Light

"If I could be with you tonight,
I would sing you to sleep.
Never let them take the light behind your eyes."
My Chemical Romance

~

I try my best.

What if your best isn't good enough?

But what if it is?

The walls slowly close in, aiming to crush my explosive mind. And I keep staring at the foreign paintings that decorate them, the faces of the people I love. I keep telling the walls that I can't breathe. I send them my pathetic requests with broken eyes because the words won't come out. But it's all in vain. For once you turn your back on the walls of your heart, the walls of reality turn their backs on you. Thus, still, hopeless, I remain a fan of the intensely dramatic, as loyal as ever to the wonderful realm of fiction.

Masks divide you. Dishonesty tears you apart. And the most beautiful things you feel remain inside your head. "Once a liar always a liar." "Once a quitter always a quitter." The voices lie because you subconsciously command them to destroy you. To overcome this, you must remember that one can never cheat their way into and out of destiny. Fate's hand floats around your heartbeats to see which are worthy and which are failed. Will remains free though. Someone I once knew taught me that.

But the world is ugly and sometimes the people we know and love, they become forgotten memories.

But sometimes, we meet someone that restores our faith in humanity, in love, in art, in the future.

And when the past comes back to haunt what's left of you, you find yourself just staring, obliviously flooded with thoughts of surrender, with ending credits flashing. "No, hold on," she says. You see a young soul masquerading as a veteran warrior, telling you that the love in her heart can fight off your demons. She hugs you, pushes you and starts running, leaving you with a gentle warning, "if you don't get up and run with me, you'll never know what happens in the future." And as she runs away from your gaze, you see a whisper flowing through her smile, "our future."

Life is full of surprises.

If you haven't met yours yet, I really hope you do.

Now, look around, after you close your eyes. Those people you love so dearly, are they not worth the pain?

Do not stand your ground as you face the storm. Run instead. Run toward it with weapons of heart and soul. Fix your eyes on the mountain you wish to climb and charge. Run with faith and conviction and you will find that they are the perennial wings of cosmic resonance, smoothly extended from your skin, mirrored in the light behind your eyes.

Run and know, that most storms are made-up ghosts. And though some are future dreams disguised as endless nightmares, you still need to keep your eyes closed wide open, because those details are divine.

We live and die in love. And a fall into shreds today is a chance for us to pick up the right pieces, the ones that can make up a whole that won't break tomorrow.

The music plays on within you, no matter how many doors you close.

Live on, dear friend.

~

"As we fade in the dark,
Just remember you will always burn as bright."
My Chemical Romance

Phoenix

"Dusk is just an illusion, because the sun is either above the horizon or below it. And that means that day and night are linked in a way that few things are; there cannot be one without the other, yet they cannot exist at the same time. How would it feel to be always together, yet forever apart?"

Nicholas Sparks

~

Free your mind. Regain stability. There is nothing here for you.

This barrier is weak and broken.

They're all fighting shadows. And I'm fighting with this pen. And it's unable to salvage what's left of me. My senses fail to capture the music. And my heart fails to feel it. Doubt is all-encompassing. And I am not here. I'm that gap between the heartbeats, the forgotten leaves in the wind - a fragment of torn silence that couldn't make it through life's blind spot. We are who we are, failing, fading and forsaken. We're that broken down dust at the beat of dusk, deluded by the bruised colors of sky and sea, drowning in their symphony.

And now the drugs don't work. And all the stars are out. And there is nothing to look away from. The world is ugly and this blackness is bliss. So let there be light, and many, many shadows to shelter us from sight. And, you, dear weakened soul, go back to sleep, for this wand you hold, it bleeds but fraudulent magic. And I... I am here. I'm this damp gaze suspended in breathless vacuity, the infinite horizon that never was... that never will be - a loveless shadow in a deserted darkness.

Now, listen close, dear ruptured heart for now, it is time to go. Listen close and act at once so we can leave, so we can run, so we can row, so we can breathe [...] Now, go and sever that faithless bond and crush those picture-frames. And burn them. Burn them all. Burn them and build yourself great wintry walls of atonement from their residual ash. Have our new citadel of seclusion rise above perfidious pain, above tainted clouds and forlorn rain. The stars are dead and you will never see them again. The stars are dead. The stars are dead and their theoretical story is bitter sorrow - impeccably unwritten, eternally unread.

So let there be light, and many, many shadows, and I'll be that shadow that never lets you hit the ground.

Let there be light, and many, many shadows, and may the phoenix and the blackbird never again resound.

~

“My breaking heart and I agree, that you and I could never be, so with my best...my very best, I set you free” 
Rachel Yamagata

Shadow

"Et entendre ton rire comme on entend la mer 
S'arrêter, repartir en arrière."
Renaud

~

She was a galaxy and I wanted to cross all the light-years stretched within her eyes.

