Dear Mama, Dada.

Dear Mama, dada

I don't think about you during the day, when I'm walking around the city, trying to navigate my way around, being cautious and vary of the people around me.

I don't think about you when I walk into a cafe and decide to get a coffee, only to realize this is Italy, and that caffe literally means black coffee.

Dear Mama, dada

I don't think about you when I'm sitting in one of the numerous piazzas around the city and marvelling at the architecture and rich history that dwells in these buildings that are as old as time.

I don't think about you on my way to class, nervous and anticipating what my teacher and classmates will be like.

No, I don't think about you at all. Not once, throughout the day.

But at the end of the day, when the world sleeps, and the piazzas are all free of the bustling tourists, I kneel at the bottom of my bed, and my first prayer up to heaven is for you both.

I think about all those years growing up. Of running for the bus to school, or going window shopping, or going out for sizzlers every chance we got.

I think of the love that the two of you brought me up in. Sometimes too much, feeding the spoilt child in me.

But most of all I think about how I would not be who I am today- independent, daring and ambitious- if it wasn’t for the two of you.

So no, I don't think about you throughout the day, because I'm so busy chasing my dreams like you taught me to. But it doesn't matter. Because no matter where I am, however near or however far, our lives, our souls, our hearts and our breaths are intertwined.

We are one.

Dear Mama, dada.

I miss you, I love you. And I'm out here doing you proud.

Hello Future, Nice To Meet You.

None of us are who we think we are. None of us are what we believe we're meant to be.
A friend of mine once said we are the sum total of everyone and everything that has happened to us. Every little incident, whether good or bad, every being that has crossed our path, no matter how painful or joyous their departure or arrival has been. Another friend of mine compliments this and says that destiny is written in stone. He believes that whatever is meant to happen to us, will happen no matter the course we set ourselves on. You can't escape destiny. It's like a nasty allergy. You avoid it for a better half of the year, but it will catch up with you the minute the first signs of Spring begin to show.

You could look up, look out into the vastness stretching up above you and realize it is all so much bigger than your existence alone. Our world is tangled up with many other worlds existing around us, all within the existence of a central world in the middle of a galaxy situated among countless other galaxies. There is a greater force at work here that often has us feeling flabbergasted and wondering why we exist. To fulfill a destiny? One that was predetermined? One that was decided for us? Maybe.

And what if we aren't happy with where we end up? What if what we believed we wanted wasn't truly what we wanted it, and it only took losing what we had, to realize that? What then? Don't we get a second chance? Don't we get a chance to do it all over again? And do it right this time?

Both of these friends make commendable arguments. But for me to believe either would be letting go of what I hold to be true. And sure, I could be wrong. But what matters is that it is MY truth.

You see, my truth isn't pre-determined. It isn't written in stone. Or maybe it is and I just don't know it. But here's the thing. I'd like to keep it that way. I'd like to not know what my fate has in store for me. I'd like to make my own choices, make my own mistakes, chase my own dreams, fulfill my own desires and land up where I land up. Not because it is predetermined or because someone told me, but because it is the path to my future that I paved.
I am one life, one body, existing among an infinity of other lives and bodies. Who I am, and who I decide to be can be determined by no one, but me.

I am, like most people my age, terrified of the future. Of what tomorrow will bring. But that cannot stop me from living.
From breathing. 
From feeling.
From hurting.

From existing.

Carpe Diem.

I've realized that waiting is a disease.
A form or sense of growing despair.
I've realized that waiting for someone or something to happen breathes nothing but hopelessness as you stay still- never moving, not for a second- and hold on.
I've realized that life is not going to stop and wait for you to make your decisions because it is too busy making its own.
I've realized that someone I love today could be someone I don't see eye to eye with tomorrow.
I've realized that wasting time- precious infinite moments, hours or even seconds- on trivial worries does nothing but feed the monsters that I have allowed to reside within me.
I've realized that if I don't tell someone how much they mean to me in that instant, I will never get the chance.
I've realized that if I don't tell them how sorry I am, they will never know forgiveness.
I've realized that I need to be able to feel in order to be able to live. 
Not just exist. But feel alive.

I believe in straightforward conversations.
In telling someone what their existence means to me. In telling them of the marks they've left on the pages of my story- burns, tears stains, finger prints- muddy, bruised and all.
For all I know, I could've done the same to them.
I believe in passion. In living everyday as if it were my last.
I believe in unwrapping a person's soul like the gift on Christmas morning that has been teasing and taunting me for months on end.
I don't believe in waiting. I don't believe in calculating moves. I don't believe in delicate beginning rushes.
I'm not impulsive because I'm reckless. I'm impulsive because I'm petrified of losing a moment forever, never knowing what could become of it.

For if there's one thing I've realized, it's that I'm terrified of inevitably blinking out of existence with things left undone and words left unsaid.    

I Want To Sleep With You.

I want to sleep with you. 

I want to lie next to you and look at the stars.

In the back of a truck. On a building rooftop. On a patio. On the top of a car. In a bed.

And if we're in a bed, the stars that glow in the dark would suffice. 

I want you to look me straight in the eye and tell me how you named one of those stars after me. 

