No.

If I had now been the same girl I was less than 24 hours ago, the first words of this post would have been “I am broken, again.” But I no longer am that girl anymore. And so my words will now be “I am relieved.”

Yes, I am relieved. Because every lie discovered is a lie less infecting my life.

Are there even words to express the feelings? No. I doubt it. But there no longer ARE feelings.

When a part of a body becomes so contaminated that it cannot ever be cured, what can you possibly do? You amputate it. Coldly. You don't leave bits or pieces, you slice it off, butchering all possible nerves that could ever remind you it was there, and you throw it out.

I screamed, I cried, I bled and broke and cracked and tore and burnt. And then what? Did it matter to all those who hurt me? No. So why waste the energy. I took that piece out of me and threw it out. It's over. As far as I'm concerned, it never even happened.

I was angry, hurt, confused, shocked, everything.. and then what!? Was it all going to go away? Was anyone going to make it okay or make me understand?! I decided not to stick around and wait it out for something I know is not going to happen. And if it does? I don't want to hear it.

Yes I am far FAR from perfect, but so is everyone else. And as far as I may be, I DO deserve better! I AM better than this.

When your dreams, promises, feelings and entire soul is brought down to its knees and everything you trusted, believed in and breathed for is shoved in your face as lies and acts begin to unfold, it is not an easy trip. But I'm still here. And I'm still breathing and my sanity is still intact enough for me to write this. And this is when I realize, I am strong. I am strong and I can get through it and I will be okay.

Because who the hell has the write to bring down my tears? Who the hell has the right to shatter me and batter my life around and then simply walk away without an ounce of humanity and with the audacity to lie to my face?!

No one. And from now on, that's the ONLY way it's ever going to be. I DO come first. Because who are people and what's the world to put me in second place ?!

If your not someone's number 1, don't let the world lead you into being your self's runner up.

Someone tell me why..

Today, I am broken.

I tried everything I could to keep it together. I smiled, laughed, talked as best I could as the streaming faces passed by, but the more I held my ground, the more it burned in my chest.

But my hold did not last long.

The moment I walked into my room and quietly locked my door, I collapsed. It all fell apart and the drumming got louder and louder in my head. A million questions.

Why

How

.. but mostly, why.

I tried breathing, but it stung. I could feel it as if it was something physically within me. What hurt the most was realizing that my pain didn't matter. It made it so much worse and made the questions buzzing in my head a million times more persistent.

I waited for anything that would somehow soothe the pain or comfort me. I held back my tears so strongly until I couldn't keep my eyes open for fear of feeling them fall. I had to hold it in. Keep it together. But I couldn't. Memories kept streaming through my head and the pain got deeper and deeper with the realization of reality.

“Please, please no. This isn't happening. Not this time. Not now. No. Please. Not again.”

My resolve broke and the only thing I could do to contain it was to cover my face with my pillow and .. that's when the screaming began.

No one could hear my muffled screams and no one could tell me I was going to be okay this time. No one could wipe my tears or stop the tearing in my heart. .. and no one could have seen it coming.

It's hard to believe yet too solid to deny.

What an idiot. What a fool.

I was cracking and by dawn, I had completely broken apart. Nothing made sense. And nothing helped. The confusion is still unbearable. Why. Why why why!!

No one was able to answer my wails. Let alone hear them. And if they did, would they know what to say? Does anyone have the answer?

The only comfort I was able to find was when my body was too tired to feel and was forced to shut down. And even then, I tossed a million times, hoping that once I woke up, it would have all been a horrible dream. The type of dream that's too devastating to even believe.

I keep telling myself that it's not worth it. That no one should have the power to destroy me. I say it over and over, but it doesn't work. Not long enough anyway.

The only words that were, in any way, able to console me were that there's no reason why people hurt us. It's just fact. It just is what it is. And that it isn't my fault that I'm trusting. And honesty was not something I ought to be ashamed of. ... but I cant help but pile these bricks around my heart and bottle up my soul.

I don't know how to deal with it, or how deeply I can breathe without bursting my lungs, or how long I'm going to feel the sharp stabs before the dagger begins to go blunt. All I know, is it hurts, and I didn't deserve it and I don't understand why..

