It could have been home

“I would rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on Earth.”
– Steve Mcqueen

I look 33 floors down, at the blinking city lights, savoring the picture for only a moment before jumping back into reality. There it goes. My eyes were flying. My mind was locked in a box. Everything in the waking life is relative.

Stare at something for a long enough time, your eyes open wide, and the edges will start disappearing. Multiple lines will keep blending into one, until the central objects become an indistinguishable mass. Absorb the brightness of the light till it hurts, and through the watery eyes you’ll see the all-engulfing light, the brightest one with the darkest intentions. Start blinking however, and blink a lot, and the surrounding world will slowly start regaining its shape, its objects popping up abruptly, reclaiming their existence.

I look at the city skyline on the horizon, stopping for a moment on the lingering monsters of brick and steel. I follow several twisted snakes of light, the highways cutting this giant into pieces, marking the neighborhood limits, creating the safe and the not so safe zones. A sensitive poet calls them arteries every now and then, deceived by the constant movement inside; but they bring death rather than life, killing the surroundings they cut into, once and for all.

I blink even harder as I look closer, now just a couple of blocks away from the building, down the bridge covered in graffiti and the badly lit road beneath. My eyes wonder half a block to the right and I see a gas station, a police car, some oily spots on the ground and an empty street. A lonely figure slowly approaches the building and disappears in the alley. It’s 2 a.m. and I am thinking that the guy riding a bike in an empty parking lot below, making circle after circle, belongs here so much more than I do.

Image Credit: mademan033
Listening to NPR :)

Yesterday's rain (watering down memories)

Pain makes man think. Thought makes man wise. Wisdom makes life endurable. ~ John Patrick

You've got to make a conscious choice every day to shed the old - whatever 'the old' means for you. ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

The scent of bathing grass and dust disturbed by water hits my nostrils. I open the window wider and inhale deeper, savoring the relief brought by rain. I close my eyes and a subtle tune wakes my thinking.

…I've seen your flag on the marble arch,
But love is not a victory march,
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah…

I used to make a step ahead and two back. Why did you hold on to me for so long? When was it, the moment you won over the control that I thought was mine? Was it the morning you wrote to say I was the first thought of your day? Was it the afternoon you yelled about your feeling out loud, making the world hear, making me blush and finally believe you? Was it the sunset on that violet hill, the one I naively imagined to be ours, until a simple note on the wall told me the opposite? I chose to close my eyes and pretend, for the longest time, that I saw a bad dream. I ran away and cried that night, but when you found me red-eyed, I lied about the cause of my tears. I shielded myself from the obvious for too long, fearing the pain it would bring. I let it in slowly, one day at a time, as if giving my body a chance to build up defense against your poison, as if letting my mind come to terms with the bitterness of it. How symbolic, I thought, when they closed our hangout place. I knew it was time for me to leave, long before I had the guts to do so.

…Well, maybe there's a God above,
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you…
It's not a cry that you hear at night,
It's not somebody who's seen the light,
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah…

I have written a short story, and it’s the first one I have ever finished. Short of inspiration, you were the cause of it. See, inspiration is too good of a word to be in one sentence with you. I have been debating for the longest time between posting it and not, and it’s still in the "not" stage. I don’t think I am ready quite yet, because I still remember.

........................................
…And the holy dove was moving too,
And every breath we drew was hallelujah…

I make two steps ahead and one back now, or maybe only half back. This summer has been cleansing, just like that rain. It’s slowly washing away every thought of you, every idea of “us.” It’s been a long time and I think I am ready to feel again.

Please, let me go now.

Currently listening: Chasing Pavements by Adele

Love Implied

“Do you know what happens when you hurt people? When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”

– Ammu in Arundhati Roy’s "The God of Small Things"

It was so easy to forget and forgive this weekend. It was so easy to ask and be forgiven. I don’t think there is a reason in the world to close your heart to either one of those. But then again, is there a reason to hurt anyone in the first place?

Leaning forward to give a hug to a friend Saturday night, I heard a single sentence that was deeply carved into my memory.

“Be good to your mothers,” he said quietly to a group of us leaving his place. His mom passed away several days ago.

The whole world changed its colors as I walked back to my car. I wasn’t driving home, I was floating slowly on a helium balloon, looking at the world below from a new angle.

