No More Lo(ule)nly Nights

Find someone who loves you for who you are, who accepts your flaws, respects your independence, enjoys the company of your family and friends and makes you a better individual. 

I'm a glad I found him. 

Bonus na lang na he drives a Porsche and lives in a three- bedroom penthouse in the posh side of the city. 

Long Distance Relationship has never been this smooth sailing when you have someone who is as committed as he is. So lucky to find my Hawaiian Prince. See you soon, my love. 

The Unspoken Absolute.

No matter what the standard conventions of right and wrong are, there's a certain sense of happiness knowing that you are loved--insanely, intensely, and unquestioningly loved.

And if I could, I would.

Because It's Heart Day

You do know how to surprise me. For someone emotionally inept as I am, you made me blush to my core. Balloons, Flowers and a teddy bear, all delivered to my office. The Ultimate Paduda move :-)

Thank you for just being there for me. It was a kind gesture to make me 'un-hate' VDay. If your intention is to turn my world upside down, baby, you did just that.

But now, let's try to build some normalcy, shall we?

Love Letter # ________

I love you because you inspire me to be a strong person, to follow my dreams and never give up. I have never seen such determination to survive and prosper from any person as I have seen in you.

I love you because we share a brokenness that only those who have truly loved and lost can ever grasp and understand. We never apologize for showing how weak we are on the inside because we revel in the thought that we're human and we are not perfect nor special. This display of rawness has brought us together and allowed us to create a world where we can fill each other's emptiness, with our strengths like puzzle pieces that complete the very essence of us.

I love you because I can be myself when I'm with you. You have accepted me wholeheartedly, unquestioningly. I can dance silly, be candid, emotionally unstable, grouchy, and yet, you will only see the beauty and goodness in me. You never waste a moment to make me believe that not only do I deserve to be loved, but loving me is an honor worth fighting for.

I love you because you are my best friend, my safe space, my diary and my sanctuary. You make me see life in a whole new perspective and you make me want to leave all my inhibitions behind.

I love you because words are not only words when they come from you. They are testaments of how one can bring another person to her knees, in love, in happiness, in friendship and in the desire to hold on to the hope of forever.

I love you with passion I never knew existed- a passion that makes me want to defy the universe just to be with you, now, instead of another lifetime.

I love you for these reasons and more that I have yet to discover. I want to make you realize just how much but I know for sure that these words will never, ever be enough.

But for you, I will always try.

The Reserved Space

Beside you, everything fades into oblivion.

The falling of leaves that reminds us that another season is about to end. The shuffling of people's feet as they hurriedly cross the street. The guileless laughter of children as they play with abandon. The coldness of the wind that embraces us and brings you another inch closer to me.

Beside you, I forget about the the harshness of the truth that we are two puzzle pieces that will never ever fit.

That is why I chose to wait.

To wait here until this space has forgotten how we used to warm it with everything that you meant to me.

When Hypothermia Strikes

You left your heart in SF, I'm leaving mine there, too. Hopefully, our hearts will meet again and decide that they are meant to be together. One day. Someday.

Left Behind in San Franciso

Once upon a time, we dreamt of leaving our hearts in SF. Then you left me.

SF should be a good experience. Now I'm here, it just leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth no matter how beautiful and charming it is.

Feelings We Need Words For

I just had to share this. Even though I'm almost completely healed, this post brought me back to a really dark and sad place. And it's not only me. I let my other friends read this too... The result: our office almost became a venue for mass suicide (just kidding). It was that intense. Undeniably, one of the best articles I've read so far in TC.


NOV. 21, 2011 By P. LUNA
www.thoughtcatalog.com


English is so bad at describing what it means to grieve. We use words like bereft or bitter or sad, or we say we have a broken heart. But none of these really get at the nuances. The words don’t seem to capture each exquisitely painful feeling.

