Make an echo that you will remember for your whole life...

I’ve been staring at this blank Word document for so long. I feel like I’ve been staring at it all night. I actually think that I dreamt with it last night in the short times that I actually slept. Some say there’s nothing to writing. What you have to do is sit down at your keyboard and open up a vein. It’s funny just how true that is.

(Still staring though)

Sometimes I feel like the Word document has come alive with personality and sense of humor... And in this clearly developed, definite, and unreserved mind of mine, there sit the words in expression fighting to come out. Still, I cannot. So I say to myself: There is a book that I want to read. I want to read it badly. Here’s the thing, it hasn’t yet been written; so I must write it- for all to read. I want it to be easy reading because that is the best kind, but it is the hardest to write.

I am too passionate. I am attached to minuscule things. I give things the power to make me “feel”; inanimate lifeless things. I give the power, I give it and after I do I ask myself why. You do it too, you know you do. How ingenious of us to love and expect love back and what kind of love is that if not a conditional love? Why is unconditional loving so hard?

I am so hard on myself because even though I love, I know that because I hurt in silence, it is conditional. Sometimes I don’t hurt in silence and it is bad, but the best is when I love and I don’t hurt at all.

Ah, the Word document has lost the staring game. Now that I have slowly begun to free the words from my soul, slowly they become my weapons of mass destruction. They swirl out of my exceptional mind and the beauty of it is how they untangle by human emotions. My words - so innocent and powerless as they are… It’s like Alice in Wonderland except I am standing in the center of an open mind full of places and memories and words; meaningful different words and it’s so pretty to me how potent for good and evil they become when at the tips of my fingers since I know just how to combine them.

I have so much to say, but I have to be careful not to lose you, my dear readers, because if I give it all then there will be nothing left. My words are but the ambiguous echo of a distant song. They are little distinct sutures fastening tightly an eminent wound to a solid voice that sang a song of meaningful purpose. So I will pour what is left with hopes that you will stay drunk on this writing. I will cast words into this darkness and wait for an echo. It will sound and when it does, no matter how distant and faded it seems, I will cast again. To me the greatest pleasure of my words is the inner music they create and the echo that makes you want more.

A sufficiently stable group in a definite arrangement held together by a strong bond.

A riddle courtesy of the rumbles in my head:

Mostly everyone has one and they don't get to choose - May cause love and happiness or be aloof and distraught. Some you know well, some you don’t know at all- and if you are as lucky as I, sometimes the ones you think you know all along are just a figment of your imagination. What is it?

I will let you ponder this. In the mean time, it is my pleasure to continue to entertain you with the rest of the rumbles in my head...

Sometimes, I feel delusional. Sometimes, I feel like everything that I feel and all that I see is nothing but my imagination playing tricks on me, confusing me to believe it all really exists. I know that many of you may feel the same and it is hard to express. Personally, I don’t want to ever become that person that has lost it. I don’t want to be “Crazy Aunt Star” delirious, mystical, and hippie like. I don’t want life or my life experiences to ever define me. I always want to be me. I don’t want to have to pretend to be someone that I’m not in order to get the approval of others.

I know that sounds confusing, but I want you to think about it. How many people do you know that try so hard to be someone that they clearly aren’t? They think they are doing such a great job at being the person they want to be that they forget who they really are. They loose the concept of self. They loose touch with reality. They don’t understand that they could have become this great person they portray to be. Instead, they hide out playing their part in the play called life.

I have made the choice to never loose myself. I will always be me. Ten years from now, I will be this person sitting here writing and putting it all out there with nothing to hide. The incidents that I may encounter may impact me and I may change my point of view, but I will always be me. In fact, somewhere underneath this black haired Buddhist, aspiring writer, and starving artist is a young teenager with strawberry blonde hair, without any intentions of reading, writing or ever getting married.

My views may have changed but I am still me- consistent, feminist, movie buff, still flying off the handle fast if need be. Yes, I have matured, but I don’t need to put on a show for anyone. Take it or leave it, this will always be me. Maybe some of us cannot help the fact that something or someone has gotten the best of us at one point and we may feel like we have lost it. It is okay. You don’t have to be ashamed, I know many that aren’t. I am one of them. Everything happens for a pupose.

