Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.

Understand that people change.
Understand that things and circumstances cant be forced to fit your liking.
Understand that matters of the heart are rarely easy to comprehend.
But most importantly, understand that you can't possibly stray from your path when your actions are based on good intentions and lined with faith.

Shhh it's a secret

The art of being vague is beautiful because when the person the vagueness is posed to gets the underlying meaning, it serves as a proof that both of you are treading on the same page.

And on this page, you see the same colours and hum the same tunes, and everybody else who's peeping into this abstract might think they understand what's going on, oh but they dont they dont!

This is a secret. Between you and the person the ambiguity is intended for.

Stomach, meet butterflies.

"Tell me something. Tell me anything."

The request took him by surprise.

I have found that when your gaze gazes into someone else's gaze, and you ask them to randomly tell you something, you always end up discovering something curiously interesting.

***

You can tell me to 'Stop wondering!' but it's not gonna work.
I'll listen to it
I'll acknowledge it
but I'll wonder anyway.

I can't help it.
My mind's got a mind of its own.

Of love (and lovers)

Sometimes

you are convinced of it

but the conviction is not reciprocated.

Sometimes

you wholeheartedly immerse yourself in it

but the circumstances just won't allow it

and

Sometimes

you dont put any expectations on it

but the tingles you feel under your skin simply cant be ignored

'My life has been the same. Nothing new. How about you?' is no longer a language currency that we accept. Please find another method of payment

Answer me this.

Does it really matter whether or not someone (whom you yearn and pine for, but are not together with - be it a Lost Lover or a Lover Who Is Not Yet Aware That He's A Lover) equally misses you?
Is it not enough that YOU felt the magnitude of missing this person, down to your very core?
Is the joy of missing (an indication that you are feeling and living) not sufficient that you need an outright reaction in return?

One Chance is All It Takes

The night was calm, as it naturally is on occasions like these. 
Dare I tell you about the stars? Oh, the stars!

Warm glows were emanating from them, and everything else shuddered in silence. 

Enough about the night, lets move on to the companion.
He had the kind of smile people fall in love with .

It's the kind of smile infatuations are born from. 

And, just then, looking at THAT smile, something in me raced fast. 

As if on cue, he placed his ear right above my heart. 

"Your heart is beating really fast."

Unable to come up with a suitable reply, I just stared into the depths of his eyes.
He gazed in return while still keeping an ear on my heart rate.
While everything was passing by in a dreamlike manner, I found myself thinking,

"I wouldn't mind spending all my time simply staring into these pair of eyes."

The realization that this person has managed to make me THIS happy, simply with his eyes and smile, overwhelmed me. 

I remembered feeling momentarily nervous and something in me paused for a while, trying to make sense of the new sensation.
At the exact moment I crinkled my forehead in confusion, he looked up at me and slowly said, 

"I dont know how to tell you this, but your heart LITERALLY just skipped a beat."

What he said set me floundering in my own thoughts. 'Did i hear him right?' 

That whole scene seemed like everything was a plan simply waiting for the cue to come on for it to be executed. 

Who says things like that in real life, anyway?
For the life of me, until this very moment, I didn't even know that 'heart skipping a beat' was a real sensation.
I've always thought it was a sentiment fully romanticized by Hallmark and the likes.

And at that moment, I smiled.

Because if you give people a chance, sometimes they might just surprise you. 

dig deep. got dug.

I promised a lot.

But never that I wouldn't get back up after you knocked me down.

Never that my broken remains wouldn't catch fire. 

Never that I wouldn't burn through the ice and snow one more time.

And you can slam your glaciers into to me, so slowly, and even though they hurt, I will not go numb from the cold, I will not pass out from the pain, I will look up at you and the world and whisper through bloody teeth

"More..."

- The Sun Will Freeze Before I Do, I Wrote This For You

I loved this.
I believe 'this' loved me too.

And all that loving, all that twisted longing, it made me feel invincible.

Even for a while.
Even for a short while.
It will keep me going.

on things that dont make much sense

There is a friend of mine, who quite frankly, is one of the best guy I know.
I should think anyone would be lucky to be granted his companion.
But as no one has ever promised that life will be easy, it is only natural to be greeted with downfall after downfall, I guess.

However, from where I am standing, it looks like he's growing up, one heartbreak at a time (so at least some good is coming out of it right?)
Which led me to thinking that we are all simply being prepped up for when the time is right.

So, as long as we strive to be a little bit better at a time, it should all be good, yes?
Please. Someone needs to confirm this bit.
I'd like to think that happiness can be achieved given enough effort and goodwill.
Clarification on this theory will be greatly appreciated (in fact, any feedback at all will do).

one

The first night I met him was intoxicating.
The full moon was out, positioned smack in the middle of a spread of stars across Nature's canvas.
The wind was breezy enough to give us a placebo effect of hanging out by the beach, but not so much that we were shivering.
A movie setting couldn't have been set better.
Like I said, it was intoxicating - and we, we were intoxicated.

He bore too much resemblance to a Spanish David Beckham that i dismissed him on auto-pilot initially.
I fell for the biggest misconception of them all - such a pretty face couldn't possibly be fronting an equally pretty mind.
By the time he was finishing off my sentences, I had to admit to myself that I've committed the most common sin of all - I judged a bloke entirely by his floppy brown hair and his surfer's physique.

