There are people in the world you know - you once talked to them, you once enjoyed their company and they will forever live in the memories you made together, in the moments you shared with them.

And you probably have a picture of a particular person in your mind: that one special friends, that shy classmate, that funny person from parties you attended, an ex lover you can't get over.

And maybe that person has a special place in your brain, randomly poping up in your mind, and you think to yourself "I wonder how he/she is doing," and promise yourself you will see that person again, someday.

Someday.

But the harsh truth is: you won't.

I guarantee you, there is someone out there you may think you will cross your paths with again, but realistically, you won't. And that's okay, too. For what I learnt in a difficult way is that it is impossible to keep everyone special to you close to you forever. Most people are meant to come to your life, and through just spending time with them to teach you a lesson and help you grow as a person. And then your paths go different ways. We all grow, we all change, we all set different life goals for ourselves.

And there may be some sorrow in that, but there is also joy.

Because when we grow and when we move on with our lives, new people cross our roads, new lessons get learnt and a new growth proceeds.

So, the lesson: enjoy the time now and here, with the people around you, be grateful for their exsistence, show them you care, let them know they are loved - because it's probably the only time you will share this prescious time and moments with them.

abstract emotions

glittering through

RGB-tinted bits of glass

glued in patterns over my skin

each piece has a set of numbers

written in fine-point sharpie

and blown on discreetly

while i sit, silent, in dark rooms

fans whir beside me, calling to

my skin from beneath colorful armor,

calling it to rise and bubble up and

shake me where i am

i wonder if i’ll glitter as brightly

out of the sunshine as i do within;

i wonder how differently you’ll see me

and wonder why i wonder such things

(i was told when i get older)

(all my fears would shrink)

(but now i’m insecure)

(and i care what people think)

(‘stressed out’ - twenty one pilots)

glass armor, glass armor,

glued in agonizingly slow patterns

written over with sharpie

and making me tired

glass patterns and shaking broken skin

i wonder if i’d bleed with my armor on--

if someone cut me deep again

would the blood escape?

glass armor, glass armor

is it really all that much to

strip the skin away and layer myself

with bits of RGB-tinted glass, instead?

glass armor, glass armor,

please be thin enough to

let my thoughts escape

and let the Water on in

glass armor

glass armor

glass armor

g l a s s a r m o r

It is not your job to make other people happy.

This took me forever to learn, and honestly, I forget it sometimes.

I always feel the need to make every person in my life happy, and when that doesn’t happen, I feel like I betrayed them.

No one has the power to make another person feel certain emotions, and as hard as I try, there is no way to make even myself happy all the time, let alone the rest of the world.

Even when I am able to make some of the people around me happy, somebody else will get mad because I’m not helping him out.

After that it is just a whirlwind of emotions from everyone around me and I somehow always manage to find myself in the middle of it.

Then I beat myself up because “I didn’t do a good enough job”.

I tell myself that I should have tried harder, communicated better.

But that isn’t the problem.

I am not the problem.

The world is not perfect and if someone is sad, it isn’t your fualt.

Even if you had a part in it, it isn’t your fault if someone is offended or hurt, because those emotions were their decision.

And it is their job to decide to be happy again.

Sure, you can help.

Give him a coffee.

Wrap her in a hug.

But none of those things will have a lasting effect if they don’t want to choose to be happy.

So, it is not your job to make other people happy.

Yes, you can help, but if they are sad, don’t put the blame on yourself.

And choose to be happy.

Who knows, maybe you will be helping someone else out by choosing to be happy so they don’t feel like they have to make you happy.

still trying to learn

whether or not my

want not to abuse anyone

is enough to be confident

that i won't

Being raised by parents who always found things in this world to blame for not having what they want in this world despite accomplishing a modest middle class lifestyle was contagious. Don't have the job I want because society this, don't have the body I want because costs of that, etc.

