just let me know this cause I tried to think of every possible reason but I couldn't get any solid reason or an understandable definition as to why.
"weren’t you the one who wants to get too close to me..? just now why are you trying to leave..?"
I didn't even know your name, your face, your voice or anything. you came up to me and started to talk with me. it was you who took the first step in everything...at first, I was very careful and very quiet, but I risked thinking you're not like others...but what was different? OH! you were good at faking and deceiving that was different! you were already popular, school heartthrob, rich, have friends, intelligent. but for me on the other hand, I was shy, introverted, insecure, trauma's, anxieties and was broke...I didn't have anything special to brag about. I never talked until you talked or if it was necessary. I never tried to catch your attention as others did. then why was I the one who had to suffer all this? I know I can handle it well, I know I can hide it so well that no one will know I'm suffering, but that didn't mean I deserve it!! like seriously, all the moments and memories we had, you never NOT EVEN FOR ONCE felt loved or loved me!? I tried so hard. I thought I could change you. I took the risk, I took the bait, I took every torture, I took every hurtful word, action. even after witnessing that I was just a bet I still loved you. even after witnessing you making out with other girls I still kissed you! only god knows how much I loved you! I never wished or will wish to have never loved you cause if I didn't give me all I would feel like I was at fault. I gave everything but got nothing in return and that's okay. I learned my lesson...I freaking knew what hell meant after that! the very first thing I did was say "let's break up" and I don't regret saying it. I said regret not feeling hurt! it hurts so bad, but I can't let myself hurt like this. this person doesn't deserve my time, my care, my love, my affection. but I still can't help but think about "why?"
why? why do you have to leave when I got attached to you? why now of all the damn times you had in past. you could have left when I didn't care so much when I didn't love so much when I didn't get so attached.
I don’t know what happened to your heart, but please, don’t hold your love back. Some cracks need to be filled with your love and only your love can fill them. I don’t know what happened to your heart, but please, be strong in who you are. And please, don’t let the actions of another convince you that you are not good enough as you are. There is eternal love in your heart and it is always protecting you.
There are places you need to go because you deserve the love you’ll find there if you give your soul permission to go. You will know when someone is not worth your energy. You will know when someone is not worthy of the love you have to give. Trust your intuition. We are all worthy of love but only certain souls are meant to love certain souls.
I don’t know what happened to your heart, but please, keep loving. Your love is never wasted. Your love is always seen even if it is not received to the depth you are giving it.
I don’t know what happened to your heart, but please, remind yourself that it’s okay to need a lot of time to move on from what hurt you. It is so important to not give your heart away too soon. It is so important to rest and reflect. It is so important to take time to heal and grow. You deserve all of the time you need to heal from what hurt you. You deserve all of the time you need to be open to love again. It’s okay to feel hurt. All along it wasn’t your fault.
There is no rush when it comes to finding the person you are meant to be with. I know it feels like a rush. I know it hurts when the people around you are in love and you’re not. Maybe sometimes it feels like the world is falling in love and you’re alone wondering why you’re alone. In those moments of being alone, I hope you remind yourself that you are beyond worthy of the love you desire. Write it down if you don’t believe it. I hope you know there is nothing wrong with you. You are not difficult to love. You are not any less than the people you compare yourself to. You are completely enough just as you are.
Growth is tiring, but growth is so important. Please, let your love overflow through you before you give it away. One day the sunrise will wake you up and you’ll be laying next to someone in awe they are yours.
I thought she would say no. I thought she would say, “No, Nava. Go home and sleep in your own bed. Call your friend, make tea, fall asleep with a book lying open on your chest.”
In a quiet voice, she said, “Yes. I’m just a little nervous being here alone. But only for the first night.”
There are many ways in which people die.
Some people die suddenly in car accidents. Some people die in their sleep. Sometimes it’s instant. Sometimes it’s quick. Sometimes you’re on this planet, reaching for your cup of morning coffee, and the next minute, you’re staring at yourself while people try to revive your heart that suddenly stopped beating. Sometimes, you kiss your kids and your partner goodnight. And then, you don’t wake up.
