The girl who was made of paper and fell in love.


Once upon a time, there was a girl. She was made of paper. When she was ten, she fell in love with a boy whose smile shook the inner walls of her heart and whose voice inspired her to write the many poems she kept hidden beneath her bed. It was a secret she never told anybody that she was made of  delicately woven grains of paper, for fear that they would leave, like the many others who did. So she swore to the stars and the leaves that turned brown that night that she would never tell a soul.
But then there was a boy named Jamie.
When they were fifteen, he held her hand for the very first time. The grey curtain of clouds loomed close by, and when the first drop of rain fell on her face, she tried to pull her quickly to a shelter nearby. He wouldn't budge. He held her hand so tight if he never let do, she imagined how she would crumble into ashes and leave no trace behind. So she stood beside him beneath the rain, and waited for her body to soak and smudge, but it didn't. She was made of paper, yet under the rain, because he held her hand she didn't break,
When they were seventeen, he kissed her for the first time. When their lips met she felt herself burn at his touch, so she pulled away abruptly that when she did, she felt the world sway slightly off balance and the rest of the universe was thrown off alignment. As soon as she pulled away, she'd regretted it. Wide-eyes, she saw the hurt in his eyes, and right then and there, she has longed to tell him the many things she wanted to tell him but couldn't. The she was made of paper. That inside her was a paper heart and a paper soul. But she kissed him again, this time without hesitation. and she didn't burst into flames like how she had pictured it. She was made of paper, but she didn't crumble into ashes like how she had pictured it.
When they were nineteen, he'd written words on her arm and no matter how many times she would rub away the ink with her fingers, they remained. When he left, she didn't cry. Instead she wrote letters to him on her other arm. When there was no more space, she wrote some more beneath his messy handwriting, and then on her palms and then on her feet, and when there was no more space, she wrote about him on her heart and on her soul. Because that was the only way she could remember him.
The girl who was made of paper and fell in love.

Relate - Not Dominate

We'll always have the tendency to want the upper hand; it makes us feel bigger. Naturally, power is desirable, because usually it is used to convince ourselves of our self worth. And it works. But it is simply a temporary solution - sucking on other people's strength to build our own is not a stable source of confidence. We fool ourselves into believing that it means we are better, but the truth is it only proves how weak we really are. Dominating is a way for the feeble to build a wall. When we try to climb on a pedestal above others, you'll realize, we rarely share with them who we really are. Out of fear, the "stronger" one never gives a piece of themselves. At the same time, we don't see the other as who they are either because how could we? When peering down from so high up, how could anyone possibly see clearly?

 Looking someone eye to eye take a lot more effort. And time. Trying to relate not really means understanding someone else; it also means sharing who you are. This kind of give and take - not simply taking, is a measure of true inner strength. It show that we are comfortable with who we are; or at least, ourselves. Dominating makes us feel bigger, but relating is what truly makes someone a bigger, and stronger person.

And so I did

There was a time she couldn't wait to show me everything about her life. I'll never forget the day she took me to the attic and dragged out box after box of her childhood memories; her proudest achievements from school, drawings and finger paintings, even poems she wrote for grandma. I thought to myself, what a gift it was to experience the view beyond the door of her soul. And as we dug through the boxes and found a baby picture of me with the innocent smile, sat on her lap, I felt her moving farther and farther from me. She became deathly quite and I could see with every item I pulled out, her gaze became more focused on the door. As the sun began to set, the attic became cold, too cold. I looked at her, wondering if she would be the first to stand, but she didn't. She sat stoic, as if to say, leave me, let me freeze. And so I did.


(sometimes) Hurting people feels good

It makes me feel powerful, like I have the capacity to affect people. Have you ever said or done something just to bring someone down? Just so you could watch their face crumple, or better yet, they try to tough it out with a forced laugh or a glare that barely disguises their drooping eyes. You find their weakness and aim at the core of it. Sometimes it's so easy that even you are embarrassed for them. But if they tries to cover their pain, at least you could go along with it and pretend not to notice.
The worst is when they don't even make an effort to fake a smile, or when they do, but fail terribly. When the hurt is etched into every movement of their body, when the little glimmer in the center of once sparkling eyes transform into a trickle down their cheek. When every muscle sags in defeat. Such a trail vulnerable form discomforts me because I do not wish to witness anyone in that state. But yet, sometimes I find it quite amusing, not just because I know I made them that way, but simply because I find the heady, shame infused tears of those vanquished fatuity to be quite tasty. 

