Loss | Eid ul Fitr ’20

So about three years ago, I lost my nana seemingly out of the blue. A man I grew up idolizing, someone I never saw getting sick a day in his life, had a cold and constant body aches during the last week of his life. I think some part of me knew what was coming, a part of me was just numb when it happened. I couldn’t accept it. He couldn’t just be gone, ya know? The day he passed, I didn’t lose my grandfather, it felt like I lost my father. Because for most intents and purposes, he was.

 

I’ve tried to put this feeling into words countless times now, time, and again I felt like what I was trying to say never justified the raw emotion and pain that took over me. He left out of nowhere and I realized I was one of the only two men left in my mum’s home that could take care of a family. I shut my emotions off upon this realization, I put a brave face on and stuck by my family as much as I physically could.

 

Emotionally for the better part of a year, I was dead. I don’t think I truly processed what it meant to have him not be around. I never processed what losing my biggest supporter meant. We had this tradition where I’d go meet him before I went out with friends, he’d always ask to check my wallet to see if I had any money on me. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t but he’d always had me some money before I left.

 

A year passes, I still haven’t processed not having him around. I still swing by his work, hoping to see him in his chair, waiting for me with a smile that always seemed to ease any worries I ever had. But all I see now is an empty chair. One of the biggest regrets I have of my time with him is that I only have a handful of pictures with him. I never really thought that one day those pictures are all I would have.

 

It was at this time that I’d scrapped my way to A2, despite what happened, A-Levels waits for no one. I had to put on my brave face again. The past year was so difficult, I constantly kept pushing loved ones away. Kept to myself. But it was finally time to start facing reality, and I did it through my art. I had to make a portfolio for my A2 Media Studies class in the form of a short film.

 

And I chose to put all my hurt, all my sadness, my anger every single emotion I felt up till that moment into my film. Saudade was as close as a representation of my mental state during the two years after his death. I felt lost, alone but as if I didn’t have time for feeling like that. I had to step up and be an adult. Too many times in my life I’ve felt like I had to be the adult in a situation, but nana never let me. He’d always remind me to be a child until I no longer could.

 

He never told me what I’d have to do once he was gone.

 

The past couple of years Eid hasn’t felt worth celebrating without him. It wasn’t Eid without his smile, it wasn’t Eid without the hug that could make everything bad go away. Eid wasn’t the same without my dad. Eid wasn’t the same without the best male influence I ever had in my life. If there’s anything anyone reading this likes about me, you have my nana to thank for that.

 

Coincidentally, Eid and my birthday have been falling very close to each other these past three years. My birthday was much the same, I didn’t want to do anything and my friends knew that. The first year I did nothing, the second year my friends ended up throwing me a surprise birthday trying to get me to normalize my life without him. And I will never stop being grateful to them for that.

 

This Eid, despite everything that’s going on I was determined to make it different. There would be no more moping, there would be no more regrets. This year, I took multiple pictures with Nanu people, I would no longer be upset for not capturing a moment in time for XYZ reasons. This year, I would force my family together by means and get at least one family portrait.

 

I hope nana is looking down at me from heaven as I write this and knows how much I love him and how much I miss him. I wasn’t ready to have him leave then, and if he was here right now I wouldn’t let him go now. I’m not ready to grow up without you nana. You’ll never see me graduate, you’ll never see me screen my first film in a cinema. You’ll never see me achieving all the dreams I have.

 

I miss you more than I can put into words. As these tears stream down my face while I write this, I hope I’m making you proud. I’m doing my best to be a good person. I take care of mummy, I fight with her much less. I’m even helping take care of the shop! I’m doing Law now. I know you told mummy you thought I had an aptitude for it, so I’m doing this for you. To make you proud.

 

Wherever you are now, I love you. I’m trying to be better, to be a man like you. So that I can be someone worth looking up to. Thank you for giving me someone to strive after. I’m trying to never take any more moments for granted. I’m trying to smile more and live life to the absolute fullest like you wanted me to. I hope you’re happy with me.