You see, dying in palliative care is very different. Palliative is where you go to die. You don’t go to get healed or treated. You don’t go to recover. You go because you know your time is limited, and you want to ease everyone else’s lives around you by having doctors and nurses take care of you, instead of your loved ones.
Isn’t it ironic? The same building we’re born in is the same one we die in.
My friend asked me a billion times if I was warm enough, and I thought to myself, “She’s the one who’s dying, and she’s the one who’s worried if I’m warm enough.”
We said goodnight to each other, but I don’t remember sleeping that night. I remember thinking if I wished this nightmare be over, she would have to die.
I love you, more.
I’ve come to realize that I have a special talent for pretending everything is perfect, when in fact, the world is quite literally falling apart.
A friend once said to me, “Not everything is always “ya ya ya, totally”, Nava.”
I don’t remember when I decided to stop feeling anything. Maybe I decided to stop feeling anything because I knew that no one would ever love me as much as she did, and no one was ever going to ask me again if I needed an extra blanket as they lay dying.
And as she and I parted our ways that day, part of me must have thought, “You see Nava, love really doesn’t matter. Because no matter how much someone loves you, we all must die.”
And maybe that day was the beginning of the end.
And as I write this now, tears roll down my face because I truly realize what pretending not to cry means.
As I did my routine in the morning, “We all must die” floats through my mind. So the failed expectations and the heartbreak that I felt from her, doesn’t seem as painful anymore. But it’s a double-edged sword because then the love never seems as real.
We are all stories.
So I’m forced to write.
You see, writing down our stories is a way of playing god.
We can give ourselves the answers we want, the answers we need, and the answers we crave. Some of our stories have left us open and bruised. Some of our stories run through our veins, from our fingers to our toes.
We breathe our stories. I breathe her death and I breathe his heartbreak. But when we take our pen to paper.
When we write down our pain, our heartbreak, the thoughts that consume us, the control they have over us lessens.
Things happen to us in life because they are stories that need to be told. And these stories will always be a part of us.
But, we are the authors of our own stories. And even if the endings are already written in the stars, it is up to us on how, when, and if, we choose to breathe them.
◕ Like the sky opens after a rainy day we must open to ourselves. Learn to love yourself for who you are and open so the world can see you shine. I’ve always found the rain very calming. The nicest thing about the rain is that it always stops. Eventually ◕
One’s true personality is revealed once he/she speaks while being emotionally charged.
When we’re emotionally charged, we fall back to automatic behaviours, such as the fight or flight instinct. Our subconscious behaviour takes over to get us out of the seemingly harmful situation.
We were emotionally charged pretty often in the past. It’s not surprising we accustom ourselves to maintain a specific vocabulary in our everyday language. And we use this vocabulary to talk to other people, as well as to ourselves.
You unconsciously use phrases like:
“I must do it” — instead of “I decide to do it”,
“It happens to me all the time” — instead of “I take responsibility for it”,
“I encounter a problem” — instead of “I challenge myself”,
“This situation sucks” — instead of “It teaches me something”,
“I have a terrible day” — instead of “I am capable of being more powerful”,
“I am ugly” — instead of “I’m unique, which makes me beautiful”,
“I am not good enough” — instead of “I will improve”,
“I can’t do it” — instead of “I’ll learn to do it”,
“Other people are better” — instead of “I have mentors that teach me”.
I don’t know you. I don’t know your situation. I’m pretty sure your emotional reactions were understandable. It’s comprehensible that you talk to yourself in this way from time to time. Don’t suppress it. But question it is as well.
Every decision is easier when made a second time. It’s easy to react the same way a second, third, or fourth time. Don’t do that. Don’t create a subconscious rhythm of destructive self-talk. Because once you maintain this thinking subconsciously, you will put your personal filter over any statement:
If someone says to you that you need to improve a specific skill, you infer you’re currently not good enough.
If someone says to you that you’re beautiful, you feel uncomfortable.
If someone talks about his achievements, you feel jealous.
