The universe is being funny. It lures me with the thought of happily-ever-after, when it turns out to be the other way around. Am I supposed to laugh at the irony?

Let go. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.

A change of heart.

I’ve always wanted to have a tattoo. Not the temporary one you get by paying someone to draw your back on the sea shore; the permanent one, something that won’t be erased after 5 times bathing. One of my closest friends constantly encourages me to get one, but I always brush that idea off—worried that having a tattoo might prevent me from getting a job in the future. I still want it, though, but maybe I’ll get it after I get a full-time job—or when I get older, who knows.

But then she told me that one of her friends said this “The heck, where’s the fun if you make a tattoo when you’re old?”.

She laughed. On the contrary, I didn’t. In fact, it sort of hit me.

How many times my worries prevent me from doing things I like? How many times my worries prevent me from living my life to the fullest?

All my life, I’ve always been some kind of a worrier. As a child, when the other kids were playing hide and seek—I was busy with my thought, what if I was never be found and lost forever in my hiding place?

It got worse by the time I stepped into my teenage years. I worried about my future life. Divorce and unhappy marriage are two things that can be passed through descendants. My paternal grandparents passed it to my dad, and my maternal grandparents passed it to my mom. Considering my issue with commitment and my temper, I’m likely to come across the very same situation. And then it started to get into me. Would I ever file for divorce in my later years? Would I drive my kids insane? Would my kids embody my personality? How if my kids inherit my pain?

I worry about my future career and what am I gonna do with my life. I worry about my assignments, I worry about my grades, I worry that I won’t be able to succeed or accomplish anything, I worry that the guy I have a crush with might not return my feelings, I worry about every single unnecessary thing and it really holds me back from taking a leap. I worry too much that I’m afraid to take the next step of my life.

They say if you believe in yourself, you can achieve anything. But instead of believing, I doubt myself and thus, reducing my chance to achieve something. Worrying is sabotaging. It’s like I’m tampering my own success by worrying too much and not taking the leap.

Robin Williams once said “Carpe Diem” to his students in one scene of my favorite movie, Dead Poets Society, but I never really get it till now. It means ‘seize the day’—make your life extraordinary. Worrying won’t get you anywhere. Worrying won’t help you seizing the day, and instead, make your golden chances fleet from your grip because you’re too afraid to hold it tight.

Your life should be filled with adventure and fun, not worries. Enjoy, don’t overthink anything. Let those thoughts go—if it’s meant to happen, it’s gonna happen. If it doesn’t, there’s always another chance. Just take the leap. If you worry you might fall, remember there’s always a bandaid to take that pain away and make you learn not to do the same mistake twice.

Getting a tattoo is just one thing, but how long will it take to really prevent me from living my life to the fullest? Life is too short to be wasted in worrying and not doing things you should be doing. Life is also too precious to be wasted in worrying about unnecessary thing instead of grabbing every single opportunities offered and make the best out of it.

Carpe diem, my friends, because you can only live once.

P.S: I might get a tattoo in a short time. Maybe. Who knows? :P

For the love of bread

Love this to death. 

Goodbyes are always like this:

When you first hear the news you’re gonna be separated, you promise each other you’ll meet up as often as you could. If necessary, every single day of the year. But you turn out to be really busy with the college assignments or the pile of works you have to do. So busy that you could only meet up once in a while. The intensity of your meetings decreases as time goes by, as well as the intimacy of your talks. At first you talk about things you’re doing right now, even in tiniest detail and how you wish they were there to see it themselves. But then you only meet them in short time, maybe only for lunch and you constantly check your smartphone to see if somebody else from your current life texts you.

And then there’s time when you can’t meet them at all. You could spare your time, but you don’t because you always say you have something better to do. To overcome your guilt, you still try to talk to them by media. First by phone, saying sorry you couldn’t be there to meet them in person and promise you’ll see each other soon. Then your conversation gradually shifts to text messages. First your texts are long and meaningful, but slowly you’re too lazy to type and just talk in short sentences. You don’t share things just like you used to. Your conversation is more to redemption because you know, deep down in your heart, it’s just feel wrong to forget an old friend. But later you think “to hell with it” and stop sending them text messages. You only reply them by one word, well, two or three words tops. Once in a while you mention them on twitter or write messages on their facebook wall, just to show that you haven’t forgotten about them. However, we all know the truth. There’s nothing sincere about that. It’s a mere formality and self-redemption. 

At last, there comes the time when you don’t talk to them at all. Neither in person nor by media. You only exchange greetings and small talks if you, by any chance, coincidentally meet them on the hallway or bus station. You asked them how are the doing without really mean it. It’s no longer a self-redemption act. It’s only for the sake of formality. 

Then eventually you are further parted. You hardly meet them, let alone talk to them. Every once in a while you send them holiday postcards or party invitation which they politely decline, partly because they’re too busy with their current life and partly because they know it would be a little awkward. You do the same thing to the postcards they send. Both of you know it’s only a matter of time when those postcards stop coming to the mail. Maybe because one of you move and forget to leave the address to the other, or maybe because both of you are just tired to cling on to the past for mere formality and have decided to move on. 

And in the end, you’re by yourself again. You keep telling yourself you’ve moved on but sometimes you can never resist the urge to look at your old photographs again. You keep yourself busy with your current life and current friends because you don’t want to think about the possibility of you’re being forgotten. Selfishly, you don’t want to be forgotten eventhough you acted otherwise. And then you regret every decision you made, how you shouldn’t do such things and how you should’ve fix things up when there’s still chance. However, it’s far too impossible now. You both have gone your separate ways. You don’t see each other again, you don’t talk to each other again. All you have is the memory of the good times you shared in the past. 

It’s always like that. You say goodbye, you make promises, you violate your own promises, the idea of being forgotten flashes through you mind and suddenly you regret everything you’ve done. The only thing left is the repercussion of what you did. 

Regrets always come too late, when there’s no chance to make things up again. But why regret when you don’t even seem to care preserving your relationship? 

It all comes down to one reason: The truth is, it’s not goodbyes that scares people the most. It’s being forgotten, being erased from someone’s mind. It hurts the most because you know you’re not worthy enough to be remembered. It’s emphasize the thought that you’re not special. You’re not unique as a snowflake design or a fingerprint. You’re just like a dust among the other who look exactly like you, one small not-so-special particle that can easily swept by the wind and gone forever. Unknown, unremembered.

Say hi to Bailey!