Grateful

Yesterday I was mad because a girl I used to call my friend randomly shrieked her guts out at me in a very callous and unpleasant matter. Surprised? You bet. And let’s not leave alone the fact that it wasn’t a very attractive site, seeing as her eyes rolled up, making her look border-line comatose and her scowl was so that it likened her to a sorry excuse of a manatee.

            Bitter, I am not.

            The day before that, my worries consisted of having my guitar strings cramp up into inefficiency (oh, the pain) and having too much homework to be able to bask in the shameful glory of what is Vampire Diaries reruns. Don’t judge me.

            The point is, if I could make a graph of my daily worries in terms of actually being critical or mainly overly-dramatized silliness by yours truly, I think the latter would top the charts.

            Just last week I saw two guys my age digging up a trashcan and placing any valuables (whatever types of valuables you can retrieve in second-hand garbage, that is) and packing them into their bags, I’m guessing, to take home.

            You worry about getting dumped by your girlfriend, being on a diet because of some miniscule extra pounds of flesh, becoming extremely stressed because your homework overload exceeds one hour of your time, and getting upset because your new Mac wasn’t the color that you wanted.

            We humans (the lucky ones that are fortunate enough to have what we do), are not designed to feel grateful or uneasy about our repulsive, trivial, shallow ways.

            We just aren't.

            And that is just sad.

Warning Labels

I abhor people coming to my house.

The plan was to make sushi together. The idea was to eat it and then, no joke, clean up after ourselves. Gasp.  

            The last part sounds dreadful. I know. And in a place where you have a maid  clean up all the dirty specks of your life and where making your bed or taking the physical exertion to rinse a plate and stick it into a dishwasher is a foreign concept, that does sound truly appalling.

            But you know what?

            You take whatever bit of decency and conscience left in your spoiled heart, and you do it.

             Simple as that.

            But my friends were too busy in the terrace inhaling smoke and releasing words relating to the usual teenage girl “life-changing-problem” crap, and overall making themselves useless.

            Of course, when it came to actually consuming anything resembling food, they were all but helpful. If only eating was considered a chore, boy, would they earn a good living.

            Too bad it’s not.

            But cleaning is. People live off of that.

            These people would die.

            I’ve decided catering to events in your humble abode should come with a warning:

CAUTION:

Hostessing has been known to bring you in contact with ostentatious human beings and side-effects include hard labor, bitterness, swelling, the urge to rip your hair out, and unusual homicidal thoughts.

BEWARE.

           

            You can’t say I didn’t warn you.

Simple

It’s not that hard.

I can’t stand you. Fuck off.

You’d rather pierce your flesh repeatedly with freshly sharpened shark needles than endure another monotonous conversation with a human being?

There’s no degree on how to subtly tell someone to relieve you of his or her presence.

There’s no indirect path ingrained with decorum that accomplishes indicating that you’d rather suffocate on the lovely smell of rotting fish.

You just have to forgo manners for that insignificant second.

It’s that simple.

And yet.

It’s not. 

Do Try. Please.

Let’s pretend for a second that the female race isn’t the obscenely annoying and needy faction it certainly is, and that for once in its inhumane existence, it developed some pride.

Wait.

We can’t.

At least I can’t.

I guess being part of the female specimen myself, I’d most likely be more inclined to praise my gender, and yet I can’t help but note the complete disregard and obstruction we have for common sense.

Yes.

I am a traitor to the double X chromosome.

But you would be too if you were to witness atrociously needy girls incessantly call their boyfriends to the point where the latter become indisputably deaf, whine and moan about the extra body-fat that prohibits them from looking downright emaciated, and shamelessly talking trash about any other female who just happens to come on their radar.

Okay.

Is it a foreign concept that when you suffocate someone to the point of death, they’re going to want to get away from said asphyxiating entity as soon as possible? Well, it shouldn’t be. (Although I seriously hope you know because of common sense and not because you’ve actually taken part in someone’s demise).

The same goes for relationships. Breathe on someone so much and cling like some tear-producing, hyena-like-screeching, emotionally-messed-up being?

Chances are they’re going to run.

Fast.

