fallen
I blogged this first on my personal blog a few days back, but it was so much about choosing the us over the me in my life, and how some things are so much more precious than pride. And it was also sort of the catalyst that got flowers and fury started - really started, instead of being some idea that we vaguely talked about. :) Which is why I am re-posting it here lah.
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[10.10.2004]
Sometimes in life, you feel so very dead, yet very alive. And the evening sun shimmers warmly through the leaves as you lie back flat chilled by your heart in the sun on the bench in the park and feel the wind and wish you could just wing your way along with it and vanish like atoms into the breeze - scattered scattered scattered because that's how you feel, but that's how you can't be. Because you are here here in the now, and you are very very real even though you are very very lost. And you cry silent, and cry out and scream inside and plead with God to take this choice away from you even though you know you have already decided, and let invisible tears fall into the invisible nothingness that surrounds you and you are one and the same with the emptiness. No one hears, because you are alone. And you know you are alone, and realize that you do want to be alone - but not quite. Not really. Not at all. Because you have tasted something so much more. And so you cry because you are here by choice, in a choice you knew that would break you.
And you break - you can't help it, but you can but you don't - but breaking is a slow and painful process as you shatter and struggle and crumble and tear yourself in two and fall apart apart a p a r t and lie there lost and bleeding and yet whole in your pain and whole in your tears and you drag yourself along the path you knew you would take all along but knowing beforehand never makes the choice any easier.
Struggle struggle and stiffen and hold out against yourself. The greatest wars are waged within the heart. The deceitful, deceitful heart. Calloused and bruised, torn and scarred, blind blind blind and afraid and proud and insecure and so settled in pain, so discontentedly settled for a shadow of life, a life with no hurt no vulnerablility no angst no sorrow no pain - but not life, really, save in the name. And you know it.
Speak with the eyes, all the millions of things you want to cry out but cannot. And turn away. Still. Turn. You cannot yet lance the boil, the festering deluge of tears and brokenness and sorrow and love that hovers on the brink of explosion. You are still proudafraidinsecure. So you turn away.
And sometimes too, you try to overcome the agony of thought with concentration on the physical - on movement, on being, measuring your breath slowly in and out in and out keeping calm inhaling exhaling steady, on walking one foot another foot hastily placed left right left right in front of the next on and on just so you can reach that beautiful exhaustion and feel the tired tingling in your calves, the satisfaction of fatigue. And as you walk, you are so so very very conscious of everything around you - of the way the crows float coarsely gentle on the air, the steel shapes of the cars that whiz by and of the reflections in the puddles the mirrors of water that are so easily shattered by your footfalls and you realize it is just like reality reality reality that isn't quite so real after all. And it is all just a reflection but you want something real and tangible to hold but you are afraid of rippling the waters and destroying what you hold dear. Realize that a reflection is but a reflection and you are loving the wrong thing and should turn away from dull mirrors to face the reflected. Turn from a pale mean shadow of life to the full glory of love. You breathe in the air and fill your lungs and close your eyes and realize that you are trying to diminish yourself by drinking in the outside and trying to let it take over the inside so you won't have to face yourself anymore.
But you do. Because you know you treasure this open hurt so much more than your aching selfishness and steely pride, because they weren't the answers you wanted or needed or could truly live in. And this bleeding heart and swollen eyes are yours and ours and therefore beautiful. Somehow. Somehow.
To utter the two phrases that I feared for years. That shattered my pride and my emotional armor. That humbled me and made me so so so damn vulnerable. The [I'm sorry] and [I love you], so short, so potent, so..so. so..
Fallen. And I am glad.
----
[10.10.2004]
Sometimes in life, you feel so very dead, yet very alive. And the evening sun shimmers warmly through the leaves as you lie back flat chilled by your heart in the sun on the bench in the park and feel the wind and wish you could just wing your way along with it and vanish like atoms into the breeze - scattered scattered scattered because that's how you feel, but that's how you can't be. Because you are here here in the now, and you are very very real even though you are very very lost. And you cry silent, and cry out and scream inside and plead with God to take this choice away from you even though you know you have already decided, and let invisible tears fall into the invisible nothingness that surrounds you and you are one and the same with the emptiness. No one hears, because you are alone. And you know you are alone, and realize that you do want to be alone - but not quite. Not really. Not at all. Because you have tasted something so much more. And so you cry because you are here by choice, in a choice you knew that would break you.
And you break - you can't help it, but you can but you don't - but breaking is a slow and painful process as you shatter and struggle and crumble and tear yourself in two and fall apart apart a p a r t and lie there lost and bleeding and yet whole in your pain and whole in your tears and you drag yourself along the path you knew you would take all along but knowing beforehand never makes the choice any easier.
Struggle struggle and stiffen and hold out against yourself. The greatest wars are waged within the heart. The deceitful, deceitful heart. Calloused and bruised, torn and scarred, blind blind blind and afraid and proud and insecure and so settled in pain, so discontentedly settled for a shadow of life, a life with no hurt no vulnerablility no angst no sorrow no pain - but not life, really, save in the name. And you know it.
Speak with the eyes, all the millions of things you want to cry out but cannot. And turn away. Still. Turn. You cannot yet lance the boil, the festering deluge of tears and brokenness and sorrow and love that hovers on the brink of explosion. You are still proudafraidinsecure. So you turn away.
And sometimes too, you try to overcome the agony of thought with concentration on the physical - on movement, on being, measuring your breath slowly in and out in and out keeping calm inhaling exhaling steady, on walking one foot another foot hastily placed left right left right in front of the next on and on just so you can reach that beautiful exhaustion and feel the tired tingling in your calves, the satisfaction of fatigue. And as you walk, you are so so very very conscious of everything around you - of the way the crows float coarsely gentle on the air, the steel shapes of the cars that whiz by and of the reflections in the puddles the mirrors of water that are so easily shattered by your footfalls and you realize it is just like reality reality reality that isn't quite so real after all. And it is all just a reflection but you want something real and tangible to hold but you are afraid of rippling the waters and destroying what you hold dear. Realize that a reflection is but a reflection and you are loving the wrong thing and should turn away from dull mirrors to face the reflected. Turn from a pale mean shadow of life to the full glory of love. You breathe in the air and fill your lungs and close your eyes and realize that you are trying to diminish yourself by drinking in the outside and trying to let it take over the inside so you won't have to face yourself anymore.
But you do. Because you know you treasure this open hurt so much more than your aching selfishness and steely pride, because they weren't the answers you wanted or needed or could truly live in. And this bleeding heart and swollen eyes are yours and ours and therefore beautiful. Somehow. Somehow.
To utter the two phrases that I feared for years. That shattered my pride and my emotional armor. That humbled me and made me so so so damn vulnerable. The [I'm sorry] and [I love you], so short, so potent, so..so. so..
Fallen. And I am glad.
posted by Hwei Ling at 4:11 PM
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