For example, there should be a word, maybe borrowed from German, a language so good at expressing complicated mental states in a single lengthy word with many chewy consonants, for when you miss someone so incredibly, achingly much, when that person pervades every thought, every interaction, every waking moment, but you also loathe them. Because they treated you badly, or because they were too weak to be honest with you. Because you were betrayed. And because you loathe them, you hate yourself for missing that person so intensely. For missing the laughter they inspired; for wishing for the easy intimacy that you built. You hate yourself for knowing that they aren’t worth so much sadness, that such an outlay of mental energy is entirely wasted and useless. But you feel it anyway, and you cry in the shower or into your pillow or anytime something reminds you of that person. Which is all the time. There should definitely be a word for that.

There should also be a word, maybe from the French, who do existentialism so well, for the feeling of disconnection you cultivate when you walk through the streets with your headphones on, sad songs blasting into your ears loudly enough that you can pretend you are alone. You pass by other people almost without seeing them, since you can’t hear them. You walk by shops and offices on the sidewalk, going somewhere or maybe not going anywhere in particular, feeling like the music in your ears is a soundtrack to your sadness. This song makes you think of that person; that song comes close to capturing how lonely you are without them. You isolate yourself physically because you feel so isolated inside; surrounded by people, you are still alone, because you have been abandoned by that one person who made you feel somehow less alone.

English is also missing a word for how it feels when you know that person has moved on so quickly. When you find out you weren’t as important as you thought you were. When you realize that they were acting selfishly instead of caring about you, or when you understand that you didn’t really come into it at all for them, they were just doing what they needed to do. Maybe it should come from Russian, because the Russians know despair. You thought you were finally getting over them. You could almost go an hour, if you were busy with something really important, without thinking about them. Then you see a Facebook post or hear some gossip from mutual friends, and you realize you weren’t over it. Not even close. You realize you were still holding out hope that you would get back together, that there would be some way to repair the damage, to be happy again. When that hope is crushed, the fragile Jenga tower of your life tumbles down. There should be a word for that kind of defeat.

And there should also be a word for when you’re just so tired of being sad, for when you are tired of being lonely but somehow don’t know how to stop. When you’re tired of crying, tired of thinking about that person, tired of missing them. You can’t yet make yourself recognize all the bad things; remembering how you’ve been done wrong doesn’t help. But the hurt over the good things, the things you still miss so much, is a dull twist in your stomach now, instead of a gaping hole in your chest. You don’t know how to turn that off, don’t remember how to be happy. But you sort of remember happiness as it existed before that person, and you want that so desperately. You want to stop this misery that drags at your ankles and eyes and insides. You know it will take time, but sometimes just the fact of being tired of crying makes you cry. Maybe we could co-opt a word from Japanese for that, since melancholy is a specialty of theirs.

There should be an English word for all these feelings of grief. And I desperately wish they existed now, just so I could tell you, next time you ask, how I’m doing in only four words, instead of all these.

You Don't Need To Say Anything

By: Chelsea Fagan
(www.thoughtcatalog.com)

There was a time when receiving even the most insignificant message from you would have been simply incredible-- when it would have told me that, no matter what was happening, I still crossed your mind. Because as we all know, silence is the most brutal statement one can make. Screaming about how much you hated me or telling me I was ugly, well, it would have been tolerable. Hate and love are two sides of the same coin; the true opposite of love is apathy. And if you had screamed, I would have known that regardless of how hard you tried to convey your disdain for me, I still meant enough to you to write a few words, to make your sentiments known. But you remained silent, and so I shut up as well.

I have lost people in my life before; I have a choice soul or two with whom I can no longer speak. Even acknowledging their existence, or confronting them with mine, would be just too ugly and pour salt into too many wounds. There are bridges I have burned out of necessity. Yours was simply abandoned, left untended for years until weeds grew through it and the railing fell apart and it became something you might take a black-and-white picture of, but you could never cross again. It was unsafe, destroyed by neglect. And that hurt more; to see something just erode into oblivion is so much more brutal than to cover it with gasoline and to toss a match on it. I wanted fireworks, to go out with a bang. I guess that's human nature.

