There are a few things that I learned about myself after coming home from travelling.
Which I guess relates directly to what I learnt while I was travelling.
First of all,
Gabrielle Aplin. Her songs can help me breathe and relax better than anything else I've ever come across. Well, her, John Mayor, and that one piano song by Yiruma called "The River Flows in You".
Second of all,
I love my alone time. I've always known that I've been a bit of an introvert at heart, but I've realised now that I'm an introvert down to my very core. I've learnt to be an extrovert when it comes to meeting new people and fitting in to society's funny little rules. But when it comes down to it, I crave being able to escape in to my mind and have my own quiet little story conversations. I could not open my mouth and speak for an entire day, and you know what? I would be completely content on that day.
The first day after coming home I was so happy that I could just sit in my room and be quiet for the entire day. No one questioning "Why on earth are you taking so long in the washroom?!" "are you okay?! You've been so quiet today!"
I could just sit and do nothing, and that in itself was glorious.
Third of all,
Singing calms me down. Just singing to myself instantly cheers me up and allows me to be able to sleep comfortably and quietly. No matter where I go in life, when I eventually end up with a partner he must be able to handle me singing to myself when I get scared. When I have a really bad break down I tend to whisper "You are my Sunshine" to myself until I can get myself back to full volume and my voice is solid and not shaky from my anxiety tremors.
Fourth of all,
I love my family. Oh I can't even begin to explain how much I love my family.
Seeing my parents for the first time at the airport and having my mom just break down and hold me in her arms while she covered my hair in tears hahaha. Oh how I love her. And my dad, he looked so close to breaking down as well, I'm pretty sure he was holding in those tears pretty hard. I love my parents. I love them both so very much that no words in the world could explain it. You could almost compare it to a parent loving their children, except I love my parents like that. So very unconditionally and whole-heartedly.
My brother. My brothers. Jordan, Kris, I was so excited to see both of you.
Jordan, Mom let your secret go when she told me that you had confided in her that you missed me and that it was weird not having me around. Oh how I love you. I love you and your stresses, your anxieties, your jokes, your smile, your goofy and silly ways. I love them all. And I'm so happy you're beginning to trust the world again. I love you so, so much.
Kris, I love you so much too. I can't even begin to explain how happy I am that you and Brooke are so happy together. I hope you two always stay that way. You deserve every inch of happiness. I look up to you so much. Your quiet, thoughtful ways. You were always the one with the level-head, but you can still cut a good joke out at the same time. I miss you. But I realise that's a lot of what growing up involves. It involves a lot of missing people, and I think I'm finally okay with that. You have Brooke to keep you company, and oh how I have grown to adore her. She may annoy me like hell sometimes, but she's really not all that bad. She keeps the things and people that matter the most close to her, which really is the best way to live. I've grown to love you Brooke, and I'm so happy that you and my brother married. I can't wait to one day be an aunt to one of you guys' kids!
Fifth,
I've learnt that it's okay to have ghosts. It's okay to have a past, or no past. It's okay to not be okay in a situation, and it's okay to be completely comfortable in one. It's okay to be creepy, or overly-friendly, or not friendly at all. Maybe even a little stand-offish is okay too. It's okay to make a fool of yourself, and to have a good laugh at yourself. It's okay to be unhappy with a situation. It's just a situation, it's not a life-time, it won't last.
It's okay.
It's okay to fail. It's okay to brush yourself off, stand up, and slip on a banana peel after your first step and fall flat back on to the ground again. That's okay.
It's okay to be vulnerable, to let people take care of you. To accept peoples kindnesses even when you may not necessarily need them. But you do it anyways because you know that it makes them feel good. Because you know that it would make you feel good.
I learnt that it's okay to not get along with everyone. That I don't have to be a whiz at coming up with conversations with everyone, and that people can think that I'm weird and awkward and not want to talk to me. That's okay. hahaha
I am weird! I am awkward! I can be a bit creepy at times!
Who cares!!!
It's okay.
and it's okay to be okay.
Thank you Peru, for helping me realize what I already had, and knew, deep down inside me.
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Friday, April 18, 2014
Monday, March 31, 2014
Tuesday, March 04, 2014
The places I've felt at my happiest
My nana's & papa's house
It's like my own little fairy tale get-a-way from life.