 

It’s been about three years now but it’s still so surreal, but even so I’ve accepted it. No more pushing the feelings or thoughts away. No more sadness, no more regrets. This feeling, the emptiness you feel after losing someone you love, it never really goes away. It’s just something you learn to live with, it grows with you. And after a while it stops weighing you down but helps you heal. I hope whoever is reading this, somehow my words reach you and you cherish the moments you have with your loved ones. If recent events have taught us anything, its that anything can happen at any moment. Live life to the fullest, no one knows when it may end.

Lost

I’m lost. At this point I honestly don’t know where the heck I am, where I’m going, what am I even doing anymore? I’m not happy, that much I’m certain of. I’m not content with where I am in life and I want to change that. Question is, how? How does one find out what they want from life, and how do they get there?

 

A few months ago, one of my teachers asked my class some very important questions:

What do you want?

Why do you want it?

How will you achieve it?

 

And that really stuck with me. What do I want? I’ve been racking my brain for a bit, I’ve been pulling at my hair trying to come to a conclusion. But, I can’t find anything. Initially, when he’d asked these questions, my answer had been very straight forward: happiness. I wanted to be happy.

 

But, that doesn’t feel like enough anymore. I look around me, so many people without knowing what they truly want, they’re content. Just as many actually know what they want from this life and they’re striving towards it. I’ve been in both boats I suppose, at one point I had a goal but life played its hand and it turned out to be a better one than what I had. That goal changed. And now I’m a little lost, roaming without a purpose, in my pursuit of happiness.

 

All I need to know now, is this pursuit worth it? Struggling, dragging myself forward, hoping and praying for a solution somewhere. I just want this to be over. But I guess life can’t really be that easy, can it? Nothing worth having is earned without pain, through the pain we grow, through the pain we learn. But no one said the pain would be more than just the throbbing in my heart. No one told me the pain would slowly start working its way into my brain, my heart of hearts.

 

Slowly poisoning my thoughts. Killing my imagination. And well here I am, without a purpose, my art drying up and dying as my emotions already have just lost in this dreary existence I call my life now.

It’s getting tedious waking up every single day, the same mundane routine no real reason for following it just doing it for the sake of having some semblance of purpose just so I don’t feel as lost as I know I am. It’s weird, I’m not sad but I’m not happy either. Oddly enough, I think a quote from Winnie The Pooh of all people might just sum up what I’m feeling “I’m not lost for I know where I am. But however, where I am may be lost.”

 

The only difference being, Pooh knew where he was, I don’t. Heaven knows what this life has in store for me, all I guess we can really do is wait and see. Make this life a life worth living even if we do get lost along the way.

 

 

Me and My Brown Eyes

“Brown eyes were never my favourite until I saw yours.”
– mytenwordstoryig

Thank you for loving me and my brown eyes, for teaching me that there was so much more than I first thought about these eyes of mine. That they were more than just the endless voids that I thought they were, they could be pools of liquid gold if the sun shone on them a certain way. I needn’t stay in the darkness, the sun would shine on me too.

You taught me to love my eyes despite how I thought they weren’t anything special, but you showed me how beautiful brown eyes really could be. It’s true what they say I guess, you never really grow to appreciate brown eyes until you fall in love with someone who has brown eyes.

I fell in love with you and somehow found myself falling for my eyes too. They weren’t just plain and ordinary anymore. They held warmth, I couldn’t really fathom it at first but there was love and there was hope in them. So I want to take this chance to thank you. For giving me hope, helping me love myself, heaven knows I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you.

For showing me that Brown eyes can be just as beautiful as any other colour, if not more. You just need to know what to look for. Beauty indeed does lie in the eye of the beholder. I fell for your eyes in ways I never would have imagined. When the sun shone on them, they become the most beautiful honey golden. They draw me in, their warmth making even my cold heart come out of the darkness it’s come to call home. The wonder that your eyes hold, the yearning to learn, to know. To be able to experience all the wonders of the world, to memorise each and every single detail you can possibly take in.

