Like A Bird.

Letting go.
Probably one of the hardest endeavors we will face in our lives. Just the thought of freeing our hands and letting whatever we are gripping so hard onto just fall, is terrifying. Not to mention something we do more than ever as teenagers. I mean how can we befriend so many people and simply let them fall out of our lives so suddenly? What surprises me is our courage to do it intentionally.

Relationships, 90% of the time at our ripe adolescence, don’t last. We all know that the one we date in high school will probably not end up being the one we marry or share the rest of our life with. Well most of the time.
So why do we take on this commitment, if we know it’ll eventually end? If we know that one day we’ll have to leave that person and maybe never speak to them again? Well because we like that idea. Humans hate the concept of something permanent. As much as we don’t like to admit it, security scares us. The thought of always being able to have something whenever we need it for the rest of our lives is something we cannot stand. Why? Well for starters it’s boring. And second, we love the spontaneous factor in life. Some more than others. Being able to wake up in the morning and not know how the day will go is something we sometimes thrive on. Who wants to wake up knowing exactly how their day will go? I mean isn’t that why the movie Groundhog’s Day was made?

Back to what I was saying.

After we go through the kisses and the cuddling and the falling asleep to each other’s voices, there comes a time where we just say “…next.” Where we decide we’ve had enough and need something new.

Then comes the hard part. Loosening the tight grip we’ve had on this one person for so long and just letting them fall into their own lives without us. The way we can actually do this just blows my mind. The way we can readjust to our lives like some animal that was thrown in a completely different environment and left to survive. And when we finally decide to shut our eyes, hold our breath, and jump into the lives we know will hurt us for a while, we go through those dreadful stages.

There’s the Numbness. The denial, the “alright, I can do this, no biggie.” This of course comes after that whole night of sobbing and binging on chocolate.
Then comes the Irritation. The whole “he’s such an idiot/why did this happen/I wish I could erase everything” phase. The point where you just cry out of frustration all the time and blow up on your friend for dropping your pencil.
In the middle of all this comes Uncertainty. “Maybe he was right. Maybe I did do something wrong. ” This is when one basically bargains on whether or not they really want to remain without this person. It’s when we begin to blame ourselves and maybe even contemplate speaking to that person again.

When we’re almost there, Depression comes in. Yep, this stage is the worst but believe me when I say it always comes. The moping, the loss of confidence and inspiration in life. The “Am I even good enough?”
And when we’ve gone through this entire journey, when we get to the finish line with our clothes shredded and our bodies weak, there comes Acceptance. Giving us all hope that it will get better and that the hole in our heart will now be patched up with something else that makes us just as happy.

These stages sound a lot like the 5 stages of grief don’t they? Well that’s because when we let someone go, when we set them free from our lives to busy someone else's, we do mourn. Because it is losing someone extremely close to you. And although it may not be forever, it is for a long while, and most of the time abrupt. To just cut off communication so quickly from someone you’ve been around for so long is astonishing. And those who have done it should give themselves a pat on the back for being so brave and letting loose from the fixation that was binding them.

And when we do feel lonely, or sad, or regretful, that the person we enjoyed spending time with the most is out of our lives for good, we must always remember that we are just doing what we are programmed to do; live freely, move on, and be happy.

Let's Play "Find the Symbolism"

Landon had always been a different boy. No one had known much of his life except for the few mumbles he would occasionally exchange with strangers who had asked. Ever since I had met him he had been a mysterious fellow, something that had attracted me more to him, to his care free way of living.