Down under the streetlights, I saw a dark figure with a grudge on her heart. A mean little person who wasn’t good to her parents. Why is it so, I thought, that I will let friends’ mistakes slide so easily, yet I won’t forgive the two people who love me so unconditionally? Is it just me, or do you let this happen to you as well? Do you ever take love for granted? Do you ever let yourself be mean to someone dear to you, thinking a couple of fights won’t change anything where love is implied?

* * *

You said,
“Even in the hardest of times,
No one will erase this kind of friendship
Off the face of the earth.”

I walked through the dance floor Friday night and my eyes, once again, met his. A friend so close and dear to me yet so far away for what seems to have been forever. It was only about a month ago that we stopped talking, running past each other in awkward silence. His eyes would always tell me he still cared. His actions would say otherwise.

His greeting came out of nowhere, followed by a hug. The conversation was flying like a bunch of little flies above our heads, I could hear the buzz but the meaning seemed out of reach. He hurt me with his harsh words last time we spoke… afraid to approach me after that… he didn’t really mean any of it... He didn’t??

…when weakness turns my ego up
I know you'll count on the me from yesterday.
If I turn into another
Dig me up from under what is covering
The better part of me.

Once again, he spoke of that implied love, that unbreakable friendship, that tie that is supposedly always there, and I was expected to know that it was... Was I??

However far away, I will always love you
However long I stay, I will always love you
Whatever words I say, I will always love you
I will always love you…

How was I to know? For a moment there, it made me think of my parents again. How do they know that I still love them as much, if I ignore their phone calls for days after an argument? Why do we expect others to know we still love them? If in our hearts we truly do, then any pain we cause is consciously temporary, right? I think this awareness only makes it worse; it gives intention to our actions. Emotion alone can’t be blamed for it all. We’d cool it down and think 10 times before hurting someone if each time the love of that person was at stake. The problem is, we think love will always be there, no matter what we say. There's always a way out, a "sorry" somewhere out there to lean on and "it's ok" to follow, both of them worn out to the extreme, overused.

Look me in the eye,
And ask for forgiveness.
We'll make a pact to never speak that word again.
Yes, you are my friend.

If there were no hurts, there would be no sorries. I think the reason I forgave my friend without a second thought was because my own heart wasn’t clear of guilt, a different kind, yet as strong.

* * *

This might seem like a mix of thoughts about a string of unrelated events but that’s not the case. The thinking they brought was similar and the outcome was one. I called my parents. My mom can never be mad at me for more that five minutes so the negative things were easily left behind. I need to learn her ways as I struggle toward becoming a better person.

I felt the bitterness of what it’s like to live on that implied love for a while, and I didn’t enjoy it for a minute. If there is love, I want to know that it’s there. If everyone always showed that they cared and never implied it, the notion of forgiveness would slowly become obsolete.

Lyrics used in this post:
Incubus - Dig
311 – Love Song
Kvitka Cisyk - Where are you now?

The music in my head

"What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"

– Rob in the High Fidelity movie

I experimented by switching back and forth between sad and cheerful songs and found that upbeat tunes generally make me happier for about three minutes but are often hard to relate to. It is not because I am some kind of a sad little person, I am generally perfectly optimistic. In a way, life reminds me of parents. I love it despite all the crap it gives me. Then why do I keep listening to music that makes me cry?

I think maybe it is because there are so many sides to happiness while the pain of loss is generally one. I think there is a certain threshold of grief after losing a person, a place or a battle that was fought so hard… After crossing that brink of a primary shock, for a while there the pain becomes so strong it blurs the differences of all the initial reasons that hurt… It becomes all-engulfing. Excruciating. So similar to other pains. The melancholic words coming out of the headphones suddenly rhyme so perfectly with emotions… It brings a sense of a pleasant surprise amidst the ocean of sorrow, making you wonder how in the world someone else could put your heartache into their words so perfectly even before your heartache existed. It’s that easy-to-relate factor that makes sadness so listenable. In the words of one dentist I interviewed recently, “our market is essentially based on pain.” I know the producers of sad songs will make sure I stay miserable a bit longer and I know I won’t put up too much of a fight against it. I guess it’s all about the core. As long as you keep it strong, all that wavy stuff like the music in your head won’t really matter in the long run. Like a storm in the sea, it will stir you up and subside. And then comes new happiness, new pain and new music to complement them.

The God of Loss

“He tried to hate her.
She’s one of them, he told himself. Just another one of them.
He couldn’t.
She had deep dimples when she smiled. Her eyes were always somewhere else.

