The Borrowed Heart

Gorgeous and beating
full of the darkest red blood,
the borrowed heart 
waits in the shadows like prey.

The borrowed heart gets taken
and used, explored and opened--
discarded and abused,
exploited and damaged,
recycled and and reused.

Always returned and never kept,
the borrowed heart has 
mourned and wept,
loved only in time's temporary,
abandoned in winter's January.

It has been left in the empty space,
it has been held tightly in sensual embrace!
Only to be returned to its place--
for no one ever keeps a borrowed heart.

End of a Silent Day

Days like this remind me that all I'm alone.

I can't complain much about my life.
I sleep until noon or later,
I have a clean and cozy bed,
good dinners worth preparing,
scented laundry and the internet.
Smartphone. Great books.

So up I go, around noon or one,
I check my phone for missed calls and messages,
make my way to the kitchen for breakfast.
Power on the computer,
turn on some music.
Email. Social networks.
News. E-zines and articles of interest.

Enough of that. 

Time for a film.
Or two.
I like the classics:
"It Happened One Night",
I've seen it so many times.
Or it'll be "The Twilight Zone", original series
until I fall asleep for a nap.

Then it's up again for lunch.
(A sandwich before dinner, really.)

I'll pull out a book from the shelf,
sit and read whilst nibbling away
at my sad little sandwich,
and usually continue on with it 
into the kitchen as I start preparing dinner.
I'll read as water boils,
stirring pasta or baking chicken.

Mostly frozen pizza.

Dinner time. Twilight Zone strikes again.
A continuation with my book after I eat.
Wash up after dinner.
Take a shower.
Pajamas.
Book in bed.
Toss and turn.
Regret the past.
Up to write.
Grab a sandwich.
Listen to Roy Orbison.
Get back into bed.

That's when my loneliness hits me.

That's when I realize it:

I have not heard my own voice all day or night.

Riverbank

Sometimes after I've eaten

my late night bowl of cereal,

or my sweet roll with milk,

as I'm listening to Josephine Baker,

I think about you.

You.

You, that I left behind in the desert.

I'll remember that tragic day--

the words we refused to say,

and the sun setting in my rearview mirror

as I escaped on the highway toward Tucson.

Sweden is far colder than Arizona,

the plant life doesn't remind me of the 

cactuses of the Sonoran,

but I take strolls through the cherry blossoms 

here and it makes me smile.

Sometimes at a pub or at a park,

In the morning or in the dark,

I see you--

Your ghost in a cafe window,

or walking alongside the lake.
I wonder if you would fancy it here?

It's funny how years can seem like
only moments ago,
like that moment we sat
on a blanket on a spring day,
down on the Ohio river.
I wore a diamond on my hand
back then, and
you wore a smile,
and our little jack russel terrier
ran merrily all around the riverbank.

Not thinking of cactuses.
Not thinking of cherry blossoms.
Not thinking of Arizona.
Not thinking of Sweden,
or about how eventually the three of us would painfully forever part.

The Wind is a Boy

You come and you go,
like an aggressive wind-
here and gone, here and gone,
and you certainly rattle my windows.

Baby, your storm doesn't scare me,
I simmer in the lava of a lover's fear.
I've seen it, felt it, feared it, dealt it,
and there is nothing left but the core.

I am there.
I am in that core.
And I see you, baby.

I see through your lies,
your insecurities,
your desire to run,
to avoid,
to hide.

I know all those places.
(I used to live there.)

You can lock your doors.
You can close your blinds.
You can silence your phone.
And you can run...

Run that distance, baby...
far away and deep into the
pastel sun-setting horizons-
where the ghosts of yesterday 
await you
at the finish line,
and I will be there to embrace you,
and finally
hold
you 
still.

Blind Incubus

Wounded yet none the wiser,
I watch you spin your seductive silks
around your victims.

You aim to suffocate,
to silence
to still
to steal the life force of your prey.

