Quote of the Week

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“The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.”

                                                      Rumi

Joy Williams, "I'm In Love With You"

I've been waiting all my life for this morning

Just to wake up next to you holding me

And your head is resting gently on my shoulder

Like you're whispering to me

I'm in love with you

I'm in love with you

So glad I found you

I'm in love with you

When we're leaving dreams and rolling back the covers

All at once we're getting ready for the day

It's when you look at me in the mirror while you're shaving

Before I go on my way, you say

I'm in love with you

I'm in love with you

You're the one I choose

‘Cause I'm in love

Love is joy and love is pain

It's kissing in the rain

It's doing dishes when it's late

Isn't it, baby

It's the art of compromise

It's hellos and long goodbyes

It's the picture of our lives

Isn't it crazy

So I'll call you when I get to where I'm going

And I'll tell everyone we know you said hello

And without fail they'll ask me if I miss you

Of course I do, you know I do

‘Cause I'm in love with you

I'm in love with you

You're the one I choose

I'm in love

I'm in love with you

I'm in love with you

I love you just the same as I did the day

I fell in love with you

Quote of the Week

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Love isn’t an act; it’s a whole life. It’s staying with her now because she needs you; it’s knowing you and she  will still care about each other when sex and daydreams, fights and futures—when all that’s on the shelf and done with. Love-why, I’ll tell you what love is: it’s you at seventy-five and her at seventy-one, each of you listening for the other’s step in the next room, each afraid that a sudden silence, a sudden cry, could mean a lifetime’s talk is over

--Brian Moore 

Per Te

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You were (and still are) what this means to me. 

Glitter in the Air, P!nk

Have you ever fed a lover with just your hands?
Close your eyes and trust it, just trust it
Have you ever thrown a fist full of glitter in the air?
Have you ever looked fear in the face
And said I just don't care?

It's only half past the point of no return
The tip of the iceberg, the sun before the burn
The thunder before lightning, the breath before the phrase
Have you ever felt this way?

Have you ever hated yourself for staring at the phone?
Your whole life waiting on the ring to prove you're not alone
Have you ever been touched so gently you had to cry?
Have you ever invited a stranger to come inside?

It's only half past the point of oblivion
The hourglass on the table, the walk before the run
The breath before the kiss and the fear before the flames
Have you ever felt this way?

La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la

There you are, sitting in the garden
Clutching my coffee, calling me sugar
You called me sugar

Have you ever wished for an endless night?
Lassoed the moon and the stars and pulled that rope tight
Have you ever held your breath and asked yourself
Will it ever get better than tonight? 
Tonight

Finding Andromache

Leaving the familiar to go into the unknown is as alluring as it is daunting. The thought of my loved ones not being a short train or plane ride away scares the shit out of me. Alone at bed at night, sometimes I am filled with doubt and am convinced I should stay in the U.S. and "settle down". After all, I have opportunities here that a lot of people could only dream about. American Privilege. Sometimes I start to believe other people who say that I am a smart woman who has made a foolish decision to move to Turkey for an indeterminate amount of time for no reason other than answering "a call from deep within". It is an adventure, but an uncertainty nonetheless. 

And yet despite these doubts and looks of disappointment, I cannot give in to fear and doubts. I can no longer continually try to fulfill expectations that people have of how I should be. I cannot fall into the trap of complacency and safety. I need to let go…have and want to let go of these safety nets that weigh down my wings. I need to fall—or at the very least experience the sensations of falling—so that I can pull myself up and fly. I need to live and not just go through the motions of living. I need to live for myself instead of be a vessel for other people to live out their dreams. I have to make my own mistakes and not spend a lifetime trying to avoid making the mistakes that others have…mistakes that have defined them into the people that they are now. This lifetime is short enough to spend it worrying about reliving other people’s past, and it is long enough to spend it defined by regrets.

At times I feel like I’m too old for this “finding myself” bit; after all, I did it for a couple of years after high school. But logically, I know that it cannot be true, for since the dawn of time, people have struggled to find themselves. Some have spent a lifetime doing so. Age is irrelevant, as “self” itself doesn’t truly age. 

The hardest part about trying to live up to legacies is that in so doing, you could easily lose track of who you are. To follow in other people’s footsteps more often than not entails setting aside your wants until you just wake up one day and realize that you don’t know what you want. You’ve felt it for so long that somehow, you now believe that your wants have ceased to matter. 

Who am I without my so-called intelligence? Would I still be me? Would I be less of myself had I been more acquainted with the letter grade C than A? Would I still be the golden (grand)child had I chosen writing over game theory, and creativity over pragmatism? What if I believed in kindness and in humanity more than I do in prestige and profits? 

Maybe at the end of this journey and adventure, I'll come back to where it all began. Maybe I already have whatever it is I'm searching for--whatever I feel is missing in my life but have yet to be able to name. Or maybe, just maybe, whatever I'm looking for is on the other side of the world...waiting to be explored. Perhaps in searching for Hector, I'll end up finding Andromache. 