People stripped of all their guards, in the raw form, is a frightening image, like seeing them in their flesh gnawed to the bone. The chilling sight catches you off guard, and you have the impulse to look away as if it's too private for you to see. But like an overheard secret, the allure of such a tentative and forbidden exchange draws you in. And in the end, I feel victorious because I was capable of tearing someone down and shredding away the layers.
I remain the victor because I had the ability to pierce through their emotions and puncture a wound, even if it was just for one moment. Even if it doesn't leave a scar.

When I want things badly


Sometimes, I want things so badly, I automatically tell myself “NO”—like the wanting, in and of itself, is a sin.  I want chocolate—nope, can’t have it, even if a little won’t be terrible.  I want a glass of chardonnay—no can do, just because you want it THAT much.  There is, no doubt, some pleasure derived from such restraint (as any BDSM-er will testify to), whether it comes in the form of pride or even a misguided sense of productivity.  What productivity inheres in discipline, by itself?  I am too used to getting what I want.  It isn’t hedonism; I do not seek things for the sake of pleasure.  It is more an issue of functionality—dipping wrinkled toes in self-indulgence in order to keep the ocean calm.  I compensate for particularly tough weeks with shoes, lipstick and more shoes.  But nothing is free, not chocolate, not YSL shoes, not even the scratchy satisfaction of asceticism.  
All morning long, I have considered the cost of this:
A cup of tea sitting on my leather couch, a pair of wool socks, a grey sweatshirt with a messy hair bun.  No words.  Just the smells of cherry blossoms tea I'm sipping and feeding my ears with selections of Nocturne.

Fantasy and Reality are us.


The truth is, we create our own purposes in this world. We think about and imagine in our minds what should be, what we should be dealing with and all that should be happening and existent to somehow lessen the already inextricable and unsolvable confusion of this puzzle we call ‘life’. We visualize our dreams, and how they could be possible to an extent that they’d feel real. We build houses where we store every last bit of courage and confidence that we have, construct buildings filled with our hopes and passions, and fabricate towers and skyscrapers where our faith and sanity lurk on the apex until some brilliant something or massive nothing comes and happens. We compose the lyrics of our own music, write the words of our own stories, sketch our own portraits, develop the films of our own pictures, mold our own perceptions, form our own illustration and view of the panorama.
Everything is real and fictive until they’re not. We are the truth and lies; fantasy and reality are us.

Episode

Do you ever sit back and think about some things you’ve done in the past and feel a throbbing pain within you because you feel as though the person who did all those wasn’t you at all? Like whenever you’re reminded about any of them, you just mutter under your breath an instant “Shite.” or “Goddamn it.”? And then all of the sudden, you just find yourself smiling because as much as you want to reproach yourself for having done a series of both accidental and deliberate mistakes, you just couldn’t anymore? So what you do is smile. You smile because somehow, those episodes of faultiness brought you whatever you have now. And even though you don’t like the state you’re currently in and the surrounding and environment you have, you smile, still. Because even though you hate it, and even though you don’t want to admit it, you know deep down that it’s relatively fun to have bits of memories to look back into so you can occasionally laugh or get mad at yourself and actually feel connected to who you really are. You don’t know it, we don’t know it— because we try to deny and ignore it on a consistent basis— but the connection that links or the bond that ties us to ourselves is one of the most substantial things in our existence.

We Left Our Love in Our Summer Skin



Autumn afternoons are about loss. The falling leaves and drooping trees sing of could-have-beens and almost-weres. Summer leaves, and takes missed opportunity with it, and you find yourself left with lukewarm tea and frozen strawberries.
There’s something amazing about watching fruit defrost, sacred, even. It’s akin to witnessing a birth or a baptism, just the deep spirituality of ripeness and readiness, but there’s an underlying awareness that it’s not real. That it’s just fake, reheated nature, and even with the sunlight streaming through the window, you’re not a real part of it. There’s a deadness, an emotional fakeness to it like being alone amongst friends; the companionship is there, but the camaraderie is missing.
September is like losing an old friend. The warmth is there, but it doesn’t caress like it used to.