And the time that we didn't speak went from a simple act of convenience into a border which could no longer be crossed. There is an invisible moment in time, a line of sorts, that you traverse at a certain point in a mutual silence. It is the time when, from then on, starting a conversation would be awkward and jagged and require an embarrassed explanation of why you haven't spoken in so long. We crossed that point a long time ago, whether I wanted to or not, and I knew that going back would be fruitless. Acknowledging each other was over, and it was time to accept the quiet death of a friendship that had taken place.

Of course, I still hoped that you would reach out. One day you would extend your hand and say that you were sorry, that things were okay, that we don't need to keep this uncomfortable distance. You would tell me that we were being immature, that life is too short, and many other clichés that we could nod in agreement on. I waited for it consciously, then without thinking of it, and eventually I wasn't waiting at all. My life began to continue, and your peripheral existence didn't factor in. I was happy without it, and the fact that you weren't a part of everything was no longer a tangible hole needing to be filled.

Every day became more and more about what was good, enjoyed fully without a nagging sense of "if only I could share it with this person." I made new friends, and strengthened ties with old ones. I no longer thought about our silence, about our depressing ending, about the fact that we'd never again stay up all night watching internet videos and drinking beer. It was simply a chapter in my life that had closed, and the ending seemed appropriate. We can't appreciate or understand the endings of things when they're happening, of course, but with a little distance they usually parse themselves out. We were right to go our separate ways, and I know we're both the better for it-- even if we can't pinpoint exactly why.

So there's no need to apologize, to come and say something, to awkwardly jump-start a conversation that goes nowhere in a matter of minutes. There's no need to acknowledge what happened, or talk about the things we would have done differently. Our lives are filled with things we could have done better, but I know you well enough to know that just because things end on a bad note doesn't mean all the wonderful music before was worthless. I won't let the ugly end color my memories of you. But we are no longer the same people, and there's no reason to force a false friendship because of some misplaced sense of nostalgia.

It's the holidays, and we are remembering the people we left behind. But sometimes remembering is enough. You're surrounded by your loved ones, and I with mine, and there's no need to toast because the season tells us we should. We're all okay, and there are so many exciting things in front of us--let's let that be enough.

Paduds Chronicle Part 2

I take it back.

I appreciate it very much. I should not be so ungrateful and so quick to judge and decide. These things take time and possibilities are endless. It could be nothing, something, or everything. In any case, it's all about taking chances and taking a step forward.

Happiness is a choice. And after treading that long road of self-imposed misery, I am finally choosing to be happy.

This is All Kinds Of Awkward

Let me tell you something about me. I am not used to being wooed and swooned over. It kind of pushes me to over analyze things. This early, it's like I'm being forced to make a choice. And it suffocates me. Gak. Pwede bang steady muna?

The Involuntary

She stares outside her window looking at the pouring rain and counting every second that passes her by. She knows that this will only get her down, and yet, she basks under the heavy weight of reliving the past--- the past that has been her mind's playground where she can freely run with memories of him.

Her heart throbs in pain, her breathing becomes laborious, and her hands begin to tremble at the anguish of wanting to hold him, but can't.

Yet, she savors this suffering.

Because it is only the ache in her heart that can validate that what they had was real. Not now, but at some point, it had been real.

It had not been a few seasons ago when she would wake up to his smile and the gentle touch of his hand on her face, making her feel precious and loved. She would look forward to every daylight as this would bring a new moment for her to relish the comfortable feeling of him beside her. She would longingly kiss his lips and whisper a line from a song they both love, as music had been their secret code to express how they feel. His breath, her promise, the lingering embrace. She thought these would last forever.

Until one day, she woke up and it was all gone.

Gone.

Now, she only wakes up as an involuntary motion that happens to her every single day. She walks not to go anywhere but because she can no longer bear lying at that crumpled bed he used to sleep on, or bear sitting at that chair where he used to wait as she takes her time getting dressed. Everything is involuntary... sleeping, rising, crying, breathing. She was not living. She was merely existing.

She fears not of growing old alone and unwanted. She fears of growing old without him.

No. She was not unloved. She could have had a chance to be with someone. And yet, it doesn't matter to her anymore. Because what good would that be if that someone is not him?

How can she have any shot at happiness?