Months had passed and we became inseparable. Spending the days together and unraveling each other's personalities, one ribbon by one.
But for some reason I felt I wasn't discovering every piece, and that there were still some places left untouched for no one to see.
Over time I had noticed his friends had started to disappear. They were no longer connected to him in any way and when I asked about it, he would shrug and tell me they had grown apart. One time he even told me they had moved away to a better place. Somewhere near Southern California.
But one thing I noticed was ever since I had met the boy, an infuriatingly bothersome tapping would occur on my window at night. The same small red bird would show up at my window for months, tapping away at my window and depriving me of my sweet rest. Every night I would try to go to sleep, and every night the patter began again. But each time I had thought to shoo the bird away, to get it far from my sanctuary, the thought of Landon had come to my mind, and his soft words put me at ease and I simply fell asleep.
Over time I saw Landon less and less, his life had become more of a mystery to me than I had expected it to be. He was disappearing and reappearing in my life without notice. When I would ask him where he was he would shrug and mumble something I couldn’t hear. My hearing had worsened through the weeks and I could barely hear a word unless someone had spoken up. My mother said it was because of the loud music I would play when the bird would show up.
It was Friday night and Landon had called me to go out to eat somewhere. I debated on whether or not I should leave, whether I should spend my time with him, and there was that noise coming from the window once again. The bird was louder this time. I never understood why it bothered me so much, but because of the it’s incessant pounding, I had decided to leave while my migraine hadn’t formed yet.

Motionless.
My eyes shielded, my limbs shaking from the harsh cold hitting it. My arms and legs tied, with nothing under them but cold metal.
I heard the heavy door open. A loud noise followed as it shut and footsteps became more and more clear even through the only muffled sounds my ears could produce.
I felt ice. Buckets and buckets of ice hitting my already numbed body. They hurt, more and more with each throw, each toss filled with such hatred.
I began to shake, to feel the anger in me envelop due to the frustrating cold.
The cubes hitting me like pieces of glass, penetrating my tough skin.

The pelting had finally stopped. I was left dripping with water, shaking uncontrollably and clenching my hands together as if it would warm me up even a little.
It suddenly became warmer. I could feel the sun beating down on my frozen skin, my blue hands and feet, loosening the rope and blindfold that had prohibited me from identifying anyone or anything.
I slowly took off the blindfold and squinted. Everything was so blurry, as if I hadn't seen it before, as if where I was standing was completely unfamiliar to me. Where am I? I thought. This can’t be somewhere I’ve been to before. As hard as I tried I could not make out the place.
But my eyes finally adjusted slowly to see I was standing right inside of Landon’s room.

I scrambled to run, to find a way out of the dim cell, but held my breath when I found him filling up buckets of ice outside. I froze in my footsteps and felt a chill run down my spine. He was going to hurt me, and had hurt others. The man I had always seen as my compassionate everything was a monster. And before I could regain my thoughts to turn around and escape, I felt a hand on my shoulder. “It would probably be in your best interest not to move” the deep voice behind me said.
The voice that had once told me I was beautiful.
I remained immobilized as I felt a hard object brush against my neck. Too scared to see what it was, I shut my eyes hard.
“This is me, this is who I am." he chuckled. "What, you didn't know?" he smiled slyly. "That's no surprise, you’re stupid anyway."
He made his way to me, speaking so closely I could feel his breath on my neck. “This is how I do it. Freeze them until they’re so numb they can’t feel a thing”. His grip on my arm had become tighter, his hands no warmer than my body. I attempted to look for an escape, anything that would free me from this grip that seemed impossible to break away from. But there was not a thing; just an empty room with a knife to my neck, waiting to take me away from my life.

I awoke out of breath, as if what I was dreaming of had stolen my life from me the entire time I had been asleep. Panting, I noticed I could see everything around my room, sharper, clearer than I was used to. I sprouted up to get myself some water but could barely hold the cup in my shaking hands.
I had returned to my warm room and sat down onto my bed. I let out a deep exhale and shut my eyes, attempting to analyze what had possessed my dreams to be so frightful. When I had finally decided to stand up, I peeked outside and was astonished at what I found before me. There on my window sill was a small red bird, motionless and dead.

I Feel With My Liver.

Mentally, people don't break. We're not toys that become damaged or bikes that come with a warranty.
We're made to heal and survive. One doesn't just crack open and leak until there is no more emotion left to flow through their veins. It's not like our hearts can just stop working due to too much abuse or sorrow. It heals, and slowly begins to work again.

What many people see their heart as is a giant emotion filled vessel in our chest where we keep all of our deepest secrets and thoughts.
Not just some pumping organ that helps distribute blood throughout the body.
What I've wondered is why the heart is the part we listen to? Why do we follow it and try to find so called keys to other people's?
I mean can't we think with our livers?

