You're like the hook in my favourite song

I like to sing.

Not that I think I'm an amazing singer, just that I like doing it. I especially like singing when I'm on the road, driving to work because it puts me in a good mood. I like to start days with good moods. Which is why I say, never ever, start the day with John Mayer. Though he is a lyrical genius, generally his music just brings me down because then, all I think about are my past relationships and how they hurt, etc. etc.
So I go with rock. Maybe something like anthemic rock. Or even music from Broadway/film musicals. Or nowadays, it has been Glee music because Glee makes me smile, no matter what the song. Lea Michele never fails to make me smile with her beautiful voice.

I don't get the whole stigma about being embarrassed about singing while you're driving. Why should you feel embarrassed? If people laugh, then so what? I feel sorry for them because it just goes to show they're not even brave enough to do it. I do it for my own enjoyment because music is so much a part of me that I really cannot function without a song in my heart. Why is there fear to do the thing you love to do the most? There shouldn't be.

You shouldn't be afraid to do what you want, when you want. Especially if it is something that you love. Because god, don't you just get this awesome feeling rushing inside you when you know you're doing something you love? Don't people want that for themselves? Don't people want that for others?

Because I do. I want that for other people. To know what it feels like to be so consumed with joy and love. To get lost in the throes of cool passion. It's life. It's love. And there is no better drug than that.

I'm ready to know what the people know

I took my niece out for a drive tonight 'cause she's 2 and she doesn't actually have any cousins who are near her age and live anywhere nearby. Older cousins maybe but they hang out with her older brothers who are the same age. My older sister's little girls are around her age but she occasionally visits so they hardly get time to bond. It breaks my heart to see her face when they leave and it's like she realizes that she's on her own again. I mean seriously, her only real friend is our driver. And he's about to leave for home, for good.

So I took her out for a drive tonight because my brother and my sister-in-law weren't back yet and my niece just looked so sad, trying to get me to do something. I'm at work all day so all I want to do is just lie down, y'know? But I knew she liked going for a ride in my car so I took her for a short drive 'cause I don't have a baby seat in my car and I'd rather not be on the wrong side of legal. But I took her for a short drive, had a Rascal Flatts CD playing in the stereo, and she was quiet for most of the drive.

When we got home and I saw that my brother and my sister-in-law still weren't back, I opted to park in the driveway and just switch open my sunroof so we could look up at the evening sky. And when I looked up, I didn't know what to feel. The night sky was so completely dark and you could see so many stars dusting its canvas. It took my breath away.

I had a moment of dork when the next thing I thought was a line from The Little Mermaid.

"I just don't see how a world that makes such wonderful things, could be bad."

Now that I'm in the safety of my bed, I think about the stars and I wonder whether there were other people who have felt the same as I did. That no matter how dark life gets, the stars will light our way. And the sun will eventually rise.
This is how I feel whenever I'm on the beach, watching the waves forming from afar, coming together and crashing on the shore. The Earth and Mother Nature can create as much chaos together, but chaos doesn't last forever.

We just have to have faith. Or we get lost in the dark and the chaos.

Taking a break

I don't know if y'all have noticed but my blogging has been taking a back-seat lately. It's mostly due to me wanting to spend time away from being online and blogging when I could actually be spending that time more productively like writing that script I keep meaning to write. So I'm declaring my first ever hiatus. But I won't be gone long... I think I just want to take a month or so away from blogging.

Parting thoughts?

It's okay to be sad. And it's okay to be happy. Nobody should make you feel guilty for feeling what you want to feel. But in doing so, have enough compassion in your heart to realize when something you say or do hurts somebody. Be mindful is what I'm saying. When we're completely wrapped up in our happiness or sadness, we tend to be reckless with our words and actions. We forget. It causes a chain reaction of ugly emotions that are ultimately unnecessary.

Life can throw you some serious sucker punches and you will have to take them on the chin. But no matter how strong they are, you will also find the strength to get back up. Have enough faith in yourself that whatever adversities that come your way, you will get through it.

