A heavy heart goes unnoticed

A heavy heart goes unnoticed. It becomes an ache that is pushed out through weak valves and into the corridors of an upset stomach. Like shots of adrenaline, thoughts of you stir in my core. My heart races. My breath is heavy. My nerves are shot. Ailments of a broken spirit. Ailments of a spirit so far lost into the depths of the human body, into the human soul. It can’t be seen, it can’t be touched, it can’t be tasted. Love is felt.

Love is defined as, “an intense feeling of deep affection”. Hate is defined as “intense dislike for someone or something.” To really delve into the meaning of these human emotions and all relative, we also need to define intense. Intense can be defined as having strong feelings or opinions.

We can probably go around and around defining what it is that provokes these strong or intense feelings, though, the key that is missing in these definitions is the use of uncontrollable.

Intense and uncontrollable situations go hand in hand. Uncontrollable situations and feelings spark intense and reactive feelings and situations. You might say, “I control everything in my life. Nothing is uncontrollable. Everything is as I want it to be.” False. A BIG NO.

I would like to introduce you to the world of chain reactions. For every action is a reaction. For every reaction, is another reaction and so on. Sure, you have a choice. But when dealing with matters of the heart, choice becomes only a particle to the bigger picture.

A seed is planted in fertile soil. The soil is plentiful and moist, and has the potential to grow beautiful flowers, but the soil alone cannot ignite the reaction of growth by itself. Someone, or something, must choose to water it. The seed will respond. The seed will begin to unfold. The seed will see growth. The seed, in all of its fragility, will seem strong. Its growth thereafter is uncontrollable in the right conditions. The now beautiful bud of petals has deep affection for its water. The flower is now reliant on it. It trusts that the water will come back every time.

A good example can only go so far. Love is something people have been trying to define since the beginning of time. Tom Robbins once wrote, “There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay?”

I don’t think you can make love do anything. Love, like the water, has action due to choice. And choice can only be made due to the human spirit; what is felt. And human spirit is uncontrollable.

My choice? Feel this uncontrollable mess, as much as I can. Embrace my choice to love with no guarantee of reciprocity. Conjure up the uncontrollable spirit, and spin it into choices far beyond what the world and its intensities have conjured up for me.

A heavy heart goes unnoticed; but I will water it and watch it grow.

I love people

I’ve heard it far too much throughout my life, and it’s become increasingly more popular to say: “I hate people.” A simple sentence, yes, but one that contains so much bitterness and narrow mindedness that I began to wonder after a while why my peers and my tumblr followers and everyone around me, it seemed, felt this way.

Then I realized- the heart of the problem is our loss of faith in the human race. We’re letting all of the injustice and mistrust and hatred in the world get the best of us as a group. But people are, for the most part at least, good.

I love people. I love their stories. I love their scars and their hardships and their compassion towards others. I love the way their hair sticks up in the morning and even their naiveté to hate. I love their crooked teeth and the way they treat their loved ones. I love their insecurities and their best assets and what they were like in high school and what they want to be in the future. Most of all, I love humankind’s ability to recover.

My adamant love affair with the human race doesn’t necessarily mean I like certain qualities of specific people, because I’m as human as the next guy, but seriously, stop hating. By hating others, you’re isolating yourself, and at the end of the day, you’re no better than the people who betrayed you and the ones who made you lose faith in humanity in the first place. Instead, you’re a sad, lonely misanthrope.

An important lesson we need to learn is that we can trust again. If you hate people, it most likely stemmed from a hurtful experience that has consumed you or even worse, a secondhand situation where you vicariously make a parent or a friend’s issue your own. Don’t let your fear of people keep you from living your life. Do you think that the people who have been cheated on are all still single because they can’t trust a partner again? And what about the people who have had their friends talk about them behind their backs? Will all of those people never be able to make friends again? They’ll move on. You’ll move on. We have to. And if you were the two timer or the backstabber, you’ll learn. I’ll bet you already have. If you’re closing yourself in or boxing yourself out, chances are you’re missing out on meeting the insanely interesting and fascinating people who live in our beautiful world.

I know it hurts. Being taken advantage of always sucks. But it’s important to note that while the majority of people are good, no two people are the same. So put yourself out there again, you wonderful people-haters, or else you’ll grow old wishing that you did.

First love?

Everybody is always making a big fuss over the “first love” concept, and how it’s this life-changing thing that never really fades away. But I feel like while your first love is great, and probably shows you things about yourself that you didn’t know, and inevitably breaks your heart, what we should really be talking about is the second and third and fourth great loves that show us that we can feel that way for someone again.

