i don’t think i’m happy nor sad, extroverted nor introverted, driven nor lazy. i think i’m just one huge blob of emotions and i fluctuate from one to the next. everything changes according to how i feel. the world is brighter when i feel imaginative and connected to my surroundings. the world is grey when i feel grey myself. and i used to hate this very aspect of myself, because there was never any certainty. i always thought it was only imminent until i met face-to-face with insanity. one day i seem to feel on top of the world and the next day there isn’t enough air to breathe. one day i am an endless scroll of apologies, the next full of inspiration. my emotions are an intense game of tennis, and in hand, my whole persona is thrown back and forth. i become so dizzy trying to think about who i am. and then yesterday after that period of elation, i plummeted into a pool of worthlessness. i tracked my thoughts and just stopped them and thought to myself, “this is silly. it’s 4am and you’re tired and you’re a little sick. go to bed and you’ll wake up feeling better.” and well, it didn’t start off like that today. this morning i didn’t wake up feeling worthless, but every thing i saw and every thing i read only made me well up in tears, and i wondered if my life had become one huge pms episode.

i think the best thing sensitive people can do is to love the ebb and flow of their emotions. it’s the only thing we can do so that we don’t rip our skin off and gnaw at our bones. some people identify with their career, others identify with their thoughts, their knowledge. i identify with my emotions. my emotions are who i am. and i need to let go of that image. because if i identify myself with what i feel, then i will only oscillate between all of this madness until i am only madness.

we must love the whole spectrum of emotions in us in order to fully accept ourselves, otherwise we struggle and struggle and throughout that struggle, we inevitably hold onto whatever emotion we’re feeling instead of just letting it go.

maybe that’s the point of everything, to find the balance between holding on and letting go with just the perfect amount.

sometimes when i’m listening to somebody tell a story and i look in their eyes and i happen to be in a complete state of relaxation (that’s when i’m most receptive), i become completely enveloped in their emotions. and when i look at them (someone once noticed i simultaneously quirk my head and smile with my mouth as curved as a crescent moon), i can feel their emotions as mine, and i begin to feel a synchronous sensation running down my cheekbones to my jawline, signaling to me that the story they’re telling is significant, meaningful, remembered. sometimes i lose myself in the way people express themselves through a story and a resonating image appears in my mind that corresponds to who they are. from that moment when i see that image, that’s how i view them. it stays with me, forever. and i travel through that image while they’re telling the story. and i travel through that image the next time i see them. sometimes the images change. my mind is like a picture book when it’s like this. i go page to page with every time i see someone.

today i was with my friend torie, and we always have extensively long dinners. tonight having been two and a half hours. she was telling a story about a boy she was recently seeing and then i imagined her as a black cut-out stencil, like the ones you see in pop-up crafts. and i thought it was beautiful, the way the cut out stencil was 2d but lived in a 3d world. the shadow of her stencil was always dancing, swaying, to be exact.

i don’t know what this means but i think it’s the land where you are always happy, where you are always free. it is the woman inside of you that has broken free of her depression, the one that has moved forward from her broken heart. i think that woman exists because of the boy that has magically appeared in your life.

you told me this is the first boy where you are unfiltered, where you can finally feel like yourself. i think he’s teaching you how to love who you are on the inside…and outside. i’m not sure. i don’t know many sides of you yet.

and these, these are the best kind of stories, the best kind of symbols.

i live in a world of meaning. when my mind isn’t running on something concrete such as words or images or colors or shapes, sometimes i close my eyes and i see purple and gray semicircles, falling descending like deflating balloons. i tried to paint it once. other times, i see blue glowing parallelograms. sometimes a blob of colors, like a blended ball of clay. it all depends. i don’t know what they mean. it feels like a swimming pool of waves moving around. and i don’t know how the waves are moving or who’s riding them, but creative energy is stirring. i live in a world of meaning, i don’t really know how to emphasize this. i remember everything that is meaningful. i match associations. i remember the way you smile when you tell a story, and that’s how i know that story is meaningful. i find everything that matches that story to remind you of that feeling. how i live in this world is derived what is meaningful or what will be meaningful. green reminds me of certain people. sharp edges remind me of others. certain smells reminds me the place down the street or a freeway over to the next town. i remember double numbers. triples numbers. i remember which side of the street is odd numbers or even numbers and i see how fast they change. blueberries remind me that it’s your favorite fruit. this. that. it all reminds me of a memory you’ve shared with me or a memory i’ve shared with you. i live in a world of meaning. and it’s. it’s. wonderful. marvelous. beautiful..one time bryan said, “the world is always meaningful, and it sucks.” darling, sometimes i feel like that too. because you wish the world would be ugly to you, and it doesn’t work like that. even if you try your hardest. i’ve tried myself.