Getting high on life, I did not want the night to end.
We were playing guitar by a lake that was speckled with reflections of pretty lights, our taste buds consistently savoring munchies.
The night did not end. It went on, and on, and on.
Through the crack of dawn, through the chirping birds and the trees with 7 shades of green.
Through breakfast, through morning classes.
The night just went on. As did the conversation.

I can't say it, so I'm writing it down instead.

Sometimes we forget that people's actions are largely based on their experiences (the good AND the bad).
We forget to take into account the traumatizing events of their past that are likely to be reflected on their current fears.
We forget that at the end of the day, they're human too.
When we do remember, however, we realize that we have wasted so much time and energy into being upset whenever people disappoint us.
It's okay.
We're human too.

Past. Perfect.

Those things that happened,
those were just stories from some time ago.

Perhaps, it had been real - but only in the past.
They are not any more real now than the facts we read about in history books.
It happened, and it's over.

The only thing that is real right now is the present.
That's why you make the best out of it,
and enjoy the fact of now - the fiction of later.

Just Maybe

Maybe it had everything to do with you.
Maybe it had nothing to do with you.
Maybe you can't for the life of you stop analyzing which of the two is true.
But maybe you were never meant to know.

The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship.

When it comes to friendships, I value quality over quantity, any given day.

Who gives a rat's ass if you have 26 gazillion friends on Facebook when in real life you can't even get one person to sit down and have dinner with you?
What's the point of having people say Hello to you wherever you go, when late at night, you end up feeling sorry for yourself because there's no one who would listen to your problems?
Why would you want to collect superficial friends whom you can brag to, tell ha-ha funny stories to, but who won't have your back when you need them the most?

I personally think these talking-behind-backs, fighting over ridiculously unimportant things, jealousy of one another, inability to directly address issues to someone's faces are very high school-like behaviour, and I have no intention of getting sucked into the unnecessary drama of it.

A real friend wouldnt mind if you've been spending more time with your partner than you do with them. A gap apart of a few months or years wouldnt affect the friendship, because the moment you meet again, it's like you never left each other. You're just glad you have all these new things to share with the other person.

You know someone genuinely cares about you when they would tell you to your face if there's anything wrong with you, however painful and awkward the conversation might turn out to be, just because they want you to be the better person they know you can be.

Good friendships are built with trust and sincerity. Thus, if you don't think you can be sincere and trust another person, don't be surprised if you suddenly realize you have a few knives stuck on your back. If you have a problem with someone, talk it out with them first before jumping to others with the 'gossip'.

I'm coming out of my hiding place today, writing about friendships, because I'm missing my half-sister, my roommate, my friend - Baizulikha. I guess i thought writing this tribute would make me miss her less. Unfortunately, business of the mind never seems to be that simple.

To Ika, who can finish my sentences, who argues with me even when we are rooting for the same side just so we will have a healthy discussion from time to time, who sometimes understands me better than i understand myself, who i can have conversations with without the usage of words and gestures, I miss you.

:)

When the Clock Strikes Midnight

it's midnight.
your phone starts ringing and beeping.
look at that!
birthday wishes in bulk!
there's the long heartfelt text from your bestfriend,
and the template impersonal 'Happy Birthday' message from your friend from primary school whom you have not met in almost a decade.

you are finally 20.
a proper adult, you think to yourself.
while you browse through your Facebook wall, attempting to personally reply each and every one of the virtual wishes that you received, you stop for a while and wonder how much life will be different now that you are no longer a teenager.

from that point on, every word that comes out of your mouth sounds like a piece of wisdom (to yourself of course. others might beg to differ).

sometimes, when you sit by yourself and reflect on the past, you shudder at all the mistakes that you've made, and promise yourself that you'll never be as foolish again.

fast forward to three/four/five birthdays later.
your Facebook birthday wishes have exponentially replaced text messages and phone calls.
you would prefer nothing more than to enjoy a quiet evening with the people that you love rather than have a huge celebration filled with people you barely know.


once you get the opportunity to entertain your thoughts, you realize that the 20 year old you was just as dumb as the 15 year old you.

how could the 20 year old you not know how foolish and naive it was to think that the era of screwing up your own life is over the moment you become an adult? how could you miss the fact that it's only ever going to get worse?

Since your birthday three/four/five years ago,

you have fallen in love,
fallen out of it,
perhaps even do the whole thing a few times over.
at the end of the day, you'll question if you will ever settle down and find the real thing.
if you are lucky enough to have found the real thing, somewhere along the line you will be too comfortable and forget that sustaining anything good involves a lot of effort. and thus make a mess of everything.
repeat cycle as many times as necessary.

you have realized that the course you are taking in university/college is not really what you want to be stuck doing for the rest of your life.

you have also come across the revelation that you are NOT one-of-a-kind or unique in any sense at all. you are just another face in the crowd.

you have had dreams of changing the world.
and those dreams have been shattered in front of your own eyes.
because the world and everyone in it (including yourself) is so fucked up and there's too many wrongs around you and there's nothing you can do to challenge the government and the society.

It is as it is.

You will find me in the shadow of things, and half-things, and ghost of things.

They were young.
He was 18 and she was barely 17.
Pretty much the right ages for the lead of a story (albeit this story only resides in an unread blog).

They were at a beach,
looking at the waves from a semi-secluded spot,
where they could also see friends eating and singing around the bonfire.

They were laughing.
At some jokes that is long forgotten by now.

Mid-conversation, he looks up to her and asked
"do you know what time it is now?"

"Four. 422. Why? "

"Because i want to know the exact time i asked you to be my girlfriend."

Oh. I'm sorry i forgot to mention that this was going to be a short story.