What does it feel like inside to be you?
I imagine an all encompassing vacuum of
misery and angst,
tempered only by feeble and fleeting
 feelings of power over your timid targets.

Does it quell your rage, baby?
Does it quell your hate?
Does it quiet the noise in your mind?
Does it make you feel safe?

Without conscience you move to injure me,
but I have grown stronger through my suffering,
through your acts of sabotage toward me
I still rise. Rise. Rise.

Rise and shine, baby. Wake up!
It's time to see--
all your antics and carefully executed moves
have no lasting affect on me.

You stay wounded,
yet none the wiser.

History Repeats Itself

She must be rotten to the core.
A poison apple.
Born under a bad sign.
Unlovable.

What is under this scarred flesh of hers?
Where and how is a heart even buried
underneath those veins that run thick with
her mother and father's rage?

Her lungs are filled with gasps of air
heavily polluted by manipulators past and present,
capillaries being constricted by the
anxieties imposed upon her by psychopaths.

She is merely a lonely corpse in the hours
she spends swimming in her own tears,
sinking in the confusion,
swallowed by the isolation and silence.

Thursday Morning

It's only fitting that it is snowing on Thursday morning
even though it is the first of May.

May.

"Mother, may I? Mother, may I take one step forward?" 

  "Yes you may."

But alas, I cannot. It is Thursday morning, after all, and 
I am captive in my bed with a pair of broken legs.

Broken legs, a broken frame, a broken heart.

Thursday morning is the morning after the tears--
Wednesday possessed the whole of that,
and all that is left for today is the burning eyes,
fatigue, resignation, and mighty silence.

Surrounded by these four walls, I can only speculate
what lies outside the windows and doors. 
I do not care.
I prefer to stay here--
in the fire of my eyes,
in the deafening silence,
where everything is still,
and I am shattered.

"Mother? Mother, may I? Mother, may I have my mother?"

Because only a mother can heal these wounds.

Bloodletting

My heart is bleeding out.

Aching. Longing. Ghosts of the past swimming around inside me.

Locked doors yearning to be opened-

keys lazily clinking together in some far off distant dream.

It must be a dream, because every morning I awake to the same thing,

and you are not here.

Eraserhead

Program me out of your heart
of your mind
your memory
your skin
your sight
program me out.

You prefer static to precision
ignorance is your vision
an imitation of
true bliss
your reality is amiss.

Program me out.
Let your incantations 
shamefully abuse your ears and mind,
let your true self fall 
farther and farther behind,
become the status quo,
be slightly better than 
all the simpletons you know.

But program me out.
Because my reality is strong,
my songs are loud,
my heart is sincere,
my thoughts do not cloud,
my spirit does not sleep,
my soul will not die,
my entity is not cheap
and my love is not shy.

Program me out.
My scars sear deep
and affection never cools,
I love you with strength
whilst you are busy loving fools.

Program me out.
Simply turn the power off,
and you will never know
what ignorance truly costs.

Safe Love

As some of us might have experienced, learned and observed thus far, there are many different styles of "love". 

There is shallow love. Shallow love is not the same as superficial love, however. There is obsessive love. Obsessive love is not the same as deep love, either. There is distant love, there is irrational love, there is unrequited love. There is forbidden love. There is destructive love, crazy love,  lost love, traditional, innocent and pure love.

And then there is safe love. Love of the cautionary kind.

What is it about love that it is able to exist with universal understanding while maintaining so many facets simultaneously? Despite the method of love, one thing can be agreed and rarely argued: that when love is there, regardless of the style, it holds within it the weight of the world. Perhaps this is why after experiencing enough heartbreaks, cautionary love is born.

Cautionary/safe love is tough to criticize. Afterall, it uses rational thought, logic, and objectiveness to come to its conclusions. Thus, the scientist. But even scientists practiced alchemy. One must wonder what love can be if it is completely mapped out and orchestrated with a detailed agenda. Furthermore, how can we predict the future? Would we want to? Is our need for control and certainty worth potentially sacrificing a happiness that, having never experienced it, we were unable to anticipate during our calculations of what a proper love should be in this life?

