Happy Birthday

A year of "Black Ice" memories.

A year of street lights blurring into each other as the needle on your odometer sways dangerously close to red.

A year since I tried to drive you home from the office parking lot on a Friday evening, without knowing how to turn on the headlights and panicked when I couldn't see the road!

A year of lovingly (and obsessively!) washing and waxing you every Friday, much to the consternation and confusion of those who have seen the aftermath-of-a-tornado condition of my room!

A year of insanity cures, driving through the night, down the hills, through hundreds of thousands of streets, not knowing the time or place, not knowing where we start, where we're going or where we end up afterwards.

A year of the purr of the engine telling me things I don't want to hear, the amber eyes dispelling the dark, and the fear.

A year spent learning that I don't get into you because I'm a driver. I do it because I'm driven.

 Happy Birthday Mi Bonita, Mi Bella, Mi Preciosa!

For surviving a year of my long drives, high-g turns and general dementia!

It took quite a bit of time, but I figured out that my type are those that pursue me, make me stay, and then walk away.

There is something really scary about how valuable you let some (things/people) become. How significant they are. The big chunk they possess in your life. And how much them walking away means this enormous vacuous void inside you, like missing jigsaw puzzle pieces, even if you know, or at the very least, have a pretty good idea of what the whole picture looks like.

Fear is always an intricate part of who we are. But with it, hidden away, there also comes a calm acceptance. And the innate cognition that you must stay who you were, inspite of the innumerous crucifixions that are sure to come your way.

Accepting that loss is not easy, never will be. But the knowledge of the inevitable and the willingness to be pliant might make it easier to bear. Keyword, might.

Everyone has demons of their own. And no matter how hard, how far, how fast you run, there are some demons you just can't evade.

The vagaries of life.

The Chronicles of Insomnia

Dark nights, dark corners, two in the a.m. and I startle awake.

I flick on the lamps, but the darkness persists..in my head...it closes in on me, like hammerheads and serpentine shapes. An invisible fist smashes into my face, a cacophony of bright lights explodes into my vision. And the darkness keeps coming. Overwhelming, overpowering, nothing.
  

I shut my eyes furiously, I am not sure if I want to fall asleep again, for there is someone in my sleep, waiting to kill me..all over again.
  

It's cold, I'm freezing, and so I run.. Into a blizzard.. It gets harsher, scarier.. The flakes fall in a flurry, crimson in hue. Fires burn all over, trying to warm me. But the warmth is fleeting. Cold, Hard, Dust.

A rope! An anchor at the end! "Safety", it says. I reach out..and miss..and I fall..endlessly. I watch the ground, rushing up to meet me. It feels like a bad movie. "This can't be right", I say to myself, because usually I wake up, right before I die. Thud. Mangled, bloodied, broken, carcass.

I'm walking the coastline, the hours of predawn. I can't swim, so I avoid the water. But the tides find me. And I find myself riding atop the first wave of an immense tsunami, the ocean sucked back from the coast. I'm leading the carnage on a pristine little town, sleeping peacefully, tucked in and trusting, in its final moments. Swoosh. Crash, Swallow, Maul, Hurl, Disfigure. And then I walk away, as my soul drifts out to sea.

I call out to you, and you turn around. And I stand stricken. You are me. And I smile and turn away. Did I just give up on me?

I run. My legs are heavy, weighing me down, but I don't stop, not wanting to be the quitter I saw in the mirror. I run, the fleshy thing within my chest, beating in protest against my ribcage.

And I stop. I'm looking at myself looking at me. It is weird, the three of me. Wait, this cannot be right. "It's not real", I say it out loud. And I laugh, and I resume running. But then, I look down, and I don't see me running. What? The smile breaks across my face again.

What are you afraid of?
What is it that causes you to feel an overwhelming, debilitating sense of fear?
What keeps you coming back to a place, a point in time, maybe a page like this?

When I know I'm guilty, that knowledge is bad enough. Why would I let constant dwelling on the guilt overwhelm me? Why stew in that guilt?

I know I am guilty. I have lived with that knowledge for a while now. And will continue to do so. But I will not look away. And I will not punish myself anymore. It's your turn now.

Run..

Be Free

Coming of Age

What does it mean, to "grow up"? Define "growing up".

Is it when you start doing things you never felt the inclination to do earlier?

Like when you have always belonged to the rare breed of 20-somethings that sleep at 7PM and wake up at 4AM (barring the occasional weekend or so). And yet, lately, you are having trouble sleeping, waking up at 1:30 in the morning, writing this, because your sleep is liberally peppered with dreams. Of enactments and re-enactments of your worst nightmares, of faces that got away, of what could have been and of what could be the scary present. All because you have not been able to let go of the incessantly boiling fury inside.

Like when you have always been a teetotaller, so you have never had the inclination to frequent bars and pubs. Yet you go to one and actually have a pretty good time there. Mistake me not, you are still abstaining from drink. Yet, having nothing better to do on a Saturday evening, you head over to one and end up feeling right at home amidst the raucous high-fives and catcalls. Although the highlight of the evening is still a visit to the nearest Coldstone Creamery!

Like when you have been a more-or-less careful driver all your life, even if you haven't adhered to speed limits, at the very least you have not crashed your own vehicles (not counting your dad's scooter!). And yet twice in the same evening, you manage to zip through traffic signals, oblivious to the bright red colour on it. Of course you were distracted, your attention focused on the GPS, since the area was unfamiliar to you. But distractions were not to be blamed, when you whizzed past two slower-moving cars in a fluid S-shaped move, before they even knew you were there!