You have to accept the places that life takes you, even when it's somewhere you don't want to be. And you accept it with a strong will. Because if you're just going to be wishing for or moaning about things, then you're failing the test. You can falter and you can want to give up as many times as you feel, but the fact that you don't and you just keep going, without complaint, you're letting life know that nobody messes with you.

Happy December every one.
Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy New Year.
I hope you will receive everything you ever wanted, and that I hope that at this end of the year, you find yourselves in the company of those that love you with all their hearts. And my wish for you is that this next year will bring you much joy, laughter and love. No matter what you think you know, you deserve it.

With all that I am, I wish you love,
Az

No one ever really wins in heartbreak warfare

I feel sad at the very lack of love that I've been seeing recently. I feel empty and drained so I try to find some semblance of love. I can't find it within me because I have used it up. I have used it up and now I need sources of love to fill me again. I know I am more than capable of love but I can't love if I have no love to give.

I guess it's almost like feeding off the love you receive and then giving it right back. I don't understand really how it works sometimes. That we can receive love, and then we send it right back out. Like love doesn't have much time to accumulate inside of you because it's just flowing continuously. Kind of like a river. Forever flowing.

I think that, at this moment in time, the thing that I am filled with is just hurt. I don't know why but I know it's mine. My own hurt for something that I don't know. For something that for the moment doesn't have a label or a name. Is this the downward spiral that we must endure before we find ourselves coming back up?

Libba Bray blogged that this is the price we pay for caring. The grief that we feel, almost day to day. Yet again, confirming this school of thought that there is always going to be another shoe, waiting to drop.

It sickens me, I guess. That we seem to chomp at the bits when we discover some scandalous gossip, like it's the very thing we live on. It sickens me more when we're the ones producing said scandalous gossip for others to spread out.

I get that there is hate and envy and anger. But I just don't get why people just can't turn the other cheek. Feuds, grudges, wars... Pointless, pointless, pointless. I don't get why we have to know war and hate to know peace and love. I don't get that. There are many people in the world who never hate or war, and they turn out to be the most peaceful people in the world.

But then I guess, peace and love could have been all they knew, so why should they think any different? However, there are those who do know hate, and yet they're still so filled with love, you'd never think that hate was ever part of the equation.

It baffles me though that people meet good and kindness with so much... Suspicion and fear. Especially the ones in small doses. Because the ones that are grandeur and well-known apparently make good and kindness seem okay and more acceptable. And apparently more valid.

I don't want people to know my good deeds. I don't care for people to know my good deeds. I know my good deeds. I know whatever good I've done to whomever I've done good to. I don't believe in the thought that one person deserves more help over others. That's why I always have trouble with charities because I know that they have good intentions but I don't understand why people need to know that I am donating and how much I'm donating. My feeling is that once my name is associated with my good deed, my intentions are gone. And I feel dirty. I know I shouldn't because it doesn't make my good deed seem any less than what it is. I guess I just feel wrong in the spotlight. Getting thanks for something that should be the most natural thing in the world.

I can't pick charities. I've donated to a couple but I'm pretty sure if I had all the money in the world, it wouldn't be enough because I wouldn't know which charity to pick. I mean, do I go for kids, or animals? Do I go for countries or nature? Prevention of diseases or research for the cure? How do you pick a cause to believe in, when you believe in all causes? I can't say that my heart is more committed to rescuing children when it hurts at the mere thought of animals are being abused, or are fading into extinction.

I'm not putting down people who know the causes they believe in, dear love no. At least they know. At least they're doing something. I can't do a thing because I don't know. I'm stuck in nowhere land. I know that if people could help everything, they would.

I guess after all this rambling, all I would wish that people would learn to accept the small doses of good and kindness as easily as they accept charity donations. Big or small, good deeds are good deeds. Just because it's more subtle and less in-your-face doesn't make it any less of what is it: Love. And it'd do you good to just accept it. Really.

The future may be all I really need.

I’ve been in love a few times, but I have only ever truly loved twice. Y’all know about Ashley, but you don’t know about my first. So here I am to tell you about her. I’m not going to say her name because I want to respect her privacy. And also, it still kind of hurts to say her name. Even if it is in a blog.

