I can't believe how much I've changed since last Thanksgiving. I was insecure, unhappy, no confidence, no self respect, and I was living a life in Black and White. Today, I am completely the opposite. I have found myself, and it is not in the reflection of someone else, but in my own reflection.
Today, I look myself in the mirror and I love what I see. I am not perfect, but I'm not striking for perfect.
I love my friends, and I've learned to love my new family.
On Friday, we watched three movies: Brave, Elf, and Love Actually. I am in love.
In love with life. In love with laughter. In love with art. In love with rainy days. In love with him.
Somehow, in the past few months, I've found a way to see everything with a different light and, no matter how crappy it looks, it will never be something else other than happiness. Because, quoting one of my screenplays, "happiness is not a place to be. it's more like a state of mind."
Let Christmas come, my favorite holiday of the year.
Hello,
Hope life is treating you well.
Last night, I found myself thinking about you, and it hurt. Not as much as it would hurt if it was a month ago, but it did hurt a little. I guess that's how you feel when you have an unfinished business in the back of your head, and it pokes you once in a while, reminding you it exists.
I don't know what I did wrong, or if I did something wrong, but your silence makes me think I certainly did. Lucky me, I've lost so many people I considered important to be depressed over the fact that you left. People just... tend to walk away, and that's alright with me. I've came to accept that people will come and go, and only a handful (up to today, two) will stay in my life forever. I've never been a person of connecting with everyone. Truth is, when I was younger, I had to do some research on how to react to certain situations because I had no idea what to do. Once in a while, I will meet someone that I can truly connect with, and that person has always ended up walking away from me.
When I met you, I instantly felt that connection, and I was scared of letting you know of it. Mostly because I did not think I was able to see someone else walk away from my life once more. I've had a lot going on in the past three years of my life, and although to people (or you) it might seem like it could've been worst, it was pretty bad. I had the help of no one to hold me in my darkest days, and I went through it myself. I was the one who decided to get out of my bed everyday, even when my entire body just wanted to stay in there the entire week. So when the good days came, I was finally happy. I made it through, and I knew the only one I needed to make it on this life was myself.
As our friendship progressed, I grew scared and scared of the day I won't see you in school, or the day I would leave to pursue my dreams, or the day that you finally would walk down the path of everyone else. I was terrified, but the good times were more than the fear.
Out of nowhere, our friendship starting growing up into something else. It made me happy, but, ultimately, I wanted you to be happy. I guess you weren't. So you left.
I asked you one night what went wrong, and you never replied. Thanks for that. Thanks for not having the courage to tell me, to confront me.
And I thank you because you made me stronger. You might think I should hate you with all my life but truth is, I can't hate anyone. I don't hate you, I will never hate you.
With time, all I will remember would be the good times: our conversations late at night looking at the ceiling, the day I won at pool, the first day I talked to you, our days at the library, at the hookah bar, and the night I asked you, "so... are we okay?" and you looked at me, and replied, "yeah, why you ask?"
A smile. A hand shake. Or just a look. Sometimes, this is all it takes.
There is this cool guy that comes around once in a while. He has talked to me once in a while, and it's a really cool guy. A little nerdy, somewhat cool, maybe a geek, I don't know, but he always comes, says hello, smiles at me, and walks away. I respect people who do that. I love when people I don't know come to me and start a conversation. You don't see that so often these days.
Sometimes, when people approach me, I tend to give them some unusual backstory. I don't know if it's because I read too many comic books, or if that's what every writer does, but I entertain myself in figuring out the person with what little he or she says.
There is something... magical about doing what you love.
Yesterday, I woke up at 4:30AM, drove about 3 hours, filmed two scenes that took about 7 hours and drove 4 hours back to my house, getting into my bed around 11:30PM to wake up today to go to work at 9AM.
Sounds insane, but I don't regret any second of it.
I prefer doing this for the rest of my life than have a desk job at a company where I'll get bored out of my mind, going through papers, phone calls, moody people and more papers. There is something fulfilling everytime I go over all the footage I took on a shooting day and see it's great.
