I write about love to tell myself that this heart is still capable of loving, and giving love.

I pluck out love from another world, another dimension. from another time when I was still that girl who rather than long for sleep, I long to hear your voice, the sound of your footsteps, your laugh–soft like a whisper, cold like the chill air that surrounds us at night when I go out of the room and you are at the study area, your head and your nose buried in your books; your eyebrows in a sharp crease and your arms on top of the table all serious and all focused.

do you know how my heart flutters every time your eyes perk up, and your ears twitch when you hear me pass? do you know how when you crane your neck to look up to me I feel like it is sunrise? do you know how my cheeks heat up like I had sunshine on my face every time I try so hard to pretend you are not there  but fail miserably?

do you know what goes through my mind as I pass you by in the hallways, being too conscious that you are there as if I was a murderer that just killed someone and you are the cop that’s going to interrogate me?

I am nervous just thinking you exist in this space with me, and I am this close to you. I feel like we are caged together. That your bones are my bones, and that you’re sucking all the air in me with just existing in this closed space with me. Like you are kissing me and I want but not want to kiss you. The tragedy of a conflict: I want you to kiss me, but I don’t want you to just kiss me.

You don’t know.

No, you don’t know.

For you I am clumsy feet and unrhythmic arms. For you I am this unguided girl who’s too nervous around you. This person who has a silly crush on you.

Just that. Only that.

You don’t know that you are the lullaby that lulls me to sleep every night. You don’t know that you are the movie that plays over and over in my dreams trapping me in this delusion that you will always be there inside my heart, inside my soul, merged with every fiber of my being.

it’s not untrue.

fast forward five years and I’m still here writing these silly notes. When I think of love, I think of you. When I think of lost love, I think of you. When I think of happiness, I think of you.

You.

You.

You. 

When I think of the rain, I think of you. And the way your cold face turn into sunshine when you smile. A gleam of a raindrop. This must be how it feels like to look at something and feel as if you are born onto a life that’s worth a while. As if Spring has come.  Well in our tropical country we cannot confide in spring. That is why you are the rain for me.

Cold and soothing when the sun’s heat is unbearable.

And then I realize. I miss you.

It’s like a punch in the gut. I am out of breath when I realize that all this time I’ve been missing you. Or missing the feeling of missing you. The thought of you is infinitely joined with everything that screams happiness in my life. I look back at my past and I always remember you and the things that you made me feel. It is still warm in my chest, as if my heart was a passenger seat where your heat still lingers.

I guess this is what it means to love. A heart is a passenger seat. You carry the weight of the beloved. It sits on your heart, weighing you down but you tolerate it because you are made to love. You are made to carry the beloved’s whole being, everything that they are into your heart without any qualms.  And when they leave, you feel light. You feel free. But their heat still lingers. A reminder of their existence and that you had loved. You carried the beloved as far as you could.

That heat represents memory just like how the body remembers the way the ocean made it feel that bones melt when an arm is wrapped around it, afraid to let go. when there are no fading footsteps, just a tight embrace that you’d like to keep forever.

3:18

 It’s 3:18 in the morning. And I can’t sleep. I’m bleeding words that aren’t supposed to bleed out of me. I am thinking of thoughts that aren’t supposed to come to me. I am writing poems I can’t write during the day without feeling exhausted both mentally and physically. I know for sure that I can no longer write the same as I used to. I know for sure that I don’t have much time to spend on other stuff. But I just still do these things. I draw. I write. I watch movies.

I can never resist a good movie nor an urge to draw.

I wish I were asleep right now. But I slept in the afternoon that’s why I don’t feel sleepy. That’s why I’m up writing this. We didn’t have class earlier today. I was left alone in the house studying. I felt quite lonely. I don’t always feel lonely. It’s just that sometimes, loneliness comes like a kick. I am surprised. Eating alone for instance had always been okay. I didn’t have a problem with it. But now, when I eat alone in the house when my sister is gone, the loneliness sits on my heart like an elephant. I try to shrug it off. But it always comes.

Maybe we can’t entirely escape loneliness? After all, humans were made to be with another, may it be for companionship or for love and affection.

