vague existence.

No, i did not write about you in my journal.
I didn't think i needed to preserve you in anyway because I thought you were real, I thought you would last.
But you didn't. You disappeared before I could ask you why.

I don't understand why people have to go. And why they have to do it in such painful ways. Are people's social circles inflexible and inelastic? Do our socialization capacities have limitations? Why can't people stay "forever"? The human mind was capable of conceiving such an idea, why can't it be real then?

This isn't fair. I spend days wondering, wishing and hoping for something I thought I could believe in. I wasn't asking for anything, I just wanted you to stay. I didn't think I needed to ask that from you, I thought you wanted to stay too.

It's tragic how people have to endure another person's unsaid goodbye. What's even more painful was that it happened right after the first hello.

delicious ambiguity.

anhedonia.

We have to unlearn to realize the truth.
We have to get hurt to remember where we are.
We have to endure to unlearn and get hurt another day.

This isnt going to be life inspiring. Inspiration is what you find when youre happy. Happiness is not the default emotion in life. It happens on rare occasions. What really happens is that you live each day in sorrow, waiting, hurting. You live in sorrow until the day when you finally get your chance at a slice of happiness. You wait patiently, arduously, for that one slice of fleeting happiness. You hurt until then. And you hurt even more after that.

Life is not fair. It never was and never will be. Were just kidding ourselves when we say life is good and just. It isnt. Its not even happy by default.

What happens after this? What happens when you realize that life sucks and that it sucks even more each day?

You live it. You live for sorrow, you live to wait, you live to endure.
Because only then will you realize that your purpose in life is not to live a superficial existence, but to find genuine moments of happiness in a lifetime of misery.

delicious ambiguity.

avolition.

The mistakes we make are as big and as enduring as the time it takes for us to recognize and accept them, as hurtful as the intensity of our denial and as encompassing as our pride. Our humanity is the limit of our mistakes, not the logic behind them. We make mistakes a lot of times but we fail to learn everytime. It is not by the number of mistakes we have committed that we are measured, but by the collective effect these mistakes have upon the people around you.

delicious ambiguity.

poverty of speech.

I have encountered many opportunities wherein I needed to be therapeutic, to be understanding, to be able to give the right answers and offer the right advice to my friends, even to strangers, because they have become incapable to do so for themselves at that very moment of vulnerability. It usually comes easy for me to empathize with them but it becomes harder for me to find the right words to say. Its hard when you know somebody trusts you that much to say the right things, to be the one to shake them back into reality but not knowing exactly what the right things are and being incapable of showing them the way back to reality because you’re not sure how to get there yourself.

*

Helping other people and trying to fix their lives for them are two completely different things – this is what I learned today. I got so used to listening to my friends and talking them into doing the right things, the things I believe will do them the most good and having them accept all that I say. I always thought that was how you help people: you try to fix their lives for them. But I was wrong.

There is a limitation to how much any of us can be of any help to everybody else. Selflessness turns into selfishness, and our intentions to help may not turn out helpful at all. There are things that cannot be fixed and there are things that are best left unsaid.

*

I learned that it is easier to make people happy with the smallest things than to try and find the big words to capture their pain.

*

I find it so hard to understand human nature. I find it harder to just passively accept human nature, especially when the behavior is more destructive, more hurtful to oneself and even to others. Some people try to bring out the best in human nature, to try and heal whatever is wrong with it but I guess it is in human nature to naturally resist, desist and defend itself. I wanted to understand why they held back. Is it because of fear of humiliation? Fear of happiness? Or is it because they know that their pain is terminal and that a fleeting sense of happiness would only give them false hope?

There is no book that tells us what the right emotion is for every moment. There is no happy chapter that demonstrates all the possible expressions of happiness, all the avenues, all the sources of happiness. There is no written guidebook to emotions and human nature. They are things that we should discover on our own, things we should deal with on our own. If we decide to try and fix these things for them, we should know when to stop. We should know the limitations and the right expectations. We are but mere mortals with the innate instinct to live and defend oneself. Every perceived threat must be dealt with accordingly.

*

Expectations are not always met and readiness is always just an ideal. Life is not something that was planned for us by any human cognition; it is something we learn to go through as we live it each day. We cannot fully grasp all people, places, events and ideas all at the same time, in one single moment. Our human capacity is bounded by limitations, circumscribed in imperfection. The unexpected and the unknown are concepts known only to powers greater than the human faculty. Our humanity keeps us unready our whole existence. We can never be ready for anything, much less everything. To know fear is to be human. To feel pain is to be human. To endure is human.

delicious ambiguity.

atropine.

It’s amazing how generic each of our lives seem to be. We have the same stories, the same pain, the same loneliness, the same fears, dreams and regrets. We feel alone, thinking that no one else can understand us better than ourselves, so we try to keep everything bottled up inside. We try to be our own personal heroes, battling it out on the field on our own. But we don’t always win. And we don’t always declare surrender. But it doesn’t matter does it? We are our only audience, we are our only readers, we are the only ones in our own fields because no one else knows. We can always fake success, happiness and strength because no one knows otherwise. But we are mere mortals. We can only endure so much.

I found comfort in the idea that life is as generic as drugs and that I am not the only one feeling the same way, experiencing the same thing. It was heartbreaking to realize we all held the same pain and yet we never knew we could have helped each other earlier. It also felt surprisingly happy to have been able to let it all out to everyone who was willing to listen. It felt different after you’ve come out weak, vulnerable and fragile. It felt as if you were stronger because there are other people who knew what you are going through and you know that they will be there to help you, protect you. For once, you wouldn’t have to be afraid that your ivory wall might crumble because you know, you have torn it apart yourself when you opened up your heart, your life, your pain to others. You don’t have to hide because you are not alone. Everybody else is just as pained as you. And everybody is willing to listen, to care and to cry with you.

Although it is heartbreaking to realize that everyone is suffering as much as you even if you feel that nobody else deserves the same pain as you, it was comforting to know that life is fair, that all are equal, that we are not alone.

And we will never be.

I learned to love life more because of its pain and its loneliness.

I learned to love life because I’ve found the best people to share them all with.