No risk, no reward. No guts, no glory. It has been said that outside your comfort zone is where the magic happens. Love in and of itself is a magical world of mystery and emotion. A sparkling carnival of unknowns. It is all left to the imagination. But when fear reigns, where can these fantasies take us? Our emotions influence our fate. Love has the power to destroy us or save us, and that is a frightening thing. One must ask oneself if they feel the gamble is worth it.

For myself, if I had a million dollars to put on a one-shot spin on the roulette of love, I would take it. Perhaps that is because I know what I have to give, and I believe there are others like me. And if they are willing to place the same bet on me, how could I live my life wondering what would have happened had I not took a chance on them. Gambling is dangerous, and jackpots are few. But when the jackpot is true happiness for the rest of our short days in this life, how could I turn my back on that? The alternative is to spend the remainder of my days in regret and in imitation of something I wanted that I will never achieve.

So perhaps Bertrand was right.

"Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness." ~ Bertrand Russell

Talkin' 'bout My Generation

What the hell do people want anymore? In this day and age, it seems the search is worth more than the discovery. Everyone is always looking over another's shoulder to see if they can find just a little bit more. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Where are we going? In a time where it seems satisfaction is unattainable, and contentment is a dread, one must wonder what lies ahead for future generations. Through the advancement of technology and the birth of the age of the internet, so much of the mysteries of life have been revealed and discarded. Who needs to pick up a phone and call someone when you are just one click away from them on FB. I don't even have to define what "FB" means. We all know.

I had a 4 hour telephone conversation with someone this evening. Quite unbelievable, but even further, quite amazing. It's not just the initiation of the event, but one must be able to sustain conversation for that length of time. This is not so unusual when reflecting on times of the past, but in this day and age of convenience, so rarely are we able to sit and connect and "just be" with someone via this medium.

I remember a time when you used to be able to see someone, and there would be an air of mystery to them. Your imagination about said individual could wander wildly, and to even have a few words exchanged with them in person was a gift you would subsequently carry with you for weeks to come. The imagination used to soar. These days, with just a click of a button, you can have 90% of the questions you have about someone answered by examining their FB.

Have we all become a shallow electronic puddle by which we are all fishing from? I paused, rubbed my eyes slowly and deeply, and released a sigh after having typed that sentence. If we are indeed in that puddle, and if we choose to fish in it, do we become electric, then? "Are friends electric?" These are the times we are living in. Through the electric pool we are able to invest less, close doors (windows), and delete our emotions. The online community vs. the community of brother and sisterhood are two very differing realms, and the latter is fading fast.

Some say history repeats itself. In that case, there will eventually be a degeneration that leads us back to square 1 in terms of the way we connect and bond with our fellow beings. I can only hope and wish that by the time that occurs, my generation will be able to remember a time before (and very early during) their own...

...when people communicated without the vice of devices.

Are You Ready?

Happy New Year. And so it goes. Another year. Days and days will pass yet once again filled with all of our heart's desires. I hope this year proves satisfying for you all.

Today is a new day. A day of renewal. A day to revive lost faiths. A day to turn our heads to wounds of the past. It is a new year.

Nothing is of waste if we have managed to extract some sort of knowledge from it. The good, the bad, the ugly: everything comes bearing gifts.

Let this be your year to stand strong. To be whom you were intended to be. Be cautious. Know your value. Be discriminatory. You are the only YOU. If the people in your life do not see your value, then move along. Paulo Coelho said it best when he wrote, "Eat when it’s time to eat. And move along when it’s time to move along."

Recognize those that love you. Give them your love and your time.

Protect the hearts of those that are near to you.


Beware the joker.

Be kind and gentle to your fellow man.

Know that we all suffer in unity, yet we all are unique in our struggles.