She can't and she won't.

Because when she gave her heart fully to him, she did not really get it back.

And now she's just an empty piece of shell.. broken and alone.

She suffers the worst kind of loneliness because the path of solitude has been paved by her own hands all along.


Now, that is voluntary.



(video from: www.youtube.com)

*** This is purely the work of the creative mind of the author which may or may not be based on real life. Paduds!

On Being Brave Enough To Start Again

JUL. 27, 2011
By KAT GEORGE
(from: www.thoughtcatalog.com)

We’ve all felt the sting of heartbreak at one time or another. And even though our experiences are not all alike—varying in extremity from unrequited crushes to soul-mates lost—between our collective, vast array of disappointments, our damp, tear stained pillow cases and brooding, lonely days, we’ve probably all had the same thought at some point: I’m not doing this again. Because no matter how you go through it, or what way you look at it, heartbreak is a taxing exercise.

There are many different ways of dealing, from the stoic, silent suffering of the proud, to the hysterical, lurid self-destruction of the openly distraught; having your heart broken is always a process. No matter how you deal, heartbreak can drain you entirely, both emotionally and physically, and sap your energy on a daily basis, especially where you have a drawn out healing period. But the worst part of having your heart broken sometimes doesn’t manifest until you feel strong again and steel your resolve—it’s the promise you make to yourself that you’ll never be heartbroken again.

It’s painful because you know it’s not you, it’s not right, and because your decision inhibits you from making contact the way you used to. But your aversion to heartbreak is overwhelming, and controls all your actions to the point of self-sabotage, which your wrought subconscious by now deems to be self-preservation. You don’t want to spend those months drinking alone in your room every night. You don’t want to end evenings out with friends sprawled across some dingy bathroom floor, your cheeks stained with mascara and your head resting against the porcelain. You don’t want to lie in bed until 3pm everyday with nothing but white noise in your head. You just don’t want to feel any of those feelings again—emptiness, sorrow, rejection—the ones that came from you letting yourself be vulnerable to someone else. You don’t ever want to relinquish that sort of power to someone again.

Every now and then you’ll meet someone new. Someone maybe your heart would have raced away with, before you experienced the crippling agony of having it broken. And yeah, maybe your heart’s been repaired since, maybe you’re as happy as you’ve ever been and entirely satisfied with yourself and your life—but that’s just the point, isn’t it? You’re no longer prepared to disrupt the harmony. You barely survived it—the first time your world was picked up and shaken like a shitty little snow globe—and you’re not willing to hedge a bet that you’ll survive it a second time.

So you’ll push the new ones away instinctively. Half of you will be relieved and the other half will pang with melancholy. You want to be braver—because when it comes down to the bones of it, all you really are is scared. You wish it was as simple as calling out to your mother and having her check under your bed and in the closet for the boogey man, but you’re on your own now, with no one to protect you from night terrors but yourself. You sometimes think the conflict inside you is tantamount to spilt milk and you feel petty and selfish, but you’ve become so accustomed to living on the back foot you don’t know how to leap forward anymore.

You’re not a bad person—you know you’re not—you have so much love to give, but you’ve never feared anything more than giving it. It seems like such a shame and waste, but at the same time entirely necessary. You desperately want to be inspired again, to hold someone’s hand in the street, to have them brush the hair from your eyes as you rest your face on their chest in bed on lazy Sundays. You want someone to tell you they love you in the dim half-light of morning, you want someone you can cook dinner for, you want someone whose wounds you can lick. You want someone who is at once your best friend but with whom you share the secret sweetness of sex, and a heightened physical and emotional intimacy. And yet: wanting is not the same as having, and you let them all pass by you and around you, like wind whipping against your ankles. Your heart is still and safe.

