Pain...

It dawned on me last night that with all these years gone by, I still hadn't learned that growing up was all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. I get hurt. I recover. I move on. Odds are I will get hurt again. But each time I will manage to learn something...or ideally come out of it a little stronger.

Realization strikes. There are more flavors of pain than tea:

Little empty pains: empty pains of leaving something behind, from the familiar and safe into the unknown
Big overwhelming pains: when life seems to crush all your plans and expectations (mostly when related to people you make these plans with)
Sharp pains: mostly of failure or successes that seemed unsatisfactory
Vicious pains: when your hopes are torn up (mostly by a loved one)
Sweet pains: Finding people, giving them your love and enjoy life with them, all the while knowing it can only be temporary...

Pain has always been a big part of my life...and it did 2 things: it taught me and told me that i was alive. Then it passed away slowly but surely and changed me...
I would like to think it sometimes made me wiser or stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.
Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is what distinguishes us from God.

Loneliness...

I never thought I should consider myself  a loner. Sure I've felt suicidal. I have stared depression in the eyes and those dark abysmal pools brought no solace whatsoever . I've felt awful, to a point of what I thought was a no-return...I guess loneliness is never really a choice, it is simply the aftermath of  trying to blend into the world...a quest to find the intelligent and sensitive souls who would understand me...finding many people who continue to disappoint me...and a very select few who fill my heart with love and bring smiles to the corners of my lips.

Tonight, alone in my room, bent over my keypad, allowing the strokes to tear the pure silence, I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest people are the most alone."

Time for change...

As part of my 2011 resolution list, I decided to alter the way I saw life. It isn't supposed to be an all or nothing battle between misery and bliss, as for years I have lived it. 

Life isn't supposed to be a battle at all. And when it comes to happiness, well, sometimes life is just okay, sometimes it's comfortable, sometimes wonderful, sometimes boring, sometimes unpleasant. 

When your day's not perfect, it's not a failure or a terrible loss. It's just another day.

And I decided I wanted every day to be a good day and so it shall. Are you with me?


P.S: reading a daily insight from the book The Secret is quite a big motivator too. Thank you D.

Beautiful People...

It recently came to my attention that I did not know many beautiful people in real life closely.

And I was right :) Beautiful people are the last ones you want to befriend!

They tend to float through life thinking that it's perfectly normal for others to gaze at them adoringly, and open doors for them, and follow their opinions... 

Doesn't anyone understand that beautiful people are stupid? That's why nature made them beautiful, so they'd have a chance at surviving in the wild.

And how do they survive? They use people and then they drop people, and they float away on the waves of their own gorgeousness to the next poor girl who thinks that being friends with a beautiful person will somehow make her beautiful, too.

I've got news for you: Hanging around beautiful people just makes you uglier by comparison.

Tolstoy's Beggar

Today I read a short story from Tolstoy about a beggar man who sat out on the streets every day pleading for pennies from passersby. This beggar, was so caught up in the doom and gloom of his self inflicted notion of poverty that he failed to notice that the pot on which he was sitting each day was in fact a glimmering pot of gold.

And I wondered if we weren't all a little like this fabled beggar.  Isn't your mind is spinning with thoughts of opportunities that you may in fact be sitting on? Even in the pursuit of our wildest dreams I think it’s entirely possible to still be sitting on pots of gold, which we could be using to a greater benefit.

So keep your eyes out for the opportunities laying right beneath you, lest you become like Tolstoy’s beggar, asking the world for a penny when you have your own pot of gold.

Better than Chocolate...?

 

I'm not really silly enough to think that chocolate solves anything. But it calms me. It's a soothing assurance, that this hectic life I have worked myself into is also full of wonderful surprises and unexpected sweetness. It reminds me that a hefty percentage of my "problems" don't really need to be solved at all, just outlasted.

And since my therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far  I have wolfed down half the packet of dark chocolate. I feel better already :-)

I dedicate this post to someone to likes 1848 Noir Framboise as much as I do. You know who you are.

Love etcetera...

 

Today while I was strolling through a parking lot, I kept asking myself what I really wanted in life.

And do you know what the answer was? The answer was that I wanted two things. First, I want love. Then I want happiness. I always have.