So cute and quaint.
I always feel like I'm in another world when I'm there. Looking out at my nana's garden, and beyond that the ocean from the sun room. Playing my nana's piano while I smell the heavenly aroma of freshly made cookies coming from the kitchen.
It's my own little fairy tale world.
I've contemplated many times on how it would be the perfect setting for a movie, or a novel.
Coldplay concert 2012
It was one of the most amazing and glorious concerts ever.
I felt so at ease, and calm, and tranquil.
I can still see the confetti raining down on me and my friends as we literally glowed in the dark when hearing charlie brown played, because we had painted our entire bodies with glow paint. (which was a bitch and a half to get off hahaha)
I can remember the smiles on my bestfriends faces, and I remember just thinking "wow, if I could live in any moment forever it would be now".
I was so, at peace.
Nicaragua 2013
I spent a lot of the trip wishing I could just go home, because I was home sick and I was actually sick.
But there was this one day that made the rest of my trip so ironic, because now I never wanted it to end but I knew it eventually would.
That day we had all worked our asses off shoveling out two giant dump trucks full of sand and gravel, and then we mixed some cement to end the work day. I remember having a shower at the end of that day and just thinking "I have never been happier in my entire life than right now".
I wasn't superficial happy or just on the surface happy; I was the sort of happy that originates in the core of yourself and it spreads to every last nerve, and consumes you in entirety. I was purely happy right down to my core, and I've never felt that happy ever before in my entire life, thus far. It was like I was an epiphony; my soul, my body, my mind.
There really is no words to describe the feeling.
In retrospect it doesn't even make sense haha.
I was so sore from that day, and completely exhausted and mentally drained, all the while standing in a death defying cold shower, scrubbing off my entire body which was covered in 10 layers of dirt, sweat, and sunscreen mixed together. In a tiny little bathroom that had holes in the walls and bugs all over the place, and a toilet that didn't even work properly so we had to throw our toilet paper in a garbage can.
Any sane person would've been crying in that shower begging to go home. Back to the comforts of modern day first world civilization. Where the most manual labor they have to do is pick-up a tv remote.
Yet for me, in that moment, that right there is when I was at my happiest I've ever been.
And oh, how I do miss it.
It's like my own little fairy tale get-a-way from life.
So cute and quaint.
I always feel like I'm in another world when I'm there. Looking out at my nana's garden, and beyond that the ocean from the sun room. Playing my nana's piano while I smell the heavenly aroma of freshly made cookies coming from the kitchen.
It's my own little fairy tale world.
I've contemplated many times on how it would be the perfect setting for a movie, or a novel.
Coldplay concert 2012
It was one of the most amazing and glorious concerts ever.
I felt so at ease, and calm, and tranquil.
I can still see the confetti raining down on me and my friends as we literally glowed in the dark when hearing charlie brown played, because we had painted our entire bodies with glow paint. (which was a bitch and a half to get off hahaha)
I can remember the smiles on my bestfriends faces, and I remember just thinking "wow, if I could live in any moment forever it would be now".
I was so, at peace.
Nicaragua 2013
I spent a lot of the trip wishing I could just go home, because I was home sick and I was actually sick.
But there was this one day that made the rest of my trip so ironic, because now I never wanted it to end but I knew it eventually would.
That day we had all worked our asses off shoveling out two giant dump trucks full of sand and gravel, and then we mixed some cement to end the work day. I remember having a shower at the end of that day and just thinking "I have never been happier in my entire life than right now".
I wasn't superficial happy or just on the surface happy; I was the sort of happy that originates in the core of yourself and it spreads to every last nerve, and consumes you in entirety. I was purely happy right down to my core, and I've never felt that happy ever before in my entire life, thus far. It was like I was an epiphony; my soul, my body, my mind.
There really is no words to describe the feeling.
In retrospect it doesn't even make sense haha.
I was so sore from that day, and completely exhausted and mentally drained, all the while standing in a death defying cold shower, scrubbing off my entire body which was covered in 10 layers of dirt, sweat, and sunscreen mixed together. In a tiny little bathroom that had holes in the walls and bugs all over the place, and a toilet that didn't even work properly so we had to throw our toilet paper in a garbage can.