We get heartaches, bruised hearts, even broken ones. Well Literally speaking, when someone's heart breaks, they die.
So maybe we use this metaphor, since we literally need our heart to live. And since this vessel is so important to our well being, when they’re bruised or scarred, it does seem like the end of the world.
We speak of this heartbreak as if we are on the verge of dying! As if we name our hearts as the storage place for our emotions because of its ever-so precious value to the human body.
I mean with a battered heart, one cannot move on... let alone move, right?
You can fix a broken stomach or a bruised liver but it is true, the heart is our most important thing to have working. Because once it stops pumping, we cease to exist.
Maybe that's why break up’s are so dramatic.

People who claim to have no heart are barely even alive. Just floating around aimlessly and emotionless.

What is strange to me is that people brand themselves as broken when they've had bad pasts. When events have occurred before that have damaged their souls and simply left them scarred, according to them. As if they were an iPhone that was dropped in the water or something and just doesn’t seem to work right anymore.
Can we really be scratched or bruised?
After all, most of us see our hearts as a reflection of our outer selves, prone to blows and punches, slowly healing after each beating.
Those who don't want to get into relationships after a bad breakup; just looking out for their hearts. I mean they are still fresh with wounds. You can't blame them for only giving the necessary dosage of time and Neosporin to heal.
And by Neosporin I mean chocolate.

But we cannot dwell on these little cuts and bruises we get along the way of our
life. We shouldn't brand ourselves as damaged goods. We should call ourselves
courageous heroes who have made it through the battle with nothing but a few
scratches.
Because like all slices and wounds, the ones on our hearts heal. They heal until
the only thing you can see is a microscopic scar that brands you as nothing less
but a brave survivor.

Figure It Out.

A broken road.
Just one long, cracked, strip of asphalt ahead and nothing else beside me. There is nobody in front of me, and no one behind following me into the odd mystery in which I am dazily journeying to.

It’s hot. Man, it’s hot. Yet, I’m wearing a bunch of clothes, so many sweaters around my shoulders and articles wrapped around my head. I can barely see through the thick fabric, or smell, or breathe. I’m just walking…wandering.
I see headlights. I hear the sound of a car passing by, the tires hitting the cold pavement as they drive right beside me. I try to look, to see who it could be, someone to the rescue?
My eyes squint and force, but I simply cannot follow the direction of the stranger; I can’t make out where it’s going, where it came from.

Which way I’ve turned now, I have no idea. For all I know, I could be walking back the same way I came. But who’s to say where I’m going anyway? My direction is probably heading towards the same place I’ve been wandering to this whole time. I can’t help but notice the drop in temperature.
Man, it is freezing. I begin to shiver, to rub my hands together and breathe hot air into them as if it would take the pain away from my limbs that were turning into icicles. Maybe I should just keep walking, it will get warmer again…
I suddenly feel someone grab onto my legs, I turn around to find who is latching onto me with such need and desire, such miserable sadness that they need me of all people to save them from their darkness. But my vision is impaired, my sense of direction completely off track, the coldness turning me numb.
My heart beat quickens and my mind races, not knowing what to do, where to go. My throat closes in panic; I try to breathe but cannot get the sweet oxygen into my body.
And I attempt to run, to try to get to my sweet destination quicker and finally have the satisfaction of being able to breathe and feel, but stop in my tracks when I notice I shouldn’t be running when I can’t even see.

Me, Me, Me.

Selfishness. One of the worst and best attributes to have in life.
Why selfishness is perceived to be awful is understandable. Whether it’s that you don’t share anything with anyone, or you want everything to yourself for you to have; it does sound horrid, almost like you wouldn’t be someone people would want to be around.

But at the same time, isn’t selfishness what keeps us healthy? I mean, where would we be if we never thought about our own selves? What condition would we be in if we were always thinking about others and their needs, and never about our own?
When we’re babies, we learn that we must think about other’s feelings. We should be “understanding” and “open minded”, and we should you know, share our toys, and not eat paste.
But what they left out in this lesson was that sometimes we actually hurt ourselves by not being selfish enough. By not listening to our needs and focusing so much on someone else’s, we could be ignoring our own feelings that really need to be heard for our own good.

