Frozen Hearts

Do you ever get that feeling in the pit of your stomach?  You know, that feeling right before your first kiss, or when you know you're falling in love?  That feeling that tells you things are just...right?  But sometimes that feeling can be telling you the exact opposite.  Sometimes that feeling is a warning that something terrible and tragic is about to happen - or is already happening.  It's not a feeling of comfort and belonging, but rather a feeling of abandonment, loneliness, and hopelessness.  It literally knocks the wind out of you, making it difficult to breathe.

I think everyone tries their hardest to be strong in life for as long as possible.  But with time, willpower fades.  Every now and then we lose our grasp on that strength and allow it to slip through our fingers.  Depression.  Fear.  Weakness.  I think everyone experiences these things at least once in their lifetime.  But for some these feelings can be a repeated occurrence...struck day after day by life's disappointments.  The pain of life's burdens becomes too much for our hearts to bear.  Frozen in time you become incapable of moving forward - paralyzed.  You cry your eyes dry until you become void of emotion; numb.  All you can do is sit and stare blankly as the rest of the world passes you by.  And you don't care.  That's when you know you are truly broken; the moment when the ability to care about where life takes you has completely vanished.  The pain dulls, the tears dry up.  You're a ghost, no longer in control of your own body.  A different force takes ahold of you - something darker.  It's a force driven by pain...and sadness.  But you don't let it pull you down.  Instead, you use it to your advantage.  You let it fuel you - transform you into a different person.  One who will not have to feel pain again.

All those times in the past when you thought your heart was breaking - that the crack in it was growing with each singular tear that fell from your eyes...you were wrong.  Your heart was not breaking.  Rather, it was freezing.  And the moment you became truly "broken" was the moment when the ice sealed around your heart completely.  It froze - solid.  It stopped beating.  It became cold.

And so you stopped caring.  You lost your fire, your essence, your warmth.  And with that cold heart you began to see the world differently.  You began to hold a new perspective; one of darkness.  The only person you sought to please from that moment on was yourself.  You would live with this curse of hostility and resentment until the day when someone worthy and dedicated to melting your heart of ice came along.  But until that day you would live a life of solitude and malevolence - alone, trapped in the dungeons of your mind, seeking revenge wherever and whenever possible on all those who have wronged you.  Living this life void of compassion would keep you strong and spare you from the wretched pain you had let yourself endure for far too long.  It would make you feared...powerful.  But with power comes a new kind of pain...

You're My Person

Everyone needs a person.  Just one person who you can share your deepest and darkest secrets with and no matter what they'll still be there to support you.  Someone who won't go running every time you make a mistake.  Someone who won't put down your dreams and ideas no matter what they may be.  Someone who will listen to you in times of need as much as you know you'd be willing to listen to them.  Someone who understands you...maybe even better than you understand yourself.  Maybe this person will be a sibling, a husband/wife, a boyfriend/girlfriend, or maybe just a best friend.  But everyone needs a person.  Because I think if you don't have a person, you start to lose faith in yourself.  There is no one that you can fully trust, no one that you can share absolutely any information with - good or bad - without receiving judgment.  No one who knows when to talk, and when to just be there in silence.  Without our person, we have no one.  And until we can all find our person I think we become plagued with loneliness and insecurity.  Because we know deep inside that there must be something about us that manages to keep pushing everyone away.  And this feeling only gets worse as more and more people continue to disappear.  So for our own sanity, we need to find that one person who will never run away; who will never disappear, despite our greatest flaws, despite our past mistakes and even our future mistakes that are bound to come.  We need that person who isn't annoyed by our presence.  The person who looks forward to spending time with us.  The person who we can count on for anything and everything; who will sense when we're struggling and need help and will know what to do, rather than desert us because they don't want to be bothered.  We all just need a person.  I need a person.  Will somebody be my person already?!  

People Always Leave

"Do you ever wake up in the morning, realize nobody likes you and, I don't know...care??"
              -Izzie Stephens

You don't realize it until all of a sudden.  You think you have people in your life to support you and love you and be with you.  Then slowly they start to disappear, one by one.  Some of them leave by choice, like they couldn't get away fast enough.  Others leave because they have to, but it doesn't take long for them to realize they like their new life better anyway.  They make new friends, new memories, and they lose reason to keep in touch.  Their lives weren't anything special because of their knowing you, so they move on to that new place and leave you behind to navigate alone through your own cloud of misery.  And they never care to look back.  Still others stand directly in front of you, yet look right through you like you're a ghost in their ever-progressing lives while you're stuck in timeless space - trapped with no one to help you escape; no one to help you get through the days; no one to talk to or even listen to.  You are completely alone.  No one cares to confide in you or turn to you for advice, and no one cares enough to listen to your own troubles.  Or they pretend to care but then only judge you later on once you've spilled your deepest and most personal thoughts and secrets.  Everyone judges you - for the things you say, the way you act, the way you feel...even for the way you choose to express those feelings.  It's constant judgement from everyone all the time.  Inescapable.  Condescending.