Any sane person would've been crying in that shower begging to go home. Back to the comforts of modern day first world civilization. Where the most manual labor they have to do is pick-up a tv remote.
Yet for me, in that moment, that right there is when I was at my happiest I've ever been.
And oh, how I do miss it.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Change
It doesn't happen all at once.
It occurs gradually over time, but it does not flow like many think.
It takes choosing to change, every single day.
It's not an all of a sudden, BAM WAM ALAKAZAM, and walla!
You're a different person!
No.
It's a lot like pick-axing the dirt every day to level out your field so it is sturdy enough to build a house on top of it.
You have to make a choice every day to wake-up, pick up that pick-axe and work your little heart away at it, because in the end, you know it'll be worth every drop of sweat, every tear stain, every cry of plea that all you want to do is just give up; but you don't.
Then you get up the next morning and push through all of it all over again, because that's how you reach your end goal, that's the journey, that's where you learn who you are.
I choose, every day, to be different than who I was yesterday, even by the smallest of fractions.
And even though I've lost my way countless of times and I've gone on side-tracks and side-roads; I always end up right back here. In my little field of growth. Where the garden blooms so wildly and the weeds have started to strangle my beautiful flowers.
I'm back here, weeding, pick-axing, shoveling, carrying, painting, because this place, my place, deserves my attention.
Hopefully I can stay here for a little while more.
I really do like it here :)
So here's to me, and any one else reading this blog, it's time to go and pick-up your weapon of choice. Whether it be a shovel, a pick-axe, or your own bare hands, go ahead and level out your field, and bravely, pain-stakingly, with all of the might you can muster up, build your palace.
Create your own haven, where you are proud of every every knook and cranny, because you faught for it.
You deserve it.
It occurs gradually over time, but it does not flow like many think.
It takes choosing to change, every single day.
It's not an all of a sudden, BAM WAM ALAKAZAM, and walla!
You're a different person!
No.
It's a lot like pick-axing the dirt every day to level out your field so it is sturdy enough to build a house on top of it.
You have to make a choice every day to wake-up, pick up that pick-axe and work your little heart away at it, because in the end, you know it'll be worth every drop of sweat, every tear stain, every cry of plea that all you want to do is just give up; but you don't.
Then you get up the next morning and push through all of it all over again, because that's how you reach your end goal, that's the journey, that's where you learn who you are.
I choose, every day, to be different than who I was yesterday, even by the smallest of fractions.
And even though I've lost my way countless of times and I've gone on side-tracks and side-roads; I always end up right back here. In my little field of growth. Where the garden blooms so wildly and the weeds have started to strangle my beautiful flowers.
I'm back here, weeding, pick-axing, shoveling, carrying, painting, because this place, my place, deserves my attention.
Hopefully I can stay here for a little while more.
I really do like it here :)
So here's to me, and any one else reading this blog, it's time to go and pick-up your weapon of choice. Whether it be a shovel, a pick-axe, or your own bare hands, go ahead and level out your field, and bravely, pain-stakingly, with all of the might you can muster up, build your palace.
Create your own haven, where you are proud of every every knook and cranny, because you faught for it.
You deserve it.
My childhood favourite and forever my choice book:
"The Lost Flower Children" by Janet Taylor Lisle
"The Lost Flower Children" by Janet Taylor Lisle
Friday, February 14, 2014
"There is a girl who still writes you. She doesn't know how not to." - Sarah Kay
That girl, she spent two years chasing you.
She spent them spinning in dizzy circles of highs and lows,
she never knew what solid ground felt like until you were no longer there.
It may have took her two years,
But she's okay now.
Really, and truely, she's okay.
Her bones are no longer broken from the fall,
They have healed with time.
She finally learnt how to live without you,
She reached a clarity that fuzzes less and less everytime she sees you again.
Your hold over her is no longer complete.
It is broken and shattered, and she is free now.
Free to learn a new love from someone who loves her willingly
He doesn't need any forcing
He prefers to be face-to-face instead of over text
He makes time for her, which you never did
He makes room for her in his world
You never did any of this for her
There is no absolute promise,
In the future she may write you more letters that she'll never give you.