We met on a forum for a band that we loved at the time. The forum was just starting and friendships were beginning to form. And amongst the many new friends I was making, I met this girl. She was young, god, so young. But she was this unique mixture of mature and childish wonder that I couldn’t help but be taken by her. At first we kept our conversation in the forum, just having fun and making new inside jokes as we went along. But then we started chatting. And I don’t know but somehow we uncovered this huge discovery-bomb that our like for each other went beyond platonic friendship.

I’d like to believe that I loved her with everything I had. She was my first true love. The first one that made every single part of me, feel something. I had been in relationships before her, yeah, but with her, I constantly felt like I was treading new, unfamiliar waters. With my previous relationships, we went straight to being together, but with her, we were friends first. We built a strong connection first, and we deepened it when we realized how much we felt for each other. So I wasn’t just at risk of my heart breaking by a lover, but a friend too. A best friend.

But my heart did get broken. And it was like a freight train; I didn’t see it coming. We were together just two months shy of a year and a half. We broke up a few days before Valentine’s Day. I remember that because the next thing I knew this guy she had been talking about for awhile (yes, I knew he was trouble from the first moment she mentioned his name but she was adamant that she didn’t want him and I trusted her word) asked her to be his Valentine. She says that he was not the reason we broke up. It was a whole mixture of distance, insecurities and other things coming together to make an explosive combination. They were the same reasons we broke up a few times before. But this time, I knew that she really meant it. It was final. It was one of those moments when my brain took over, rather than my heart. And my brain shielded my heart from hurting too much, making the hurt only come out in small spurts rather than a tidal wave. My own defense mechanism.

It has been four years or so since we broke up, and I have been with others. I was in two serious relationships (Amy and Ashley, respectively) in those four years, and they made me happy. I was actually happy, especially with Ashley. But this is the one that still haunts me. To this day my mind, my heart, my soul; they’re still hurting because of it. Of course with the time passing by, the hurt gets less and less when there are newer things to occupy my focus. Her name and the memories of us, good and bad, go to the back of my mind. But when my concentration comes back to it, when there’s something to remind me of her, if I see or hear anything that would inevitably come back to her, everything aches all over again. I get that feeling in my gut; a feeling like I’m on a roller-coaster going up the track and I’m right there at the top, anticipating the fall, and then experiencing it. Like my stomach is empty but there’s something zig-zagging inside.

I’ve been wondering why I find myself thinking about her a lot in the past couple of weeks. Why I had some masochistic urge to look at the remaining pictures of us that I didn’t want to delete. Something about this time of year has been making me more melancholy than usual. A few days ago, I was cleaning out my hard drive, deleting things I didn’t want to keep anymore and I had a folder called Old Memories. I thought, “Why not, maybe there's something I can delete after all this time.” There were chat logs, poems, messages we exchanged... And they were things I hadn't read in so long. But it wasn't as painful as I thought it'd be. So I kept reading. After a time, I then discovered that come 1st November, is our 6th year anniversary. Not that there is anything to celebrate anymore, but it’s still a date when we realized that we loved each other. And love is always something to celebrate, whether found or lost.

I haven’t spoken to my ex, probably in about two-three years. I’m not going to lie; there have been a lot of moments when I miss her so much that I can barely stand it. But I never try to contact her. I think we did our best to be friends… And I think, for about less than a couple of years, we were doing pretty well on the friends thing. I hate to admit this but, even though we were moving on, with other people and what-not, it still hit me hard whenever she would talk about somebody she was with or liked. It hurt every single time (like maybe a pinch, I guess) but she never knew. Or she never gave an indication that she knew. And I was never going to say anything about it because… She seemed happier. And that was all I ever wanted for her. That is all I will ever want for her.

I go through phases thinking about whether we were a mistake; whether I was a mistake to her. Deep down inside, even though I’ll never think of us as a mistake, there is a part of me that knows how truly wrong I was for her. Sure, we loved each other. Our passion seemed so boundless to me. But it was so crazy, y’know? I remember times when I thought to myself about intense it was. And we let that passion rule us. We really were a couple of crazy kids in love. And it made us idealistic, vulnerable and ultimately, naïve.