I'm going to put my questions to rest for now.. maybe tomorrow things will be clearer. Maybe soon I'll laugh again. But for now.. I'll keep my pillow on my face and scream myself to sleep..

Shutting out!

Today was a mess. In the mildest sense though. I couldn't make it to class, it was raining, I had to bail out on my gym session and basically did pretty much nothing more than turn back into a couch potato for the day.

I'm sick of my days going like this!

I keep making lists of the million things I need to do, and that list is long, but I never get around to doing them..

I just sit on my bum and daydream. Daydream and think. Over think. I need to stop putting my thinking on full gear all the time. It's getting really tiring and it's turning me into a pumpkin.

But, looking back on the past couple of weeks, studying put aside, I'm actually pretty proud of myself. About most things anyway. I'm starting to be a lot more like 'me' than I was in the past year. I've begun living each day as it rolls along instead of chasing days that haven't even dawned yet. I'm having more fun and laughing more than I have in the past 9 months put together. I even mean it when I smile now.

Things are far from perfect; I still have a lot to work on, but overall, it's not too bad :)

I'm starting to do new things.. things I've always wanted to do before but never got the chance. I'm somehow braver too. I don't let fear make my decisions for me anymore. It is scary, but it feels a million times more satisfying knowing I'm getting what I want by taking risks.

The past is... the past. Just that. I will not think, remember, or regret. I'm done with that and I've let go of that load. I'm not living in the future either. I'm living NOW. So I'll make mistakes -who doesn't?- and I'll hurt and be hurt, I will learn..we all do, don't we? Eventually anyway. But at least I'll be alive and NiNETEEN. (wow that old already ;P) yup. 19. I wont be 16 or 25, I will be 19; I will live my life so that one day when I'm old, wrinkling and crippled, I will at least have the memory of living out my life and having a blast to comfort me!

I've spent far too much of my life fretting about what everyone thinks. Who bloody cares anyway? I do things MY way. Because what's the point of being something everyone else wants me to be when they talk either way?! So talk! I feel sorry for their pitiful existence ;P I mean, if they'd get lives of their own and actually focus on that, the world would be a happier place.

So, its not gonna be fear or chat that's gonna slow me down ;)

I'm happy. Happier. And I'm damn well glad :)

Reborn.

Today I decided to put my life on halt and observe.

I went to the place that uplifts me the most. The playground. As I sat on the grass and watched the kids play, I couldn't help but be overcome with nostalgia. I envied them their opportunities, their ripe lives still waiting ahead of them, their dreams waiting to be fulfilled...

Sitting there, breathing in the smell of wet grass, feeling the breeze and watching the kids run around with pink cheeks, laughing hysterically as they chased each other around the jungle gym, I suddenly wished I could do the same.

It was so much easier being so young, yet all we wanted back then was to grow up. If only we knew then what we know now..

I remember back in elementary school, we used to peek around behind the “big kids'” gate and wish we were older so that we could join them. Old people seemed so cool to us; so powerful and neat and I remember thinking “wow, I wish I was like them and do whatever I wanted”.

The truth is, it's so much easier when someone's making those choices for us. But now that we're older, it's all up to us isn't it? It all comes down to the decisions we make everyday and who we turn out to be.

There's no replay, no rewind button that takes us back, and like the old cliche says, “life is not a dress rehearsal”. There's no one who will take the blame for your mistakes or forgive you heartily like your parents do when you mess up when you're a kid. And in life, there rarely ever are second chances.

We all wish for them though. We all spend so much time wishing that somehow by some magnificent miracle, we'd be able to take it all back and re-write our lives. When we're stuck, we envision a replay and how things could have been different, and when we'd do, it all seems like it could have been so easy and so real we could almost reach for it and touch it. We'd just cry begging life to just give us one second in the past to flip our world the right side up again. But it doesn't happen. We eventually get a headache from all the crying, get up and crawl into bed and sleep it off.

Well, for most of us anyway.

But, you know what else I've realized? That we should never ever regret having done or not done something. Because at one point, it was exactly what we wanted. Maybe what we should be regretting is not having had thought it through.