And please don’t point out some barely-there flaw that can only be seen under a microscope. Try and obtain a higher self-esteem via counseling or stop trying to gain compliments telling you “What are you talking about? You are so not fat,” because you already know that, and if your ego gets any bigger, the Earth might just tip on its axis.

Please.

As for the bashing of any girl that happens to guarantee a spot on your ‘Hate List’? God knows if it’s someone who you feel inferior too, threatened by, or just plain dislike. But dissecting every single crevice of their being as if they were a pig laid out for slaughter is not going to help you feel any better. Saying the girl over there that can pass for a Greek Goddess is a genetic miscarriage will not make you drool-worthy attractive. Jealousy is unbecoming.

And so is vocalizing unnecessary commentary about random people.

It’s annoying.

So do try and restrain yourselves.

People say we’re needy, facetious, self-criticizing, faultfinding and hypocritical human beings. And maybe inside all of us there lies a tiny bit of all those aforementioned attributes. But do we necessarily have to make it World News that we feel that way?

Try and tone it down a little. Okay. A lot.

So next time you send a guy running for the hills, you realize no one gives a crap about your self-deprecating thoughts, and you find yourself being tossed aside because you’re too busy talking about the random girl on your left?

Don’t say I didn’t tell you so.

Perfectly Imperfect

Inside the tiny crevices of our lives lie pent-up insecurities. You know, the ones that make you squirm just at the thought and that make you self-conscious when you’re confronted with the possibility of anyone else ever coming close enough to witness them?

The thing is, in this superficial, plastic mud-mass we call Earth, we can’t help but have insecurities based on physical aspects. It’s the fact that you’re five pounds over the status-quo, that you’re eyes don’t obtain any type of brilliance to them and are the color of dog crap, or that your arms have just an extra bit of skin that clings like an unwanted child.

And yet no matter how beautiful or brilliant you are, any positive qualities you have our out-weighted by those little puzzle pieces that are fragmented enough to make you cringe.

Maybe it’s human nature to zoom in on the unwanted or undesirable. Maybe we’re just so contaminated with thoughts of perfection that we are prone to depict what keeps us from reaching that aspiration.

I’m not talking about just our appearances and the physical department. Maybe we were born with a brilliant mental capability that renders us geniuses, but we also are ranging on socially inept. Or vice versa and your beauty is so that it could have been molded and sculptured by Michelangelo himself, but you tend to be viewed with having only one remotely functioning brain cell. And maybe we have a natural knack for music and are known for playing the guitar like a god, but we can’t sing to save our life.

We all have that special talent that makes us wonderful and unique and admirable. But that’s not enough for us, is it? Instead, we focus on what we can’t do. We concentrate on what amazing physical qualities we don’t have or the unfortunate ones that we do.

And we spend valuable time dreaming or raging on the possibilities of “what if”. What if I had this, or didn’t have that? It seems it’s implanted into our brains when we’re born to always want what we can’t have as well as focus on what we ill-fatedly do.

Quite frankly, it’s absurd.

I don’t mean to say that I don’t have my moments of un-catered want, because I do.

But when I dig deep I see the pointlessness of said deed.

Why can’t we focus on what gifts we do obtain and see the lack of others as nature in its purest form: unalterable. Something that is never going to change unless we fall into a pile of toxic waste and magically develop super powers capable of modifying it.

Which is highly unlikely.

So maybe it’s better that we stick with what we have and appreciate it, and cease to pin-point our every detectable flaw. Because what good will that do us besides drench us in bitter feelings and unfulfilled deception? Every blemish, talent (or lack-there-of), and imperfection makes us who we are, unique. That’s what makes the world such an extraordinary place.

If everyone was “perfect”, life would be a lack-luster gray that dulls the mind.

And we are currently the specks of color that keep it sane.

So you think you want to develop an unhidden talent for singing, magically lose any existing body fat, or have all your freckles disappear?

Well, maybe in another, perfect universe, this could all be possible.

But we’re on Earth.

And in this flawed, fault-ridden world, perfection is inexistent.

And while all those flaws and out-of-stock qualities don’t make us perfect, they make us perfectly imperfect.

Not only does that have a cool ring to it, but it is undoubtedly true.

Imperfections make your who you are.