But I'm not going to apologise, for loving her, or being with her. I loved her the best I could. I made many mistakes and I know there were a lot of times when I was completely unbearable, but I loved her. I hope she knew that.

I don’t know where she is, or whether she is with anybody. I don’t ask the mutual friends that we know, and I will never ask. I don’t think I have the right to even ask anymore. I only hope with all my heart that she is happy, because of all the people I know, that deserve all the happiness in the world; she deserves it, ten-fold and then some.

I loved you like you loved me
Like something pure and holy
Like something that could never be replaced

And it was wonderful
It was magical
It was everything I waited for
A miracle
And if I should ever fall in love again with someone new
It could never be the way
No, it will never be the way
I loved you

The good, the bad and the ugly.

I have a somewhat love/hate relationship with the internet. In that, I love that it keeps me connected to the friends I left behind. Love knows, I miss them so much. And sometimes I can't grasp the fact that I can't actually text them to let them know we could meet up in the next hour for a drink.

Another thing I love about the internet is blogging. I love to write. And I love to write things that people will read. And I love it when they comment to let me know they understand how I feel. To let me know that they're going through the same thing. It makes me feel less alone in the world.

I also know that too much internet is definitely not good for me. It actually depresses me to have so much information so easily at my finger-tips. It's one really bad addiction because once I know, I want to know more. And that's not the way things should be. Well, maybe what I mean when I say internet, I mean things like Friendster, Facebook, Twitter and Myspace. I have a lot of fond memories when it comes to these social networking sites.

But what I hate about the internet, no sorry, what I truly dislike about the internet is that people can be so cruel without suffering any consequences. While I believe in the freedom of speech, but there is a line between using it and abusing it. People take liberties with what they say and what they do on the internet like it's a completely different world. So they type things without thought and people get hurt and either retaliate or suffer from some serious emotional damage.

It's been a long time brewing really, these thoughts. And since the popularity of Twitter has risen, it makes me even more wary I guess. Even though I love knowing the intricacies of the thoughts belonging to the people I follow, it bugs me somewhat. Like I know them intimately without actually knowing who they are. That's how it is with Facebook too though. That I would get friends request from people that I don't even know. I understand getting friends request from people I went to school with, people who are friends or family. But really, if you're not going to interact with me, then what's the point?

The internet has always been more famous for porn but really, you don't need to take off your clothes to feel naked to the world anymore. In the internet, everybody is naked.

Angry blog... Shield yourselves.

I'll be letting this go after this post. I just need to get this out right now.

So you do something nice for me. So I don't say thank you. So you happen to get me on my off day. It's not an excuse but then there shouldn't any excuse for you to make me feel I'm a horrible person. Like I should be murdered or something.

Look, here's my thank you now.

Thank you for making me feel about so big. Thank you for making me realize that traveling thousands of miles, shifting everything around to suit your need, was pretty much a wasted effort. Thank you for letting know me exactly where I rank in your life. I get that you have more important things to think/worry about, but I never expected that I would feel like less. You, of all people. I never would have thought you'd be the one but so there, thank you for making me feel like less.

I don't fucking need this. I don't need my friends holding something over my head just because they did something nice to/for me. So what, you do something nice for me and I'm automatically indebted to you? Like I owe you something back?
No bullshitting because I know this as fact, I do a lot of nice things for my friends. I never expect them to thank me. I do it because I either want to or they asked me. I don't want anything back from them. If they feel obligated to do so, I'm not going to stop them. That's my biggest issue from this ordeal. That they're not even willing to give me a free pass for slipping once.

I don't get this whole thing of doing something for somebody just because they did something for you first. And if you don't do anything about it, you end up feeling guilty about it every time you see this other person. I don't get that. Why should you feel guilty? People should do things for other people because they want to, out of the kindness in their hearts. Not because they want to get a fucking thank you. Getting a thank you should not even be a goal.

I'm rolling my eyes in annoyance, just so you know.

I'm out.