Your eyes are like none I’ve ever seen before. In your eyes, I could see love. Love for me and my Brown eyes. I saw everything you saw, and for the first time, I could see clearly what it meant to love oneself. Me and my Brown eyes will forever be grateful to you, I pray I can make you love your eyes like you’ve made me love mine.

I Will Love Again

Shattered. That’s how I felt in that instance, everything I’d known came crumbling down in front of me. The love I had fading away, my paint drying up, the ink in my pen leaking out, my voice cracking.

“To love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed” – Cassandra Claire

All of me feels numb to the core. As I see you in another’s arms. I know not what to do anymore. A love I thought to be mine, was all along someone else’s? Fate truly is a cruel mistress.

I wish to move forward, to forget, to heal. But I can’t do it if I continue to think of you as I do. I no longer sing to you anymore… I sing to your friend. Does he tell you of my despair? Does he tell you of the pain in my voice? Without you here, I speak to the moon, he’s all I have left of you.

“Why wasn’t I good enough?” I shout to the heavens. It’s frustrating to still, I pull at my hair, I want to hate you. I really do. But I can’t. All that time I spent with you, all those moments we’ve shared.

You were my muse for the longest time. So much of my art is inspired by you. I can’t just let that go, so how do I? How do I throw away everything I’ve known about love and my art just like that?

Let me, love, let me feel once again. Let me get lost once more in your eyes, I wish to become so intoxicated I forget how to breathe.

If this is what I must feel to have a taste of your love, then death is not my demise. Death will be my bliss. I try to write once again, this time of someone other than you. I think I may have found a new muse. Someone who can sympathize with what’s left of my broken heart.

02:00 am, I begin. I let the night consume me and get lost in it, my pen guides my heart as it weeps. And it cries as the ink leaves my pen and stains the paper underneath.

I didn’t manage to write much. But, it was enough. Enough to make me realize not to pine for something when I could get much better. If it is meant to be, it will be so. I just hope you’re happy and loved. Because I want to be, and I won’t let this stop me.

I will live, and I will love again. This is goodbye, for now, maybe we’ll meet again someday. But for now, this is it.

You were like an unexpected storm on a perfect day, leaving destruction in your wake. And I was utterly, and inexplicably in love with you. But I can’t wait for something that may never happen, so I will live for me, no longer for you.

Not worrying about you is going to take some getting used to. Not loving you is taking some getting used to. But I will succeed.

You shattered me, but I’m learning to pick the pieces back up again. And I will be whole once again.

Love Was The Most Unexpected Person I’d Ever Met

The first time I met love, I was sixteen years old. I met her in the most unexpected of places, in the most unexpected of ways. At the given time, I never could’ve known, that this, is what love was supposed to be.

Love used to wear her hair in a high ponytail, love used to pout in every picture she took. I never expected love to be this way.

I had a completely different vision of love than the one I got. For me, love was shy, love would blush whenever I complimented her. But when I met love, she was neither of those things. Love was never shy, she was always confident. Love would hardly blush when I said something about her, but that’s what made her all the more intriguing to me.

Love made me rethink everything I said and did, love made me question whether the love I had envisioned was really love or not.

Love had a way about her that made me want to sing all the time, a way I’d never felt before. Love truly was something else entirely. But love also had her flaws. Love was not perfect, and she reminded me of that fact every time we spoke.

Love didn’t feel everything I felt so deeply. Love was not ready for commitment when I was. Love was never constant in my life, love came, and love left as she pleased. Each time she came, I couldn’t help but love her. Each time she left… I still loved her. Because love made me say and do things I never thought I’d be doing, love truly was something I’d never expected.

Love was like a whirlwind in my life, love introduced me to all her friends. Soon I found myself so invested in her life, I didn’t realize where my life ended, and where her life started. It was an oddity, living a life where I knew everything and everyone, but I didn’t really know anything or anyone.