Seeing Your Ex

Aug. 24, 2011
By Brent Delaney
www.thoughtcatalog.com


There they are on the crowded street like a hallucination in the pregnant air. You are immediately hit by a bolt of anxiety while the word f*&^ skips over and over in your head like a roughed up CD. Your first impulse is to toss yourself into the nearby alley, but it's too far gone. They see you. You are two bar magnets simultaneously attracted and repelled by each other, north and south poles wildly confused. The sweltering tension as you approach each other climaxes in a, "Hi." Then, an awkward conversation bumbles along in an effort to disregard the coffin of memories anchoring every word. You brandish your shield, calling to arms everything in your reserve in a noticeably forced bluff of contentment. You uneasily shake hands or hug as if you've lost all knowledge of how to hug. And you continue along the filthy sidewalk, treading over cracks as you are struck with murky emotions of nostalgia.

It's a near-death ordeal where brain activity surges and a mashup of all your memories with that person plays on and on and on through invisible earphones. You can't shut the music off. It crescendos and you remember every nondescript detail. The way you changed hand positions when you went on walks together, sometimes intertwined, sometimes palms diagonally overlapping. The way you couldn't grasp how this person you're so in love with could actually like the medicinal taste of kale. The way you held their face or stared up at them anticipating a moment of vulnerability. The way they touched your leg under a table filled with your friends and how that small gesture gave you a profound feeling of support.

It is then that a decrescendo occurs and a cold stream runs through you as you remember that monumental fight you two got into, retreating into your corners of the ring, waiting for the other to send the first SOS, the first apology, the first admittance of wrongdoing. The way you felt at first and the way your relationship crawled towards a routine complacency, dispiritedly trying to regain that electric current of the initial few months when time was irrelevant. The way you both wanted different things in life, but kept an ongoing, unspoken mantra that you were bound by something stronger than your own selfishness.

It was like any other relationship of both positive and negative charges. Just like any other.

And suddenly, it's all over. You start thinking about your own life again, your present problems and the fact that you need to buy Parmesan if you want to actually enjoy that spaghetti you plan on eating. The memories evaporate. Who you were and that particular stage of your life recedes back into the depths of you, laid to rest in a place with no gravestone; a place you will visit less and less because, no matter how much effort, you can't resuscitate the past.

Sometimes, When It's Raining

By Kat George
Oct. 19, 2011
(Source:www.thoughtcatalog.com)

Sometimes, when it's raining, I think about you. I think about you all the way over there, with all that ocean and all those years between us. I think about if you're doing well, what your bedroom looks like, if you enjoy your job. I think about the times when there wasn't any ocean between us and my time was your time. I think about when I knew the answers about you, because they were my answers as much as they were yours. Sometimes, when it's raining, I wonder if it's raining where you are too.

Sometimes, when it's raining, I pretend I'm kissing you. I pretend we're lying in bed all morning with the grey half light and the patter of rain on the roof and the sloshing sound tires make on the bitumen as they speed by the window outside. I pretend you're bringing me tea and we're sitting side by side in bed reading the paper, you telling me the comics and me failing at Sudoku. I pretend we're playing Quiz Master and we're winning. Sometimes, when it's raining, I close my eyes and pull the duvet over my face, and pretend you're breathing by my side.

Sometimes, when it's raining, I feel a little lonely. The grey sky reminds me so much of London's sky, the greyness that enveloped us, even in the summer. I miss my friends, my family, you, especially when my feet are wet and I'm so far from home. I wonder if you're thinking about me too, and I know you're not, and I get to feeling so isolated and worn out. Sometimes, when it's raining, I wish I really was alone, that I had nothing in the past, and only a moment to hide from the world while the sky releases madness

Sometimes, when it's raining, I listen to love songs. I plan my wedding and it's not to you, even though I once thought it would be. I sashay across my room and concoct fantasy love stories in which someone falls for me, madly and passionately. Not the way that you did but in a way which would last forever with every conceivable grandness announcing its arrival. I think about falling in love again, and I promise myself I will, one day. Then I put that promise inside a box, and I put the box in my pocket. Sometimes, when it’s raining, I like to make believe.

Sometimes, when it's raining, I begin to feel alive. I start to have those clichéd thoughts like "everything is washed away". I think of you fondly, without remorse or longing, and decide that the rain will bring me a new beginning. My mind clears and I begin to see the future spanning before me, as I turn away from the past laid out behind. There are ways for me to say goodbye and when it's raining, sometimes I say them all in whispers you'll never hear. Sometimes, when it's raining, I like to run outside in all my clothes, and let the water to soak through to my skin.