So I'll keep walking, no matter how hesitant my steps. No matter how many times I falter or fall, I will get up and keep walking. I can feel the sun even as I feel uncertainty. I just gotta keep facing forward. 

The One (Who Should've Been): Old Journal Entry

This is my dream home. Not this exactly, but something like it: a house on a cliff that overlooks the ocean. The kind of home where through my bedroom window, I could catch the faint yet distinctive scent of salty sea air. The kind of home where the brightest light I could see at night emanates from the sky—the moon and the stars—and not billboard lights. The kind of home where I could cook big meals with my husband and have our family and friends come over for dinner and drinks. The kind of home where my children calls our neighbours tita and tito, or lola and lolo. A simple home and a simple life, intellectually and culturally rich, rooted in history and invested in the future. 

But wanting this dream means letting go of him, because it is not his dream. 

We finally talked again, this time not tiptoeing on the fragile eggshells that were remnants of us. Anger, frustration, regrets, confusion, resentment, love…all of them were laid bare. 

He pinpointed where it all went wrong: when I wavered on my (family's) lifelong plans for me to attend law school and get into the family business of politics. The only place to go on from where I was academically was up, he said, but I chose to take a descending detour. He was angry and confused as to why I deviated from a plan laid out for me, in a field where I have already proven myself to excel. He believed I didn’t need to find myself, because from an early age, it was expected that I continue a legacy. 

He has become a stranger…he who I could read far better than “The Great Gatsby” or “Knulp.” 

He is no longer the man whose smile knocked me off my feet when we first met. He is no longer the man who reaches out in kindness to homeless people by buying them food. Instead, he is now a man governed by socio-economic, racial, and gender distinction. 

Cognitive dissonance, they call it.

I want so badly to believe that the man I fell for is still there, and that maybe if we compromised, we could still have it all. I believed that love on its own is powerful enough to undo the hurts, the confusion, the frustration. I believed all of it could be salvaged. We still love each other so deeply, you see? 

But then I thought of it. Love. 

And I realized that in my determination to believe our love to be all-encompassing, I forgot about loving oneself.

And I could now see. Understand. Why two people in love isn’t enough, as the fairy tales say. 

To fall in love—to give love to someone else—you must first know and have love for yourself. 

I want him to love and accept me as I am, all of me. I want him to love  not just my so-called intellectual mind but my idealistic heart as well. I want him to love me more when I’m having a rough day at work—not when I win an award—because that’s when I need it the most. I want him to love my ability to read 500-page books in a half a day, as well as the fact that when I try to assemble furniture, they almost always end up lopsided. I want him to love me because I snort when I laugh and make faces at babies. I want him to love me when I’m covered in paint and when I’m biting my lip as I try to finish my manuscripts. I want him to love the part of me who believes that people are capable of goodness, the part of me that’s full of hope and the part of me that’s insecure. I want him to love who I am as well as what I do. 

But what he loves  more is an idealized image of me, an image of what I could or should be. I realize that now. 

And I deserve better. 

Of course I’m fucking scared of this finality that lingers in the air. I’m aware that he may be it, that despite everything, no man could love me as deeply as he does.  I’m scared of being 90 years old and not having a hand to hold. I’m scared of coming home to an empty apartment ten years from now, and rolling over to the other side of the bed and finding it cold and empty. I want to wake up in the mornings realizing that even as I slept, somebody was watching me, loving me. I want to rest my head on somebody’s chest at night and be lulled to sleep by the sound of their heart beating. Knowing that all those could possibly not happen because I let go of him…it scares the shit out of me. 

And yet even if I’m scared shitless, I can’t ever change who I am. I tried. I can change what I am, what I do, where I go, what job to take…but who I am…I cannot. It is my core, my self. 

I can’t give up on my dream home, because it is mine. I cannot give up myself.  

And finally, I understand that my wants do  matter. 

I matter. 

Fulfillment

Sultry, I hear, the rhythm of hitched breath:  
Marked eternity in this, love's sashayed percussion.
Golden skin--tremulous with your alabaster touch. 

There stands you--mighty, gentle, broken, and whole--  
All for me to hold
To love
To get lost in.
Haunted orbs of blue,
Depths of cerulean sea.

You are my obsidian diadem, Obelisk laying claim to this, my quivering heart. 
Mine spine, oh how they shiver at your honeyed breath.

I awake to dreams of heightened sensations,
Of futures awash in fireworks' kaleidoscope.
Hushed conversations illuminated by hearth's embers,

Moonlit dances and rain upon velvet cheeks, 
And fingertips tracing
Stubborn jaw framed by moon-dappled freckles.
Heart to heart,
Hand in hand,
Eyes locked,
Breathing as one.