“That afternoon, Ammu traveled upwards through a dream in which a cheerful man with one arm held her close by the light of an oil lamp. He had no other arm with which to fight the shadows that flickered around him on the floor.
Shadows that only he could see.
Ridges of muscle on his stomach rose under his skin like divisions on a slab of chocolate.
He held her close, by the light of an oil lamp, and he shone as if he had been polished with a high-wax body polish.
He could do only one thing at a time.
If he held her, he couldn’t kiss her. If he kissed her, he couldn’t see her. If he saw her, he couldn’t feel her.
She could have touched his body lightly with her fingers, and felt his smooth skin turn to gooseflesh. She could have let her fingers stray to the base of his flat stomach. Carelessly, over those burnished chocolate ridges. And left patterned trails of bumpy gooseflesh on his body, like flat chalk on a blackboard, like a swathe of breeze in a paddyfield, like jet streaks in a blue church-sky. She could have so easily done that, but she didn’t. He could have touched her too. But he didn’t, because in the gloom beyond the oil lamp, in the shadows, there were metal folding chairs arranged in a ring and on the chairs there were people, with slanting rhinestone sunglasses, watching. They all held polished violins under their chins, the bows poised at identical angles. They all had their legs crossed, left over right, and all their left legs were shivering.

“If he touched her he couldn’t talk to her, if he loved her he couldn’t leave, if he spoke he couldn’t listen, if he fought he couldn’t win.

“The God of Loss.
The God of Small Things.
He left no footprints in sand, no ripples in water, no image in mirrors.”

- from The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

It’s ironic that you lent THIS book to me. It’s ironic that YOU lent this book to me.

It’s a great book. Life is ironic.

Not only good dreams come true, you know. I had so many nightmares about you and they all became a reality. This book of yours brought out a feeling of sad satisfaction in me. Sad, but satisfying.

The part above is so deep in its tragedy yet so beautiful. I reread it many times, receiving a bit of a gentle relief each time. It reminds me of one of those soothing melodies I listen to when riding my bike late in the evening. They blend with the freshness of wind pushing against my face and give me that tickling sensation of a flight above all the insignificant things in the world. They only matter if we choose for them to matter.

The part below is more earthly, but still captivating. It made me think a lot, but not about you any more. It made me look into me. I think it’s better this way, to finally think about me for once.

“In the year she knew him, before they were married, she discovered a little magic in herself, and for a while felt like a blithe genie released from her lamp. She was perhaps too young to realize that what she assumed was her love for Chacko was actually a tentative, timorous acceptance of herself.”

Despite all the pain I felt, I won’t deny that you played a significant part in my life, a role in my world that made me stop abruptly. To think. Although you’ll never know it, you helped me find the sides of me that I haven’t yet discovered. You helped me realized new truths and dig out the truths long forgotten, the ones that were covered with dust somewhere in the deep corner of my conscience, behind the shelves of doubts and stacks of fears. That corner was so dark it took the light out of my dreams. It made me want to postpone them until better times. Until when I’m strong enough. Until later. Lay Ter. But there is now, there’s today and I want to live it to the fullest.

You didn’t politely pat me on the shoulder, asking me whether by any chance I took a wrong route. This isn’t your way. You kicked me hard, pushed me against the wall and slapped me in the face, calling me a fool for not noticing a one-way sign for so long, jumping out of our time, onto your street, slamming my door, never to travel with me again.

I cried as you left, but then I smiled. I started accepting myself more and more each day and I liked it.

You reminded me who I really am and then you set me free. Always look for the positive side of things. They will only matter if we choose for them to matter.

I matter now.

Before Sunrise

I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.

- Celine in Before Sunrise

I was standing outside last night, looking at the man on the moon. An insignificant spot on the face of eternity, he’s larger than us in some ways... smaller in so many others. I was looking at a swallow’s nest over my porch. I’m not sure how long it’s been there but the birds are long gone. They must have flown away to a better place, carrying their dreams on their wings, leaving my porch with an empty nest. My dreamless porch.

I am doing better at times. I think my mind is ready to move on, telling me there’s no reason to cry over someone who doesn’t care. But the pain still wakes me up in the middle of the night, every night.

I look back at this summer. There is a strong temptation to forget certain people, moments or days; but I don’t give in to it. It might be good to not have lived some of those days, but would it be right? I believe our mistakes are there for a reason. They remind us of our human flaws. They help us grow.