Forget Reality: Let's Fall In Love

By Kat George 

Oct. 20, 2011

From (www.thoughtcatalog.com)

We snagged, just for a second there, didn’t we? We bumped our heads together like idiots and we both came up concussed. Everything was going so wonderfully, I was so delirious for you, but then… well, it’s life happening, not some romantic dream. And I hope, I really do wish it with my eyes squeezed tightly closed and my hands balled firmly into fists at my sides as I concentrate, that next time we see each other we forget what’s “real” and indulge in our reality instead.

Because our reality, right now, it’s just about falling in love. Let’s put the real stuff aside—the past, our insecurities, all the baggage we’ve imported from all our journeys—and let’s just be. This is our moment to be fanciful, and we might not get another one, at least not together. I don’t want to have to “deal” and “cope” and “work” yet. For now I just want to kiss you and lose myself in all the small moments when you wrap your arms all the way around me.

Things are complicated, I know, but let’s soar above that, at least for a day. Let’s make getting to know each other about all the wonderful things that made us fall into each other’s embrace in the first place. Let’s not mar it with all the ugly crap we’ve filled our pockets with over the course of the years we’ve already lived without each other’s company. And then, once we’re madly in love, and only then, we can unleash it all upon each other, so that we’re equipped to deal with it the way that lovers do—patiently and compassionately.

You know how it is when we’re laughing? That’s how I want it to be all the time when we’re together. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not idealistic or selfish—if you’re having a bad day I will be there to hold you and hold you until you don’t feel sore anymore, and I’ll do it without complaint or request. I’ll do it because I care about you deeply. But listen: we’re not ready for the heaviness of the past yet. We can share and laugh and rub away each other’s daily miseries but I don’t want to delve into the backwardness of all that came before. Not yet, at least.

I want you to trust me and know that every time I look at you all I see is wonderfulness. I see lights and rainbows and everything good and awesome about this world all radiating out of you at once. Yes, I’m intense and yes, I’m romantic, but can’t you just take my adoration for a second and let it make you as happy as it makes me? Relax into me, because I’ve got you on a pedestal now, and there’s no one else in the room but us. And this is half the reason I don’t want to share the dirty stuff with you—because every now and then you make me feel so warm it’s as though nothing else ever existed.

We could be best friends, you and me; we’re so alike in so many ways. And now we have to decide whether we’re going to knock our likenesses against each other and explode into tiny bits that splatter against the walls, streaking downwards and pooling in insidious puddles, or if we can make those likenesses build each other up, like great cities or rolling mountains. I’d like to think that we could be a team, that we could conquer everything together. That we’ll draw from each other to be stronger and better. That we’ll still be holding hands through all of winter’s blizzards.

 

Post-it Note of the Heart

Its so simple. If you want to be with someone, you have got to take that leap. Choose your happiness. Choose love.

Do it now before it's too late.

Nothing Without You

By Vienna Teng

it's the quiet night that breaks me
I cannot stand the sight of this familiar place
it's the quiet night that breaks me
like a dozen papercuts that only I can trace
all my books are lying useless now
all my maps will only show me how to lose my way

oh, call my name - you know my name
and, in that sound, everything will change
tell me it won't always be this hard
I am nothing without you
but I don't know who you are

it's the crowded room that breaks me:
everybody looks so luminous and strangely young
it's the crowded room that's never heard
no one here can say a word of my native tongue
I can't be among them anymore
I fold myself away before it burns me numb

oh, call my name - you know my name
and, in your love, everything will change
tell me it won't always be this hard
I am nothing without you
but I don't know who you are

This song is perfect for me right now.

Intense.

Quoted from the Office Season 6:

(Pam to Erin)

It's not about who you've been with. It's about who you end up with. Sometimes the heart doesn't know what it wants until it finds what it wants.

*Sigh*

;-(

(source: http://leilockheart.me)