But right now, right now she doesn't write them
because she realised, you don't deserve her precious ink droplets anymore
So good bye, she whispers into the dark to you.
Goodbye my love
The winds do not lift her high into the air anymore
No, now she glides along the ground
And there she'll wander, until a new gust is found
Goodbye my love,
Goodbye.
That girl, she spent two years chasing you.
She spent them spinning in dizzy circles of highs and lows,
she never knew what solid ground felt like until you were no longer there.
It may have took her two years,
But she's okay now.
Really, and truely, she's okay.
Her bones are no longer broken from the fall,
They have healed with time.
She finally learnt how to live without you,
She reached a clarity that fuzzes less and less everytime she sees you again.
Your hold over her is no longer complete.
It is broken and shattered, and she is free now.
Free to learn a new love from someone who loves her willingly
He doesn't need any forcing
He prefers to be face-to-face instead of over text
He makes time for her, which you never did
He makes room for her in his world
You never did any of this for her
There is no absolute promise,
In the future she may write you more letters that she'll never give you.
But right now, right now she doesn't write them
because she realised, you don't deserve her precious ink droplets anymore
So good bye, she whispers into the dark to you.
Goodbye my love
The winds do not lift her high into the air anymore
No, now she glides along the ground
And there she'll wander, until a new gust is found
Goodbye my love,
Goodbye.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Poetry
Short stories
Novels
Paintings
Movies
Photography
I forgot how much I loved these.
I'll always know my love for soccer,
My love for music;
But I had forgotten about my love for the other arts.
The ones that captivate me and leave me breathless.
And with-in only seconds, I'm lost in them.
Swirling around in happiness and bubblying over in wonder,
I'm struck in awe by my own rearing joy.
And then with-in moments, I lose them.
Left to sit and wait for a seemingly endless time for them to arise once more.
They're a lot like you, really.
"There is a girl who still writes you. She doesn't know how not to." - Sarah Kay
Short stories
Novels
Paintings
Movies
Photography
I forgot how much I loved these.
I'll always know my love for soccer,
My love for music;
But I had forgotten about my love for the other arts.
The ones that captivate me and leave me breathless.
And with-in only seconds, I'm lost in them.
Swirling around in happiness and bubblying over in wonder,
I'm struck in awe by my own rearing joy.
And then with-in moments, I lose them.
Left to sit and wait for a seemingly endless time for them to arise once more.
They're a lot like you, really.
"There is a girl who still writes you. She doesn't know how not to." - Sarah Kay
Wednesday, February 05, 2014
I'm awake
I don't want to sleep
I don't want to study now
I want to lay here
I don't want to think
I dont want to pine for more
I want to lay here
'til the sun rises
and the next moon fades to light
I want to lay here
For all that it's worth, is it worth it?
I fell for a spinning out of control hurricane.
That literally swept me off my feet,
spun me around, and then threw me to the ground.
You were so sudden and swift
With no care and a love to jist.
You were sweet, kind, endearing, loving, handsome,
All the parts that a girl wishes for
But still I stumble.
Still I crumble,
To pieces of glass every time someone asks
"How are you two? Do you like him? How are you?"
We're rocky, I'm selfishly indecisive, and I'm broken.
I need to remember I do not love him, I do not even like him. It's true.
I WANT to love him, even like him would be pleasant.
But I don't, I just don't.
I yearn for a love that's more than just touch
I want one of sight, sound, smell, taste, then touch.
One of deep friendship and long love
Not one of just physical shove.
I want the love of my bestfriend.
I'm so sorry, but I can no longer pretend.
Because I do care about you,
Enough to no longer be selfish with you.
To let you go, and live a full life without me.
The only place you'll ever find true happiness.
I must let you go,
I must.
I must.
So why can I not utter those ending words to you?
Stuck on the tip of my tongue as your eyes meet mine and our bodies intertwine.
Why do I keep doing this?
Selfish.
Selfish witch I am.
I'm so sorry my love.
My darling love, I'm so sorry.
We're in a rut,
and my goodbye is stuck.
That literally swept me off my feet,
spun me around, and then threw me to the ground.
You were so sudden and swift
With no care and a love to jist.
You were sweet, kind, endearing, loving, handsome,
All the parts that a girl wishes for
But still I stumble.