After all, what is happiness? Love, they tell me. But love doesn't bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it's a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield; it's sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we're doing the right thing. Real love seems to be composed of ecstasy and agony. 

Will I hence never have the only 2 things I desire in life because of the conundrum of their coexistence?

And as someone told me yesterday, rare are the people who actually love.

Shh!

Sometimes I feel that it's easier not to say anything. 

The wise option can be to simply shut my trap, button my lip, can it or whichever expression suits your fancy. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say. They just want to hear you say what they want to hear.

Tea Living...

If you are me or know me, it should come as no mystery to you that I am a tea addict. And not just any tea. If it comes without good company and conversation, it is a thoroughly useless attempt at enjoying my life.

Now talks over tea (again if you are me) are a tediously sublime experiment (to be tried at your own risks depending on the person you are having said tea with). The underlying fact remains that you cannot enjoy such moments with men (unless they are gay or so in love with you they would agree to senseless ramblings, fact proven over the years where no man ever asked me if I wanted to go on a tea date with him...).

So what do women talk about over tea?

Shoes left under the bed; accessories lost on the dresser; walking down the street at 1:30 in the afternoon, just two people walking together; the long nights of drinking and talking; the arguments; thinking of suicide; eating together and feeling good; the jokes; the laughter out of nowhere; feeling miracles in the air; being in a parked car together; comparing past loves at 2am; mothers, daughters, sons, cats, dogs; sometimes death and sometimes divorce; but always caring on, always seeing it through; reading a newspaper alone, parks, even jails; her dull friends; your dull friends; your mystery, her dancing; your flirting, her flirting; her life, your life and inevitably life as we wished it would be...

Special Appearance...

Just a thank you to the anonymous(yeah right) author of this blog to gracefully host my guest post.

http://idither.com/blog/2010/10/30/she-flaps-her-wings-when-no-ones-watching/

I shall now step away from her e-vehicle to jump on a hot ride in mine.

Did you say depressive?

Everyone, at some point in their lives, wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling that they are all alone in the world, and that nobody loves them now and that nobody will ever love them, and that they will never have a decent night's sleep again and will spend their lives wandering blearily around a loveless landscape, hoping desperately that their circumstances will improve, but suspecting, in their heart of hearts, that they will remain unloved forever.

The best thing to do in these circumstances is to wake somebody else up, so that they can feel this way, too...

Do you know me?

People often wonder why bloggers like me do not put in much effort in verbally deciphering their "About me" section.

I have intentionally omitted my entire life history; however, if you have a predilection for the soporific, and you’d like to know more about me, then just ask.

If you have blog-related questions, then feel free to ask. If you have questions concerning the meaning of life, quantum mechanics or string theory, then I suggest you Google it.

Stress...

Let's start with women...oh these women! They happen to have different categories of stress(surprised?), notably:
1. Stress caused by relationships
2. Stress caused by the famous "time of the month" aka "little girl problem"
3. Stress caused by miscellaneous circumstances / events
Let me develop briefly these categories so you can fully grasp the extent of their vulnerability to stress.
Category 1:
Women are always stressing about their ‘relationships’ with other men, women, children, elderly, in-laws…in short, you name it and they are worried about it. Perhaps, it has to do with the “What are you doing…? what will others think?” question that every elder has probably asked the girl frequently while she was growing up.
Category 2:
If you are currently in a relationship with a member of the female species, you should know by now that these 3 days will always bring out sessions of complaints, tears, silence, solitude(for us) and need I mention moodiness?
However once you realise that the same elements and issues will be played over and over again, all you have to do is say "It's my mistake sweetheart" or "I didn't realise this meant so much to you" or my favorite "I promise I will never behave like that anymore".
Category 3:
This category relates to circumstances / events such as 50% sales, new collection at a lingerie boutique advertised on a supplement brochure in the Sunday paper, surprise guests at dinner time, another woman wearing the same outfit as her at a wedding and the like)
If you feel there are more categories you've been faced with, please add them up in the Comment section. My research on these so-called women was interrupted when the women I was interviewing (mother, niece, girlfriends) refused to participate further due to Stress Category Number 3.
For men on the other hand, stress can only be due to 2 things:
1. The football team the men are cheering for loses the match (Here it can only be Manchester OR Liverpool)
2. Work
Since there is no solution to Manchester OR Liverpool losing the match, men will simply pick up another beer and stare blankly at the TV set and wallow in some mind blankness until everything seems to go back to normal.