But I'm tired. I'm tired and this new kind of pain isn't one I can tune out into the numbness of my veins. I'm tired and the breakdown is on the verge of tearing up my papery soul.

I can't maintain composure and I can't maintain my hateful self-criticism. I can't help seeing the flaws and I can't dodge them anymore.

And no matter how far inviolable principles go, the fraudulent eye is there to put up a smokescreen masquerading as the immaculate horizon.

This is not me. It's just how my broken parts behave. This is the broken road of growth mazing under the clouded sky of insanity. This is not me. It's just an ugly mask consuming my skin.

Anger. Rage. Anger.

Every day, I see strangers walking on the street, with virtual copies of themselves fighting off their inner and outer demons. And as they all fail to keep a straight face behind the dance of light and shadow, I keep wondering why we all keep pretending. And I wonder if my buried struggles ever appeared as a sword-fight in someone's imagination.

What are we doing here? Does anyone really know when or where or why or who they are? And if you're on the quest of becoming who you truly are beyond all those kinds of despair, then how do you know you're on the right path? How do you know you're not just pretending not to be pretending, like everyone else?

This is the point that stretches into a dimension. You either see it or you don't. We're all acting as if this is real, as if we are for real. When the truth is that what truly matters is kept hidden behind the stage, while we falsely lose and regain despair as quickly as the spectators' fake smiles fade. Maybe it's always going to be this way, human beings beating their egos against the wall of despair.

I know that some things matter more than life. And, yes, there are moments that outweigh the universe. But I don't want to talk about any of that.

People change. People help other people change. But no human being can fix another.  Everyone's broken; some are broken beautifully, others not so much. Yet, breathing aside, people lie to themselves far more often than they do anything else. People are cruel. And they're ruining everything. People are selfish. And the first thing they always ruin is themselves.

I wonder if my dreams and my words are part of the script I'm pretending not to read. And I wonder if anyone in the audience ever truly saw the mirror-like property of the eyes behind the mask. I wonder if I will always be acting alone on this stupid stage of delusion. And I wonder if I will ever stop wondering and just walk out of here.

There is a thick line between honesty and self-deception. Where are you?

There is a thin line between identity and purpose. Where do you want to be?

There are no more lines. All you can do is read between the lies.

Action.

~

“Act well your part; there all the honour lies.” 
Alexander Pope

Stranger

“The pain started years ago, but I'd lived with it for so long at that point that I'd accepted it as an inevitable part of me.” 

Ashley D. Wallis

~

She couldn't understand it, that small and very simple statement: 

He's in love with someone else. 

I told her that people are free to fall in love with whomever they choose, that she needs to stop fighting so that he can find peace and happiness. She said she couldn't stop thinking about him and I told her that I totally understand what she's going through and that things always get better in time. Then she asked me why he would stop loving her. And I froze for a second because I had a flashback and then I answered her in the best way I knew.

"People change all the time. They develop new feelings for new people. The downside here is that he changed and you didn't. The upside is that you will too in the near future. And if you want to look at it from an ideal perspective, the old him still loves you, and one day, the same will apply to you, when this you becomes the old you. Then all the moments you can't get out of your head, all the nights you spent thinking about him, all the beautiful daydreams and whatever songs or movies remind you of him, they'll become distant memories that rarely ever visit you. But when they do, they'll draw a faint smile on your face accompanied by a tender blink and a downward gaze and when that happens, you'll see that the old you was very lucky to love and be loved by the old him."

I went on and on but she was not convinced. And I knew that all I said was in vain because a blinded heart simply wants what it wants and because I saw how the look of brokenness in her eyes remained unaffected. And still, I kept going. I kept going, on and on and on.

"You need to stop fighting for him because he probably belongs with someone else and that's something you have no right to take away. You need to stop fighting because if you don't, the pain will destroy you. You need to stop fighting because ten months isn't even a long time. You need to stop fighting because while you're here crying on my shoulder, he's kissing her and I swear and I promise that I'm sorry but this is the truth."

I probably shouldn't have mentioned the part about him kissing her because she started crying again. And the sight of her pain overwhelmed me with sadness so I looked away. I looked away and wondered if I actually cared about this young stranger who opened her heart to me even though she didn't even know my last name. 

Regardless, life goes on, and it stops for nobody. And eventually, it gets better. So, dear reader, if you have loved and lost, or suffered from unrequited love, I hope you know that everything. everything happens for a reason. I also implore you to remember that life is full of surprises, opportunities and distractions. And most importantly, you should know and believe that there is someone you are meant to love and that they are meant to love you back, that you can share a life and family with them, till death do you part. So instead of being sad, look forward to the moment you eyes will meet.

You might meet him very soon.

~

“When I found you, I had not found myself yet, but when I found myself, I had already lost you.” 

Elmar Hussein