(Let's Be) Happy Birthday

Umh well...I am typing this piece without any intention that I have to write/or type it in every single year. In fact I have missed an/or skipped a year or two...but fuck, here we go.

Today is my birthday. Yup, birthday. The only occasion that I rarely celebrate. It is just as maybe I have said before that I can't find the hype, the euphoria and the joy in it. Birthday meaning you're getting a year older. Just a year, 365 days older than you were yesterday with TONS OF HOMEWORK. Questioning what's the homework?. Let me start with self improvement. A girl can hope, dream even and sometimes her dreams come true. I can hope and dream that I can be better the day after my birthday for days or years ahead. But what is hope and dream without knowing where are you heading?. Hope and dream were there because there's a goal. A purpose. A destination. Shall I begin?

1st , I want to be healthy by working out, eating clean while living my life to the fullest.

I should have though. I didn't sell my soul to the devil so I can be immortal with a body like Scarlet Johansson, fitness as Jillian Michaels or born as A Lady Of Healthy Eating like Michelle Obama. I need to give efforts to be them in a package. I know that I have been a wishy washy person when it come to this. I was a yoga aficionado in 2013 and back to laid back-hell-I-won't-move my body to a work out session since the result from yoga was still there in 2014. Then, I realized that my fondness towards foods and booze made my inside and out slowly shattered. I better start before I'm completely broken-not-fully-functioned. With work out and eat clean, meaning I can eat and drink and have fun more, yes?.

2nd, (if I could) I will reduce my alcohol and caffeine consumption AANNNDDD...cigarette addiction.

Thought I'm kidding?. Me too!. It's been yeaaaaarrrrsssss I have been though not really that hard trying to quit smoking and drinking alcohol and caffeine. By quit, I didn't mean completely quitting like not at all. I can diminish it but I can't quit. It's good to have those things once in a while, aite?. I found my interest in tea for the last few months actually since my colleague is a tea enthusiast. If someone asked me what's the most 3 drinks I always have in a day, I will answer: Tea, Alcohol and water. See?, a progress  ;)

3rd, I need to strive on the best career for me.

I was a hotel management graduate who never thought that I won't have a career in a hospitality business. Two years ago I was this ignorant little bitch who hated working in a hotel because it's exhausting. Turned out, every job that you do/get will make you exhausted. It is not the job. It is you (I mean, me...). I, these days still of course have the passion on working in a hotel. After jumping here and there, switching the job as this and that, I should have known what I want to do and to have as my career. I know I know, I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer but to be a world citizen (one thing that I strongly believe I will be someday) needs more than a courage to drop off everything that I have and pick up my backpack. I have to work in a job that I enjoy to do for a future that I aim for.

4th, finding God.

Do not ask me how but I know I will along the way. Liz Gilbert wrote "God dwells within you as you" in Eat, Pray, Love. Is it confusing you?. It's confusing me for 5 years as I can remember and that's horrible. I need God so I can put down my fears, my concerns, my prayers. I forgot when was the last time I actually prayed for something and it was actually came from my deepest heart. I don't want God in me, as me, who's a mentally broken and damaged person to be the one I can look up to. I need God as my grip 'cause I know God is the least that will leave me behind.

5th the last but not least, love harder.

to love my life, myself, my family, my friends, to love someone who deserve the love, to love people who loves me. Love is a myth for me. What I have given and showed all these years was caring with a touch of affection. I care about the people in my life, but care doesn't mean that you will be there to catch them when they fall or sacrifice something in order to make them happy or save them from something that harmed. It is love and I want to love. To have, to feel and to give. It is love that won't let me replace my beloved people. To love is to share.

head versus heart

It's 11.41 pm on a Sunday night. I should have be asleep because tomorrow is Monday and I have to go to work and do my routines and catch up with many great things that will happen. I was in the middle of arranging a "Super Monday" playlist when my ears caught a song from Damien Rice's new album. Damien Rice, I like him and his melancholic poetry that translates as songs. 8 years of hiatus and he came back in the same charm. I listened to the song carefully and got "greatest bastard" word  in it.

Am I the greatest bastard that you know?
The only one who let you go?
The one you hurt so much you cannot bear?

You know when you recall someone that remind you of one thing/one song/one movie/one act but you also know that it was when your heart ruled your head?. EXACTLY, I was in the middle of THAT situation. In one second I would like to see how's he doing and in another second, I would very much remind myself that "cmon Aya, everybody is moving on and forward with their life. Why you bother to look back on some sort of endless pain?." At least my brain was working really well. I totally can hold the urge to look up at him. 

He was my personal greatest bastard. In every girl's life there must be one bastard as a lesson learned. BUT, if I'm sorry that you've always been with gazillion of bastards continuously  then it must be something's wrong with you, or your head. I know the feeling of confusion when I can't go forward just because I don't know which way I was facing. Even worse, you can not rely on anyone but yourself. I was thinking why the heck I'm hanging myself on the reverie?. That he will come, again, this time in a shining armor and picking me up, saving me. I ain't a princess in Disney's fairy tale. I was paralyzed, I was not able to see the good in anything and anyone for quite some time. 

Family, friends and love found me just in time. It lifted me up to see the joy of the world. Brought me back as a person I should be. I am me again because my head told me that the insecure/pathetic girl is not me. The letting go process may not be as easy as a movie or a song told you, but it taught me to be a little bit stronger. Because life is much more that just loved, beloved and brokenhearted. It may be rain in your heart, but please keep the rainbow and unicorns in your head. 

