awhile

awhile, (adv.)

I love the vagueness of words that involve time.

It took him awhile to come back — it could be a matter of minutes or hours, days or years.

It is easy for me to say it took me awhile to know. That is about as accurate as I can get. There were sneak previews of knowing for sure. Instances that made me feel, oh, this could be right. But the moment I shifted from a hope that needed to be proven to a certainty that would be continually challenged? There’s no pinpointing that.

Perhaps it never happened. Perhaps it happened while I was asleep. Most likely, there’s no signal event. There’s just the steady accumulation of awhile.

~ The Lover’s Dictionary, David Levithan

it never ceases to amaze me how unpredictable life can turn out to be. one minute, i’m feeling despondent about J’s lack of communication to the next minute being held in his arms and having him tell me everything’s going to turn out okay to yet another minute of having him gone again.

possibility

Postcards
Sarah Kay

I had already fallen in love with far too many postage stamps when you appeared in my doorstep wearing nothing but a postcard promise. No, appear is the wrong word. Is there a word for sucker-punching someone in the heart? Is there a word for when you’re sitting at the bottom of a roller coaster and you realize that the climb is coming, that you know what the climb means, that you can already feel the flip in your stomach from the fall, before you’ve even moved. Is there a word for that? There should be.

You can only fit so many words in a postcard, only so many in a phone call, only so many into space before you forget that words are sometimes used for things other than filling emptiness. It is hard to build a body out of words. I have tried. We have both tried. Instead of lying your head against my chest I tell you about the boy who lives downstairs from me, who stays up all night long practising his drumset. The neighbors have complained, they have busy days tomorrow but he keeps on thumping through the night, convinced, I think, that practice makes perfect. Instead of holding my hand you tell me about the sandwich you made for lunch today, how the pickles fit so perfectly against the lettuce. Practice does not make perfect, practice makes permanent. Repeat the same mistakes, over and over, and you don’t get any closer to Carnegie Hall, even I know that. Repeat the same mistakes, over and over, and you don’t get any closer. You never get any closer.

Is there a word for the moment you win tug of war, when the weight gives and all that extra rope comes tumbling towards you? How even though you’ve won, you still end up with muddy knees and scratches on your hands? Is there a word for that? I wish there was. I would’ve said it, when we were finally alone together on your couch, neither one of us with anything left to say.

Still now, I send letters into space, hoping that some mailman somewhere will track you down, and recognize you from the descriptions in my poems, that he will place the stack of them in your hands and tell you, “There is a girl who still writes you. She doesn’t know how not to.”

i have been listening to this again and again for the past couple of days because it’s beautiful. but if i have to be honest with myself, and most of the time i am, i keep listening to it mostly because J hasn’t written to me at all yet this year. there was this one short message on my facebook wall to acknowledge that he received my christmas card but that was the last i heard from him. as for me, there have been two attempts to make contact: a birthday card and an email update mid-may. while i am not heartbroken, i feel a bit saddened about the entire thing.

some pictures popped up on facebook around a month ago that i recognized as from the night when we met. it wasn’t love or even attraction at first sight. but after a night of good conversation over religion, no less, i swear a voice in my head was saying, ‘here is what you’ve been waiting for.‘ i surprised myself when i got home because i ended up praying for him that night. i, who hadn’t been in touch with my spiritual side for years, prayed for a guy i had just met. he was here for two weeks and in that time we got to know each other through texts, chatting, two lunch dates, one group dinner after disc practice and one drinking session that ended with me passing out on his friend’s couch. (yeah, one of those crazy, unplanned things that i swear could only happen to me. haha!) to quote a line that’s been haunting me since reading it in Carrie Ryan’s book The Dead-Tossed Waves, “i could feel the possibility between us.”

headlock

my brain has been going a hundred miles a second, running from one thought to another in a snap of a finger without the sign of stopping anytime soon. crap, it’s been too long since the last time i’ve been this confused and i don’t like how it’s making me feel.

i’ve always been a cautionary person, never one to take risks. i’ve always been too scared to ride a roller-coaster, learn how to surf, sleep with the light off when i’m alone or even just jump into a pool. somehow the fear of getting hurt weighs more than any amount of curiosity I feel. the same goes with me and love.

the alchemist by paulo coelho

i bought this book along with by the river piedra i sat down and wept way back in college. it’s been in my bookshelf since then and i only got the urge to read it last week.

this inspirational story is all about a boy’s journey to follow his dream. it’s about overcoming personal obstacles, finding strength in God and finally achieving his Personal Legend. he meets some strange characters along the way that help him learn important truths and continue on his journey.