it’s a gift. to see life as a present. this has taken time to learn. it still does.

i realized i’m really closed off when i hang out with guys for the first time one-on-one. and it’s not that i have anything to hide, i just need a reason to share. he told me i’m really curious because i ask a lot of questions and he told me i’m fun to have a conversation with because i have an opinion to everything, which is refreshing to hear. about 2/3 through our time together, he said “so i’ve been talking about myself and i don’t know anything about you except that you really like to go hard, you like seattle, you’re from manhattan, and that you almost applied to the arts institute.” and i said i’m not really interesting and he said “don’t you write” and i said “not much” and i realized that i come off as really open because of my insatiable curiosity but i actually sit sort of standoff-ish and i don’t make a lot of eye contact and i don’t smile a lot because i don’t want to provide an impression that means i am interested in the other or something of that sort. and it’s not that i personally choose to hide anything, there aren’t specific intentions in the way i act, it just happens like that, but it’s more of do i feel comfortable around you and do i feel like i can trust you to even share with you the simplest of things. and i do share simple things but there isn’t that comfortabilty in my voice or my presence, it’s more of just speech rather than just connecting. i don’t know if this makes sense. and it’s recently come into my conscious awareness that i’m like that. it’s sort of a way to protect myself but also be able to connect with others at the same time. i don’t know it’s very weird but it works

i miss adventure. that’s what i miss, and that’s what i seek. when you experience life at such a fast pace at a young age, it’s almost as if every moment you live is a moment to redeem your youth. i know that when i meet people, they don’t seek adventure as much as i do. i know this off the bat. i know this the second my eyes lay on theirs. people want to be alone, people need time to recuperate from a weekend. people don’t want to be bothered. people like to be lazy. people like to stay in their rooms. people find comfort in television shows. people think it’s weird that you want to hang out so soon having just met, or people think it’s weird to hang out so much. or maybe you do hang out for prolonged periods of time, but there’s this staleness in the air, and it penetrates every blood vessel of mine. and so i retreat to their reactions.

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i look back and see the same girl, the same crescent-shaped eyes with bitten nails to the rim. some things have changed, my intentions are different, the way i view life has shifted, but i’m still that same little girl sitting in trees wishing for birds to come carry me into another world that seems just like this one but feels a little different. the difference between now and then is the hurt, the betrayal, the resent, the aloofness of my presence. i used to be driven to protect myself, i learned that when you feel darkness, when you are the darkness, it not only clouded my judgment, but i lied to myself and told myself it was my lightness. i told myself this was the best it would ever be. people told me these would be the best years of my life, and i said, what if you’ve already experienced that and now you’re just dragging your feet across this uneven pavement? when you live so much at a young age, you wonder what’s next, if there is one. i learned to let go of expectations, still learning. if you’d ask me years ago, i’d say, demons - what demons? i don’t have any. throughout the years i’ve learned this is a fallacy, and that when i mask the truth, i am hiding from myself. i learned that these demons are as much angels as demons. i let them surface and found that my skin was a playground of demons and angels playing with each other. i’ve learned the balance between avoiding and confrontation. i’ve learned to stop assigning labels and random connotations to different aspects of myself. i learned that the more i dissect myself, the more i lose out on the present moment. i used to fall in love with my self-destruction over and over again that i began to chase purity. contradiction? you’ve got it. i was full of them, but this was the only way i knew how to take care of myself at the time. i used to string lies that were so intricately thought out that you wouldn’t even begin to find any dents. i used to stay out in the middle of the night, ignoring each and every one of my mom’s missed calls. it ranked up to 8. i didn’t care that my parents cared for me. i used to be afraid of so many things, afraid of being judged, afraid of never measuring up to people’s expectations, and then i learned that the most critical person is you. i used to be afraid of trivial matters, such as asking a stranger a question or standing out. i always wanted to blend in. i learned to strive in this world for what i want, not what others expect. what others expect is ultimately an expectation of yourself. i look back and want to tell myself that it will all be okay, even the times you don’t want to hear my voice because i am here to remind you. those tears will stop falling. the harshness of your emotions will blossom into lightness. one day it won’t matter that you didn’t have friends who stayed. one day it won’t matter that love wasn’t what it cut out to be at the time. you already knew this, anyway, but you convince yourself you can find temporary love on the streets. one day among all this complexity, you’ll find simplicity. one day this war with yourself will have found a resolution. one day you’ll be here and you’ll be content. peaceful.