Deal with it.




.

A Thousand Words

Cigarette ashes spread all over the paved streets.

Flashing lights set on billboards atop hypnotizing and prominent skyscrapers.

Taxi cabs and seemingly obtrusive mass of pedestrians rush past in an assorted chaos.

…

There she was.

Just a speck of unnoticeable dust in a pile of overpowering grains of sand.

You could see the dirt-strung leather strap that barely covered the curves of her breasts.

A scrap of cheap cloth made up the barely-there skirt, displaying a pair of what in other circumstances would be killer legs, but at that moment exhibited an almost invisible display of stretch marks from having grown up too fast.

Tasteless red ink tinted her lips, displaying a mouth that had been chastised and rebuked for a better part of her life.

Sunken blue eyes that should have sparked with a certain entrancing gleam just laid back in pure surrender.

There used to be passion in those eyes.

There used to be dreams and hopes for an indescribable future, endless goals, and a never-ending resolution.

But that unending resolution came to an unexpected halt.

Selling her body for money, respect drifted out the window along with other useless scraps of debris.

Just as the seemingly tied-up love for life ran off in speeds that reached places unknown, never found again.

She had succumbed to the world of heroine, useless promises, and selfish wants.

And look where that got her.


A hand clutches my arm.


I turn away from the painting.


“Honey, it’s just a painting, New York in all its amazing, star-lit glory. No need to drift into cardiac arrest.”

She starts dragging me away, my imagination being hauled along with me.

A pictures is worth a thousand words.

I make it worth more.

Priceless Thoughts

A penny for your thoughts.

Really?

Are our thoughts that relatively cheap?

Personally, I think I’d value my thoughts to be worth more than the overall yearly income of the average American citizen.

Maybe people would take into consideration the high-standard price I set for my thoughts if we lived in a world where you could actually pay to know another person’s internal thinking.

But we don’t.

And no matter how much you may wish on a shooting star or pray to God that you know what a certain-someone thinks about you, you will never know.

Depressing, isn’t it.

But there is one dilemma that has been plaguing me all week (or for the past fifteen years of existence), and it is the following:

Do I really want to know what people are thinking?

There will be times when the current object of your affection seems to be unaware of your presence on earth, and you would like to verify that fact in order to be sure of where you stand.

Which in that case, would be nowhere.

Sorry.

Or maybe you’d like to have an inner look into what those Ivy League interviewers thought about you, or what your in-laws really say when they’re not communicating in French (which completely excludes you from the conversation.)

I, personally, I have no other regard for that special would-be possibility if not for the ability to read a guy’s mind (Particularly one of certain importance to my interest).

Simply put, I am teenage girl just like all the rest.

I like boys.

If anything, that should satisfy you completely just by clarifying the unlikelihood of finding me someday in a random alley-way instigating several unmentionable acts with the female specimen. Be thankful.

So of course I sometimes wonder what that certain guy is thinking about me or if he is even thinking about me at all.

But what about the random people you just want to assure yourself feel highly towards you?

Maybe the one person you thought you could trust thinks you’re an invaluable scum who reads books for fun and therefore should go hide an isolated cave for the rest of her lackluster life.

Would you really like to find out that out of all the people you were so happy with, the majority really wanted to have your ass fried on a stick?

What about it regarding you? Would you like your every little secret, lust, and hidden shame to be poured out to anyone who had enough money to buy your most hidden, prized possessions? Your thoughts?

Even if the responses are positive and everyone seems to be who they really are, what would be the point?

What would be the fun if you could pin point every little think a person thought of you from the start?

How would you even learn to overcome those certain things and grow to meet them?

Maybe I’m not making any sense.

Maybe this sounded all the more better in my head.

Maybe that special guy does return those feelings, or maybe he barely notices me all. But why classify everything into perfect slots?

Why take the fun out of waiting for him to call, or waiting for the acceptation to that University, why take away the fun in life?

So bearing in mind that our mind--our thoughts--- is the only thing that we can truly keep for ourselves, why wish for the chance to break those apart just because of our selfish need for other’s approval or admiration?

Thoughts are private. Thoughts are spontaneity.

A penny?

Thoughts are priceless.