The beauty of Hawaii

Here are some photos that I took over the summer while visiting my Mother in Hawaii.

Love Rejected.

Heartbreak. No matter how many times I say it, in any different way the sound of this word is hesitant to roll from the tip of my tongue. We are children, until we have our heart broken. Once this inevitable initiation into adulthood occurs everything changes. Children are wild, free. They strut through the streets, oblivious to the darkness that lurks in the corners, the darkness that hides in the cracks of the road. The most horrible pain one will have to endure in their lifetime is heartbreak. There is no experience that could possibly be more harrowing. Your heart is your center, your core; its what keeps you alive, what sends sweet warm blood pulsating through your veins. When your heart is broken, you are broken. When someone undergoes this for the first time their eyes are opened to the feeling of suffering. Children can only know pain, they cannot know suffering, what it feels like to lose yourself to the torture that this degree of torment will bring. When I had my heart broken for the first time I wished that I could forever be a child, forever stay sculpted in this blissful state.
When I met him I felt something that I had never felt before, for the first time in my life I felt as if I could be myself. I didn’t want to play games; I didn’t want to go out of my way to make him like me. I felt as if everything I was was already perfect for him, like we had been born for each other. Things sparked with the tingling flames of lust. The feel of his embrace made me weak with emotion, pregnant with desire. I wanted him at all times of the day, everyday for the rest of my life. It wasn’t just passion that beat through my body, his laugh sang to me, his words spoke wisdom. I had always been weary in love, but when I met this man I let myself go completely. I lost my sense of reason, the tiny little voice that rests on our shoulder and reminds us to the right thing occasionally. Things remained like this for two months, two months of exotic electric passion. Then one day I woke up to see the shadow of his face being hidden in the ruggedness of his hands. I knew something was wrong. He was distant, nervous and fearful.
He told me he didn’t feel what he had felt two months ago; that what had started as a sublime burst of breath taking flames had dimmed to almost nothingness, flickering from exhaustion, its coals had settled in the dirt, its ashes growing larger while the heat that fluttered from it evaporated into the coldness of the air. He told me it wasn’t me, these things just happened. I muted his voice and gathered my things, the last two months of my life, the best two months of my life. As my hands twisted at his door for the last time I turned around to sadly frown farewell, but his head was turned away, fixated on a growing crack in the wall. I slammed the door behind me, as loudly as I could and once I left I felt tears crash at my cheeks like violent waves subject to a coming storm.
Thunder struck from my tears. I was upset, I was furious, I was confused. Things had been so good, they had almost been perfect and now they were nothing. He had been able to dismiss me so easily, without any warning, without any hints. I sat on a littered curb and gave into my sorrow. Strangers passed me, but I only knew my tears. I was alienated from the world. I didn’t know how I would be able to live in this world; with these people who had no idea of the pain I was experiencing. I cried for quite some time, for hours, until I lifted my head to see vivid hues of Smokey pink painted across the setting sky. I got up, understanding that it was time to go. When I got back home I collapsed my corpse onto my bed and pulled the covers over my head, wrapping myself in a cocoon in the hopes that I would leave my emotions in the world outside.
The next morning I got up slowly and quite late in the day. I stretched myself out of bed and yawned with the humming sunlight that masked the bitterness I felt. I went to close my curtains when my foot stepped on a paper that had found its way onto the floor. Curious, I reached down to see what it was. It was a short story I had written some time ago, one that I had brought over to my heartbreakers house to show him, but had shoved back into my bag when he showed no interest in reading past the first page. I sat down and threw myself into the story, living the life of the characters I had birthed. I had forgotten how much I missed writing. It was one of the few subjects I couldn’t speak to him about; he didn’t understand that part of me. I frowned when I came to this realization; I suddenly wondered how anyone could keep me from writing for two months. I had had writers block, something that drove me to a dreadful state of madness and he had not cared. He didn’t see the point in my writing. Then I found myself smiling, grinning with the radiance of the sun that begun to pour brighter into the room.
He had not understood me; he had not been able to help me develop who I already was. Like the ticking of time, the termination of our relationship finally made sense. If he didn’t love me, then it just meant he didn’t understand me. I needed someone who would understand me because there were going to be times when I didn’t understand myself, times when I would stray from the path of my destiny and I would need someone to remind me of who I am, of who I am meant to be. So he said I wasn’t the one? Well that just meant that he wasn’t the one for me, and I was one step closer to finding the person who was. I needed someone who understood not every part of me, but the most important parts, the parts that made me, me. I felt my smile grow like leaves branching to summers sunlight. It had happened for a reason, and I was going to be ok.