I personally think it’s very strong of a person to be able to step back and look at what is good for them; not just wonder what is good for everyone else just because it’s “convenient” or just because they don’t want to “hurt” anyone. To be able to look at yourself and your needs is a very powerful action. And it means that you have enough respect and love for yourself to do so.
For example most people who are in abusive relationships and keep going back to their abusive spouses, people whose friends only put them down, people who let others talk to them however they feel; those are people who don’t have enough love for themselves to be a little selfish.

To just say “alright now what’s good for me, because I’m awesome and deserve the best” shows very strong character and judgment. Not to mention loads of confidence. And those people probably go further in life than most.
But yes darlings, it is impossible to be healthily selfish if you do not like yourself. And that’s…well…because you subconsciously set yourself up for disaster in attempt to punish yourself for being so “horrible” as you would put it in your own mind. Yep, and that’s all subconscious.

I like to study the human mind.

But that’s a whole other blog.

Of course listening to others is extremely important as well, I cannot stress that enough. Thinking of only yourself is the most horrible thing you can do. One needs to accept that there are many other people in this world and their needs are significant also. Besides, thinking that way is just a setup for loneliness and despair.

But back to my point.

We need to be selfish sometimes. It’s why we pay for doctor’s visits, why we do well in school; because we want to take care of ourselves, we care about our own lives.
Why people say it’s wrong when we do it in our everyday lives, astounds me. And they only really tell you that you’re being selfish when they want their feelings to be heard.

Yep, we all do it.

So as weird as it sounds…selfishness kind of makes the world go round.

Well This is Depressing...

Rope...That’s all I see, all I feel between my coarse hands. Just a single strand that I’m holding onto for dear life.

Just rope…

And darkness, man it’s dark in here. I can barely see anything except for the thick thread in front of my eyes. I try to climb it, but my limbs are weakened by indecision, my head spinning from confusion.

How did I end up here?
I look down to see a bottomless pit, I try to squint, make anything out from the shadows. I lift my head up to find that the darkness is simply surrounding me.
I suddenly feel my heart begin to pound louder and louder, faster, I hear it in my ears, I feel it throughout my entire body, the deafening unsteady rhythm striking within me like a drum.

It is now harder to breathe, harder to see, but I do not loosen my grip, I refuse to let go. I reject the idea of simply letting my hands ease up from the rough lifesaver that I’ve been clenching onto for so long.
The concept of just letting myself fall into the uncertainty that was waiting to envelop me frightened me. So I just shut my eyes and hoped that someone would eventually pull the rope and lead me to clarity.

But after waiting 5 days, no one came.
So I took a deep breath, counted to three, and simply...released my hands.


Hey look, I just made a metaphorical blog.

Can I Play?

Oh how nice it must be to be a child.
What am I saying, we were all children at some point in our lives.
Our minds still raw and untouched, still full of fantasies and fears that we have yet to uncover.
We all envy this innocence, for some reason...even though we've all had it.
Of course when we were "little", we wanted nothing more than to be grown up. We gazed at adults, admiring them, wondering when we'd be "able to do that" or "see those movies" or "understand those jokes".
We'd play house and wonder when we'd really have an actual kitchen and a husband or wife.
And when it happens, when we finally wake up with a high school diploma waiting for us or with a briefcase in our hands, all we want to do is go back to that time where we were painting pictures with our fingers.
That time where we had to spend hours and numerous times repeating, just to remember something as simple as our phone number.

Could it be that we envy children because of their ability to forget something in an instant simply because they don't comprehend? As "adults" we can cling onto bad memories and events because we do understand the situations we were put in. It sticks to us because we are aware. Things that happen to us as children are sometimes forgotten because we didn't understand. Our parents would tell us to forget about it and we would just pick up our doll and go play.
But it's not so simple anymore. We're not able to just turn off our minds and turn them over to the wonderful concept of imagination anymore.
I think that's what we really miss the most. The ability to be mentally... free.
Because as much as we like to think we have the most freedom as adults, being a kid is as free as it gets.