Things we mean and not say

There are things that I won't tell you: of how I turn around and expect to see you there; Or that I hold out my hand expecting yours to clasp mine. Or of how I see the brightness of your eyes, or your smile, or the strength of your shoulders on people I see in passing. I won't tell you how my gaze lingers even when my brain is already convinced not one of them is you. I won't tell you any of that. I'll just tell you that I miss you.

I want to write you all the words but I keep them in my heart

For a long while I have not visited this place for many reasons: lack of time, school, lack of energy, school, and lack of desire. Mostly, I just didn't know if I wanted to share my experiences, my failings, my utter glee, and my current self with the rest of the internet. So, a sudden hiatus from writing was warranted.

I did miss baring my soul to the universe. I feel that writing here is similar to shouting my feelings on a mountain top where there is not a lot of chance for someone else to hear me and respond. That, of course, is not true, but it is a delusion that I choose stick to.

I have run out of words. Or I have been silent too long that words have dried up and faded even before I can write them down. I miss handwritten letters and smudges and carefully folding of the papers before tucking them in neat envelopes. I miss conversations that occur on a silent canvas of parchment and ink stains and tear stains and tears on the margins. I miss waiting for a message that I can feel, crumple, smooth out and re-fold. I miss all of these simple things that I took for granted before and now I can only slightly recall the event I was so angry about that I wrote them out or the joyful experience that I carried on about and why you wrote these words. I miss the people we used to be when we wrote them even though we were rougher, more impatient, angrier, more childish, and different than the people today.

I want to write you all the words but I keep them in my heart instead because I have no time. I have your e-mail address. I am your friend on Facebook. I just liked your status. I follow your tweets. I read your blog. I text you all the time. I call you once a while. I have no extra money for the postage. I'll pray for you instead. I don't know what to say. I don't have your address. I don't think you'll care about my week. I don't want to wait too long for your reply. I have a list of things to do. I will do it tomorrow, or maybe next week when I have time. I don't have nice pens and paper. On and on.

I'm sorry that I missed years of your life now. I'm sorry for being a below average friend that we're not even friends anymore, we're down to mere acquaintances. I'm sorry to have been such a jerk that I waited for you to write but never wrote on my own. I'm sorry I stopped sending you letters. I'm sorry we're only friends online but not in real life. I'm sorry I depend on social networking to update myself on your life and not asked you myself how you are really doing. And I'm sorry that I'm blogging this now instead of telling you myself. Ironic, I know.

This a letter to remind me to write you all the words and to read all the words you write to me. This is a reminder to make memories with people instead of just waiting for them to upload and update about their life so I can 'like' them. This is a reminder not just to keep all the things in my heart but to touch other people's hearts.

A Year of Thanks, Almost

Dear _________,

Thank you. You have brought me so much this year that I apologize in advance knowing that I have forgotten about some, most of them. But I hope you know that all the things I am thankful for, and will, I have kept as treasures in my heart.

Thank you for your faith in me, your trust, and the love that abounds. Thank you for the prayers, and the kind words and thoughts, and thank you for the messages that made me smile, that me light up, that made me alive again. Thank you for your patience, and the guidance, the wit and the silly conversations via notes, the phone, e-mail, Facebook, and face to face. Thank you for the gentle and sometimes pointed reminders of things that I have missed, lessons I needed to learn, and encouragements that have held me together when I doubted.

Thank you, if you have not heard me say these words. Thank you. I am grateful for humbling me down, with tears, with hurt, with heartache, with disappointment, with loss that I have shared with amazing people, some individuals I only recall through vague initials or shared moments. I can only thank you for your strength, and your determined drive to endure. I can only stand back and bask on how much is out there, how little I give and how much I gain.

Thank you for being the wind beneath my wings. Thank you for laughing along with me. Thank you for taking the time out of your equally busy life to share a simple but heart-filling and heart-warming meal with me as we take this adventure together. Thank you for being there when I needed someone to chat with, even at 1 AM and you have responsibilities later. Thank you for remembering my birthday, and I am sorry if I greeted you late on yours. Just know, I meant my birthday wish with my whole heart.