Reading persons and family relations law made me wonder about myself in the context of a family. The provision on Article 36 of the Family Code really disturbs me. It is about Psychological Incapacity of a spouse to render Marital duties and obligations. And the sample cases are the likes of Chiming Tsoi, Te vs Te, and etc. Most are about personality disorders. Chiming Tsoi’s case was his inability to bed his wife.  While we were discussing in class,  I thought that if I find someone, I may not be able to give that person what they need. I have been living with myself for a while now, ever since I was in high school. I’ve lived far away from home. I only ever looked out for myself until I went to graduate school and my brother, and later on my sister accompanied me here.

When I see how my mother takes care of us, I am always thinking if I could do the same. Is there something wrong with me? There are different forms of love. There are different ways of showing love. Maybe mine is different. But I would never know if I would be competent to care for any one.

There are days when the words won’t come no matter how much I try to summon them, so that I could be able to put them into paper. There are also days when the words just overflow within me, and I can’t stop writing them. These days are good days, because when I want to write, I can write. Bad days are when I want to write, but I cannot. Bad days are also those days when I feel like I am not enough, and I question my worth. I question my purpose in this life. I ask myself whether instead of becoming a better version of myself, why am I becoming the worse version of myself?

I no longer think of such questions deeply because I don’t want to hurt anymore. I don’t want to mull those things over and over inside my head and feel insecure about everything in the end. I don’t want to feel not enough. I don’t want to feel jealous. But I can’t help comparing myself with others sometimes.

I’ve said a lot of times that I can be what I want to be; that if I put my mind to it, I can do anything. But I don’t know. Maybe there are just things that no matter how much you wish for it, you can never reach it; that no matter how much you hurt, your efforts are just.. really not enough, and you are just left with that burning feeling in your chest and your own voice saying, “will I ever be enough?”

 

Love is a Choice.

I watched City of Angels last time with my sister. Earlier today, we had a conversation about the couple. The couple she’s referring to was the Girl protagonist and her partner before Nicolas Cage came into her life. My sister asked me why did she leave her partner when their relationship was actually good just for Nicolas Cage.

And my answer actually had me thinking.

I believe that love is a choice, because one way or another, the affection you had for someone at the beginning will not remain the same all through out your relationship. I know they are exceptions to this, because there are really people who, for one reason or another, feel the same for their partners no matter how long they have been together. But these people, I think are only very few. There are people that once they feel secure with someone, they tend to search for other people to liven up their lives. I think the girl protagonist of City of Angels is one of those people.

Her relationship with her Doctor boyfriend was good, really good in fact. They are made for each other. She is secure with him; they have a good relationship with each other’s family. When he asked her to marry him, she didn’t say yes, because she had been so smitten by Nicolas Cage the Angel.

In the movie, it was shown that since they were very scientifically inclined, love, an abstract concept that cannot be measured empirically, was lacking in their relationship. They were together because they are like-minded. They were together because they liked each other’s company.  Meeting Nicholas Cage made the girl realize that there are things that science cannot explain. And one of which is love.

But really, I think it’s just because she had become so familiar with her doctor boyfriend. Catching a handsome man’s attention like that probably made her feel desirable and young again. It made her dull life exciting when she met him. That’s why.

People search for other people. But one thing I learned from other people’s stories is that, love is a choice. You chose to love that person. You chose to marry that person; and sticking with that choice is all up to you.

Don’t say you can’t do it. How many times have you told yourself you can’t but you made it out just fine? How many times were you close to giving up, truly believing that things wouldn’t turn out well, but it did just fine?

You said that you were a success story. You said that you were proud of the little things that you got through struggling; through doing your best to improve what you lacked.

Your flaws are your battle-scars, and you wore them on your sleeves as if they mattered, silently. But we all struggle, we all break down and fall. You are just a speck of dust in this vast universe trying to leave a mark in this world. Be kind to yourself. You can’t perfect. But you can be good.

So this is Aching pt.1

I would have gone to the ends of the earth just for you. But you wouldn’t do the same for me. You were afraid darling. You were afraid of the fire that burned in your chest; feared the very thing that could possibly maim you from inside out. You denied the rush in your veins when we touched. You chose to forget the trail of rose kisses you planted on the garden of my skin when you could no longer resist. I still remember it though: the way you smothered me by raking your teeth against the soil of my shoulders. Oh the feel of those incisors against my flesh! Oh how the warmth of your trembling mouth made me insane. From the way you pressed your palms on my arm, gliding it across as you grabbed and pulled me against your aching, throbbing bosom, you reduced me to breathless, heaving lungs.