Love helped me grow in ways I never could’ve seen myself growing. Love believed in me where I found it hard to believe in myself. Love never gave up on me, when I all but had.

Love had an odd way of showing she cared, she never could outright say it, but she showed it with everything she did. Love truly was the most unexpected thing I’d ever encountered.

Love filled gaps in my life I never knew I had, but her absence created gaps in my life as well. But I learned to bear with her passings as well. Each time she came, I welcomed her with a smile, each time she left… I wished her well, with a teary smile she’d never get to see.

Love was not the best person I’d ever met, but she had something about her that kept me coming back. Love made me strong, yet she made me weak. Love was my strength while simultaneously becoming my weakness.

For all her flaws and imperfections, to me, she’d always be love. And for love, I’d wait till forever. Love was the most unexpected thing I’d ever experienced, and she became the one oddity in my life I just couldn’t live without.

After everything was said and done, eight years of our lives spent together I finally told love who she was to me. And just how much she meant to me. That day love made me the happiest man in the world, she said the words that finally made love the constant in my life that I’d always wanted her to be: “you will forever be my always.” 

Love truly was the most unexpected thing ever, but eventually even the unexpected was something I’d grown to learn was where the best of things happened to us.

Hold On

Hold on, hold onto me, dear friend. For I fear without your embrace I may fade away. I’m cold, so very cold but your warmth reminds me of what it felt like to be home. Keep me close to your heart, for that is where I wish to stay forever.

My breathing is shaky, my words slip, my hands trembling. I try to utter the words I wish to say to you so desperately, but I can’t. I try to show you what I wish to see, but I’m unable to. Oh ’twas me cursed to love one whose heart belongs to another.

Your emotions are in turmoil, your mind in disarray. If nothing makes sense, how do you make sense of this? How do we come to the decision that what we have cannot be what we both need oh so desperately?

I’m sitting here at quite late an hour, the night sky is riddled with stars, tiny flecks of light in the pure black void. Although sleep tries to envelop me, I wish to stay awake, for I know not how many beautiful nights like this I may live to see again.

It’s getting harder to breathe as time passes on, I see things changing before my very eyes. I see people growing older, maturing, I’m reminded of time simply passes by us. Waiting for no one and going forward, never stopping. And it saddens me to see this day, but I am more forlorn over how short a time I have left with you.

Hold on, hold onto me, dear friend. For I fear without your embrace I may fade away. I’m cold, so very cold but your warmth reminds me of what it felt like to be home. Keep me close to your heart, for that is where I wish to stay forever.

I try to sing and my voice cracks each time the words reach my lips, the only thing I can utter anymore is your name. But how am I to sing of my sorrows, when the only thing I can sing about is the one thing that brought me joy?

As I’m left here thinking of where time will take me, I’m left wondering how much time do I have itself. Will I see tomorrow? Who knows how long they truly have, I do not. But I am content with seeing where time will take me.

I know I don’t have much time left, all I can do is hold on for as long as I can. You give me all the strength I have left. And I know until my last dying breath, I will love you, for I know not of any other love. I’ve held on only so long because of you. But my illness is getting stronger. My strength is waning.

As I go I ask only one thing of you, promise me… promise me you’ll hold on. Promise me despite how tough it may get, you’ll keep fighting. Promise me you won’t give up when giving up seems like the easiest thing to do. My soul will rest easy knowing you held on when I couldn’t… I’ll know my life meant something after all.

I’m afraid though, I’m afraid of what’s in store for me. Stay with me? Just a little while longer, until I can finally rest.

Hold on, hold onto me, dear friend. For I fear without your embrace I may fade away. I’m cold, so very cold but your warmth reminds me of what it felt like to be home. Keep me close to your heart, for that is where I wish to stay forever.

Goodbye, my love, you will forever be my always. Even if I wasn’t yours.