So now what? Are we going to spend the rest of our days living lives of regret? Thinking of how it all could have been. How it should have ended up? What's the point? Time isn't going to turn back no matter how hard we will it to.

So as I sat there on the damp ground watching those tiny faces, filled with innocence and curiosity, their eyes filled with promise, I promised myself something. You see, life doesn't give us second chances, but why be so harsh on ourselves? Why don't WE give ourselves that second shot? Yea, life's harsh, but we don't have to be!

So I got up, and as I wiped the dirt off my jeans, I began wiping off the dust on my heart. So I'm not young anymore, but I've got a load on my back called “lessons” that I have to arm me through which those kids don't. And their parents will try with all the power of their love to protect them, but those kids, will fall, they will get hurt, and they will make mistakes. But they will also grow. So maybe I can't turn back time or re-write history, but I can move on and give myself a break.

..and so on that certain day on one certain playground, my heart was began to become reborn.

(Empty)

I came home, it was supposed to be just one of those regular boring nights back from the movies.. but something had me gripped. This sharp, hollow feeling. I don't know where it came from or why it's still making me shake..

I couldn't go in, but I couldn't wonder out either. So I went as high up as I could.

I stood on the roof top gripping the rail. I knew I wouldn't fall, but the density of the metal somehow reassured me that it's solidness would keep me from slipping over.

It was cold. And I welcomed it. I welcomed it's sting and let it trickle through me and bring numbness with it; then my body would be too busy to feel anything else. Too busy to feel the wall inside me crack and finally begin fall apart.

I took a few steps back and sat there on the damp cold planks and took a deep breath to ease the panic. The air did me good. It frosted my insides so that my heart would beat slower. So I wouldn't fall apart at once too quickly.

I heard the laughter from below me bubbling up. Familiar voices.

I looked around me.. it was dark, cold, I was shaking, there was an open door.. and I was.. alone.

I'm not alone in the usual sense.. I have a lot of great friends.. family.. a life..

So what was I doing up there? Sitting there and feeling.. empty. Empty but on the verge of bursting at the same time.

As soon as I started feeling the dampness soak through my jeans, I realized how crazy I must seem. Sitting on a wet roof top in the freezing cold, in the middle of the city, at midnight. I kept looking to the door, but no.. No one.

I realized that if it was someone or something i was waiting for, it wasn't going to happen tonight; I was going to be sitting there for a long time had I chosen to wait for something majestic to suddenly occur.

So I did what I do every night. I got up, pulled out my keys, and pressed the button to my floor on the elevator. And also like every night, I unlocked the door to my apartment, hoping that somehow, I'd hear something.. Sounds. Someone moving around. A TV on.. anything. But no. Not tonight. Tonight there was just.. silence. Silence, and me. Tonight I didn't even bother flicking on the lights. I just stood there. I leaned my back against the door and slid down to the floor and sat staring at nothing in particular for a good while. Until a voice inside my head told me, “get up, you look pathetic.”

And I did. I got up and got out my notepad and started writing this. So then what? Now what?

Now, I close the lid on my notepad, find my way between the sheets and turn off. Because tomorrow I will wake up, and everything will be right where I left it.. and tomorrow will probably be the same.

Change of season.. change of heart.

Bundled up with my zillion and one carry-on bags in a tuna box seat, I look out the window just as a roaring engine signals the end of summer. It's over ..and now something new is about to begin. I'm still unsure whether its a beginning I'm anxiously awaiting, or one I'm dreading as soon as we touch down.

Summers are strange to describe.. we wait for it to come, we plan, we dream.. we hope.. we reach climaxes of excitement and emotion and everything seems so much richer, so much more real, but the truth is, as soon as it approaches the end, we realize our adventures end with it. Our expectations die out and everything disappears like it was never there..

It's as if the feverish heat makes everything buzz as we sink ourselves in the depth of all it's delicious warmth. We become more daring, somehow more determined to live; more determined to make the most of the time we get..the freedom we have. Parties get wilder, clothes get brighter, the air seems fresher and everything is bursting out on full swing and even romances get so much more intense.

