My favorite things

1) Waking up early on the weekend, taking my sweet time lounging around my apartment with a fresh pot of coffee and my latest novel, with no anticipated plans and no need to rush anywhere.

2) Feeling the sun on my face on a particularly cloudless day and allowing all the smells, sounds, and vibrancy of this city suffuse every cell in my body.

3) Dancing crazily in my room to slow-paced acoustic tunes.

4) The glowing cleanliness of just-washed dishes that are still hot from the dishwasher.

5) The first bite of berry fruit spread on honey wheat toast.

6) Finding the divine in the smallest things, like an exquisite chord from a song or the saturation of greenery in nature.

7) Asking myself what I really want in life and going out to get it.

8) Discovering new songs from old, favorite artists.

9) Dispersing kindness when it isn’t expected, catching people off guard.

10) Letting go.

Certain truths

I want to run far away. Just start running and never stop until I reach that perfect location where peace blends gracefully with serenity, exuding self-awareness in every oxygenated breath from the trees and gentle ripple of water. I am hell-bent in finding that place. My place. Of complete and thorough stillness and contentment. After a mind-numbing and painful month of dealing with a breakup and rearranging the makeup of certain relationships, I am depleted of any former comprehension of who I am. Who I was. Who I’m striving to be. Perhaps it was all for the best; certain truths will never come to the forefront without an earth-shattering catastrophe to shake things up. Growth typically comes in times of adversity and extreme hurt. Change for the better usually occurs as the aftershock of major emotional upheavals. Etcetera. I don’t know. I don’t care. I don’t know anything anymore.

Which is not exactly accurate. I do know a few threadbare principles that have not been toppled by my world literally turning upside down. And, as I’m coming to see, I am starting to grasp particular facts of life rather quickly during this time of excruciating uncertainty. Life doesn’t throw you into the ditch without usually tossing in a barrel of sardines to help you sustain yourself. Or so I would like to think. So I have come back to this weblog to rehash these epiphanies, or in the least, to document them for reference against future forgetfulness and distraction.

I’m not even sure if I’m even making any sense right now. But moving forward…

Trust no one but yourself. This recently discovered concept seems to go against everything that I am. Or was. Or whatever. I am truly the epitome of gullibility. I hand out trust like a wide-eyed advertising intern dispersing flyers at a busy street corner without discrimination or regret – until recent times have so aptly shown me the dark underbelly of utter blind trust. The truth that I’m quickly coming to understand is that people generally are idiots. Myself not excluded. People are foolish with emotions and ignorant in cultivating the best possible interactions between themselves and others. People are also stupid, selfish, flawed, and riddled with misconceptions. Why should I hand out my trust and confidence when everyone will just fuck it up in some way? Not to be bitter. Of course not. I am slowly realizing that the only person whom I can trust is myself, because even though I’m just as guilty of committing human errors as anyone else, I do have a competitive advantage. I know myself the best. I understand what I need the most. I am the being who is closest to myself of the entire population on earth. Which brings me to my next point.

Be your own soulmate. I should have come to acknowledge this a long time ago, say when I turned 16. But I was not so wise, and years of childhood expectations stemming from Disney movies kept me in a naive bubble far longer than what is considered healthy. There is no perfect person just for me. No goddamn soulmate who shares the same interests, knows what to say and how to act to make me feel completely loved, and treats me with the level of respect that I desire. Because, as I have indicated before, people are idiotic and stupid. And the only one who can keep up with my shifting interests, intellectual hunger, and emotional transitions is myself. Nobody will understand my tastes in both classical and pseudo-country music as much as I do. Nobody will comprehend why I love absorbing knowledge from a textbook but refuse to do the same from a topic-related televised program. No one out there, in the entire universe, will get my simultaneous, paradoxical yearning for losing myself in the circus of Austin nightlife and losing myself in the latest piece of postmodern literature that I purchased with the money I should have used to buy groceries. I don’t need to apologize to myself for my inability to be pigeonholed into a certain category. I am the only one who can love myself despite my inconsistencies. Be kind to myself even when I dislike my own attitude. Be gentle with myself when I am not in the position to be treated in any other way.

Be alone. If I am aiming to be kind to myself and I am truly the only person who is capable of assisting the healing from the terrible blows I have recently suffered, I will need to understand my limitations when it comes to non-platonic involvements. I simply cannot be involved with anyone right now. I am exhausted from the entire run with Oscar, as well as the relationship with Ravi 2 years prior. I am 25 years old and have been dating for 10 years. I simply don’t have the means to emotionally engage in anything more than a handful of superficial dates that don’t lead to any physical intimacy. And I don’t even see the point in that. I’ve had more than my fill of backbreaking labor that inevitably comes with being emotionally attached to someone, and I need to fucking stop and take a breather. Even if the perfect guy (who I’ve recently come to believe doesn’t exist anyway) waltzes along and offers me the world and the sun and the stars, I would not have the ability to start the engine. This is perfect timing after all, since I really do need the time off to piece together my heart and whatever notions on love that I used to nurture and still want to keep around. If any.

You are born alone and you will die alone. So learn to be alone, Linda. Learn to be your own boyfriend. Learn how to be kind to yourself. Because there truly is no one else who can step up to the job.

Love is pain

Kill it.