Time Will Tell The Tale

I’m sitting here at quite late an hour, the night sky is riddled with stars, tiny flecks of light in the pure black void. Although sleep tries to envelop me, I wish to stay awake, for I know not how many beautiful nights like this I may live to see again.

Life has become a rush of events happening faster than I can contemplate, months come and go by as hours used to. I can feel the grains of time falling through the infinite hourglass signalling how the end is near. I find it astonishing how fast time is passing all of us by, but none of us truly appreciate what this time has given us. We don’t love the people we have in our lives, we aren’t happy with the things we have, we aren’t satisfied with everything we’re given. All we can really do is complain.

It keeps bringing me back to one point, what’s going to happen to all of us when there’s no time left to do anything? There’s no time left to repent for our mistakes, there’s no time left to give the love we failed to give, there won’t be any time to say sorry for the wrongs we committed. Time is passing by us so fast, and if we don’t appreciate time for it’s worth, I fear time won’t think twice about doing the same to us.

As I’m wasting away on this starlit night I’m left to think of all the wrongs I’ve done, all the hearts I’ve broken. I lay awake at this hour, not knowing what to do, with all that I’ve already done. Looking back on the life I’ve lived, I can’t help but sigh at how foolish I really was I never thought of how I took things for granted and never thought of how I could end up losing everything I had.

I never truly learnt to seize the opportunity and rise to the occasion on time for it to ever matter, I wasn’t able to be there for the people I loved, I wasn’t able to become the man I wished to be because of how I let countless chances slip through my fingers.

Where I stand now, it’s too late to cry about moments lost, but I can look to the future. I won’t give up till it’s over, if it takes me forever, if I stumble, I’ll get back up. Time waits for no man or woman, and I no longer wish to waste how much of it I may have left in this world.

With how fast time is flying by, I don’t know how long I have, I can’t say how long any of the people I love will be with me either. All I know is that I want to spend whatever I have left on this earth in the best possible way, I wish to live life to the fullest. Leave no stone unturned, and as I leave I want to forever imprint my mark on history.

Although I do find it odd how time seems to wish well upon some, while seemingly leading others to ruin. I see people getting admissions in the colleges they wanted, I see people getting married to the person they wished to, finding success in one form or the other. But then I see the misfits, the rebels who just don’t seem to fit. I see them struggling through life, I see them fighting and clawing to find their way in the world. What had they done to deserve what they had to bear on their own?

This is to the rebels who don’t want to be like the rest, for the misfits who want to stand out you may be different, you aren’t like the rest and that is brilliant in the age we live in. Don’t fret over how you may not be at a good point in life at the moment, you may not be like other people you’d see otherwise but your time will come. You aren’t like the rest and so you can’t expect to reach places at the same pace as them, we all have our own way of going about things and reaching places on our own time.

There is nothing in this world we can’t accomplish, so do not fret friend, do not cry for you aren’t a failure. You are a star just waiting to pierce the dark with your light, you just need to keep shining a little longer and a little brighter. Give your life a little time to mend itself, with time it will fix things. You are brilliant, you are beautiful, time leaves remnants of itself through whoever it goes and so shall it with you. And as time leaves us you will leave your art for the world to admire after you’re gone.

For you see time will tell the tale of how you turned time in your favour.

The Power of a Prayer

Life is truly a wondrous thing if one truly wishes to admire it for its real beauty, we all lead very different lives than each other. Some of us spend our entire lives always knowing what we’re doing, planning everything in a very meticulous manner and executing everything to perfection. But then there are those who wish to be great but aren’t as adept at following through with everything they plan. The ambition is there, the will to succeed is there but there is one thing or the other always holding them back from achieving the greatness they’re destined to reach.

Make no mistake there is nothing in this world that we can’t do, but only the fearless can be great at them. The ones who aren’t afraid to take a risk, to go the extra mile for what matters to them.