I look back at the day of the big fight, when I stood up for your right to take the opposite side and, as a result, lost my friend. There is another painful memory from that night, that of you slamming the car door and walking away. But you know, I wouldn’t change a thing. I wouldn’t skip that evening even if I knew what was coming. I wouldn’t try to save my friendship. I wouldn’t stop you from walking away. Because when you caught up with me at a stoplight a minute later, you told me that you loved me. I will eventually forget the tremendous negativity of that night, but I will treasure the fact that you and I were able to leave it all behind so easily, driving away into the night.

I look back even further and I see us in a friend’s garage at 7 a.m. in the morning, after just talking the night away. I see us going through a car wash twice, enjoying the little streams rolling down the windows in this rainless land, lowering the backs of our seats to lay down and listen to some quiet music, savoring the simple bliss of the moment. I see us walking through the farmer’s market closer to noon, without a single hour of sleep the night before but with our reflections still fresh and clear in each other’s eyes. You carrying the fruits for me. Your smile a reflection of a morning sun. I see us in your room, going though your family photographs. Your books. Your paintings. You making hot dogs in the kitchen. Me drinking juice from the bottle. You had no cups. You lying on the floor in an empty room, looking at the sun caught in the texture of my dress as I stand in the doorway. That dress looked tired of your witty remarks over the last 24 hours. I wasn’t. Remember? Us sitting on a staircase in your hallway, speaking about the meaning of life. You handing me a book to take home with me. You waving goodbye to me on my way out, then rushing down the staircase to give me a hug. One perfect hug. My hand shaking behind your back holding the heavy fruits. You releasing me just to ease my burden. Our shadows crossing one last time on the pavement, one unwilling to leave, another unwilling to let go.

That was our own Before Sunrise, wasn’t it. That night was the whole world, the perfect world in which we had lived and breathed each other before the real life began. Before your friends didn’t get along with mine. Before I pushed you away. Before your heart grew cold, unwilling to forgive my fear of love. I think it will take me years to get over that one night, an eternity to forget the perfect fusion of our thoughts, ideas, feelings and dreams.

I don’t want to remember anything else from this summer.

Broken

Sometimes words hide from me when I need them the most. Sometimes I wish I could speak in tears, in looks, in songs… in silence. If you ever listened to my silence, I mean really listened, you’d hear the beat of the loneliest heart in the world. You knew I was vulnerable but you chose to hurt me nevertheless. I get up and I fall again. I lean on walls. The world is spinning. I hear your voice, again and again. In songs...

I wake up, it’s a bad dream,
No one on my side,
I was fighting
But I just feel too tired
to be fighting,
guess I’m not the fighting kind.
Wouldn’t mind it
if you were by my side
But you’re long gone,
yeah you’re long gone now.

It’s Your world, isn’t it. It’s Your freedom, Your fight, Your thirst for Your life. What about My pain? "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed," said Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's fox in the Little Prince. You ran thousands of miles away from responsibility, you ran toward your freedom. I only wish my heart, too, could be free again. I wish it could be untamed.

I need a place
That’s hidden in the deep,
Where lonely angels sing you to your sleep.
The modern world is broken.
I need a place
Where I can make my bed,
A lover’s lap where I can lay my head,
Cos’ now the room is spinning,
The day’s beginning.

I don’t want to live, I don’t want to wake up into this new day. I don’t want to die either, I just want to slowly cease to exist, fade away like your feeling to me, turn into a fox and run. I think you might respect me more as a fox. I won’t have to worry about money as a fox, because that’s what I worry about, right? I probably won’t feel love, because that’s what I’m pushing away, right? In a simple world of foxes I won’t feel lonely any more. I will feel at ease, because I’m sure foxes are so much more human than many-many humans in this world.

I hope you fly free, if that’s what your freedom is all about. I hope you win your other battles, those you actually believe are worth fighting.

Why do I have to fly
over every town up and down the line?
I'll die in the clouds above
and you that I defend, I do not love.

Our ways part here

There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives. - Cyril Connolly

I wish I could take a permanent marker and cross the last couple of days out of my life, leaving only the good memories of us. I wish I could take a highlighter and make the two weeks before that stand out, overshadowing the mistakes you made in the end.

You left for good this morning and I think it’s for better, too. My heart is screaming right now, begging for my absolute attention. It tells me that now is the time to be hurting and feeling sorry for myself. I would much rather listen to my mind though, which tells me it is time to grow stronger. I bury myself in work and I put my heart to sleep.

