crush my soul

I have been sick with fever and chills for the past few days then I get a message from you that breaks my heart. You never really say much but when you do, you choose just the right phrase to crush my soul. My words are spilling like blood all over the place and if I admit that it affects me, it affects me, so I stay silent. 

You know you really love someone when you're relieved just knowing they are alive somewhere however far away they may be. And it doesn't even matter if they talk to you or not, if they ignore you, reject you, don't value you or push you away. When you're okay that they're happy even if their happiness does not include you - that's the measure of true love. 

Thank you Pa for instilling this value in me when I was younger. Once again I'm realizing that the heartaches I've experienced early on were just preparations for bigger disappointments in life. You've left so many times that I'm used to disappearing acts. You made promises you never kept, so I'm familiar with broken vows. You told stories that were not true, so I'm accustomed to lies. And you cursed a lot, but God, I'll never get used to that - and all the violence that comes with each profanity, the broken bones, the bloody face of my brother as you beat him up and you make me watch and you tell us not to cry because crying is for the weak. 

There are some things a child can never un-see or un-know, but there are some things a child should never experience at all. I wish time can distill the memories and make them pure but every time people disappoint me or hurt me, all the bad dreams come back on repeat and I have to hide myself under the blankets until they leave.

I blame this sickness that has temporarily made my heart soft and my brain muddy with dark thoughts. But why did you have to make it worse by saying that? My only happiness these days comes from sharing with you all these little things I find in this journey, and yet you told me to stop sending any. It's like asking me to stop breathing. Why don't you just kill me now?

I had high hopes about you. I guess I was wrong. 

amidst all the leaving

So I visit you again, for the first time in a long time. These familiar pages call to me like old friends who know too well when I have stories to tell.

I didn't think I'd see you again, but the stars have a way of aligning to make the past seem like a distant dream and the future a foggy unknown so that we can all concentrate on the present.

You haven't changed at all, you may have evolved into someone with more complexities that you have built around yourself to shield you from the world, but essentially you are still the same person I met in another lifetime. You still look for love in all the wrong places, give yourself away to the wrong people, succumb to the darkness and self destruction, and yet somehow you can still laugh about it all like the whole world is a joke.

I would say I haven't really changed much as well, I'm still painfully aware of every little detail, too sensitive of all the hurt. I wish I could turn it off, so I don't catch the loneliness in people's eyes, but I can't, it's a curse that I have learned to live with. I'm not as affected as I used to be though, I've grown to be this cool detached person with an air of nonchalant indifference. It keeps me sane, it stops me from thinking and feeling too much. All the sadness just bounces off me, I don't absorb them anymore, but sometimes, I let them in, if only to remind me how it is to feel again.

If I knew a decade ago that this is how this will all end, I would have saved myself all the heartache. I guess caring too much about people is my major flaw, it keeps me up at night, it drives me crazy.

I've always felt that you had this tendency to stray off the right path because you are too much of a free spirit. You like the adventure, the unknown, the danger, and you have blatant disregard for rules. All I wanted then was to keep you safe, to make you realize that you have so much potential in you if you only bothered to pursue your dreams, but of course you couldn't care less. So you chose to break my heart and hurt yourself and here we are, light years later, older but none the wiser.

I told you I was leaving, and I might never come back. I left behind everything and everyone to follow the unknown, something you would be proud of. I can jump off cliffs too, you know.

Of all the goodbyes we've been through, I think this is the only proper goodbye we ever had. There is no more running away, no more bitterness and pride. We're just two old friends who have resigned ourselves to the fact that however fast the world may turn, we will still find each other somehow and we can always continue our stories where we left off.

So take care as you pursue your own journeys, I can't wait to hear what you discover.

See you someday soon!


2015.12.2.4.53.a.m.

only memory remains

When the world is still, I think of you, of all that was and what used to be. In that moment, there is clarity, the suns shines brighter, and the wind touches my face like an old friend who knows how much tears I've stopped from falling. 

The world seemed too real then, every breathe pierced my lungs, every feeling hurt my chest, and only you could stop the pain, but even then the dream does not stay. 

When the world is still, there is music, the rain stops, the clouds roll away, the sky is bigger, people smile, wishes come true and there's you when I turn at the corner.

But today, life's noise drowns the pain, and only the memory remains.

old friends, new friends

why is it so hard to have new friends these days? all the people we meet now in this age are all so fleeting and temporary, we don't really take the time to know them anymore, it's not like high school friends or college friends or friends from your first work where you spent at least 4 years, where it's so easy to pick up from where you last left. now it's all hi, hello, what did you do last weekend, what are you doing next weekend, that's great, have fun, drive safely. and that's the end of it. the next day will be the same questions like you never answered them before, so automatic, so thoughtless, so heartless. this is what we've become - walking spheres that don't intersect, we just bounce off each other and move on to the next direction. 

is it our age? is it our generation? is it the natural progression of time? is it evolution? do we somehow lose this capacity to care for someone new in our lives after a certain age? when did we stop asking questions like: you look sad, do you want to talk about it? can i help you with something? do you want to just hang out? - when did we stop reaching out? when did we become so selfish and self absorbed? 

in the city that never wakes

Restless. This city leaves me yearning for more. I can't stay too long, I feel like crawling out of this skin. This is not home, these strange people are like characters of a play that was written long before my time and now I am here, totally out of place, without meaning, without sense. I have too much time to think. Too much time to feel.

And the ghosts of my past are restless, wanting to come alive and wreak havoc. I need to gain control before it overtakes me. I can hear it sneaking up on me when my guard is down and I have too much time, too much time to not be me.

Tonight I walked to the skytrain while the weight of autumn gazed at my back and all these voices they keep screaming. I can't make them stop. I need to be with people who stay grounded. I need these pointless conversations to make me stay sane. And yet I have to stay away. I can always blame the season, the gray that comes too soon. My head was heavy with unreasonable thoughts and I hopped on the train towards the wrong direction. Two stations passed before I woke up to realize that I should get off and go the other way.

I am restless. This city leaves me restless. These people have no faces and they never mean what they say or say what they mean. They keep forgetting and I have to go away. I have to stay away. It's for my own good. It's for their own good.

Tomorrow I will stay away.