oh, and he falls in love somewhere in between too. and for some reason, this is where i related to the book. haha! he, of course, has to leave her while he’s still hasn’t found his treasure and she promises to wait for him…

From that day on, it was the desert that would be important. She would look to it every day, and would try to guess which star the boy was following in search of his treasure. She would have to send her kisses on the wind, hoping that the wind would touch the boy’s face, and would tell him that she was alive. That she was waiting for him, a woman waiting a courageous man in search of his treasure. From that day on, the desert would represent only one thing to her: the hope for his return.

as the boy keeps thinking whether it was right or wrong to leave the love of his life behind (in the meantime), the alchemist tells him…

“If what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil. And one can always come back. If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing on your return.”

but my favorite line of the entire book is this… “So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.” it should feel that way, shouldn’t it?

right now, i feel as though i am the desert woman, waiting for the return of a boy in search of his treasure. i only hope that what was there was pure matter and not just a moment of light.

warning: chick flicks are hazardous to your (emotional) health

it’s been a pretty gloomy weekend. i think it’s been raining nonstop since saturday… the perfect weather for staying in and watching chick flicks which unsuprisingly is what i ended up doing this past weekend. throughout the past couple of months, nina and i have been slowly going through my personal chick flick collection. on days where we don’t feel like going out clubbing we normally end up staying in and watching a chick flick or two. i’ve actually been spending a lot of time with nina recently, be it clubbing, hanging out at my house watching dvds or grabbing a bite to eat after work. i swear if we weren’t both such girly-girls and really into men we could already been considered a couple. 😛

here are a few movies we’ve watched together already…

While You Were Sleeping. Mrs. Winterbourne. How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days. Two Weeks Notice. Someone Like You. Sweet Home Alabama.

and here are the movies we ended up watching just this weekend…

The Way We Were. Pretty Woman. The Mirror Has Two Faces. Strictly Ballroom. Notting Hill.

i don’t think we’re even halfway through my collection yet though. there still are a lot left with my favorite romantic movie scenes and other personal movie favorites like Cutting Edge, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, Ever After and many more. (if you’re wondering what all the links are for, they’re imdb links in case you’re interested to know the stories of each.)

after a significant amount of junk food and coca-cola consumed, a few tissues disgarded and somewhere in between julia roberts and hugh grant’s famous scene, i had to hit nina with a throw pillow to say, “we shouldn’t be watching stuff like this anymore!!!”

*sigh*

we’ve actually got some pretty good theories off some of these movies like it could take just 10 days to fall in love with someone (How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days) or that sometimes you can get engaged to a rich, handsome guy even if you’re chubby and just gave birth to a baby fathered by a drug-addict (Mrs. Winterbourne). yes, chick flicks are realistic, dontchathink? hahaha! we’ve actually had some pretty funny conversations where we convince ourselves that time is not an enemy for us anymore. ask my sister, she’s been privy to some of our really deep, intense ones. 😛

chick flicks are very much like fairy tales. they make us believe in happily-ever-afters, a concept which is intangible and really hard to grasp. don’t get me wrong, i believe in happily-ever-afters. after all, i am a product of my mom and dad’s very own happily-ever-after. more and more of my friends are finding their own happily-ever-afters and are getting married (much to my dismay, only because i’m not one of them yet). i guess it’s just kinda impossible to believe since i haven’t found my own yet.

chick flicks can be deceiving. where are all these wonderful, perfect men in real life? do they really exist or do they just exist in movies and fairy tales? if they do exist in real life, where are they? can someone point me in their general direction? even Hugh Jackman’s character in Someone Like You ended up to be such a gem after being an asshole in the beginning…

Eddie: It’s over. Why can’t you just let it go?
Jane: I can’t.
Eddie: Why?
Jane: Because I was happy. Because if this theory is wrong, men don’t leave all women, Eddie, they leave me.
Eddie: I know it hurts. I know. It’s so hard to believe that something that wonderful can ever happen to us again.

*tear*

not all chick flicks have happy endings though. The Way We Were, Closer and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are just a few examples of those brutally true movies that just hit straight to the heart. and i love each one of them just as much as all the others. i ended up sharing The Way We Were last weekend with nina and she loved it. i haven’t watched it in a while so i ended up crying along with her. of course immediately after that, we ended up watching a happier movie. we really didn’t want our optimism to be overshadowed by brutal reality.

perhaps there’s nothing so wrong with wanting to be in-love in a movie. it worked for Meg Ryan, didn’t it? ;P