After that “first great love” breaks your heart you get to thinking they’re one in a billion, the only fish in this sea that could possibly jive with you, that could possibly make you want to touch them all night and then just sit next to them while watching Netflix and go grocery shopping and talk about the annoying things that happened today and all the little, ridiculous nuances of everyday life that nobody else could possibly understand but them.

But one day, usually when we’re least expecting it, someone else comes along. Usually, we’re hesitant to love them. We think we’re broken and “we need time” when really it’s just an excuse to not be with someone because we’re too afraid of our own feelings. But what we realize, slowly, but then all at once, is that the person we have in our lives right now makes us happier than that other person did. They ended for a reason, and you don’t have to end what you have because of what happened in the past. It’s over, your thoughts are the only thing that keeps it alive.

And maybe we want to keep these things alive, because we can’t get over the fact that sometimes in life, we can love greatly and deeply but not forever. This is not what we were taught. We were raised on the notion that once we find someone we care about enough, we have to bind them together with us by law and conform to every convention set up for us to breed the next generation and live a blase life.

You don’t have to choose this. There will always be more love to find. It’s only ever a matter of getting over the fear of feeling again. 

This is all I want

What if all I want to do is write. I want people to know how I feel and for them to understand me. All of these ideas in my head fade when the ink hits the surface of my leather journal. Wouldn’t it be easier to write my darkest secrets? Because I have no one to listen to me. But why should they, it’s not their responsibility to help me work through my problems, and I am capable of doing that myself. So instead I’ll just write and not worry about what they think. I’ll try.

But the thoughts are all gone, nothing left to write about that hasn’t been written before. Of course there are so many ideas in my head, but they all fade. Gone, into nothingness, with only their echo remaining. I want you to know me, but how can I even begin to describe myself. How can I tell you through my writing.

I want to write about this burning passion that is in my heart, but I can’t find the right words. I want everyone to know about the fire that is slowly consuming my thoughts and my lust to have everything in life and more. Where can you even find the words to express the excruciating pain that it causes, but also the overwhelming joy of having something you can love so much?

It’s not a person I love, nor a thing. Instead it’s an idea. The feeling of freedom as you hear the click of the airplane’s wheels as it prepares to land. The way it slams on the ground and how you can feel the pilot flooring the brake. My feelings rush and slam in this same way. I can feel my heart race and flood with emotions as I try to stop it. I try to put out the raging fire but it’s useless. Secretly I love it. I love feeling so much. It kills me, but brings me life. There are no words to describe it, which kills me even more.

Dear Justin

Can you believe that it's already been seven years already? Well, I'm sure you can. You're the one that's gone, after all.

Seven years.

So much has changed. Yet today will always be the same.

I don't think there will ever be an April 1st that I wake up with this feeling of dread. I'll always realize that I've made it through another year when you were taken away far too early. There wont ever be a morning that I don't ever wake up wishing that I could just tell you one last time how much you mean to me. There will never be a morning that I won't wonder what you would have been doing today.

Seven years and everything has changed.

Sometimes I think that maybe you were the glue that held so many of us together. After you left, so many of us drifted apart. I can't even remember the last time I talked to, let alone saw, so many of those friends. We had plans to be friends forever. But maybe that's just how life works. We all drifted apart. I would like to think that would have never happened with us. All of those plans we made and none of it ever actually worked out. I don't know if that's just growing up or growing apart. But we would never have grown apart, right?

Seven years and nothing is really all that different.

I still deal with the same problems that you would spend so many nights talking me through. I guess I've gotten better at dealing. Or hiding it. That really hasn't changed at all. All those late night phone calls and cigarettes and you would call me out on my bullshit when I needed it most. You always had that uncanny ability to look through the facade I put up every day. I have a couple other people that do that, too, now. I guess I'm still not that good at acting okay. Or maybe there are always going to be people like you that can read me.

I'm going to try to make it through the day without having a complete breakdown, but I don't think I can promise you that. I know that you were all about living life for the moment, being happy, and filling the world with laughter and joy. I should try to do the same. But I can't bring myself to do it. Today will always be the day I struggle to get out of bed and face the world that doesn't know what happened. Today will always be the day that I got the worst phone call of my life. Today will always be the day that we never made it to dinner. Today will always be that changed everything.

Seven years.

I miss you. I love you. I will never forget you. You will always be in my heart, Justin, and that is one thing that will never change. No matter how many years go by.