Singles

I don't like singles. Especially the way the clang against each other in your pocket as if their compiled weighty-ness doesn't already remind you of their existence. 

I don't disregard their value though; in the same way that I do not disregard single souls, lost in a sea of turmoil. 

Convince yourself of practicality. Be my guest. 

But I do want to suggest that, maybe fate/karma has already made a visit to your mind creeping through the back door. 

I call it being "spiritual but not religious" and states my practicality that way. But I'm ready to say that I'm comfortable, at least, with being by myself always, if fate so decides. 

Chances can be numbers, irrational and illogical. 

But I stand at this point and say that chances are quite decided.

And I'm ready to accept mine. 

Quit

I'm trying to quit smoking.

It scares me, the feeling it creates, this viscous and short-lived aura of delusion; as if I can afford to live recklessly.

I never thought of my self as ambitious. It's a latent ambition that does not compel, but rather glares.
My ambition glares at me as I tilt my head back and draws another breath of nothingness.
It glares at me when the sequence of my favorite past eerily dissolves into incongruent pixels and frames.

I can't think of why I fell into that fountain when I was 5 anymore.

I'm slowly losing my presentness.

I can't recall the mess from last Friday.

I can't remember what I said to my mother from before I departed.

I can't smoke anymore.

Down

I am that obsessive lover.

I am that clingy type.

I am the emotional juggernaut that leaves ruins in silence.

Burn

As I ride this flying metal box soaring through territories so foreign to me, I can’t stop but look back at the day, the week, and the semester before me. As much as this post is about reflection, I still can’t quite understand people’s need for reflection. Why do we have to constantly remind ourselves what we did yesterday and spend this grief-worthy amount of time making attempts at understanding our own histories when all this generation wants is to YOLO? 

Time is a sequence, mimicking that of DNA, where segments interlock in accordance and therefore producing the sequence we came to understand as our reality. And though I don’t possess the knowledge equivalent to that of a microbiologist, I, as do many others, am still hooked on pulling this intricate sequence apart and judge the shit out of each moments and each broken phrases. We actually think we are some forensic genius who spend each living moment gathering and deciphering the mundane details of the even more mundane daily activities which we so pride ourselves in. Gag.

People like to play gods. I don’t mean having the power to alter physics or warping times; but the ability to control every aspects of life. Who said what and how they felt and who did this to whom and blah blah blah. Standing, or rather ironically, sitting in this viewpoint and peeking at my semester, it’s quite a joke how much I overanalyzed, over-interpreted, and over-planned in just a short span of four months. Regardless of how much I tell myself I am over different things that occurred, I still contemplated so very hard at grasping reality from other people’s angle. 

I can sure tell myself that, you know, I’m smart enough to let go of it. But fuck. 

Fuck.

Remember that cliche all those legends created and re-created, the saying about how we all are touched in some shape or form and are therefore impacted as seen in For Good from Wicked? Fuck that. 

I don’t dismiss it completely though. Cliches withstand the trial of time because the truth within, no matter how insignificant and overlooked, has the ability to stand as long in history as they make you believe that diamonds last forever. Fuck that, still. Because I was not just touched by Tyler in some glamorously metaphorical way, it hurt more like a burn. It was almost like that time when I thought it’d be a good idea to touch a turned on iron. What set them apart is that, with some toothpaste and “roughin-it”, the blister on my thumb eventually learnt to retreat and heal; but this one doesn’t. It does not just “take time” or can be “waited out”. 

I don’t believe the Weekend narrative where true romance can happen over a one-night-stand. I do, however, wholehearted think that this narrative should be the way love happens with the one-night-stand part being optional. It’s the true connection between two lost kids in a crowded park, that instant recognition that makes you believe things would be easier now with this new-found relationship and someone who’s always going to be confident in you no matter what. It’s the connection and recognition that just really piss me off; because I thought I found it. I thought I effortlessly, just, I don’t know, earned it? 

Maybe it was a shift in focus that I positively convinced myself of making. I was that dummy who believed in the reinvention bullshit those self-help writers churned out in some grim self-help-books factories.

Damn.