Thanks for being firm with me, honest, and being a real friend. Thank you for keeping me in check, and prodding me, and saying no when I needed to hear it. Thank you though for reminding me to have fun, to ease my rigidity, and live this one life I have with intent and laughter. Thank you for going to the movies with me, for singing loudly along, and spending time to just hang-out. Thank you for taking pictures of me, with me, of us; proof that yes, those are real moments and not just hazy memories.

Thank you for reconciling with me. That was probably awkward and painful for us but what matters more is us being okay and mending. Thank you because even when I wasn't there for the worst parts of your life you don't hold those against me. I am sorry though, and I hope I will be a better friend, sister, daughter, aunt, grandchild, niece, classmate, and random stranger. Thank you because you inspire me to be better, and more. I love more now, and laugh more, and cry easier, and hug a little bit tighter. Thank you for teaching me how to be.

Thank you for being a mentor, a friend, my mom, my dad, my brother, my sister, my brother in law, my niece, my cousin, my uncle, my aunt, my grandmother, almost in-laws, comrades in school, and all those things in between, like being someone who knew what to do with my dead car batteries, or the person telling me directions after I got lost for the 3,127th time.

Thank you because even though I don't name names, you know I am thanking God for you, because hopefully I have already said those words to you at least once. If not, then I hope you know now.

Thank you God, for all these things, and all those people, and all those experiences that you have brought in my life to make me more, and better. And thank you, for so much more, for the love, there's so much love that I cannot help but smile and breathe deeper.

Thank you is just one tiny part of the huge balled-up tangle that I feel.

With the hope that you love always,
Kat.

Velleity

Velleity. It's a word I stumbled upon at 3 in the morning, after typing words on my laptop's Dictionary and clicking through words I have forgotten and have not encountered, and their origins in Latin, and Dutch, and French, and Old English, and Welsh. I found some amusing and most of them interesting, and then I remembered wanting to look up the word 'vellum', but 'velleity' came up first. And made me pause and wonder what it meant sounding it in my head and mouthing the words aloud. It means 'a wish or inclination not strong enough to lead to lead to action'. Like saying 'almost'; I almost won or I almost missed my TV show. But also not quite. There is a similarity in the sense that what was desired may or may not have been fulfilled, and in the case of 'almost' it is fifty-fifty but with 'velleity' it just never happens at all. What you thought of doing never translates into anything, there is no effort or even luck at all.

It's actually tragic, pathetic even; and this thought is what niggled at me, that lead me to think of how many times in a day that occurs, well at least in my life. Inaction, either deliberately or mistakenly. From there, the thought segued to Newton's Third Law of Motion, of how for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I wondered whether my not having an action also results in an equal and opposite reaction or if that just cancels out like a math equation where you get zero if you add two zeroes together and such. (I guess the first law would apply to this so yeah). But more than physics and math and plain english, I thought of how much I don't want that to happen. That no matter how much I procrastinate and bemoan my current life as a student, I do not want to be inactive, non-productive, or not strong enough to make true my wishes and goals. And this is probably too philosophical or taking the context too deeply and out there, I will blame this whole thing on jasmine tea with strawberry lemonade for keeping me up with think-y thoughts. It's not about being successful or self-gratification, or Abraham Maslow's tier of self-actualization (some or most may argue differently), because I know that there is a part of me that can coast through life like a professional slacker (Hello, high school years of my life and then some). The part of me that is greatly disturbed is the person that I am now at 21, not me at 16 or me at 20, because I am seeing an incongruence at this current age and the past and I know that I have change. And will continue to change. (Just observe how differently I have been writing, grammar where are you and incorrect punctuation marks, hello.)