That awkward phase

Lets face it, we all go through that awkward stage, I’d bet my Mothers life on guaranteeing that a quick image of your awkward self flashed through your head while reading that. Relax, its normal; It seems like going through this stage is just part of the natural order of the universe. By not having confidence in yourself for a certain amount of time in your life, you’re keeping yourself grounded. We all have flaws, and by having to work through them we make a better, more interesting person. This is great and all, but unfortunately most don’t realize this until they’ve moved past that phase. For me that phase lasted painfully long. It started when I popped out and entered the world and continued on until my first semester of college.

I’ve always been a writer, there’s no other word to describe who I am. This may sound arrogant, but writers are living in a tough world, we’re shot down and rejected everyday, it hurts; confidence is a must in this field. My confidence came later though, and once my confidence came I found myself changed as a writer. I used to be the shy type, I still am from time to time. I liked to sit by myself and “think” and “write” when I was a kiddo while all of the other children ran around doing what normal kids do. As I grew up it only got worse, my natural shyness did nothing to help the crookedness of my teeth, or the acne that begun covering my face in hideous freckled spots like an infectious cancer. The shyness did nothing to shield my body from the world as the pounds begun stuffing themselves into my fat. The shyness thinned my naturally dull, delicate strings of hair. Worst of all, the shyness made me shyer, and when I looked at myself in the mirror I felt hideous, both inside and out.

By the time I got to college I had changed without realizing it. The weight dropped once I became a vegetarian, I cut my hair into a short choppy cut that framed the oval outline of my face. I developed my own unique style, picking clothes that flashed brightly hued patterns, contrasting myself from what I saw in the world around me. I became a different person, but I was far from being a bad person. The first party that I went to I felt out of place when I walked into the room. I was surrounded by hot men and beer, a females worst enemy. I clung to my friend that night until she got drunk and wandered off with some random guy. When she left me I begun to panic, I was alone. I felt like people were staring at me, laughing at me and pointing at me, whispering amongst themselves. I ran to the bathroom and splashed cool water against my face.

As I sprinkled my skin with showers of water my mind began dancing to the sporadic images that trespassed my thoughts. As I looked in the mirror I suddenly realized that I wasn’t the person I was a year ago, I had grown in so many different ways. I thought of my work and how it had improved, I thought of my courage in moving to a new country for school. Then I looked at my face, and truly looked at it for the first time in years. It had changed. My skin had cleared, my short bob waved at my jaw bone like children skipping, I was thin. True, I didn’t have the things I had always longed for, the things I seemed to be surrounded by in every day life, but I was getting there, slowly, at my own pace. I liked who I was looking at. More importantly, I liked the hope I felt for the future, the longing I felt to only make myself better.

When I was a kid there were many things I could have wished for, things like beauty, wealth, intelligence or even luck. Instead I wished for passion, for the ability to feel alive with every breath I took and to engage myself in life completely. My wish wasn't granted, I found it myself. I found something I love, something that I want to give everything I have to offer to and with this discovery came a happiness I knew I could never feel with being the girl who was beautiful, or the richest or the wealthiest or the luckiest in the room. Instead I realized I would always be the girl who was in love with the world, the girl who could still feel optimistic without having any beauty..luck..intelligence or wealth because I'd always have faith and a burning longing to follow my dreams and to keep diving into the rushing waves that threw themselves at me. By having no confidence in myself I had to work hard to make myself think something I did was even decent. After years of hard work and then a newfound realization that things could only get better, I’m finally the person I am today, the person I was meant to become.

My point is that we all go through this stage. It could last a day or it could last a decade, but we go through it for a reason. Appreciate what you’ve been given. So what if you’re not a vogue model or a multi-millionaire? Don’t wish you had those things, wishing will get you nowhere. Figure out what you want in life and go for it. Be brave and take a chance, do what most people are too afraid to do and follow your dreams. I’ve found that passion can take you anywhere in life. If you have passion then you’ll never give up, and if you never give up then you’ll eventually start to succeed and once you’ve started to succeed you’ll wake up one day and realize that this awkward phase has passed you… and you’ve released a marvelous butterfly, ready to explore the vastness of the unknown sea.