Over the years into adolescence, I knew they were the origin of me thinking the same way. Unfortunately, until a few years ago, I was thinking the same way they did, towards them. Yeah, it's hard to break a mentality that stems from family, but it's still on me. Once I acknowledged that, I started taking more risks (calculated ones of course) and got better about taking care of myself and calling myself out for mistakes in relationships with other family and friends. I still have a lot of desires in my life to accomplish, but I feel far less helpless and bitter towards accomplishing them. Friends are more interested in seeing me and come to me rather than awkwardly avoid me when in need.

Not where I want to be ultimately in life, but the shift in mindset has helped blow the dust off the blueprints to get there.

The lesson I learnt the hard way was to appreciate my own company, building my self worth and becoming more ambitious and focused on my goals. It took years of heartbreak, pain, being used, being exploited and so on. But I learnt my lesson and now I’m better off. I learnt that I’m truly priceless, and the one whose gonna get me will be the luckiest man on earth.

A green pin-dot of light flashed in the darkness, a bright Christmas tree green. Pop- gone. Dry thunder at high noon openly interfered with my thoughts as I gazed through an open door onto a burnt sepia, Texan landscape. Late afternoon subpoenaed me to a small, chlorine pool.

I sat on the bottom of the deep end listening to water pressure-sizzle inside my ears, like medical tests done on me -before I could remember- by a medical research facility in Iowa that could only be reached through an underground tunnel. Neon navy blue streaks swizzled down an invisible screen inside my head. My submerged thoughts imagined an unknown teenage boy whose eyes reflected chronic trouble he couldn’t do anything about. He flinched from a flood of salty perspiration pouring from his burning eyes.

More parched thunder ambled across the sky, the sizzling in my ears continued, drowning out personal thoughts, distracting my mind from my body running out of oxygen. A promise is always coming, but never gives an arrival date -You’ll know it when you see it- Lone Star, too-hot-to-touch, faded car-hoods propped open to jump lead acid batteries. Alligator cable heads glowed on the posts. Twelve feet down, all I could feel was gradually increasing pressure on my eardrums.

Watch, wait- a repetitive process I was all too familiar with. A young woman with long, fawn-toned hair, wore a white cotton top and Comanche skirt inside a shadow cooled adobe ranch house. Paisley drapes barred sunlight entry and kept room heat satisfied to a minimum. She smiled and let her hair fall in front of her face as she thumbed through an outdated phonebook.

Outside, population zero. Abandoned sage and mesquite stretched out, puzzle-linking a local ghost town. Cacti bordering a vanishing point highway melted into waxy green puddles. Rough-feathered gargoyle buzzards relocated to the square adobe’s Spanish tile rooftop. A bank of mica-thin clouds appeared like the snap of a magician’s cape. The sun graciously allowed them to linger, even smiled before extinguishing them into shimmering vapor like so much photographic flash powder.

The young woman lounged crosswise on a long horn, cowhide chair, her hair dangled near the floor. She used an old landline phone to order Chinese take-out and let perspiration on the back of her delicate neck cool her. Ice cubes had almost formed in freezer trays and began to rattle in the fridge like rocks in a cocktail glass. Cold clinking was the only music drifting over the desert as the sun traveled to the next town, the next state and made a hollow promise not to be back for hours. Searing temperatures radiated everywhere, off everything, leaving no escape.

Oxygen leaked from my nose as I imagined Chinese food cooked in desert-fired woks, steam rising from cartons of fluffy white rice and egg foo young…I wondered if take-out was still delivered by rickshaw. A slate blue sky slowly erased to reveal rough streaks of indigo scuffing through from underneath. Low on the horizon, a narrow train of popcorn clouds scuttled to catch the sunset. The first evening star flashed, a quick, bright Christmas tree green… Twilight started to settle in early, but the other stars wouldn’t attend for hours… the Milky Way might RSVP… no one could say.

Our promotional bank calendar broke sometime back in April and the seasons refused to change, that was the story anyway. Someone opened a bag of marshmallows outside, the microwave air puffed them caramel brown. The sweet, beguiling scent penetrated the pool surface. I pushed off the bottom of the deep end, and dried my hair as I returned naked to the house. Inside, the woman sat cross-legged and naked on a crocheted rug eating chow mien with fluorescent yellow chopsticks. I humored myself, it all could’ve happened this way.