“How would a kiss taste then?” you asked me laughing. And like the thousand simulations I made of this conversation inside my head, I replied, “It would taste of the mudshake you and I both shared that lonely evening when we snook out of the house; or that vanilla coffee with whipped cream you loved so much which you said tasted like constellations and galaxies melting on your tongue. And perhaps of infinity, if infinity had a flavour.”

You just looked at me like you knew the number of times I’ve imagined us talking about this. Then, you just left it at that. I wonder if you ever considered how that made me feel.

Settle Down Vid.

Hala, I just realised it just now. I’ve been watching this video over and over again because this has been my theme song for Guren and Ferid but I fail to realise how beautiful this video really is.

Matty said the video is inspired by a dream that he had.

So this is my interpretation of this video: the two kids live in a society that is very traditional, a kind of society where the people follow and obey this ‘norm’ in a manner that’s bordering into fanaticism. This norm of course is embodying the traditional image of masculinity. Liking girls, being brusque and tough. But these two feels such a very strong attraction towards each other that they just sneak out just to see each other. They take a risk despite knowing that their parents’ are already suspicious.

I really like the car scene. When the cars the two boys were riding pass by each other. At that instant, when for a little while it was as if the car slowed down a bit just to give the two of them a split second of intimacy.

The running towards each other was very beautiful too at the end, when finally, finally’ve escaped whatever it was that was hindering them to be together. The swooning of the adults in this video was very symbolic, as well as that scene when the two of them were finally face to face and they touched hands. When they were engulf by light after. Really liked it. It’s like these norms, these social construct were fading, dying away to make way for their love to grow.

It’s really beautiful. ❤

Wow I feel like I’m drunk. I’m being overly talkative today.

I want a lot of things. I want a love that will blow me away, that will make me rethink about every decision I’ve made. A love that will make me beg, bow down and throw everything away.

I want my mind to be confused and at the same time entirely sure that this is what I want, that this is the only thing in my life that made sense, the only thing that matters and will ever matter to me.

I want to feel the fresh air against my skin. I want to discover for myself what it means to hold hands with someone you hold dear, someone who I am utterly in love with and devoted to.

Wouldn’t that be nice?                                                                                          Wouldn’t that be nice?

To spend the whole of your life with the one you love? With the person whom you’ve been waiting for your whole life? Someone who would look at you and see the universe in your person. Someone that would smile at you and then you realise that: “yeah this person really loves me. He really loves me more than my mother loves me” that kind of thing.

That would really be nice. Oh well, it doesn’t really matter.

I always wonder why when we’re depressed we always imagine this large ocean surrounding us. We feel like floating at first and then after awhile we feel the water getting deeper and deeper until we’re underwater. We try to struggle, try not to suffocate but our limbs feel heavy that we just wait for someone to save us. Of course no one will. And we just stay still and wait for the time this feeling subsides. In the past, I count the days and spend the whole night blaming myself and wishing for the week to be over. It used  exactly seven days ‘till I feel okay. Now I just wait for it to leave me.

What is it with the sea? Sometimes I could even smell the salty water and feel the windy beach air. Sometimes the reality of it all creeps me out because I feel the cold water underneath my feel licking the soles of my feet. I can feel its movement, the way it recedes and approaches.

When I just lay in bed and imagine I’m floating, I always feel the water buoy me and I wonder whether or not things will get better. I wonder whether or not after waking up the next morning everything will feel different. It would, it wouldn’t. And when it doesn’t, I just stare at the ceiling for five minutes and feel nothing. I just get on with life like always but the heavy feeling stays. The struggle is there because time feels so slow and it hurts. Feeling that way hurts.

I stare at my classmates and my teachers and wonder whether this slimy black gooey thing inside myself was as obvious as daylight. I wonder whether they could see it in the way I stand up to answer for an oral recitation or in the way I retort back, my voice in a drawl, my eyes weak, devoid of any light. I wonder why I always feel this way. I wonder why.

But the mind is wonderful, because now, my ego automatically shuts down the heaviness and I am just left with nothing but the feeling of apathy when the feeling gets worse.