And I want you to laugh and sneak me a kiss on the forehead when I tell you I don't believe a word of your cliched attempt at flattery.

I want to sleep with you. Not your body.
   Your heart. 

Not an act of pleasure. 

   But an act of warmth. 

I want to tell you how much I've missed you. And now that I'm here, I'm never leaving again. 

I want to tell you my heart's deepest fears. 

I want to cry and tell you how terrified I am of losing you, even though you aren't mine to claim.

I want you to whisper silent desires that have kept your soul awake at night. 

I want you to tell me if you felt the same way too and that you missed me too, or if I was only mistaken. 

I want you to tell me how much you don't want me to leave. 

Never again.

I want us to joke and laugh like we've never been burned or bruised.  

I want us to goof around the way we did when 18 seemed like the world was ours. 

When we were, when I was falling hard.

I want us to talk about food and wine or whiskey and drunk confessions and conversations at 4 in the morning. 

I want you to tease me as if we were in kindergarten, so I can be dramatic and get mad at you as you try to tickle me to near death.

I want to sleep with you. 

My hand on your chest, my finger tips tracing the fabric of your shirt, I want to sleep with you. 

I want to feel your heart and the way it gets louder and faster with every inch that I move closer. 

I want you to play with my curls as I rest on your arm and we talk about the silliest and simplest of things, 

slowly succumbing to the sleep plaguing our eyes.

I want to sleep with you. 

We can just lay there.

Say nothing. 

Do nothing. 

Just lay there.

And let our hearts do the talking. 

Hoping in the comfortable familiar chaos of each other we'll find solace.

And we'll be whole again. 

Bubble Dreams & Reality.

At some point, living in a bubble becomes overwhelmingly suffocating. 

Reality then seems to be the best and only bet to breathe again.

Saving Grace.

Here's the thing about self-love.
It is absolutely crucial to our soul. It is the only thing that matters. It lets us live. Self-love is what saves us from the monsters we turn into when our inner demons take over who we are-or at least who we think we are.

When you find yourself on a bathroom floor, numb from your favorite flavor of tear-stained whiskey, 3 am, with nothing but questions burning themselves into your brain...
...wondering who you are?
what the future holds for you?
where your life is going?
All these questions slowly eating away your will to survive; your will to live.
Nobody's going to be there for you. Nobody is going to hold you.

Nobody but you.

As you sit in the bathtub filled with ice cold water and scrub away at your skin, hoping to erase the feel of his hands, the stench of him all over your body, the marks of bliss he inked you with, remember this: No one can damage you the way you can damage you. No one can break you the way you can break you. So breathe.

Close your eyes and breathe. No one can save you, but you.

Self love is beautiful. It allows us to come to terms with the fact that however bruised, battered or scarred we are, we are worthy. We are capable of love and happiness. We are capable of giving it as much as we are of receiving it.
We are capable of being our own northern stars. Of shinning with the brightness of a million suns dancing together. We may not see the road ahead now, but as long as we believe we are capable, we have the potential to be whoever our hearts desire us to be.
We are worthy of one day finding a love so strong and so passionate, that it consumes us. We are capable- flaws and broken parts and all- of finding a happiness so sacred it hushes our demons, and calms our frightening fears.
We are capable of living, no matter how terrifying that might be. 

But not before we allow the love that resides within us to take over.
After all, how can you expect another soul to love yours, when you yourself despise it?

That's the thing about Self-love. Its all that matters. It allows us to live.
It is our saving grace. 

 

Life Is A Funny Thing.

I went to the 9/11 memorial plaza today.
And I wept.
I wept for all the people I didn't know.
I wept for Todd Russell Hill, who'd left the house on that fateful morning not knowing that he would never see home again.
I wept, despite the fact that I was 5 when it happened and I had no idea why mama was staring at the TV screen crying, watching in disbelief as the plane collided with the second tower leading it to crumble on live television, while dada made frantic calls to our family here.
I wept because none of the victim's family members deserved the wretched horror and grief that comes with losing a loved one.
Or a hole as big and wide as the north and south pool with all the names of the lives lost, constructed where the buildings fell.
I wept because none of these thousands of names engraved in stone, like the memory of that day in our souls forever, deserved what they got.
I wept because I didn't know what else to do. I wanted to do something. I needed to do something.
But apart from staring into the black hole in the middle of the pool wondering where  it lead, I could do nothing else.
So I let my tears join the water that flowed with the souls of all those thousand innocent lives.
I'm not American.
I didn't lose anyone to the falling of the Twin Towers.
But I wept.
Because human beings. People. Loved ones...they all died that day.
And they still haunt what is now a memorial site for tourists to take pictures and say that this was where all faith in humanity was broken.

Life is peculiar isn't it? Not knowing whether you'll see the crack of dawn, or the sun as it sets. It's marvelous, to live everyday like it's your last, because truly you won't live the same day again. You won't love the same way, or the same person again. You won't believe the same stories retold again.
YOU will never be the same person you were the previous day.

It is marvelous, yes. But oh so haunting.

Smile. Laugh. Love. Do it all while you still can. 
Make every day count.

It might very well be your last.