All of this happens day by day, a little at a time until everyone has successfully managed to remove themselves from your life.  Until one morning you wake up and realize that your life is empty; void of any and all meaning and motivation.  You begin to lose any sense of purpose that you may have once had.  You lose reason to study, to diet and stay fit, to do anything really.  You lose it all because you realize that you have no one.  You don't know how it happened that you have no one...but you have no one.  So why bother?  Who is there to impress?  Who is there to compete with?  Who is there to love?  Who is there to live for?  The answer is no one.  The answer is always no one.  Because somehow you managed to become disliked by the world.  Everyone has deserted you.  Or maybe you've pushed them all away.      

What If...We Stop Asking 'What If?' ?

"Don't spend all your time wondering what you are, or who you like, or whether it's right for you or wrong for you.  Just let yourself be happy."
                  -Calliope Torres

People often have a tendency to over-think things in life.  It's human nature to concern yourself with the what-ifs...it's how we survive - planning ahead.  We tend to look beyond what is sitting right in front of us, always anticipating the future instead of focusing on the present.  When faced with a problem or a situation we always try to play out the prospective outcomes in our minds.  We try to determine whether the benefits will outweigh the consequences - whether the act will be "worth it" or not.  We are constantly debating with ourselves over that which we want to do (what our heart is telling us) and that which we think we should do (what our mind is telling us).  Sometimes we just have to let all of that go.  We have to live for the moment and just let life unfold in front of us.  Do what makes you happy in this moment because for all you know it could be your last.  Life always has a way of working itself out.  So take a chance.  It doesn't matter if you screw up, or humiliate yourself, or something just doesn't work out.  Because ultimately you will end up where you're destined to be.  So quit worrying so much about the consequences; about whether something is good or bad or right or wrong for you.  Just do what makes you happy and let life lead the way.  YOLO.  So take the chance.  Take the fall.  Risk yourself every now and again.  We can't wait around forever pondering the what-ifs.  Sometimes we need to just go for it.  And who knows?  Maybe one of those 'what-ifs' you were so fearful of will develop into something magical.  But you'll never know until you take the plunge.

We Can't All Be Shiny Happy People

Do you ever get the feeling that no one understands you?  Like just because everyone else is happy in life they think that you should be, too.  You try to explain to them why you're not - why you feel like you're slowly dying inside, suffocating with every breath you take.  You tell them how trapped you feel - how there is so much the world has to offer and you just can't reach any of it because you're living in a box (a cozy and familiar box, but a box nonetheless).  You tell them how lonely you feel, how confined and restricted with no one to help pass the time.  You tell them all of this and instead of offering words of understanding and encouragement that things will get better (because you know as well, deep in your heart, that things will get better...eventually - sometimes we just need a little reassurance), instead they try to force you to be happy where you are.  It's like discontentment is an alien concept for them to grasp.  How could anyone be so sad and morose in this beautiful, sunny world that we live in?  They are blind to the clouds rolling in over your head and the rain pelting down and stinging your skin.  They can't understand why you're always depressed, and they seem almost annoyed by it.  They try to tell you to enjoy what you have now - that you'll miss it later on.  How can anyone tell you what you will or will not miss in the future when every person is different?  Everyone else seems to think they know what's best for you.  They know where you need to live, what you need to eat, what you need to study.  They're always telling you what you "want" to do.  But really they have no idea what you want - and where do they get off on thinking they have the right to assume they do?  Hell, I don't even know what I want!

Sometimes we're just unhappy - with where we are in life and the people we have in our life.  And the only thing that can change that is time; time to bring about something new.  Nothing is automatic and sometimes we just have to wait it out.  And although we may acknowledge this fact, it doesn't make the waiting period any easier.  And the knowledge that things will be better in the future doesn't make the present any easier.  So it's unfair for those shiny happy people who have already reached the better days  to try to dictate our lives and force us to be happy.  It's not that simple.  They try to relate and they say they've been in your shoes once.  Maybe...but they've never been in your mind.  And until that day comes they cannot just come along and tell you how to feel.