I was much like the second of people in life. I had dreams, I had goals. I wanted to be someone who people could look up to, I wanted to be remembered as someone great. When people thought of me when I’d be gone I wanted them to remember me with a smile on their face, and no tears in their eyes, but if they ever wept for me it’d be tears of joy. ‘That woman truly was different, she made a difference in life. She helped me…’ that is how I wished to be remembered. But I always found myself lacking in one thing or the other. I knew that this shouldn’t be happening, I was smart, I was brave, I was cunning when needed, my looks weren’t half bad either, but most of all I had a good heart.

I never hurt anyone if I could help it, never broke anyone’s heart. In fact, I tried to help as many people as I could, spread all the happiness that was possible for one girl. I helped people laugh, I helped people smile, I took away everyone’s sadness even if it meant making it my own. As long as I could make a difference for someone and make their life better it made me feel good about myself. I wasn’t always a very religious person but whenever I was sad I’d pray to my Lord and I’d ask him “Oh my Lord, have I done something to displease you? Haven’t I made you happy with all that I do for your people? I try and help as many people as I can, I spread smiles wherever I go. Why is it then that I am unhappy in life?”

I’d go about my life each day the same way, I tried to study but could never reach the potential everyone knew I could reach. I grew frustrated with myself, I began fearing for my future, I feared no college would take me. I feared I’d let my parents down, that I was worthless. My friends seemed to have their lives sorted out, some were planning where to go on vacation, some were already looking forward to college, but all I could do was feel miserable about how unfair my life seemed to be.

I sat down, with a clear mind. I wished to speak to my Lord and ask Him for help. I prayed to him, I spoke to Him of all the good I’d done, I spoke to Him of my failures, I spoke to Him of what I wished to be in this life. I wept in front of my Lord for forgiveness, I wasn’t very religious by any means, I didn’t pray very often but I wasn’t infrequent with it either. I still tried to do all the good things my religion taught. But I felt like something was always missing. As I sat that one night and wept to my Lord, I asked him to help not just me, I asked Him to help my friends who were going through troubles worse than mine. I asked Him to help my family, my father was very sick and being admitted to the hospital he needed all the prayers he could possibly get. I prayed for my best friend the boy who stood by me through everything, no matter how much I pushed him away he always seemed to find his way back into my heart. I prayed to Him to help me find my way back to my religion, to help me find my way in life. And I promised Him I’d work harder than ever, and I fulfilled that promise to Him.

After I got up praying that night, I felt a change in me, my heart felt lighter. I felt better than I had in quite a while. I fulfilled my promise to my Lord. I started praying more regularly, I thanked Him for the life he’d given me, for the blessings He’d bestowed on me. And with time, I saw how the power of prayer began working, life didn’t seem so bleak anymore. My father got better, I began studying harder than ever and managed to get into the college I wished to study in. My friends who I saw suffering, it seemed my Lord wished for me to be the one to end their suffering. I helped them in any way that I could and stood by them when there was nothing to be done. And with time all the suffering ebbed away. And my best friend, the one who stood by me when I thought I was worthless and had nothing left in me, he showed me he’d love me just for who I am regardless of what that entailed.

And so I began hoping again, I began hoping for a good life. I began hoping that there was a good future waiting for me ahead, and not just me but for all of us. Because a very important thing I feel we all forget from time to time is that there is more to living than not dying. There is so much to be done if only one wills it to be so, anything is possible so long as you believe in it. And prayers do wonders even in the darkest of times, this was something I’d experienced for myself. For those of us who are going through a tough time, just know, you are never alone and things will get better given time. Never lose faith.

A Guardian Angel’s Tale

How do you love a girl who no longer wishes to love herself? How do you help her realise her worth? She cut her hair thinking no one would bother telling her how beautiful she looked when she’d kept it long, I longed to tell her but couldn’t for it was not my place. She stopped smiling thinking no one would care that she didn’t, I cared but could not voice my displeasure for my job was only to watch. She stopped spreading all the joy she spread because she believed there would be other people to take her place, how could I tell her of all the little children who wished to see their big sister again? Her eyes lost the mirth they once held, gone was the girl I’d been sent to look after, gone was the girl who simply brightened people’s days just by her presence. 