Slowly but progressively, I am changing, hopefully into a better and more pleasant something of a person. I no longer want my world or my life to be just about me because there are so many people in the world right now that I want to get to know, and help, and inspire, and be inspired by. I no longer want to be the person who's sister, or parent, or whoever else is holding their hand. I want to be the one who reaches out and comforts, be the shoulder to cry on, have the hands that hold someone else's. As optimistic, and idealistic, and uncynical (I blanked out on this word because it has not been part of my vocabulary for a year and some months now. And idealistic and cynical are totally antonyms anyway) as I sound right now, I am sorry I cannot help it and I do not want to. Because I have seen heartache after heartache, tears, and more-than-a-knee-jerk type of response to pain and loss, and I have felt the same and you have too. I cannot stop any of these but I can help and offer myself because I want to even when this is not enough and does not even come close to what you need, it's a start. The only way from here is up or to move forward. I don't want to just wish or have a notion intrigue me and have it remain a velleity. As easy as it is to give up without even trying, I do not want a life of regrets on things I could have done with people and for people.

There was a point to this before I just collapsed into a ramble and got into a tangent. I tend to talk about five things at once and confuse everyone even myself. So yeah. At the end, it's more of a declaration of personal intent really. So what's yours?

sentimentalities for a friend

I hope you take care of your heart
And I don't just mean physically or with what you eat,
Take care that you don't easily fall in love, too fast,
Too many times, that when you one day open your eyes
You'll see how worn out and patched up it is
Only it may be then that you'll blame it on love
When in fact love had nothing to do with any of it
I hope you take care of your heart
That should you fall out of love, you'll do it gracefully
Or as graceful someone could be while breaking hearts
As you side step the wreckage that yours won't be part of.
The moment you have an epiphany that cynicism is better,
It is not, pass, do not collect 200 dollars
Because cynicism will lead to years of bitterness
And a dozen or so of cats and moldy take-away.
I hope you take care of your heart
Guard it with your life so that when you finally receive
Someone else's heart, you'll have yours to give in turn
Baring out your scars and patches, while you map out theirs
Knowing each line of heartache, minding every last burns
Take comfort in the realization that this is a promise
To care for their heart as you've cared for yours
As you've fallen both in and out of love, broken a heart
Yours as much as another's, in both epiphany and stupidity
Since most of the time, one could appear to be the other
Because this promise has everything to do with love, and not just
Falling in to it or being in it, but in taking care of it.
I hope you take care of your heart so that you will know
When someone else starts taking care of it as much and more so than you.

Nothing in common

It surprised me when I checked my inbox and saw an email from you. Of you apologizing of all things for things unsaid. And I wondered who put you up to it. We've drifted, it's been years, we don't talk. And that about sums it up. You've moved on and I am, well, I've learned to just let go. I've stopped chasing after you awhile now because I don't know really, I just got tired of it. Cynical. We have nothing in common anymore. I'm certainly not the one you need in your life, I'm finally learning that I am no longer a little kid and you are moving into a life where you fit in with someone better. Someone who isn't your younger sister. I could try and chase after your coattails as long as I could, but I no longer wish to. I miss you, yeah. I miss getting emails and chats and silly jokes. But I no longer feel compelled to chase after you because I know that even at my pace I'll meet with you at the same stage sooner or later, but with less heartaches, with less bitterness. I've learned that you are your own person and you do not belong to me and I can't keep you with me forever. I've been seeing that we can never own people for our own selves because we can only share bits and pieces of each other. That I can't possess people because the moment I do they become possessions and no longer persons. And I'm sorry if you felt the need to coddle and hold my hand far longer than any other persons would allow just because I refused to let yours go, that I shackled you to my leg only letting you go so far before I dragged you back beside me again. This is me letting you go, unchaining you from my side and stepping back. It's past time that I stopped using my insecurities and my own self-bondage into blackmailing you into staying. Thank you for indulging me and coaxing me along life but I can manage on my own now, but thank you. And I won't begrudge you of running off into the sunset when I myself have realized freedom. I'm happy for you, and I always love you.