Most of the time, I'm sleep deprived, but it makes me happy. Most of the time I'm working on multiple projects at the same time and I want to pull my hair or scream out loud, but I'm happy. Sometimes I whine about how much work I have or how little sleep I get, but at the end of the day, I go to bed with a smile on my face.
I love what I do, and although it's not perfect, I'm not looking for perfect.
Happiness is not perfection. Happiness is knowing what you want, and enjoy every single second you have doing what you love. And if you don't know what you love? Well, the journey does not end there. Keep going, that you will get somewhere. The goal is not the thrilling part, it's the journey. It's sounds awfully cliche, but it's the truth.
This month, I've been... somewhat productive:
- I rewrote Looking For Paradise, which will get published on Naked Acts, the school's screenwriting journal.
- I'm in the middle of producing/shooting my Senior Seminar, a short film called Ashes.
- I started a new untitled screenplay.
- I'm working on a graphic novel.
- I added close to ten pictures to my photography portfolio.
Am I being egocentric? Or am I being selfish? I don't know. I just know that I want things to work. I want things to happen, so I decide to make it happen.
Because seeing things happening make me happy.
Everytime I come back to New Hampshire, I take a walk on the woods. Close to my apartment, there is a railroad. At first I thought it was an old railroad because... well, it seems abandoned. Supposedly, there is a train that passes there everyday. I've been living in here for over two years, and I haven't heard it once.
This gave my imagination something to wander about.
There is a railroad in my backyard, guarded by trees and autumn leaves. On first sight, there's nothing more than old and rusted metals. No one walks around it. Some say it's haunted, others don't mind it. But everyone knows.
Close to midnight, the clocks freeze, time stops for a whole minute. Only those who wait for it, realize this. In that minute, the stars shine. The soft hissing of the whistle comes to the ear as sudden as wind. With every second it comes closer and closer. That's when a red and black train travels in time through those railroads.
For a whole minute.
If you stay in the woods at midnight, and plan carefully your escape, you can hop into the train of memories and time traveling.
Grasslands are now grey like ashes
with a bloody sun up in the sky.
The Kings and Queens of Earth,
at the bottom of the food chain.
I lay my eyes across downtown
The great city, now gone,
piles of dust under smoke and bones.
People in filthy, torn up attires,
Looking for food and water everywhere,
a mix of broken bricks and despair.
Where I stand, the belfry of the church,
the broken body of the bell saves me
from unwanted stares.
It looks like the stage I used to play,
but it is reality. Welcome to existence.
I like quotes. I have a sketch book and I collect quotes. I am not a person who lives through other people sayings, but I like to reflect myself in what other people think of the world. It is fascinating for me to read what other people has to say about the time we live in, how we are supposed to interact with each other, and how it is to fall in love. Quotes make me think of another world, where words are the songs of the soul.
I like words. I like to have words on the walls of my room. They fulfill me, and they fulfill my desire to have a beautiful poem on the walls of my room. Somehow, those words reflect what I can't seem to say. How much I love. How much I fear. How much I think that paradise is right here, with us, right now. How perfect the world is because it is not perfect. Because people come and go. Because people will hurt you.
I like optimism. I like to see the world with all its beauty and accept that, in order for beauty to exist, it has to have some counterpart that must of us call ugly. I prefer to see the glass half full than half empty. I might be a pessimist sometimes, only when I'm tired and in desperately need of sleep. Once a new day comes in, I can't help but to feel overwhelmed with everything around me.
I like people. I like to talk to people and to laugh and to smile. I like to think everytime I smile to someone, I'm helping them to have a better day. Smiles can change people. Smiles have changed me. Culture clashes and people clashes, and it is fascinating.
I like pain. I like hurting because at the end of the day, pain develops areas of myself I would never be able to without it. From the pressure comes diamonds. Crying until falling asleep? Been there, done that. But those are the things that had made me who I am today. I can't help but think, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel, it's darker before dawn, and it has never failed me. Success is inside you, and you are the one who decide to succeed or fail.