♪ ♫ ♪ Damien Rice - The Greatest Bastard ♪ ♫ ♪

Just A Little Note

     I was almost resist to believe that 2014 is almost over. I just thought that I haven't done anything useful or good up until now. Oh well, I just disgrace myself. I have had, maybe do something good, at least for myself. It's not like I was hoping that I found the cure for cancer or ebola or anything grand. 

     Plenty of things happened to me and affected my life, even more myself. I'm thankful that most of them have given me lessons to be learned. I teach myself to take a note of everything that happened at the end of the day, every day. Just because it would be important not to forget what the best that you can get from life lessons. 

     I was never a rational person. Never. Ever. I rarely used my logic to face problems. As the time goes by, like any single person who wouldn't know what will happen to you/or me...I've changed. I was giving myself a training to use my brain, think deep before act, inhale-exhale and just be calm to face whatever in front of me. It made me a protective person when it comes to my heart. So I built a thick and strong shield by default. I didn't want to get carried away with my feeling, 'cause I knew myself better than anyone else in this world. My fully sympathetic, affectionate yet shallow character would ruin what I aimed to do. But then love happened and things changed. It changed a lot. Do I want to get back to level 1 being a rational person?. Well, I would kill to stay as one. 

     My wounded/cold heart felt something warm once again. I was laughing, feeling happier than I've ever been these past 4 years. I love the concept being in love, not falling in love. I was still holding back a little but then someone asked me to loosen up. "It was never a mistake to be happy and to be loved." I forgot how great it was to have someone who love me wholeheartedly. 4 years of waiting, hoping, loving and wanting for the guy to feel the same way lead me to a bittersweet result. However, mio caro teach me that feelings are often real, so let it be. It's just the words we use to express them are artificial, most of the time. So, both of us rarely say "I love you", "I miss you" in a manner that extremely vulgar and unfortunately abusing the meaning.

     The relationship is over, at last. Whatever it was, it's ended. The guy and I, we were moving forward with each other's life. I was wondering why I didn't give up years ago, we were better without each other. I just woke up from a dream that we didn't work out since day 1. So what was the point of me staying all these years?. I wasted my time for something. Then again, in between of happiness and extreme sadness a voice within remind me that when God takes away what you think you have, usually you are going to get something better. And I am now. I would like to keep it, protect it, cherish it. I have failed protecting what I had with the guy but knowing now he wander to better hands that keep him safe is so very relieving for me.

    I'm in love. In love being a happy person. Because I allow myself to be as happy as I can. With or without someone else, I absolutely need someone else sometimes. Happiness is real when it shared, right? . 

The Bibliography of Strings

And you taught me what this feels like.

And then how it feels to lose it.

And you showed me who I wanted.

And then who I wasn't.

And you ticked every box.

And you drew a line.

And you weren't mine to begin with.

And then not to end with.

And you look like everything I wanted.

And then became something I hated.

And you get thought of every day.

And then not in a good way.

And you let me leave.

And then wish I'd stayed.

And you almost killed me.

But I didn't die.

pleasefindthis

ghost

I was trying to recall what I had the past 4 years.

Probably nothing.

Or everything that matters to me the most.

The audience settled in. The theatre dropped dark. The curtain rose. Him and I stood on the stage, ready for the play. Did I play my role well?. No one know. All I know, he got the standing ovation from the audience. I forgot to tell, the audience was set to be silent so there was no cheering. As for him, the role that he played for another 4 years got a long standing ovation but no one said a thing about how good he was. It was simply silencing.

Unfortunately, silence speaks. It speaks harder than the talks. Exactly when I got tired, giving all my best performance every night, every day, and sad but true, years ahead. I don't have to ask him what he feels, because those standing ovations tells me. Of course he's proud, appreciated, and loved. He did good. He made me feel alive to play my role on the stage so I didn't feel sick to perform my role along with him every night. Until I  have to find a hurtful fact by myself when I went back home. I passed another small, luxurious theatre. There he was, on a catchy poster with a lovely lady in another play. 

I felt my throat closed. My feet were shaking. I mustered the courage that left in me to enter the theatre. I sat on the back and I saw him on the stage. His mischievous eyes landed a soft stare to his partner that I never knew she exists , his solid and good shaped body held her petite figure, his perfect hair stroked that woman's neck and his hands...The hands that never let me go now interlocked with her fingers. The audience rewarded him another round of standing ovation. He's as good as he was with me on our stage.

I walked out the theatre and I just knew that I have to quit my role and leave the stage where him and I have been performing all these years. I did my best performance and I did my worst. Lesson learned. The stage and the play taught me all I had to know and experience in life. Now the show is over and with a brief note of good bye, I wish you well, partner. 

(il)legal alien

Fleeting existence. People do change, come and go is pretty normal. It should happen every now and then, so we can let go those who wants to leave and welcome those who wants to come in. The thing is when it happens too often, too fast it makes both my head and my heart hurt more than ever. Amazingly hurts. I never chose to wake up in the morning and suddenly the people who matter the world to me, just stop talking to me for no reasons. The side effect from not talking is the distance that drag you apart from them further and further. The people who I think of every day and make me happy, they just leave and even worse stop acknowledging your existence. The least that I can do is standing there, pretending that nothing happened or being so confused to pull myself together just so I can understand what happened. Until...I start to miss them very much every single second of my day.