All is quiet here.

I've been moving from one city to the next. And while each change in scenery is welcomed, I cannot help but feel that the weather is following me; pinning me under its spell. A lonesome grip held by the chilled and dampened grey.

I long for the rising of the sun, even just to remind me that it's real. To awake the frozen skin I'm covered in; to reveal the colours of the earth, hidden in plain sight, gone unnoticed without illumination. 

I had hoped that leaving the country would open up the doors to inspiration and revive this deadened piece of me. Instead I still feel underneath it all. Buried deep under some weight I cannot name, apart from even the comfort of words. (My words, that is.) I've found there is no easy stream of language overtaking me. I'm met with silence, growing ever more disturbing to my heart.

The quietness of the land does little to comfort me. What should bring a soft relaxation brings rather a raw desperation. I find I cannot open my mouth to speak here; each sound echoing in this valley. 

And while beauty surrounds me down every bend, it too is burdened by the stillness and the grey. I feel that it longs, as I do, to come alive.

S. 

{Photo via: We Heart It}

Promise.

Please don't see how broken I've become:
The way the words and lies have made me numb.

Please promise you won't look as closely as before.
You need not know me anymore.

[Yours always,]

S.

{Photo via: Favim}

Choose Love.

In light of this situation, in light of this life, I think it best that we stop and recall the words of Martin Luther King Jr.:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,

begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes: Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

I see no good in wishing ill on someone, for that only traps us in our own cycle of hate and darkness. Remember that light and love are the only weapons we have to drive out the blackness that surrounds us; and indeed, that is what we should long for.

Choose love, dear friends, above hate or bitterness or anger. Choose it so that it can become part of your character. Choose it when you are wronged, and when it it the furthest from instinct. Choose it, because it is our only hope now: it is our doorway to forgiveness, and through that door we will find freedom and joy renewed.

I am sorry for everything that has happened; but remember that more pain will neither reverse nor erase the pain already felt. Remember that you have a choice, and then choose love.

S.

The sounds of loneliness.

It's taking my breath away, the way a song can flood my mind with the past. I'm really drowning. Drowning in the long - frequent - drives, in the late nights spent with you, in all the things that I forgot to say racing through my mind.

I forgot this loneliness, but it's a not a feeling I despise. Instead I let it crawl back to me in its old familiar way. It comes to hold my hand through the cold, grey months. It latches onto my heart and grabs a hold of my mind (again). There is something odd about this feeling - something addicting about the ache it creates in me. I remember it all.

And I welcome it back. Maybe I ought not wish its return, but there is that something about it. That familiarity that I accidentally long for. Maybe I'd rather - sometimes - fall back and drown in an aching comfort than march forward and upward and past it all.

But it sounds ridiculous like that, no? Unambitious, perhaps? Very well, I am stupid and lazy. But it may be said, clearly and soundly, that some of my most fond memories were in that time. They were in the car rides by myself, in the late night visits that ended too late and too soon, in facing some battles by myself, and in the music that surrounded me all the while. So today I reach for that old friend - the dull ache that kept me company when my heart was beyond the reach of human touch. I let it take me again, to a place where I felt many things, and nothing at all.


S.

{Photo: Junkiesky Tumblr}