All these cases have one thing in common — you feel hurt, even though the other person never intended to hurt you. You hurt yourself by your unhealed yet ignored parts that got triggered within.
It’s not the thing itself that hurts us. It’s that we refuse to deal with it. It hurts because we haven’t expended any energy to resolve it yet. We haven’t put our strength together to work on ourselves finally. In other words, we feel hurt because we feel incapable of doing anything about it.
If you feel hurt by other people, it’s time for you to accept one thing: You’re worthy enough to take care of yourself. Don’t let yourself be told anything else.
Listen to the words you say throughout the day. Take notice of your reactions. You’ll observe they’re connected and root in your thinking. How about just using a few more positive words from today on and observing what happens?
From a passionate thought, there could never grow weakness. From a loving thought, there could never grow anything else but love. Think loving, kind, and compassionate thoughts, and you will see the world starting to act differently, but accordingly.
Your thinking patterns act like a filter through which you experience your life. Two different people might recall the same event in completely different ways because they don’t perceive objective reality. They interpret what they perceive based on their beliefs. These interpretations form their subjective realities.
Imagine two painters sitting in jail; each has a canvas and a beautiful view of the outside world through a prison bar window. One would paint the bars that lock him from freedom; the other would paint the colourful outside view. Two equal situations, but different perceptions, that root in different sets of beliefs:
Since you’re a child, you experienced, learned, and got told,
you’re only loved, if…,
you’re not good enough,
someone else makes it better,
you’re nothing special,
you must do this and that,
you must be like everyone else,
you must fit into the group,
you’re insignificant, too old, too young, too big, too small.
Over time you made congruent experiences. Plans didn’t prove to be successful. Projects didn’t work. You fell out of love. Beloved people left your life. It’s hardly surprising you use these experiences and setbacks as evidence for what you already believe subconsciously.
“I might fail but I’ll never quit & if I never quit, I’ll never fail.” — Anonymous
You know what? You never gave up, so you’ve never been a failure. The opposite is the case. You’re here and moving forward. Don’t be so tense. Just fine-tune a few screws on your attitude and invite things to unfold in their natural way and timing.
You have people in your life that love you unconditionally.
You have strengths. You’ve just been too focused on your weaknesses.
There is always the one who can do it better, but you’re the only one with your unique, personal, and valuable experiences.
I’m pretty sure we could extend this list endlessly. It shows how a tiny difference in perspective can change the whole perception of life.
Take your experiences and look at them from a different angle. Can you put a positive spin on them? What do they want to teach you?
Imagine you’ve obtained a mindset that translates each setback into a lesson, each exertion into power, each difficulty into an exercise. You’d not only live life way more naturally, but you’d also form a firm belief that you’re strong enough to handle anything life throws at you.
“The mind is everything. What you think you become.” — Anonymous
Researchers found that cells within the human body are subject to permanent and regular regeneration. The cells of our bodies aren’t old. They keep regenerating and therefore are quite new. As we grow older, only the ratio between the generation of new cells and the degeneration of old cells varies. But regeneration continues.
Your body is as vital and young as it has always been.
To put it in other words: The only old thing you carry is your outdated thinking about your new and regenerated self.
Your mind might still carry old and destructive thinking patterns due to your conditioning. You are trained not to consciously question how to live your life, how to make a difference, and how to think for yourself. You are conditioned to perceive your life as it is right now without questioning it.
What your body does automatically for your physical existence is your responsibility to do for your mental well-being.
(This was scientific and informational, and I'm sure most of you would have just read it half-heartedly or just skipped a few lines so I got the one with which you can relate more. People usually read things or listen to something to which they can connect to or they are going through.)
It's been a while since the last time I wrote a letter to you. How have you been? Now that sounds like a silly question because we've heard so much about you these past years! So many people wrote about your success story and of course, you guys keep updating us about your daily life on Twitter, Instagram, fancafe, Vlive app and many more platforms. We're watching you dearly from afar and glad to see that you're spreading your wings even more!