Family, that’s the answer.

You should too.

I have what I need, but not what I want. Sometimes this is the case- I see. I want to wash clothes and for it to magically put itself away, perfectly like when I first bought it. Instead, I’m left to iron.

I want to wake up in the morning with a vast mind, stunning, impossibly refreshed, and ready to face whatever unfolds before my eager eyes. Instead, I have to hit the snooze button on my alarm clock at least twice.
I have to rub my eyes and have a conversation with my mind where each of us states the pros and cons of my meditation.

I have what I need, but not what I want. This isn’t always fun. Especially for an overachiever like me. I’m hard on myself when I do not succeed. I’m hard on myself when I don’t speak my mind,and I’m hard on myself, most of all, when I feel like I’m not number one.

If this is the case, then I'd like to know the purpose of this arrangement. I don’t have millions in the bank or live worry free without concerns; I’m left to wonder the why of things while making my monthly payments.

I have what I need, but not what I want. Is everyone the same? Do readers like you ever wonder why and who we are to blame?!

I have what I need, but not what I want. Have you ever heard that song? The one that clearly states: You can't always have what you want and if you try, what you need is what you’re getting. I wish what we needed would come in a box with a clear explanation and this way whenever we’d want something else we wouldn’t get that weird sensation -that even though we really have what we need, still the wanting is what seems like perfection.

I have what I need, but not what I want. Is it at all up to me? I think and think and ask my self why the things that I want don’t just be! The reality of it is simple and plain just one that I choose not to see.

I choose what I want and I choose what I need and I've chosen to just let it be.

You should too.

In all the confusion, disorientation, chaos, and disorder, my thoughts never seize.

My thoughts are ongoing. I try to confine them sometimes, but I find they do not like to be governed. I fight them and though usually I win, sometimes I just cannot help it. I give up and among all the confusion they win. I argue for a while with the voice that rambles inside my head, but I’m tired and I choose to give up this time. I shut down. This dark shadow comes over me and I feel it consuming my existence. I close my eyes and in they come so fast. I have lost control. They want to stay. They want to take me over. They use my weakness to unravel the thread of courage and defeat that holds me together. I fight, but I hear their murmurs in my ears and I cannot control the noise. I breathe deeply.

I remember feeling this and I hate it. I can feel my heart beating so fast. I’m scared that the fear that has embodied my soul is so strong it will never leave me. A cold rush flushes through my insides. My finger tips are numb, my body is cold, and my eyes are burning. I sit there lifeless, delusional, dissipated, abandoned, corrupted, exhausted, and afraid. What is left of me? My thoughts, they never seize. They are always with me. When they are good, they are grand. When they are bad, they are horrid. They invite themselves into my mind, make themselves evident in my insecurities, and threaten to never leave me.

The conversation with my mind begins and this is what it sounds like:

Me: “Why are you doing this?”

Mind: “Because I can.”

Me: “I’m a good person, I don’t deserve this.”

Mind: “It doesn’t matter to me. Why don’t you stop wasting your time and realize that all this meditation nonsense is getting you no where?”

Me: “It makes me feel good. I have control.”

Mind: “No, I make you feel good and I can also make you feel bad. That means that ultimately, I have control.”

Me: “Help me to be better. Help me rid myself from all these negative emotions”

Mind: “Why? They are there for a reason, you feel them, and you have to remember them”

Me: “I don’t want to hold grudges. I want to forgive those people that have done me wrong.”

Mind: “Why? They should learn their lesson. You are not a door mat.”

Me: “You are me. You are my thoughts. I choose. I decide, not you. I know you want to distract me. I know that your job is to control me or you cease to exist. You will not win this time. You will not take me over. You will work with me or I will shut you out. If I have to take a vow of silence and have this conversation with you the entire day, I will. But you will not win this time. In fact, you will not win any longer. Do you hear me? You are me, I decide.”

Mind: -

My thoughts are ongoing. I try to confine them sometimes, but I find they do not like to be governed. I fight them and usually I win.

**Dedicated to Juanqui- I love you.