higher expectations

i'm a bully, really

i beat myself up

every day of the week

each thought carving

jagged lines in my heart

i bleed insecurity

inside, i scream

inside, i kick

crack myself open

tear myself apart

i'm crushed to a pulp between

every angry fact

every judgment passed

yet

i smile through the darkness

i laugh toward the dawn

you can't hurt me

you're just a bully, really

drift away

night sits gently on

my shoulders

the magnetic pull of sleep

nibbles on my eyes

soft glow of a smiling

moon, illuminating

page twenty-three,

eyelids and pencils fall

quietly to the floor

dreams pushed aside

it can wait, it can all wait

a soundless vacuum -

don't say a word

i quietly surrender

the anchor lifts

my mind begins to drift, free

over open seas & rushing waves,

i drown, slowly but surely

testing my balance

I feel like I'm living a neverending juggling act.

But you know what, I like juggling, so its okay.

I'm just scared I'll drop one and the whole thing will come tumbling down...

Seriously though, life has been one hell of a battle this year, against myself and time. I can never fit everything into 24 hours, and it breaks my heart to leave something out! In the meantime, I've been sacrificing sleep to make up for it. It makes me wonder: is this sustainable? Will I crumble soon? I tell myself: all you gotta keep is strong, move along, move along, just to make it through. (All-American Rejects ftw.) So I guess I'm making it through - for now, at least. I'm trying to do an impossible amount of things, equipped with only huge amounts of determination and energy. Because you can't run out of energy. Just when you thought you couldn't move a finger, you find some means to move an arm.

But on the other hand, it's extremely taxing in the long term. I'll be celebrating if I'm still alive in March.

f a l l i n g

At home, everything has been getting on my nerves. I constantly feel like I'm one word away from punching somebody in the face. Speaking as if I were a cat - my facial expression is frozen in a snarl; I squint suspiciously through eyes in vicious slits. My mental claws are left unsheathed, itching to tear at something to let out some of the steam bottling up inside me. Well-intended questions prod at me like fleas, and I gracelessly shake them off - "stop biting me!"

>And after listening to Secondhand Serenade on loop, the insignificant ditches I get snagged in become abyssal trenches. Each song lamenting lost hopes, lost loves, lost lives only amplifies my frustration; eventually I go numb.

I don't want to move; I don't want to think. For a glimmer, I even feel like I don't want to live, but dismiss it as a silly thought. "Life is lots of fun," I try to convince myself. "I have a great life ahead of me - no: I have a great great awesomely amazing life ahead of me. Don't throw it all away." Looking back at my mind in its lowest points, I can honestly say I'm glad I never did. I guess I try to preach the love of life so much, I feel hypocritical when I start to doubt it.

But in the end... I still feel rather lousy.

I apologize for the emoness. But it had to come out.

I feel like I have to get a blog nobody knows about... ranting about this stuff on here causes unnecessary worrying... after all, I always get through. It just takes an amount of de-steaming.

legos & barbies

In China, we stopped for drinks while biking in a farmland. The farmers' children were playing in the peanut-shell-and-coke-can filled river. But it seemed like they either didn't notice or didn't care, because they had a great time nonetheless. Other than children, who could do that?

When we were small, one hour felt like a vast stretch of time, but now weeks and months go by when we blink. I guess as we grow older there are more options; so many more things to do, and also so many more things we have to do. But yet, we squander time worrying about things nobody cared about when we were five or six, like where am I headed? why does this cost so much? why does she have a Gucci bag and I have a no-name-brand bag?

We become less tolerant of petty mistakes. If a five year old's white shirt turned pink in the washing machine, he might not even notice. And when real problems arise, children have the zeal to take it head on, devoid of fear or doubt or regret. They smile when something good happens, cry when something bad happens. No hidden meanings, no innuendo.

They are able to live in the moment and take every day to it's full value, measured in only one factor: fun. But that's what life is about, right? Having fun. Being happy. We lack that simplicity. Tangled in the never-ending loop of worry and work, we lose sight of what we live for.

Simplicity. by todo-el-mundo


What do you live for?

h e a r t a c h e

I

...............guess

..............................I watch

too

many......................

.......tragedies...

....................................that's

why.............

.............I can

never...........................................

.....................fall

..............................for

someone

....I

...................................................................can

.......................................be

with.

edit: It's only another phase (I think). Please don't remind me that this post ever happened. :')

~ remembering how to breathe ~

/ waking up at the start of the end of the world / but it's feeling just like every other morning before / now I wonder what my life is going to mean if it's gone / I believe the world is burning to the ground / oh well I guess we're gonna find out / let's see how far we've come /

These past three internet-less days have been eye-opening. I can't say it enough times: "you don't know what you've got till it's gone!"

At first, I just kind of rotted. If I wanted to go somewhere for the day, I couldn't check the weather. If I wanted to bake something, I couldn't look a recipe up. If I had a song stuck in my head, I couldn't listen to it on Youtube. If I wanted pizza, I couldn't order online, or even look up domino's phone number. If I wanted to go to the library, I couldn't find the opening and closing times. Whenever I found something to do, I came to a roadblock.

Just then I realized how much time we spend on the computer, or in front of a screen. When I just moved here, my first observation was that the streets were lonely. Back east, the parks and sidewalks would be swarming with kids running, rollerblading, biking, scootering, skateboarding, you name it. Here, it's just emptiness. A car drives past. If you're lucky, a person might walk their dog by you. But meanwhile, they would be tapping away in front of their iTouches, or clicking buttons on their cell phones.

After the grim realization sank in, I reconnected with things I haven't seriously done in a long time. I laid in bed and read heaps of National Geographics. I sat in my backyard and painted a picture. I talked to friends face to face instead of over AIM, Facebook, or Gmail. It was almost... peaceful. Without a trillion things to do, we lose the need to rush. And when we don't rush, we start to actually breathe.

Although my internet's back (obviouslyyy), I'm determined not to let my lesson go to waste. Appreciate the internet for everything it lets us do, but don't use it as a substitute for really living life.

Zen by Liek