I dearly miss you. The you that was with me. I wish you'd come back to me. I wish you'd stayed. I wish you loved me , the song you couldn't convey. I feel your presence , even with the distance, I'm tired of my own insistence, I wish I wasn't played.

Grief

Dear friend,
It's been two years since I've written to you. I have a lot to say yet I , like every diary writer who hasn't written for a while, don't know where to begin. So, lets start. I am a school teacher now. My previous posts were all about dentistry and now I look back and feel like I am a whole new person looking at reflection of what I once used to be. The essence remains vaguely familiar yet strangely foreign.

Yesterday, at work, some teachers were discussing about a student in the 8th grade who lost her father 2 days before Christmas. They were a bit puzzled to why she hadn't shown any visible signs of grief to any of her friends or family or teachers. I generally don't interfere in personal discussions yet I mentioned that grief is such a private emotion. Not everyone has the strength or personality or the will to show it publicly. Despite the constant nature of it , one could only be able to catch glimpses of it in people, and that too, if you are really willing to look. Unfortunately, and I knew this was coming, the teachers asked me how did I know so much in depth of such a primal emotion.I poignantly exclaimed by saying, someone left me on Christmas too.

I remember reading somewhere that the holidays are generally tough for people because of the expectation to be constantly cheery and happy, which puts a lot of pressure on those who struggle with the basics of being alive. Needless to say, the holidays have always been hard on me. Yet, in my travels, I recently met 2 Swedish drug and alcohol addicts who have been sober for years. Their journey of self discovery, acceptance and growth brought so much strength to me. I knew I'd never see them again, yet I would always value the lesson that brief , chance occurrence taught me; that there is more to life than this (whatever this means),  and I need to keep the journey going and maybe one day, all this ( whatever this means) would make sense, because to quote the Indonesian band Peterpan, " I can tolerate this pain, I just can't understand it."

A friend of mine once told me that he doesn't pursue happiness anymore, I never understood that because I always felt that the pursuit of happiness is what gives us purpose, and a goal to live a full life. I understand him now, though still being optimistic about hope and happiness, that sometimes, we need to stop trying to run behind things that seem to give us joy, and to just focus on the details of our now. The now that probably is happy but we can't see it, yet.

My year started off with a lot of grief; people leaving, bus banging into trees, and pots and pans falling onto my head,  but I'm going to focus on the details, the now, because I am sure, 10 months from now, I'd laugh this all off. At least I hope I do.

I try not to be solitary anymore. I make efforts. I guess if I ever wanted to be appreciated for anything in life is the fact that I did not give up. I pulled through. Letting go of a career that I once loved dearly or even the people in my life, it broke me, but I pulled through. I made uncertainty my friend and trusted my instincts. I don't see myself as a failure, but an unexpected success story, I wish people saw how hard it was for me and believed that too.

I guess I wrote a lot for one day. I don't know when my next post would be. However, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading.

Always.

The Conditioned Mind Moves In Autopilot.

Dear friend,
Everyday, i cross a broken ceramic statue of lovers. the mans head is broken. the statue was placed on a wall next to a villa. i guess the owners were hoping that the garbage lady would come and take it away. however, no one has touched it. when the sun shines from behind, its like it was never broken. perception is fun. every time i cross it, the words "hand.cannot.erase" comes into my mind. its a very poppish song but the words run deeper than the song,

i found the soundtrack to the game i used to play as a child. i was overwhelmed with nostalgia. so many memories scattered , ran through my mind like a film running through a projector. i cannot bring that time back, though through listening to those songs, i relived my childhood. all that time lost, saddens me.

i remember writing about a bougenvilla tree i used to cross everyday when i was in college and now i write about a broken statue. it made me realize that our life runs in cycles of highs and lows, yet there will be something always common to each phase. i relive situations and i know how to feel and know what to say because not so long ago, i lived something similar if not exactly the same. the conditioned mind moves in autopilot.

we may never be able to relive the past with the same people coz people come and go, yet ive realized that emotions can be re-felt. its a dangerous realization coz  it could be assumed that people are disposable. they arent! however, we dont have a control over life.we cant control who stays and who leaves us. all i am saying is,people tend to adapt well to change even if it does take a bit of time.

i feel preachy again. i feel that alot. i shouldnt have gone into deep meditation after all. i was happier being a superficial person to whom ignorance was bliss.


Always,

buying a new soul

dear friend,
yes, i know i ripped off the title from a steven wilson song. its funny, how I always land up listening to that song after listening to a billion other things. so, for the past 6 days, ive been attending an art class. i wanted to learn a new style of painting with epoxy resins and acrylics. the instructor told me that he had nothing new to teach me after he saw my work and curiously asked  from which art college did i graduate from. he said i needed to teach instead of learn after i told him i was trying my hand at ebru painting and tried to create my own ebru paints since its not available in the country i live in. i finally finished my painting today. i got alot of appreciation for it too. it saddens me though, the idea of being good in such a solitary hobby. i can sit for hours alone being engrossed in the details of it all. i wonder if im good at art because of the lack of people around me or i prefer art over having people around me. is it my refuge or my catharses?

i feel stuck. people say that my life is going to change soon;great adventures are going to be a part of my life etc. time is all that i need. when will my time come? sometimes i think things will change for the better in a new place,with new people where i  will have a chance to start over, away from everything. a new life.when will my time come?

"i woke up and i had a big idea
to buy a new soul at the start of every year
i paid up and it cost me pretty dear
here's a hymn for those that disappear"

always

Cageing Ageing

Dear friend,
I stood in front of the mirror today. I tried to figure out who I was and what I became in 9 years. Ive forgotten most of my childhood and early adulthood. Its like I woke up with a delete button and instead of deleting the bad stuff, I deleted all the good. Ive aged. I have wrinkles around my eyes when I smile and I have white hair. What started out as a single white strand at the age of 18 has ploughed its way through my field of hair and manifested as a salt and pepper pattern. luckily, Im still more of pepper. Im not the person I used to be at the age of 18 but I still have random memories that bind me to the past. I look back at my past entries and it seems like a completely different person wrote them. I fear that one day, Ill look into the mirror and I wont know who I am.
Im slowly beginning to accept the idea of being all by myself and thats how it can be and should be.
I dont know if this is a dark place or reality. Time will tell.

Always

Song writing.

Dear friend,
I'm song writing. I didnt know I could be good at it since I've tried my hand at it back in college. I guess all I needed was my bluke ( blue ukulele). I hum, I sing and then I write. But the again, I always wrote. what kind of music do I make? the better question would be , what kind of music would I like to make? I dont think I have it all figured out but I know I want my songs to belong to a nostalgic moment, the ones you look back to and smile and feel bittersweet about. I want my songs to be the words of a sentiment unable to be spoken. I want it to be a glowing memory of a time gone by, never to return, yet somehow, can always be revisited; to be omnipresent in times of nostalgia that lingers on a cold,lonely rainy day to bring forth a warm comforting embrace.

Do I sound reasonable (yet) ?

Always

Melancholia, again

Melancholia, again
trying to keep it at the surface
but it sinks in, unexpectedly
untimely, and without reason
I push it out but it never stays beyond
melancholia, again
always coming back like a lost lover
fight it, fight it, fight it.
melancholia, again
when will I truly be free?