Every summer..this is how it ends. We're either coming or going and I spend the last hours wondering how different it all could have been and how different it all might be soon enough.

So as I sit here, I look back at all the decisions I've made, and it's surprising how differently we would have done things if life had given us that moment to think, right? But life's not like that. We don't get to plan every little thing and we don't get to plan how we react.

I'm not sure what we regret most in life; the things we did or the things we should have but didn't.

And it's always those we love that we hurt the most. I've seen it happen and watched it play out time and time again. Sometimes I think it's because we expect them to understand and forgive us.. or maybe we think they'll love us anyway. Maybe we hurt them the most because we're scared.

I've been thinking a lot. Sometimes now I think too much. I'm a coward. And I guess being able to say it out loud makes me less of one. I don't know. Why am I a coward? Well.. it's because I'm afraid to believe in myself. I'm afraid to believe I'm needed. I'm afraid to believe that there really are people who want to protect me. That there are people who do want me happy and want to be close. So what do I do? I run. The first sight of feeling like someone shows they care, I get confused, I panic and try to keep them as far out as arm's reach as I possibly can.

Because all I think is, no, you don't know me well, you don't want to be close, and if I let you, when you go, it's going to hurt. So I leave first.. or make them want to be gone. My stupid theory used to be: if they decide they don't want to be around me right before I go, they wont hate me for it.. or it wont hurt as much..?? And it's like that with everyone. My friends..sometimes even my family.

So then why do I hang on to the wrong people?! Why do I trust the ones who DON'T warn me?!

Why oh why can't I pull down that thick defensive wall and stop being afraid to get hurt? Because in truth, I've realized, that fretting about getting hurt and pulling away is actually hurting more then what it is I'm running away from!

I'm proud of myself about a couple of things though..

I'm never afraid to admit my mistakes. There's someone in my life who I've lost because of cowardice..and also because of bad judgement. I forgot that some people's faith in me is not as solid as I may believe. That they may not hang on to the truth they know about who I am and what's in my heart, but believe that the circumstances I've brought upon them may be ones I've brought onto them with the intention of hurt.

This story has been needling at me ever since it happened. All summer, I've been wondering..what if? What if I had been braver? What if I had stopped the person slowly corrupting my life and spoke out the truth? What if that one time I should have, I dropped everything and ran? Ran to the right person.

Well.. I never did. I never did speak up, nor did I run to the right person. But I sure as hell ran away. Eventually. From all of it.

I must have started walking in the right direction a million times, but my feet always felt heavy. My heart told me one thing but my brain and everyone else told me another. I was always afraid of what I was walking to. Always afraid that what's on the end of that road is going to be more than I could handle.

And I still am. I am afraid. But I'm not afraid to say so. Because how much more of life do we really have left anyway? It's all just passing us by. And so what if I'm afraid? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's nothing to be afraid of. Maybe what I'm afraid of is me.

So many people have always told me that the power in any situation lies with the one who cares the less. Well I don't want the power anymore. I don't want to be the coward anymore. I want to be the one who grabs life by the tail and rides along. I want to have the courage to trust, but not the naivety to trust the wrong people.

All this time, I've been telling myself it's something I didn't miss; something that didn't matter. And I've been trying so hard to convince myself of that, that I've said it to those who wonder along with me.

But now summer's ended and so have all the lies. I've unravelled the truth about all those around me, and decided to start out fresh and new. Most important of all, I've unravelled myself and I've lain myself bare. Bare enough to get hurt. Bare enough to give in.

So maybe you're thinking, that this time, like so many other's I've chosen to pour out my torment in writing, I'd be able to walk away from it and seal my emotions in this blog. But I cant. Because everyday I wait. Everyday I wait for the chance to make everything right again. And this time I'm waiting rather than moving because I have no right other than to stay right where I am.. waiting.

Oh.. and now the rain is tapping on my window.. the first sign of autumn. A new season has begun.

Purity

Purity. What is purity? Is it when we've seen nothing of the world and are blind in our innocence, or is it when we've seen so much yet still feel our heart beat when we would have been expected to have turned into stone?

