capable of forgiving transgressions and all that makes us human and flawed. Because let’s face it, we humans screw things up all the time.

Everyone deserves love. From the tiniest child in the most desolate of places, to worn out, broken and forgotten souls.

It’s not about being complete because it’s in our nature to have this insatiable appetite for things. It’s part of our makeup and how we grow and evolve. The moment we stop reaching for something is the moment we die and the moment our light in us die. Love shows us that some things are enough. Having someone there to touch your face at the end of the day and recognize who you are is enough. It’s a gift, one we take too lightly in search of something greater than ourselves.

There’s a quote a friend had on her status and it said,people come and go but true friends stick around. Or something like that. And it’s true. Much of the love we seek is grounded on something as selfless and true natured as friendship. Who-else would choose to stick with you even though some people would find you annoying? Who-else but a true friend would want to stick with you when you start passing wind on your sexiest underwear? It is transcendence. It’s seeing the beauty, under all the murk and all the mask we tend to wear and seeing the light we all guard ourselves to have.

If you have someone who sees you with the light in their eyes, honor it, respect it. Make yourselves worthy of that. If you fuck up be sorry for it and make up for it until she forgets about it (that means for the rest of your life). Because you can claim the world as your oyster but it would all seem pointless if you didn’t have someone there who knew and believed that you could have the world in your hands.