Be patient.

Be kind.

Be honest.

Give love.

Or be the void, but be it quick--

anyone will understand your need to disappear as long as you don't try to deceive.

Goodbye, 2012.

Goodnight, my loves.

Who Can You Trust?

And so one must ask oneself---who can you trust? Can one even trust themselves? Can one answer that question honestly and have its answer stand up against the validity of the future? Does one ever know what may come one's way?

Perhaps these are variables that we cannot predict. But are we able to predict the behaviours of ourselves? I wonder.

Lately I have been reflecting on what it means to be a good person. How can one define this when we are all using a separate standard of measurement based on our own imprinting and experiences? When there is no universal code to go by...how does one summarize their existence and it's benevolence?

I feel so very few people reflect upon their behaviours and the effects they have on others. So many are so unaware. Unaware, or simply indifferent. I examine myself. I am weighted down by the unhappiness in myself that I am not able to give more, understand more, feel more.

Is it really so? Is it so that we exist in motivation solely for our own gratification--that ultimately it is our own desires being satisfied that determine our kindness and loving for another? Oh, say it ain't so.

But this is a truth that I fear.

Somewhere, what lies beneath us...we seek for only our happiness. Often we disillusion ourselves that if others can make us happy, then we are happy. We deceive ourselves that if we are happy, then others will be too. I am conflicted.

Often times I have been told that I do not care enough about myself. I am sure everyone has heard this in their time. But I feel I do. I know I am not a saviour, but often times I become consumed with people that I feel need the experience of my existence in their lives...that I need to help them unlock doors that otherwise will forever remain closed.

Is this ego? And if so, why do I physically feel the desire of this action stemming from a sensation in my heart? Why do I become overwhelmed and completely consumed with seeing a larger picture? Why do I feel that my motives are pure? Can I trust myself? Who can you trust?

I do not know the identity of the world we live in. I do not know how one is supposed to live, feel, what one is supposed to learn or seek. But I am relentlessly pained and feel the pangs of wanting to become more altruistic and make the world a better place. Why is such a good intention accompanied by so much pain and suffering?

I fear more than anything living a life doomed to superficiality, vacancy, selfishness, ego, pride, deception, and without empathy for my fellow man. And yet I find myself magnetically drawn to individuals whom live their lives just as that.

I can see it from far away. I know I am not a saviour, but it is my own saviour that I aspire to be. And somewhere inside of me, I feel that these individuals need me in their lives.

I have never lived on the surface. But perhaps there is nothing wrong with doing that.

One thing I do know, is that hell is below...and I have spent most of my life in that depth. What I don't understand is how my heart has always soared to great heights despite that.

So. Again, I wonder. Who can you trust? Can I even trust in myself?

"I cry out to no reply
and I can't feel you by my side
so I'll hold tight to what I know:
You're here...and I'm never alone."
B.G.

The Words

She hides the words

She keeps them sloppily yet safely crammed

in an old, beaten up suitcase.

She keeps them for

some reason.

What to do with the words?

To render them useless is to

bury them alive

to give them a torturous death,

to dry the blood of the heart.

What to do with the words?

Let them out?

Free them from captivity?

Let them dance off her tongue

and into his ears,

and risk once again the 

slaughter of her very own heart?

What to do with the words,

what to do with the words,

what to do with the words?

She knows these words will not fit him.

They are too large in size,

and she would be ridiculous to believe he

might 'grow into' them.

But perhaps if ever one day,

the cruel world leaves him alone and cold,

she can cloak these words over him-

over-sized, loving and warm,

wrapping him with all the words

she has secretly struggled for so long

never to share.

And when she does,

she will have to speak nothing.

He will feel them and he will know.

Her love, he will certainly know.

Oh, how deeply she has missed him...

All of us together, All of us alone.