it astounds me how empty people’s minds are. no emotions no thoughts no reflections nothing really. you’d be surprised how many people don’t pick up on anything in their environments, how their minds are so blank waiting to be fed some information on the tv or being taught how to think. or how some people only feel emotion when it’s social anxiety or only experience thought when they’re paranoid. some people’s minds have neither depth nor width. do you know how many people are opinion-less and careless about this very aspect of themselves? do you know how many people are not informed about…anything? what goes on in their minds? sometimes i intuitively peer into people’s heads and there’s nothing there and i’m a bit shell-shocked! it’s as if they only ever feel or think in reaction to something in their environment. tell me - how many people watch numerous reality tv shows because of boredom, because they need to pass the time, because they’ve run out of tweets to file through and facebook posts to lurk? i don’t want to know the answer. do you see this pattern in people? they fill their lives with the lives of others because they don’t have a meaningful lives themselves.

i love to surround myself with people whose minds and hearts and lives are enriching, meaningful, substantial. the other night i met somebody and i said “you think in emotional shades and tones don’t you?” and then he asked me if i do, and i said sometimes. i live in a world of emotions, i’m stringing poems or i’m adopting people’s emotions or i’m trying to understand someone’s mindset or a concept i’ve read. sometimes the world is bland to me when i’m tired, and other times i can’t seem to rid of all this excess energy. sometimes i have a dialogue in my head, other times the sky tells me stories. sometimes i dream of fairies playing hide and seek in my studio, other times i don’t imagine at all. sometimes i’m problem solving, other times i’m tracking patterns. sometimes i think in shapes, other times colors. and sometimes i don’t think nor feel at all. that bleak sort of silence. there are days like those too.

but i look at some people and their mind is just…. shallow. you know, like those people who dab their feet into the ocean at a beach and think they’ve touched the whole sea.

i think it’s important to be passionate about something - anything really - because that’s what will drive you to do anything. people either become so wrapped up with with work and money or they’re disturbingly unmotivated and lazy. it’s disturbing to me because you’re wasting your days. you’re a part of this world, contribute to it! if you would just take a moment to look within, you would see you have so much talent! what good is an artist who can reproduce nearly any image if they don’t care to freely create? it’s a strong visual mind gone to waste. what good is an A+ paper if the person wasn’t enthralled with the topic? it was just someone with good writing skills. you need to not only recognize your talent, but also let it motivate you to live a meaningful life, and not for the purpose of getting the job done. if you would just get out of your bed and walk outside the door, there are endless opportunities waiting for you if there doesn’t seem to be inspiration in the house that day. i see people’s greatness, people’s potential, a vision for their ideal life, but it’s not my say to push my ideals onto others, i can only help people realize that they shine bright, i can only remind people that they’re lovely. 

the whole world is so beautiful, i’m always learning about something whether through observation, others, or text. it’s so sad to me when people are ignorant of all this divine beauty that is in plain sight. when you just do the same old routine everyday, you really miss out on the present. and when you don’t do anything at all all day long, all year long, you also miss out on the present. being alive is such a gift and when you see what is alive around you (which is everything), you become that.

“what do you really see me doing in 10 years from now”
”hmmmm why do you think i know?”
”because you are good at your analyzing. way better than me, anyone, at understanding people”
”you’re going to start something. i don’t know, entrepreneurship, non-profit. i think business comes naturally to you”
”like inventions?”
”mhm yes!”
”wow. when i was 5 that was my dream job, an inventor”
“but i don’t think you’d actually invent. i think you’d be like the boss of everybody who is inventing and they’d be the puppets for your ideas”
”because i know how to put them together into maximum efficiency?”
”you’re the brain power, they’re the hands. you’re the fuel and they’re the engine”
”but to get to where i want to be i have to make a name for myself somehow”

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