Is purity when you love freely, trust openly, try unconditionally and show a kindness with no boundaries? Or is purity strength and knowledge and a wise mind that knows where to draw its limits, and the understanding that there are worlds that we simply should not cross over to?

Is purity to isolate One's mind from the filth of reality and to live in a fantasy world of One's own, or is it to walk, liberated, into the world, fearlessly, armoured with the lessons we've learnt from our experiences?

Is purity to have never known sin, or is it the understanding of sin and therefore the appreciation of repentance?

I have a theory: that without having known darkness, we cannot value the gift of light.

..Purity. Is it vulnerability, or is it strength?

I still cannot get over the controversy over this concept. So then.. who is pure? Who is weak and who is strong? Who is wise, and who's naive?

Purity can be many different things. Purity is also a soul. It can be one that has seen no evil, and yet could be another who's felt the cold of loneliness, wandered the the deep corners of darkness and yet knows that through the gloom, there is always hope, that what was once black can be turned into greys and one day become white.

Purity is being able to forgive the past, people and circumstance, but also being able to protect One's self aided by the lessons learned, yet without locking out the world.

It's when we go out into the world, knowing that there will be hurdles to tackle but still cleanse our hearts of all fears with the solidness of our faith.

To be pure is to not be afraid. Fear is the dirt that clings onto us as we come through the experiences we face in life.

Wash away the fear. Wipe away the doubt. And do not be afriad to Love; do not be afraid to Live.

Letting go.

Last night I cried until my whole body dried out. I cried until my body had to force me to sleep. Then I took a long hot shower and let the water wash away my pain. I let the steam surround me and the hot water pour onto my skin until I was numb and could feel nothing.
Crying is good. It purifies the soul and washes away the dirt from the chaos we live in.

I spent hours just laying there. Thinking. Remembering. And that's when I decided to stop trying to understand. I thought about a million things. About the people in our lives that come and go, the relationships we have with them that sometimes die and sometimes grow.. about the decisions we make and the experiences we gain and the lessons we learn.

They say that the hardest lessons are those we learn from the most. .. I can't say I can argue with that. I've discovered that our lives are like mazes. We all start at the same point; innocence. Then, we each try to find our way around. For some, they have this instinct on where to turn and they make a clean getaway. For the rest of us, we sometimes make the wrong turns and yet follow our guts and sometimes find ourselves at a dead end and take longer to finally set ourselves on the right course.

We all search for something in this life. Some of us yearn for accomplishment, succes..others seek fame, glory or rewards. And some..some of us just look for love. A dear friend of mine said that some of us were givers, and our need was to find someone who was willing to take.

Maybe the problem is, we're all inlove with an idea. With many different ideas. He also said that perhaps now that I have an image of exactly what I want and know I need, I have to make sure that that image is elastic enough to accomodate reality. Because no one really does live a fairytale.

In life we make many friends. Some of which we carry along and some we are forced by circumstance to leave behind. Some remain the friendly familiar faces we always knew, and others change and become complete strangers.

I think it's the hardest when it's a close friend you find you've left behind, or realise had been someone else all along. We hang on to them, wish the best for them and try to be a helping hand, but then we reach a point when it's simply not worth it anymore. When we realise that in order to learn to love again, we have to let them go.

It's also the hardest when you realise that the person infront of you was never the person you chose to hang on to. We just wish so badly that who we have are exactly who we want them to be that when we finally wake up and look closely enough to see that they are nothing of what we thought we knew, we feel betrayed by our own senses.

I still believe everything happens for a reason, and that there are bigger plans for us than any of can begin to comprehend. Those doors that are sometimes closed to us mean that there are many others waiting to be opened. ..I was told that if I still hadn't found happiness, it meant I was looking in the wrong place.

I have to be patient with time and renew the strength in my faith. Because like old man Kentucky had to go through 1009 stores to convince someone his recipie was good enough, I may have to go through several stages of my life before I'm appreciated. But.. he did get there in the end. On the 1010th attempt. Moral? he kept trying and believed that he had something worth putting out there.

..I just hope I don't have to try quite as many times.