Sometimes it feels like we're all just aimlessly shooting around life wounding one another. Like we're playing razor blade bumper cars with one another's feelings. The unfortunate thing is that for those that are unable to avoid the collisions, they become more erratic and inadvertently end up driving even more recklessly, perpetuating the problem even worse within those in their immediate paths of traffic.

Most people want very little more than to be understood and appreciated by someone. A genuine validation of their purpose and existence. What I find to be tragic about the seeming failure of such a simple human requisition is that it's as if we've reached a stalemate with each other because either no one believes that anyone is interested in the veritable contents of their true being, and/or, as a result, are emotionally repressed when they encounter someone who actually is interested. Which, of course, leaves the interested party feeling shut out or potentially rejected. Wounds are mutually inflicted, and both continue on feeling misunderstood.

To be open is to be brave. To be brave is to risk being hurt. But if we're able to choose between shooting a  gun at the virtuous and altruistic, or taking the bullet for them, I think the latter choice is the only way to ever define yourself as part of the former group. This means that we need to be brave. We need to be open. And we need to receive others, despite their considerable differences from ourselves. If we can all be decent and proper in our intentions, then we might just finally find a universal language that the human heart can understand.

Maybe.

The Great Death Game

I was 5 years old when my father came in the room, knelt down on the floor and with tears in his eyes told me and my siblings that his father had died. This was my first experience with death. I remember feeling confused about my father's sadness, and about what my grandfather's death actually meant. I was told that I was too young to attend the funeral, but my two older siblings were going to go. I don't think I ever mourned his death. I was too young to comprehend it all. I just learned to get used to his absence. 

It would be 7 years later when death made another appearance. It was a strange year in which 2 kids from my school whom I knew both died. The first died in his sleep at a young age of 13, and the second was killed in an alleged accidental gunshot wound at 14. At this time in my life, I could comprehend death a bit more, and I recall spending a lot of time in thought about the loss of futures ahead, and about the family of the deceased. I imagined what it must have been like for a mother to come in and try and wake her 13 year old son only to discover he was dead. I pondered over the mystery of the gunshot wound death.

3 years after that, death returned again once more. In a bizarre chain of events, my cousin and my father's then girlfriend were in a high speed head-on collision with one another on an old country highway. My cousin would survive, but my father's girlfriend died. In even stranger circumstance, this happened on my brother's birthday. The odds of a person being involved in a head-on collision in traffic are one thing, but the odds of being in a head-on collision with someone else that you actually know? It was so peculiar. My brother's birthday would forever be somewhat tainted with the sadness of the events of that day. While my father would surely want to celebrate the birth of his oldest son, his heart would always be marked with the loss of a woman he loved.

2 years later, I would be awakened by my mother telling me that I had an important phone call from back east. I took the call and it was my best friend telling me that one of our great friends whom we had known all our lives had taken his own life in the night. He shot himself in the head. He had just graduated high school and had enrolled in college courses. I remember wondering why he even suffered through high school if he was just going to kill himself a couple of months after graduating. I always took a lot of photos (still do), and after his death I remember looking at the photos. I also used to use a video camera and film my friends when were hanging out. I reviewed the photos and the films, and suddenly it seemed so clear to me. It was as if it was so obvious our friend was not happy.

2 years after that came the overdoses. These deaths would continue for years and years to come, and were many. There was something about death that had perplexed me. I could not distance myself from it, it seemed.

I then lost both of my grandmothers and an aunt. Then my sister lost a man she once loved, who was also a friend of mine.

Somewhere along the way, I decided that I wanted to become a mortician. I felt that I had a lot of experience with death, and I wanted to be able to help people during the most devastating time of their lives. I wanted to be able to try and quell some of their anxieties and suffering. Eventually, the human funeral, corpses, and grieving families became a part of my Monday through Friday routine. Though it could be incredibly stressful, I felt good inside knowing that I was doing something for others that few actually could.

Then I moved to Sweden. Death and I once parted from each other again. Until this year.

I lost a beautiful friend in May. Sara. She was 40 years old.