So.. 8 years, huh? To say that it's an eye-opening, tough, emotional, but wonderful, exciting, illuminating and precious journey is such an understatement; it's impossible to find a single word to describe it. We still remember like it was only yesterday when Namjoon-ssi said to everyone who has acknowledged you guys, that if they could at least lessen our pain from 100 to 99, 98.. then it was enough. But we're here to tell you, you've done so much more than that.
There are days when we feel sad, depressed, sick, injured or hurt. Some of us are having an identity crisis, feeling worthless and unwanted, or being ignored and unheard. A lot of us are struggling with our dreams and passions, or scared of our future and still undecided about what to do next. But then, it feels like we find you at the perfect time. When we are sad and depressed, listening to your music is like a healing process for us. When we are questioning ourselves and our ability, you come to us and sing, “On days where I hate myself for being me, on days where I want to disappear forever, let's make a door. It's in your heart, open the door and this place will await. I wanted to become your comfort and move your heart. I want to take away your sadness, and pain”. You give us Magic Shop, a miraculous place where we can escape the reality for a while and meet you there to encourage and enjoy each other's presence. You also say, “What did I say? I said you’d win, didn’t I?”. You believe in us, even way before we do. And as dramatic as it may sound, but you also give us a will to live and make us see the other side of life, the side where things get better. You become our reason to smile and laugh again. You make our hearts flutter when you say you like our smiles and that our laughter sounds beautiful, as we rarely hear that from other people.
With your consistency, while making music, writing lyrics, performing on stage, and spreading kindness and positivity, you give us the courage to speak up. To use our voice for something that we really care about. To give back and to always do good wherever we go, starting from the smallest things. After seeing you constantly work hard and barely having time to rest, you give us the driving force to finally take a step forward and start doing whatever we need to do. With your patience while finding the meaning of life, the meaning of love, you touch our hearts which have been hurt several times before making us skeptical about love. You teach us that love is not always about a person to person, but could also be about 'me and myself' and that we should love ourselves first before we can start loving other people properly. By looking at the process of seeking your inner peace and staying true to yourself, you teach us how to be grateful for our life, to not always worry about the past or the future, to let loose and enjoy the present while it lasts. On top of all that, you unite us in this together. We find new friends, brothers, sisters, and soulmates because of the love that we have for you.
That's when we know our heart is in the right place.
We cannot be thankful enough for everything that we have gone through together.
We thank you for lending your hand to help us cross this fragile bridge of life.
We thank you for being our—and each other's—source of light.
We thank you for spreading nothing but positivity to the world.
We thank you for your love and passion for music that inspires us to achieve our own dreams.
We thank you for letting us experience how great it is to be a part of something historical.
We thank you for treating us dearly, like your own family.
We thank you for being honest, for keeping it real and relatable.
And most importantly, we thank you for teaching us that there is no greater joy than being a human, to feel these overwhelming yet fascinating emotions, to give love and receive love, to be happy but to also feel sadness, to blend with others but also stand out because of the differences, and to show us the purest form of human relationships : being there for each other through thick and thin and making each other shine brightly in equal glow.
Namjoon-ssi also said the other day to use you, BTS, to love ourselves because you guys use us and learn from us how to love yourself. Sounds good for us. Let's continue to live our life hand-in-hand, okay?
“Let's only walk on flower trails, I can't say that
Let's only see good things, I can't say that either
Saying that there will only be good things from now on, saying that you won't get hurt
I was driving to work and saw how much the leaves had begun to change. Their vibrant reds and oranges, scattered on the ground and hanging on the branches. It made me realize I survived another season without you.
It’s been over a year since you broke my heart. And to be honest, I feel like a broken record for continuing to talk about you. The fact that you can still bring tears to my eyes on days when I’m so happy. How you can keep me up at night, unable to close my eyes because memories of you still play in the back of my mind.
But I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to cry at the thought of your name. I don’t want to toss and turn to hold the covers to my face. I want to bring my smile back that used to take up my whole face with how much it showed. I want to go back to sleeping peacefully.
To say I’ve grown this year without you by my side would be an understatement. I’ve changed so much for the better I don’t even recognize that girl in photos from a year ago. I wish I could have been able to tell her how much she would be better off without you, but she needed to hurt before she started to heal. My healing process is over now.