Like even though you are into dance and music, you've never relished the idea of dancing at discs and DJs, simply because you aren't into gyrating in a pulsing grope-y crowd, to tunes that are hell on your eardrums. And yet, a lissome girl grinding up against you at a disc, to the tune of music that goes thump-thump-thump, wasn't so much a bad thing as you thought it would be!

Like when you have never needed the kind of gratification that strip clubs are designed to provide, simply because you've had the (")love(") (within and without quotes) of women without having to pay (without quotes, meaning you've had to pay in ways that do not involve currency) for it. And yet, when you visit one, it turns out to be a pretty novel experience, where "novel" here is NOT to be interpreted as "gratifying", since there was no "gratifying" to be had. Literally!

Karma is a Bitch. Those that have been screwing me over, wrongfooting me, undermining me, every step of the way, Karma will catch up with you. And she will cut and cauterize her way through. You wait and watch.

Looking Back

I may not be capable of loving the way You do

But help me become worthy of being loved by someone like You

You know how sometimes things can come back and bite you in the ass?

Trust. It is one of those things.

It can come back to haunt you.

If you let it go, it can wreak a million different kinds of havoc.

It can mess with your head, make you hope, giving you a false sense of security, like it’s a release from loneliness.

It makes you believe, that you can’t, and won’t be hurt.

Nope. Trust can hurt. It can hurt so bad that nothing else will matter.

Trust gone haywire, is the worst thing you can do to yourself. Because the sheer agony that follows is not physical.

Don’t let anyone get to know you better than you know yourself. Always, always keep your guard up. Build and fortify those walls around yourself. No doors, no windows, not even a skylight. Letting someone in can be the biggest mistake you ever make. Don’t let someone touch you so much that when they leave you can’t take it. Don’t let them in so much that when they go, you feel like a fool because that feeling does not feel good.

It's the very reason dreams are dangerous too. Scarier than nightmares. Monsters under the bed don't haunt you in real life. Dreams do. Because you keep hoping that they'll come true. You tell people about it, you fight for it. And then in a single instant, it walks away. And you're left battling for nothingness. You're left with what you fought for, those you fought with and nothing to show for it.

The thing with being an idiot is that the only one you hurt is yourself.

When you remove memories of something that you said made a day special..

When you remove memories because of the tags they come with..

When you remove people from circles and block them out..

Did you think no one would know?

As I end this, I'll take a leaf out of Sunshine's book and post the lyrics to Gotye's "Somebody that I used to know"

Now and then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it's an ache I still remember

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I'll admit that I was glad it was over

But you didn't have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and I feel so rough
No you didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know

Now you're just somebody that I used to know
Now you're just somebody that I used to know

Redemption: A long road to Peace

Dear God..
I've been sulking for a while now. I think I'm done.
Thank you for sticking around, thank you for not giving up on me, thank you for knowing I'd be back. I hope we will be friends again. Soon.
Thank you for believing in me, when I didn't believe in myself.
I've been foul-tempered, ill-mannered, foolish, overhasty, impetuous.. Life as usual, You'd agree. And as I pause to draw breath for more madness, there are some things I need to get off my chest.

Thank you.. for the heartbreaks, for the humiliation, for the times of being invited to be made to feel like I was invisible, like I was a waste of breathing space.
For the four days of waking up with leaden feet. For the four days of wishing I could go back to sleep.
For the days of being in the vicinity, and yet being non-existent. As if no one had come, no one had gone, no feathers were ruffled.
They taught me to lick my wounds.
Thank you.. for old friends.
Thank you.. for those that take advantage of bad situations, of soured friendships, for those that do not move a finger to set things right, lest they fail to get ahead.. They remind me that You're watching.
Thank you.. for a foolish but open heart.
It makes me be there for people when they were new and had no one, even if they walk away later when they have people to turn to and I have no one.
It keeps me diving headlong into relationships and crawling out of the debris, feeling like a celebrated martyr.
It keeps me bouncing from mess to mess, and yet get back up on my feet.
I may not be what you intended me to be. I don't know if I ever will. But I'm glad you're around, waiting to see what I'll get up to next.

Happy Easter everyone!

Raindrops on a window

Thunderstorms rattling the panes

Blind Shadows, eyes wide open

Two familiar pillows and a sheet, unfamiliar companions

The melancholy of water, tearing the heart of the sky

We never broke up.. We never even got to start..

Changing the name to "Do Not Call Her" doesn't help either..

Looking back at the multiple times neither of us disappeared when the other person wanted to.. We both refused to listen to each other..Whatever happened to never walking away, however bad it gets..?

There are a lot of things that you changed about me. The first thing that I felt like standing up for, like fighting for.

And every time I make the effort, I seem to be the one getting clobbered and abandoned.. Waylaid at the wayside.. Call me a hypochondriac..

From when I wrap myself up in a black and gray comforter every night..

From reading SMS lingo messages..

From watching you sleep like a baby..

The mistakes were mine, the choices were mine, and hence the consequences are to be mine too. Being a pathetic insecure jerk has its "perks".

And "sorry" just does not cut it, no matter how much or how sincerely it is said.

This is for me, for me to know that I'm trying to face the enormity of my choices.. I'm no better.. But I'm trying to be.. And I need that conviction to be able to look at myself in the mirror tomorrow morning and every morning..

Redemption is a long road to Peace.