Then Yancey died. He left behind 2 children as well as my 2 nephews.

And today, I was told someone very special in my life died. David. He was under 30.

Treasure those dear to you. Love them with all your might.

Death has made its move once more in a great game that I no longer wish to play.

The Miracle

Life and its bastard 'trials'. Why is it every time you finally think you're strong enough to live with misery, right at that exact time that you finally resign yourself to living with your pain or your problem, right when you accept that this pain or this problem just might be a significant part of your existence in its totality, that suddenly SOMETHING comes along and changes all of that?!

These things one cannot predict. Perhaps you can predict their coming, but never the moment of their arrival. It's like waiting on a friend that is running seriously late. They said they would be here, but it's getting very late: 

"Are they sure they are coming? Did something happen to them along the way? Ok. Maybe they aren't coming. That's it. They are not coming. Sigh. Oh well. It's okay. I really wish they could have made it, though. It would have really transformed the entire evening. But that's life. I probably didn't need company tonight anyway. No, no, I didn't need company. See? Now I can do this, and I can do that, and this. That's what I'm going to do. Yeah, that's it. But wait! What's that!? The doorbell! They ARE here! They HAVE arrived after all!"

Waiting on the miracle to come can be a lot like that. The hope. The uncertainty. The doubt. The resignation. The acceptance. And then? Well. The miracle comes.

Now I know it's quite a character flaw, but very few things make me genuinely smile when I am alone with my thoughts. It is when I have these moments--these authentic, grand smiles in the quiet and lonesomeness of my space--that I know that no matter how dismal the world can seem at times, it isn't pointless to have hope. 

For some of us the world can be an infinite field with only a few flowers. The important thing to remember is that the flowers are indeed there. Instead of being upset that our fields are so empty and lifeless, we should be grateful for the contrast we get when we encounter these flowers. For it is, for us, a wondrous gift to be able to never take a single flower for granted, to be able to see all of its rich colours, to smell the intensity of such a rare fragrance, to touch the fragility of such perfect petals. We take great pride in caring for our flowers because they are not many and do not come often. We never take them for granted, and from our hearts, for our flowers, we become the sun.

And for some of us...

...that is nothing short of a miracle.

The Lights Will Go Out

Right now I feel as though life is a holy mess--as if there is an inhuman pandemonium occurring in the air around me. People as a specie have become second, even third, fourth, etc., issues of interest to my mind. I'm further preoccupied with the happenings unfolding all around me. I'm watching a beautifully strange, lit-up, autumn Ferris Wheel make its rotations, and I am peculiarly hypnotized.

Each car on the revolving wheel possesses a different realm. There are realms of cacophonous street life, blasting sirens and garbage trucks, blaring horns and roaring engines, drills and hammering. There are realms of dancing and swing music and the sound of my tapping feet on an old wooden floor. There are realms of the sound of my family's hearts beating--loudly and quickly, slowly and lowly. There are sounds of ice clinking in glasses of whiskey that are still yet to be drank in a smoky bar in Hamburg. There are sounds of the waves of the ocean lulling from a terrace in Spain, where the night sky and doo-wop music sits waiting patiently for me. There is an anxiety that mirrors mine and merrily welcomes me to the South of Africa. There is a realm of a house in south Texas calmly watching me discern it all, and there is a nest of squawking baby crows that patiently wait to be hatched one day. There are these realms, and so very much more.

The excitement and dreaminess of it all can drive me to mad nights of sleeplessness!

But somewhere else, in another realm called Georgia, the lights will go out once again. And it is for this man's life that tonight I will turn out the lights of this Ferris Wheel called life, too.

Dear Lord, Karla.