Still I crumble,
To pieces of glass every time someone asks
"How are you two? Do you like him? How are you?"
We're rocky, I'm selfishly indecisive, and I'm broken.
I need to remember I do not love him, I do not even like him. It's true.
I WANT to love him, even like him would be pleasant.
But I don't, I just don't.
I yearn for a love that's more than just touch
I want one of sight, sound, smell, taste, then touch.
One of deep friendship and long love
Not one of just physical shove.
I want the love of my bestfriend.
I'm so sorry, but I can no longer pretend.
Because I do care about you,
Enough to no longer be selfish with you.
To let you go, and live a full life without me.
The only place you'll ever find true happiness.
I must let you go,
I must.
I must.
So why can I not utter those ending words to you?
Stuck on the tip of my tongue as your eyes meet mine and our bodies intertwine.
Why do I keep doing this?
Selfish.
Selfish witch I am.
I'm so sorry my love.
My darling love, I'm so sorry.
We're in a rut,
and my goodbye is stuck.
Wednesday, January 08, 2014
We all live in the grey.
Everytime that school starts up again, I'm never excited.
I've never been truely and honestly excited about my schooling.
(unless you count my childhood days or the odd time I actually am in love with a course)
I may tell people that I am, or that I enjoy what I do over-all in school; but I don't.
This entire first week back to school has been worse than normal for me.
I feel like my entire body has collapsed under stress and it's a struggle for me to keep my eyes open and not fall asleep on a daily basis.
I shouldn't feel like this.
Not in the first week of school, when my homework load is pitifully small compared to the tsunami waves I will be recieving as the semester goes on, but I do.
I feel so exhausted, and bogged down before the semester has barely even started!
I'm not sure if I'm actually just getting sick, or if my iron is dangerously low again (which is highly likely), or if my body is truely just stressing itself out so much that its decided to shut down on me already.
Tonight my mom looked at me in the kitchen after I came home from school and asked me
My mom then said to me,
That entire conversation is what got me thinking.
I'm not one of those people that does things just because I want to.
I usually do things because I think it will land me some place I'll be happy in.
It doesn't matter that I'm not exactly happy in this moment, with all the stress and everything, because in the end, I trust myself enough to believe that the choices I make will be better for me in the long run.
Now whether this state of thinking is correct or not, it completely sums-up how I've lived my life up to this point.
One thing that I've learned from my 19 and a half years of being alive is that nothing is black and white. Nothing is right or wrong, or good and evil. The entire world lives in the grey area. Where not one single person's opinion is completely correct because there will always be an opposition.
No one gets to choose what is right and what is wrong. There is no giant leader of the earth who chooses this for us. But we can choose for ourselves as one single, living, breathing, entity in this giant universe, how to live our own lives, by our own standards. As people who live in countries where we are free, we get to decide what opinions we agree with, what set of morals we will follow, how we will uphold ourselves, and what we will strive for in our own lives. It is not up to society, or our community, or our friends, or even our family to tell us what to believe in. It is up to ourselves.
Pretty scary thought, eh?
Being completely in-control and responsible for our own actions.
Terrifying really.
I may hate school at times, and it may make me extremely exhausted, but I'm choosing to do this. I'm choosing to put myself through this because I believe in myself. I believe that I can live in the grey area where I live confused and dazed most of the time, and I have no idea what is going for the majority the time; and still be perfectly happy while also being completely stressed. I chose this. My parents didn't force me, society may have pressured me, but it was my own hand in the end that said, yes, I will go to university and get an education. Why on earth I'm putting myself through this torture won't really reveal itself to me until the end of it, like everything else I've done in my life. I've never understood anything that I've done until I'm sitting looking back on it.
My advice to myself, or to anyone who's reading this that would like to take it, is to make a choice. Any choice! It doesn't really matter in the end, since we aren't making it out alive after our time here is done anyways. Just do something with your life that you feel is right for you, even if you're not completely positive about it! Because,
Fear it.
Love it.
Live in it.
And if you don't know what is right for you, then do whatever the heck you want! That's the beauty
of indecisiveness, you can pick whichever road your little heart desires and go down it; because no matter which one you choose, we all have to face our own roads the exact same way;
I've never been truely and honestly excited about my schooling.