Yes, there have been many dark days where I didn’t want to make it to tomorrow. Times where I couldn’t see myself without you in my life. I thought about that girl who begged for you to stay. To not get in your car, drive away and never come back. But now I know it’s what was best. And as hard as it is to finally admit, us no longer being together was the best thing to happen to me.
I see myself in a new light now. Someone who knows her self-worth and won’t settle for anything less than what I deserve. A person who is courageous and takes each day at a time and goes after what she wants. I have you to thank for that. Because of you I know what I want and will never stop trying to find it even if it takes the rest of my life. I just knew that what I wanted wasn’t you, wasn’t us together. It doesn’t hurt the same way it did a year ago to say that.
I’ll never forget you and maybe I’ll never stop loving you, but I will never go back to you no matter what. There’s still a tiny piece of my heart that you carry whether you know it or not. Maybe it’s that part that’s weighing you down, I know the feeling, I lived that way for so long. But I finally released it and I can breathe again. I was the one who gave my heart to you and trusted you to keep it and hold it close. I guess we were both foolish for doing something we knew wouldn’t happen.
You were my first love. I can’t and wouldn’t change that. I don’t want to go back and erase every single memory of us we shared together. All the good times and even the bad ones too. Because whether we like it or not, there was a time when those moments were all that mattered and they made us into the people we are today. I can’t fix the past, but I can improve the present to make sure my future is brighter and better for me to never want to look back but take it with me and move on.
I won’t find someone just like you, I’ve come to realize that the hard way this year. Spending my time on dates and dating someone searching for something reminded me of you. Only to break up with them and hurt them because they didn’t come close to you. I know now I need to stop comparing everyone to you. Because if I want a chance to find happiness and love again I need to know that the love you gave me was all you could offer. But that there will be someone else out there who can give me more and is willing to. Not everyone I will meet will be like you. there will be someone who will love me for REAL ME.
I know now that if I want to be happy, I need to let you go. I need to stop hanging on to something that used to be good. I don’t hate you, I could never. But I hate what you did, what you were capable of doing. If we ever even accidentally bump into each other, I hope one day I want to just smile to myself and proudly think that I am a better version of myself now.
My only concern right now is myself because I haven’t been the best person for me this past year. But it’s time I do that, starting with something I thought would always be hard. I want to change myself for the good, I don't want to be someone who is the only one who is putting in efforts.
~ We'd always go into it blindly
I needed to lose you to find me
This dancing was killing me softly
I needed to hate you to love me
I needed to lose you to love me ~
It’s time I say goodbye to you. Because for me to truly love myself, I need to let you go. Holding onto you was slowly killing me inside and I don’t want to feel that way anymore.
So, this is me releasing you, you’re free from my thoughts and my mind. I won't be sad anymore. I will be me. Now I can finally stand tall and uncurl my fingers.
And now the chapter is closed and done
And now it's goodbye, it's goodbye for us.
~ Who says you're not perfect?
Who says you're not worth it?
Who says you're the only one that's hurting?
Who says you're not pretty?
Who says you're not beautiful?
Who says you can't be the best?
Trust me, that's the price of beauty ~
~ Sometimes not getting what you want is a brilliant stroke of luck. Once you figure out what you want in life—expect nothing less. Find your focus by seeking all that is good in your life. The decide word is so powerful. It's amazing what you can do once you decide to do it. When the awareness of what is achievable brushes your life, your journey has begun ~
Am I happy?
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I wish I could say that I ask myself that as rarely as every monumental day during the year, but the truth is I find myself thinking it—or even saying it out loud—every other week. A tiny part of my heart can’t help but feel like I’m missing something, and most of my brain agree with it. And since this sort of occasion is as extraordinary as the big bang, I’d have to take it as a pressing matter.
More often than not I curse myself for feeling such a horrid hollowness in my guts. I have so much to be thankful for, and to be honest; I could not find any crack in my life that I am discontented with. I can’t. So why do I have this constant feeling that it is not enough? Why do I feel like there are greater things for me that I somehow cannot see? In the recesses of my heart, there is a missing puzzle piece, and the thought that I might never discover it frightens me to my bones.