I won’t be mad at you or judge you in any way, although you did cause me a lot of pain the last two nights. I think you have a potential of becoming a good man, but for now your actions still reveal your youth too much. Don’t apologize to me, I knew what I was signing up for from the very beginning and I saw all your little irresponsible and immature moments along the way but I would let them slide. I did not want to concentrate on anything negative because there were many good things about you to counteract that, and I had my mind set on having two wonderful carefree weeks together.

You have been kind, open-minded and adventurous. You never hid your emotions and you made me feel special in many ways. I wish you organized your life however, and set your priorities straight. I wish you stopped trying to be a crowd-pleaser and thought about what truly makes you happy, acting upon things which you wouldn’t regret an hour later. Maybe then you’d start making the right decisions the first time around.

I had a great time with you, my sweet California boy.
Stop saying sorry and simply remember me instead.

A recipe to unbreak your heart

Ok, you have to try this if your heart was broken. Travel somewhere. Visit a friend who has been inviting you forever or a sibling whom you saw a year ago or so behind your job-school-whatever else too busy life. I know, we all are busy, but there are weekends, right? No, no trip is too short, my last one was Friday through Sunday and trust me, it works like magic.

Plan a trip a month or so in advance and take that month to get over yourself and cry all you need, but as the trip nears, look forward to it. Set your mind into an adventure mode, plan, pack, make yourself look pretty, it all helps so much!

I got this idea from a movie. Ok, I quote a lot, but I guess that's what you do being a journalist. Sometimes the quotes you see or hear are so relevant to your current state of mind that you can't resist the urge to jot them down. They make you feel warm inside, telling you, “Chin up! You are not the only one going through this!” They are better yet if they offer a solution to a problem, a practical step that actually works.

“I understand feeling as small and as insignificant as humanly possible. And how it can actually ache in places you didn't know you had inside you. And it doesn't matter how many new haircuts you get, or gyms you join, or how many glasses of chardonnay you drink with your girlfriends... you still go to bed every night going over every detail and wonder what you did wrong or how you could have misunderstood. And how in the hell for that brief moment you could think that you were that happy. And sometimes you can even convince yourself that he'll see the light and show up at your door. And after all that, however long all that may be, you'll go somewhere new. And you'll meet people who make you feel worthwhile again. And little pieces of your soul will finally come back. And all that fuzzy stuff, those years of your life that you wasted, that will eventually begin to fade.” – Iris (Kate Winslet) in The Holiday movie

I set my mind to good weather, adventure and meeting people who'd make me feel worthwhile. I decided to take the load off my heart and stay cheerful throughout the trip to make sure the people I meet also feel worthwhile around me.

The new place breathes new life into you, it gives you new energy, it makes you feel whole again. It gives you new ideas, something to look forward to. To my surprise, my grief did not come back home with me. I felt as if I came back from a two-week vacation — not a weekend at all — refreshed, strong, eager to experience more of that new independence. A week later, I still feel that. I don’t want to go back to crying. Why would I?

There is a whole world out there ready to embrace you, as soon as you are ready. Pack your bags and leave!

I hope this helps someone else as it helped me. And I hope no one stays heartbroken for a long time, it’s such a dark place to be. Get out of there, and even if you don't travel, do something for a change or treat yourself to something nice, you know you deserve it.

Pain

I am coming back to my senses. Things straighten up. There are only two scenarios of what happens after you fall. You either keep lying there, your face down; with pain, fury, fear and helplessness all combining into an unstoppable source of tears… Or you get up, shake off the pain and start over again. I made my choice. I get up and walk. I did have to go through the worse scenario first to realize it was not for me. It was short – just a couple of days – but it left a pain burn, a strong mark of something I never want to go back to. I don’t even want to remember how nightmarish I felt and what I thought during those days. I don’t want to go back there although somewhere very deep in the back of my mind I want to remember that it is there, so I can stay alert and never repeat my mistakes.

"A nature like yours can turn trouble into good. All this sorrow will give you strength and point you on a higher way. Think of a tree, how it grows around its wounds. If a branch breaks off, it don't stop but keeps reaching towards the light. We must meet misfortune boldly and not suffer it to frighten us. We must act the play out, then live our troubles down." It’s my favorite quote from “The New World” movie; the words that helped me somewhere on my way back up.