 
As for work, the stress is quite easy to understand. It can either be about whom he should flatter to go ahead or whom should he start digging a grave for. Or...in case the man is in his late twenties and looks married, the stress will be over why the new pretty interns don't speak to him.

Plans...

 

Today I break from my usual format to write about the subject of plans. Not so much my plans for this blog particularly, but more about life plans and how we all make them...and how we wish for all our close and loved ones would make good smart safe plans of their own. But if we are really honest with ourselves, most of the time our plans don't work out as we'd hoped.
So instead of asking people: "What are your plans?" or " What do you plan to do with your life?"...maybe we should tell them this: "Plan to be surprised!"

Indifference...

The quality I most covet in most people I care about is their indifference. Unlike me, and unlike so many of us, these special ones seem to have an internal stop button, a buffer beyond which their feelings do not extend. 

They experience life with the same transcendent loves and bottomless despairs and somehow come off as totally indifferent...pacific...whilst I tend to look more like a one-off freak.

It takes 43 muscles to frown and 17 to smile. However it doesn't take any to just sit there with a dumb look on your face. Should I try it? :-)

Girl on Girl...

 

Don't tell anyone at the church about this, but I think girls going out with girls is quite a sensible paradigm.

Imagine not having to do all the housework because she would definitely help?

If you found a nice girl the same size you'd have double the wardrobe...maybe shoes...oh my god so many shoes...

You'd never have to clean shaved beard hairs out of the sink...or eat greasy crappy food...

I don't know why everyone doesn't do it. 

It's awesome provided you stay that way though. It's the changing back to men that sends you mad...

Soulmates...

Most people I have met seem to think that a soulmate is their perfect fit, potentially their life partner...and that is what everyone wants.

Now isn't that total hokum! (forgive my bluntness)

It's like people believe all you need to do to is like the same bands  or singers in order to be soulmates...or book. 

Exbihit A: "omg...You like Paulo Coelho's The Zahir too...wow it's like we're the same person!"

No we're not!it's like we have the same English teacher. There's a difference... 

I think a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.(not always in the gentlest way possible but who can blame them?)

But to live with a soul mate forever? Hell NO! Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life...

Lucky are those who met their soulmates, and for those who just realised it was not who they thought, take your torch lights and go on into the night. Somebody is out there.

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder?

 

I am fairly certain that you are familiar with the commonly coined legend of Narcissus...

Young hunter who by 16 years of age had conquered the hearts and minds of every young man and woman (yes both genders :-), i guess we were eons away from the invention of homophobia ) but who haughtily spurned them all...he who one day knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty and was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned.  

But this is not the entire story as I see it...
 

When Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears.

'Why do you weep?' the goddesses asked.

'I weep for Narcissus," the lake replied.

'Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus,' they said, 'for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.'

'But... was Narcissus beautiful?' the lake asked.

'Who better than you to know that?' the goddesses asked in wonder. 'After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!'

The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said:
'I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.'

What a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world I ask you? 

Where then could we look for reassurance of our identities? 

Narcissus was so egotist...he was merely another of us who, in our unshatterable isolation, recognized, upon gazing on his reflection, this beautiful comrade, the only inseparable love...poor Narcissus, possibly the only human who was ever honest on this point...don't you think?

Unzipping the Jacket

Blogging arenas make my knees weak, not in a heart-melting emotionally chaotic way, but the way a caped matador surely feels when he sees those bloodshot eyes riveted on him in the bullring. 

In an absolutely insecure feat of mind over body, I have decided to set my soul bare on this virgin page...will I now be known as the Cristina Sánchez of bloggers? 

As I delve into these precious illusions of mine (who have never let me down by the way), I look forward to forgetting who I was to become who I am. 

What part of my history will be reinvented or under rug swept?

Don't forget to tune in next...this season is going to blow...my mind.