I’ve always had a perfect image in my mind of how I want my life to look like someday. Okay, yes, I realize that it is a long shot but really, how do I bring myself to settle for anything less? I have the blueprint of that dream in my head, but what if they’re only lines and never concrete? What if I’ll always be pleased but never happy?
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Every particle in my being is telling me that there is something I need to look for, a clue that leads to the treasure. But like, all I keep finding are clues leading to other clues.
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We all have those feelings we just can’t brush off no matter how many distractions we provide ourselves, and for me, this is one of those feelings. This quest comes with a desire to find something new: a new place, new people, or perhaps, a fresh start. It feels like that missing piece is not here, it’s not with anyone I know right now, and, God forbid, maybe not in this lifetime. How do you find something when you’re not even sure what you’re looking for? My search for that piece to fill the void is desperate, up to the point where it is becoming more and more disheartening.
I was never the kind of person who waits around for something to happen, or for someone to come along. So why does it feel like I suddenly am? Sure, I’m on a continuing journey of finding that missing piece, but I’m always looking at all the distant places. Down the road, around the corner, you name it. It suddenly dawned on me that I’m waiting. I’m waiting. Waiting to find that missing piece, waiting to be finally complete, waiting to be happy. When I thought I was taking charge of my future, I let myself forget how dynamic and uncertain the future is. I let myself forget that we only go to new places, meet new people, and experience a well-deserved fresh start when we are ready for them. But most of all, I let myself forget that this void only makes me human, not incomplete.
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Am I happy?
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I have been denying myself the privilege to say yes to that question. This quest I’m on has not been in vain, for I know now that I’ve been looking in all the wrong places. I know now that I have been looking out and tip-toeing around for something certainly uncertain, something that I will only find when I learn to embrace this hollowness and still be happy. Happy, perhaps, is not down the road. It’s not around the corner. It’s not in someone else’s hands, nor it is in a distant place I’ve never visited. It’s every single day.
It’s every meal I have and every hand I shake, it’s every book I read and every smile I see. It’s within the void, not outside of it. Happiness, as I’ve come to realize, is right here. Happiness is right here, right now, or not at all.
So. Am I happy?
Yes, I am.
Usually, I shut my eyes off at 12 am, but lately, I am having a hard time sleeping. Maybe because of stress? Depression? Anxiety? I don’t know.
I came to realize that something is missing in my life. But that piece is still unknown. Maybe a person? A touch? A drink? I don’t know.
I’ve been through a lot of difficulties in my life: rejections, betrayals, breakups, trust that was ruined, and an unsteady relationship with my family. All this pain that I encountered made me ask myself if I’m really worth it.
I’ve always been the saddest one in a group full of extroverted people. Always on the side with soda on my left hand and a snack on the other. Always anxious about everything.
It’s been years since I started writing, I am always unsure of myself, unsure of the words that I’m using. My mind is always unstable. Before I sleep there are so many random things that pop in my head. Countless problems that have never been solved, good or painful memories.
If I seek help from others, I feel that they might think I’m not that important so I don’t deserve their help. That I should do things on my own. Or when if there’s something wrong around me, I feel that it’s all my fault. There’s no other person to blame but me.
I couldn’t let go of the mistakes I made back then that made my family really disappointed. I feel they are slowly walking away from me.
I can’t stop blaming myself at all times. I feel I am not worth it. I feel I am not enough.
Whenever I’m going to open up to someone, I feel that they’re just there to listen by the ear, not by the heart. I’m losing all the confidence I had when I was free and happy. I couldn’t help myself up. I always have hesitations and fears. I have so many troubles and pleasure running in my head and they never stopped running until I fall asleep.
Despite every trial, I encountered, every tear that fell from my eyes, every heartache I endure. Here I am, still breathing.
Still thinking and dreaming after 2 a.m. falls.
It’s a phase of my life that I am really tired of repeating but leaves me in ecstasy every time somehow, for being able to see what my true self is.