(unless you count my childhood days or the odd time I actually am in love with a course)
I may tell people that I am, or that I enjoy what I do over-all in school; but I don't.
This entire first week back to school has been worse than normal for me.
I feel like my entire body has collapsed under stress and it's a struggle for me to keep my eyes open and not fall asleep on a daily basis.
I shouldn't feel like this.
Not in the first week of school, when my homework load is pitifully small compared to the tsunami waves I will be recieving as the semester goes on, but I do.
I feel so exhausted, and bogged down before the semester has barely even started!
I'm not sure if I'm actually just getting sick, or if my iron is dangerously low again (which is highly likely), or if my body is truely just stressing itself out so much that its decided to shut down on me already.
Tonight my mom looked at me in the kitchen after I came home from school and asked me
"Do you like what you're taking?"Because I've never liked what I was taking in school.
... my initial response was "huh?"
(Well, actually that's a lie. I've liked a miniscule amount of courses I've taken over the years. But the majority, no, I have not been particularly fond of them.)
My mom then said to me,
"Do you like what you're taking? Because you seem to be so stressed out. Kind of like a switch went off in your head the first day back to school, and now a giant weight is being pressed down upon you. Do you like it that much that you're just that worried about it?"My answer to her was,
"No. Mom I've never liked what I was taking in school, I take it for the sake of taking it. I take it knowing that it will give me a good ending. I don't take what I take at school because I like it."And the answer in my head to myself was,
"No, I don't like it. But, I do like it at the same time. Honestly I just wish I could drop out of school for a bit so I could organize my thoughts better and more clearly so that I could figure out what I want."Because you know what? I actually do have those days where I'm so completely stoked to have the opportunity to be able to go to school, and learn and expand my knowledge that it overwhelms me with an elating feeling of pure happiness.
That entire conversation is what got me thinking.
I'm not one of those people that does things just because I want to.
I usually do things because I think it will land me some place I'll be happy in.
It doesn't matter that I'm not exactly happy in this moment, with all the stress and everything, because in the end, I trust myself enough to believe that the choices I make will be better for me in the long run.
Now whether this state of thinking is correct or not, it completely sums-up how I've lived my life up to this point.
One thing that I've learned from my 19 and a half years of being alive is that nothing is black and white. Nothing is right or wrong, or good and evil. The entire world lives in the grey area. Where not one single person's opinion is completely correct because there will always be an opposition.
No one gets to choose what is right and what is wrong. There is no giant leader of the earth who chooses this for us. But we can choose for ourselves as one single, living, breathing, entity in this giant universe, how to live our own lives, by our own standards. As people who live in countries where we are free, we get to decide what opinions we agree with, what set of morals we will follow, how we will uphold ourselves, and what we will strive for in our own lives. It is not up to society, or our community, or our friends, or even our family to tell us what to believe in. It is up to ourselves.
Pretty scary thought, eh?
Being completely in-control and responsible for our own actions.
Terrifying really.
I may hate school at times, and it may make me extremely exhausted, but I'm choosing to do this. I'm choosing to put myself through this because I believe in myself. I believe that I can live in the grey area where I live confused and dazed most of the time, and I have no idea what is going for the majority the time; and still be perfectly happy while also being completely stressed. I chose this. My parents didn't force me, society may have pressured me, but it was my own hand in the end that said, yes, I will go to university and get an education. Why on earth I'm putting myself through this torture won't really reveal itself to me until the end of it, like everything else I've done in my life. I've never understood anything that I've done until I'm sitting looking back on it.
My advice to myself, or to anyone who's reading this that would like to take it, is to make a choice. Any choice! It doesn't really matter in the end, since we aren't making it out alive after our time here is done anyways. Just do something with your life that you feel is right for you, even if you're not completely positive about it! Because,
In this world;
Nothing is black, and nothing is white.
Nothing is black, and nothing is white.
We all live in the grey.
Embrace it.Fear it.
Love it.
Live in it.
And if you don't know what is right for you, then do whatever the heck you want! That's the beauty
of indecisiveness, you can pick whichever road your little heart desires and go down it; because no matter which one you choose, we all have to face our own roads the exact same way;
bravely, blindly, and boldly. :)
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