No matter how many times I tell myself that I'll "never be hungover at work ever again", I keep finding myself crawling into the office slightly disheveled and feeling a little rough. I hang my jacket and scarf, turn on my computer at my desk, and then do my best to sink down into my chair so as to hide myself behind my screen. It's on these days that I break my 'no coffee' rule, and I sit with a cappuccino and eat some sort of pastry. "Is it inappropriate to wear sunglasses inside the office?" I find myself wondering. I then realize that my hooded sweatshirt complimented with wearing sunglasses indoors just might give off a bit more of that unibomber look than I would want. Particularly in the office.

I wish I didn't bore so easily. I drink mostly out of boredom. And to relieve anxiety.

Yes. I know. I shouldn't do that. But if people always did what they should, think what a catastrophic effect it would have had on art. We can't have that, now can we? So you see? I'm doing it for the art of the world. Settled.

Office anxiety is really quite discomforting. Especially because I can't drink on the job. So being hungover at work is just a barrage of anxiety that I really wish I'd stop signing on for. It just leads to blank conversations, a heightened sense of hearing (and being irritated by nearly every sound), and compulsive clock-watching. Most importantly, it even interferes with my youtubing. Joke.

So as I throw back this orange juice that I desperately need, and try to restore some order to the island in upheaval that is my desk, I can't help but repeatedly hear my own voice in my head saying:

"Dear Lord, Karla!"

Subways and Sharpshooters

The human emotion can be a quite equally enjoyable and disturbing thing. It can also be remarkably unpredictable. From one moment to the next, you can suddenly find yourself going from the east side to the west side. From the north to the south. And on this clamourous and bustling Wednesday, I found myself near Stadshagen experiencing just that.

The underground (the subway) can bring many delights as well as heavy feelings. I usually ride on the green line. That's my line. It's always been my line since I've lived in Stockholm. It was over a year ago that I lived on the other end of the line that I do today, so needless to say I don't venture over that way so often. But today, I had some business to tend to, and I had to go surging down the green line deeper than I have become accustomed to traveling. 

That particular end of the green line holds a lot of pain for me. It is where I first lived when I moved to Stockholm. It reminds me of the reason I came to Sweden: For love. So as the subway crossed over the water, and from the window I could see the door to what used to be my love and my home, I was a bit taken aback by how much it stirred in me. It probably wouldn't have affected me as much had I not also passed the stop before the one I describe. The stop before it is also a place I lived a year ago. It is also the place where two of my dearest friends lived. Unfortunately, one of them moved over a year ago back to her home country, and  the other friend tragically died just this past May. So as the subway train came to a stop, and the doors opened, and I looked upon the platform that I used to traverse so often, it was hard not to see and hear the ghosts of a time passed, of a friend lost, and of the wonderful and the rough times 3 friends all had there together not so long ago.

I found myself struggling not to cry, and I was doing just fine, but the next stop on the line was the place that started it all, and even worse was that I could see the front door to my old home from the window. Even more memories forcefully resurfaced, and I found myself in a rather fragile state.

Most of the time, I manage to keep moving. I try not to think too much about the fact that I'm pretty much wandering around alone in outer space over here.The only thing familiar to me is the unfamiliarity, which I've become quite used to. Regular solitude, tempered by reckless socializing have been my only means of surviving. The essence of home and all that lies therein has become a faint and distant memory that seems to not concern anyone, and I have even marginalized such thoughts myself.

Sometimes everything seems like a really bad dream that I can't wake up from. It is difficult to not want to rewind the past almost 6 years of my life and make different choices. The best we can do, as we all know, is learn from our mistakes. I've always tried to forgive people, no matter how badly they have hurt me, because I know I am only human myself and we all have our limitations. I've always felt that anything can be healed, and that pride is the ultimate killer. Fear would run an insanely close second to that. Pride and Fear are a match made in hell, and they will always bear Loss as an offspring.

I have a birthday soon. I believe I will spend the year of my new age exploring and learning more about those three things: Pride, Fear, and Loss. I will learn all that I can so that I will be able to give more to the people in my life, and so that I might spare my heart any of the bullets from those three, quickly-drawn weapons...