How To Be Happy

happiness is a choice, he smiled at me.

sometimes it evades you, i said quietly. then it’s no longer a choice you have the luxury of making.

no, happiness is always a choice, he insisted, beaming brightly.

i went home and thought long and hard about it. after putting everything side by side. left to right. up and over each other. i’ve learnt that, yes, happiness is a choice. even if it evades you, it is still a choice. it is always a choice.

i choose to be happy today even though it is difficult to be. and because there is nothing big to be happy about right now, i will choose to find joy in something small. this isn’t as hard as i think it to be, because there will always be little things around us that we oft overlook in the pursuit of bigger things. so i will take this tiny, almost crackable, ounce of joy… and i will turn it into something that is bright, cheerful and bigger than me. as long as i can make it bigger than me, i will be happy. so the small thing i choose to find joy in today is: the song Bubbly by Colbie Caillat. i’m gonna wrap myself in it like frozen fish in cling-wrap.

It starts in my toes
And I crinkle my nose
Where ever it goes
I always know
That you make me smile
Please stay for a while now
Just take your time
Where ever you go

someone i know calls me Colbie because this song reminds him of me. it’s so perfect.

so, for today and maybe even for tomorrow, my name is Colbie. because i am happy.

Comments January 22nd, 2008

Strangeland

the world is my Flying Pan.

i just have to keep telling myself that and i will be okay.

it has been an unusually difficult couple of days. i would like to talk about it but it always comes out wrong. once again, i have made the wrong decision in a crucial time. why do i keep doing this? is it bad judgment? indecisiveness? recklessness? love?

the floor here breaks my heart. there are all these things scattered on the coffee table that i don’t even want to touch. within 10 minutes of arriving, i had to lock myself in the bathroom and cry. and then earlier this afternoon i had to come back in because i forgot my mobile phone.. in a fit of determination, i made myself lie down on the bed. my bed. in my room. facing the wardrobe. just to stare at things. and so i stared at the wooden duck on the floor. stared at the potted plant. all while trying to pin down nausea and a spinning head.

yknow, it’s so easy to say, this is just another place, but it is NOT just another place. it was supposed to be so much more than that. it’s funny how the things that you love the most, hurt you the most.

i really want to go home.

but then, going home is for the weak. i am strong, i am brave and i am good at what i do, and no one or myself can convince me otherwise. the world is my Flying Pan. if i could do it that one time, i can do it now and always.

Comments January 16th, 2008

Carpe Diem

for a fleeting, few, scary, heart-stopping moments, i realized that i had forgotten what you look like. there i was, with my breath catching in my throat, desperately grasping for that one mental photograph in my head, my lifeline, my pillar of support, my prozac, my everything. but whatever brittle fragments of imagery that provided a brief flash of relief were fast slipping through my fingers like broken lace, rusty dust. there was just this. blank. spot. vacuum. thing. in my head. like someone had broken into my mind and stole you away from me. and so i tried to think of all those face-to-face moments, the across-the-table moments, all those times i looked up at you while lying in your arms and you would be sleeping and i could count your eyelashes and truly see you for who you really are. but it didn’t work, and i started to feel even more scared. it was really weird because i could feel you, here with me, but i just couldnt see you. the panic was starting to bubble over. is this what it is, when a patient’s body rejects the organ donated to it? is this what it is, when you have the flu and your nose feels like it’s this alien appendage attached to your face that sporadically and uncontrollably makes your entire body seize up in a sneeze? is this what it is, moving on? is this what it is.. forgetting.

hollywood road was all over the place. taxis, antique shops, pacific coffee. sighs from me. missing all those things, missing you, not understanding. i cannot possibly forget how you look like. you’re supposed to be always here, omnipresent, never leaving.

there are times that i think maybe it would be for the better. but then in those quiet peaceful past-midnight hours of watching you while you sleep, i cant bring myself to repeat the thought. the undiluted truth just presents itself in the most coy of manners, in the most vulnerable of times. and who am i to question this truth? i close my eyes and suddenly i see you, your face, your james blunt shirt, your smile, that teasing grin. carpe diem, someone once said. this is me seizing it all the way.

Comments October 20th, 2007

Skin

when it rained yesterday, it rained orange juice. big fat droplets full of vitamin c fell on my cheeks (they really hit quite hard for such harmless-looking things), and sloppily they trickled their way down to that area between my neck and my shoulder. they formed a pool right there, a little orange juice pool, and it sort of stayed there for a few moments. hanging loose like a coin just before it slips out of your fingers. and i knew i had but seconds before it would all give way and splash down my shoulder blades and onto this new white top i’d just bought at Miss Sixty. well, i didnt really want an orange splotch on my top. and i just kinda wished you were there, you know? kinda wished you were there to save the day, that you would come up behind me, hold me, and then lick that orange juice pool away until it is nothing but a tangy aftertaste on your chapped lips. in turn, i would shudder and sigh and turn around to look at you; grab fistfuls of your skin; rub my palms vigorously on your forearms like what kids do with both their palms when they’ve just learned how friction can produce heat. hey, let’s produce heat. let’s produce heat forever and ever.

Comments August 5th, 2007

A Published Unsent Letter

happy birthday julian.

Comments July 18th, 2007