Reinvention doesn’t happen according to your will! Most of the time you recognize change in yourself because somehow you were touched and it impacted you so much you took time off from looking at your face and those ever-present zits. It impacted you so much so that even you sense the change. It’s a gradual process no college-aged naive kid can just compress into a four months session, though I did believe I could. 

It doesn’t matter anymore though, whatever “coerced” me into taking that leap as I would like to tell myself.

Haha. Coercion. As if that was actually it.

Nah. It was only my over-interpreting and overanalyzing. Regardless of how untruthful Tyler was and how much of an [insert insult] he was, it was I who thought I really saw the big picture and had a feeling that it was going to turn out as I planned. That whole over-interpretation grasped my attention so intensely I swallowed my subconscious and deceiving idea of being with him down. I set up a trap followed by lies I told myself and jumped in ever so willingly.

That doesn’t obscure the utter aloneness and the deep and unbelievable loathe I had against myself in those tears I so pathetically cried. I laugh at myself though.

But above all, it was the true emotional turmoil that I underwent, which all sprang from a deception, that really irritates me and completely destroys what courage I have left in me to believe I am strong and mature. Because I was touched by a fictional and intense love I created myself from a deception. 

Fuck.

Sonder

It's actually kinda funny.

I was sitting in a final twisting my brain trying to find an answer for a question. It felt so clear to me as if I could almost just reach into that little drawer in my brain and pull the answer out. As I was sitting there having this mental struggling, I found myself distracted somehow and my eyes were unconsciously focused on some strangers' head.

I was unknowingly staring at this person's head long before I started to wonder what, at that exact moment, is going on in that head. Are they searching, like me, for an answer to some question, or are they planning out the perfect weekend schedule.

I don't know.

Sonder is a funny word. It hugs the fine line between genuine curiosity and utter creepiness; but I do it anyway.  Others' stories are always more interesting than mine right?

Reminder

I am never afraid of honesty. When that bitter air flows around, bringing currents made of knives, cutting me into fragments, I only taste the sweet, sorrowful, but honest scent. 

If that stands true, if that’s what I expect of passerby’s in my life, why do I personally fall short of that hollow statement? 

Why can’t I be brutally true and naked in the eyes of others when I so desperately desire their looks to be revealing and just?

I only look into myself and find that poisonous mirror reflecting only what I want to see. No. It reflects what I want to become; and I see this slender, elegant, yet pretentious and vain shape giving me a haughty smile so hollow it haunts. 

But I look closer. I look past the blurry outlines of that shape and the feigned smile, and I found this vileness pooling in the sockets of whose face I recognized as my own. It creeps down, through the curves of my cheekbones, pouring out from the pair of ajar lips that twitch in disgust. 

And that vileness cries out, in agony, of imperfections I found so aggravating within my soul. It mocks, in roaring silence, that shallow figure appearing in the mirror and threatens to burn and shatter it in cruelty unimagined.

What keeps this vileness and this facade apart, as I take steps back, is my insecurity. This minotaur stretches its rippling arms and stops the collision, and then stares at me in utter arrogance; because its so powerful and invulnerable. 

I must kill that beast.

I must drain that vileness.

And I must blow away the smokey facade and shatter that poisonous mirror.

And then I can truly inspect this world, with bright eyes in such curiosity. 

I shall have tougher skin. I shall have clearer vision.

And I then will learn love. I will learn intimacy.

Like never before.

Beginning

Yet another fall, yet another semester.

This is a new beginning indeed.

Not in a metaphorical way though. This is tangible. It's differences I can see and feel, not simply numbers comparing the "before" and "after". 

And I feel revived. This revitalization seems to bring back some hope and happiness that are much needed and desired in my life right now; and I can see it and feel it because, this cheerfulness, is real to me.

Looking back at all the things that disappointed me so much, I don't sense that dark scent of bitterness. It only leaves a alerting pinch in my mind enabling me to look at these incidents from a critical view. 

This reflection thing, does bring me a nonchalant mood; because they paint a story about how much one person can mature in one year; and I am that story. I matured so much in one year.

That is why I am proud of this beginning.

That is why I call this a new beginning.