It seemed the girl I fell in love with was truly gone forever… but I wouldn’t believe it. Ever since I could remember she was like the flame of a burning candle in a room filled with darkness, lighting up the path for herself and all those around her. Spreading love and joy wherever she went, and the people, by God the people loved her for it. The girl I saw before me now was dead, emotionally she was destroyed. Her eyes were dull and the beautiful pools of gold I often found myself lost in had become cold and emotionless. The colour in her once rosy cheeks seemed to leave her pale almost as if she were sick, the smile that seemed to stop wars in place was no longer there…

I wished to hug her and tell her everything would be alright, to kiss her and tell her how she was so breathtakingly beautiful but I could not. I was to be her guardian but never to interfere with her directly, I could only protect her as much as she wished to protect herself. We often believe that our entire lives are already written out for us, that every action we commit is predestined for us and there is nothing we can do to change it but that couldn’t be further from the truth. We choose the life we think we deserve, not the ones we wish we had because we deem ourselves unworthy of them. But who is to decide who is worthy and who is not? Your destiny is within your own hands if only you wish to reach out and take it for your own. 

As much as I may love her, I cannot influence her directly, I cannot make her decisions for her she must do that herself. But I believe, before I came into her life there were things she kept to herself, spoke to no one about them. But now, now that she has me there beside her she try’s to open up, to speak about what ails her, in those brief moments of vulnerability she seems so fragile and I’m afraid to even touch her, as if she were made of glass and one wrong move could have her falling apart into my hands. 

God sent me to her to teach her to love herself again, to have her hope once again. To show her He hadn’t abandoned her, that I was her guardian angel and I’d be there whenever she needed me. I was sent to ‘fix’ her, but how do you fix someone who is so utterly broken they believe they are no longer worth being saved? I pray that I find an answer to my worries, I pray she finds the peace she so desperately needs in her life. As I feel the time passing me by, I can feel the grains of time slipping through my fingers, I’m reminded of my inability to help the one I love but then I’m reminded of the strong, beautiful and hope filled girl it was who I fell in love with and the fires in my heart reignite because I know she’s in there somewhere deep down. 

Wherever you’re drowning, whatever you feel is pulling you down so far that you cannot escape from it, I promise you, you are far stronger than you realise. You can and will break free from this, you are everything that represents what all women of this era wish to be seen as. Strong, intelligent, beautiful, caring, passionate all of this and more I just need you to believe in it one more time and look into the mirror and see what I wish to see in you again. 

There is more to living than not dying, and I wish I could show you how much your life means, to not throw it away. We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.

 

Hope

“There’s only four rules you need to remember: Make the plan, Execute the plan, Expect the plan to go off the rails… Throw away the plan.”

 As long as you keep that in mind, there isn’t anything that can faze you, there isn’t anything that can thwart you. Because if you expect the worst, you’ll never be disappointed. The world is a harsh and cruel world where only the selfish succeed, but somehow someway with a little hope there’s a light shinning in the dark that’s waiting to burst out.

Be that light in the dark. Be your own superhero, don’t want for someone to come rescue you. Be the one who saved themselves because they didn’t want to wait for anyone else to do it anymore. We are the heroes of our age, and there is nothing stopping us from greatness except us. Be the change you want to see in the world and don’t let anyone deter you from it. There’s a whole world filled with possibilities just waiting for you to come seize it, you have the chance, you have the opportunity, all of it waiting for you only if you so choose to go after it and take it.

Listen to the mustn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts. Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossible’s, the won’ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me… Anything can happen, child. Anything can be. The world is your playground to do with as you please, your blank canvas to paint your legacy as you see fit. Make mistakes, fail, fall down, but never give up. Get back up each time stronger than when you fell, learn something new from every time you fell. There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for. But above all else never give up hope, because hope keeps us alive, it keeps us dreaming and if we lost that. Well, there wouldn’t be much to come home to now would there? There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for. They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.