I'm going to marry you anyway...

Saturday morning, jumped out of bed,

and put on my best suit.

Got in my car and raced like a jet -

all the way to you.

Knocked on your door with my heart in my hand:

to ask you a question:

would you forever be my man?

He's hell bound...

Everyone suffers at least one bad betrayal in their lifetime. It’s what unites us. The trick is not to let it destroy your trust in others when that happens. Don’t let them take that from you, because the beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them. Then if they let us down, and ruin our bond of trust, we see it as a failure on our end, not their's. What did I do? Why wasn't I good enough? The answer, it seems, is understanding that love is not a noun - it's a verb. It is active. Love is not just feelings of passion and romance. It is behaviour. It's choosing to trust, when nothing but their eyes, tell you otherwise. 

Be with me for the last time...

Darkness can be a lonely place...

I choose to write because it's perfect for me. It's an escape, a place I can go to hide. It's a friend, when I feel out casted from everyone else. It's a journal, when the only story I can tell is my own. It's a book, when I need to be somewhere else. It's control, when I feel so out of control. It's healing, when everything seems pretty messed up. And it's fun, when life is just flat-out boring.

We've come a long way...

It's been a long couple of days, and as I sit and ponder how I've almost reached the end of an era, I am reminded that while things might never be the same, it may just be exactly what I need. I've created a plan of where I want to be, and I think I found the most proficient way of getting there - now all I need is the fortitude and grace to see it through. It surely won't be easy, and I could very well stumble before I even start, yet what drives me most, is that I don't truly have a choice at all. I have marked my path, and the universe hasn't steered me wrong so far, thus I only need patience, courage, and as always, a little bit of luck.

What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered. The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny. One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us. We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements. Because only then can you claim, that you are not a victim. No matter what you have been through, you're still here. You may have been challenged, hurt, betrayed, beaten, and discouraged, but nothing has defeated you. You are still here! You have been delayed but not denied. You are not a victim, you are a victor.

All the planes we flew...

It's been a long day without you, my friend,

and I'll tell you all about it when I see you again.

We've come a long way from where we began,

oh, I'll tell you all about it when I see you again.

When I see you again ...

Checking my vital signs...

Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does. So I beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Loving can mend...

Loving can hurt...

Young and reckless...

By far, my biggest flaw, my absolute fallacy as a human being, is that I'll do just about anything if I believe it would make a good story. Such thinking has led me down many paths that in hindsight, might have been better avoided, yet without question they have shaped my life into one worth living, into one worth telling, into one worth writing about. As I try to digest the emotions from my recent blunder of misconceptions, I remind myself that anything causing me discomfort is a phenomenon I can't help but explore. What do these feelings mean? What can I do with them? How do they change my view of the world? The anxiety is barely bearable and I run to my addictions to ease the butterflies running amok in my stomach, knowing in the back of my mind that living the life of a writer has never come easy, and if I am to learn anything before I leave this world, then I need to accept that the choices I make, aren't really choices at all.

I want to see you be brave...

He envisions a life for himself that seems real and within reach - how he loves and is loved in return. How he goes out everyday to make a living, just like his parents, and then when he himself becomes one, he sacrifices the life he wanted, for the life his offspring deserve. It is a life he has seen unfold before his eyes. The joy, the happiness, and even the darker sides. Resentment, pain, regret. The choice itself has been made easier for him, because he is not excepted, and in this moment in time, not even allowed to lead a common life, even if leading one might be everything he ever wanted. And while he still navigates the misty road of the future, he is somewhat soothed by the notion, that even despite of everything, he may very well not be as alone as he thought.

The best thing for being sad, I learned as I puffed and blew through my recent unravelling, is to learn something, anything at all. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Just look at how every corner is different and what a lot of things there are to learn.

Bow down to the mighty...

You can be amazing,

you can turn a phrase into a weapon or a drug.

You can be the outcast

or be the backlash of somebody's lack of love.

Nothing's gonna hurt you the way that words do,

when they settle 'neath your skin,

kept on the inside and no sunlight

sometimes a shadow wins.

But I wonder what would happen if you

say what you wanna say.

and let the words fall out?

Honestly I wanna see you be brave.

Sometimes shadows win...

As an adult it is hard to navigate under the constant pressure of meeting expectations. Our choices matter and they shape us as individuals - how others see us and more importantly, how we see ourselves. As children we could make mistakes and brush them off as easily as dirt on our shoes, but now, as I am bombarded from every corner, I realise that grace and serenity are my best guidelines. I don't wish to be known as impulsive or unreliable. I want to be perceived as someone who is trustworthy, someone who knows when to stand up for what is right, and when to bow down when the fight has clearly been lost. I am growing up, for sure, and while the future can't come fast enough, I try to find solace in the fact that I have never before been surrounded with so much love and friendship. Both of which outweigh those that would bring me down, those that cannot see how life is simply never life at all.

Words just fall out...

I promise, after this, I'll let it go...

He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.

Blinded by the lights...