Write from the Heart.

I never thought there was a possibility that I could ever find a place in my heart for anyone else. That there was even an empty crevice to fit someone else and their love story. I thought my time with love was over and I was leaving it on the side of the road. But there it sat and I couldn’t just leave him there. I looked him deep in the eyes and felt a respect I had long desired, an affection that had long alluded me, and a love that was strange to me. I didn’t walk into this expecting anything different but I didn’t walk into it expecting to feel the same. He is crazy, funny, random, and mine. And I don’t know who in the world let him go that God thought I deserved this perfect human being but he’s here. And he is the first person to understand why I wanna get my dads name on my wrist because every time I look down I see the cuts from the sorrow that ate away at my skin and I don’t wanna see that anymore. I wanna see ink, of his name where I can always tell people that he is my life line. They say one cut to your wrist ends your life. I wouldn’t even think about it, especially after having my dads name there. It would be like cutting him out. The first person to understand my pain and not scold me for it. Which is the toughest part because pain in everywhere and for me it is frequent. It’s the ocean I step in, the bed I lie in, the people I talk to. It’s the moment I go from one room to the next and it follows me like its searching for an answer that I just don’t have. But then I see him, and all pain evaporates into the sky and back with god. He is like the wind. Sometimes he’s quiet and he’s just not the sharpest to look at….that’s a joke by the way because he’s beautiful. I’ve never thought a guy could be beautiful but when I look at him, all I can think is he’s beautiful. He’s like the wind where you can’t see it, but you can feel it. And even when I can’t see him, he’s here with me. Every day, every moment. He cares about me like I’ve never known someone to be able to care about me before. I’ve been in some weird relationships but this one is my strangest. The love that it takes to really feel for someone broken has patience and time written all over it in ink tattooed onto animal skin paper. I am broken. And I am not easily repaired, Hell I don’t think I can be fixed. He’ll get mad, he won’t understand and he might walk away. But I know he won’t. I know I think of these things because I feel like he will because that’s what a broken mind does. It makes you think twice about the most beautiful things. And even though I’m afraid most of the time, I had a wake up call. I saw him for who he really was and he made my heart stop and beat and stop and beat again. He made me swoon and smile like I’ve never felt before. He gave me butterflies kisses that sent shivers down my spine to the end and down to my feet where even the ants at my toes could feel them. He doesn’t have to stay. But he does, because he is a real man. He doesn’t give up when the going gets tough. He doesn’t let someone go because they aren’t performing at their best. And he certainly doesn’t stop trying when there’s no more trying left to do. He gives it one more kick and everytime he does that, he pushes me right back into him as if he jumped over me and forced me into his arms again and I fall into them because that’s what I do best. I belong with him. And it’s risky to say it after only five months. But if in my innocence I thought I could be with someone forever after only one month, I think this is possible. There is something magical here and worthwhile that I didn’t think I would have found anywhere else. I am falling in love with this guy with the million dollar smile, who lights up a room if you give him some confidence, who can show you a good time and who can protect you with humor. There is no one on earth to possibly understand just how happy he makes me. Because nobody will understand how unhappy I used to be. And that is the point to my story. An unhappy beginning will always look sorry. You can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel so you settle for less than what you deserve. You think it’s better to be with someone who you think you love but treats you like the ground he steps on every day. But if you look closely and don’t settle for the trash seekers, you’ll find someone who will dig you from that bottom and make you a princess.

I love you, Michael Phillip Jimenez. And I think I always will. #july25

Death marched up to him, smiled, and shook his hand. You were a brave soldier, said Death, I never expected you to be blown away by the fight. And the man simply shook his head with a sad sort of smile playing on his lips. His eyes were sparkling with unshed tears as he looked Death in the eye. You have been a very noble opponent and I was pleased to play this cat and mouse game, he whispered. Death is only the beginning. There is a world waiting for me where pain no longer exists and sorrow is but a whisper in time. No one speaks of what happens when you’re gone. And I can only recall memories of the ones who have gone before me. And as the man spoke those words, he looked into the distance and saw the family members and friends who had been long gone. The tears could not stop him from being strong for the ones left behind. He slowly took a breath as Death could only stare at the floor. I have battled for a very long time. Injuries, both physical and emotional. I have suffered many emotional stings and my life has ended in a less than perfect way. I have loved ones that I am leaving behind and my sorrow is beyond description. I know the empty loss that they will experience. I can understand why they would hate me or God or fate. And as he spoke those words, he turned around back at the world we was leaving behind. Tears streamed down his lively cheek as he whispered: I will not forget the ones who have stood by my struggle. And as death awaits, I will promise you a different forever….

For two years, I have silently struggled to accept death as a friend. Someone who did not wish pain upon me but a job for an old friend. You cannot stop Death from doing what he is supposed to do. But you can welcome him. God, fate, Death….whatever you believe is the reason other than science for the unexplainable passing of a loved one: the hardest battles and struggles are always given to those who won’t give up without a fight. And god wills you to believe in a stronger power, a stronger persona. He wills you to believe that although the battle is rough, you must continue. Although the heartache is great, you must believe that He needs an Angel. God only gives his toughest battles to those who can rise above the struggle and be braver than others. Who can establish hope for those who have lost their faith. I lost my Dad, my best friend, and the only man who I loved with a child’s innocence two years ago. And although I’ve been kicked to the dirt with my breath catching by the heart break in my cheat leaving me breathless….I have strived never to lose my faith. When I feel like I am being pushed to the ground, I continue to stand right back on both my feet. Time has proven to me that it will help you heal, but it can never erase the wounds nor make them sting any less. I have been a witness to the power of time. It moves and can make you forget what you’ve been grieving for. But time can never destroy a heart break where it stood. The heart is like a sculpture. You can fix the cracks as long as you want, but it will never be the same piece of art. It will always be broken.

I love you Papi, and everything I have done and will do for years to come is all because you taught me how to stand on both my feet and move forward. Everything you taught me: from how to swim to how to swim from the sorrow ripping me under the current. No one can take a Daddy’s place on his daughters heart. But God will always be there to fill in the cracks to feel whole again.

I spent my whole life basing every decision in how I felt. And I never questioned it. Because even if I was hurt I was doing exactly what made me happy at that moment. Maybe it was wrong but it taught me a lot of good, hard lessons. And I’ll always appreciate what my past did for me. But this is one moment where I’m not young anymore. And basing my decision on my feelings will likely hurt my heart and someone else’s. I waste time by clinging to my feelings. How do you turn your back on what you’ve been doing your whole life? It’s difficult. It makes you hurt just by thinking about it. But if I could put down the pros and cons of someone I was deeply in love with for two years, why can’t I do it now? Am I afraid of being alone? Is there a chance I don’t wanna hurt someone? There’s never a right answer. You’ll always make a mistake somewhere and nobody can be completely perfect. Which makes everything so much more difficult. But what do you do when you want something, someone, and your expectations were drained? What happens when you have to reevaluate the situation before things get sticky? It’s not an easy answer. And I don’t know when I can be sure. But I can’t be sure months from now when he’s falling for me. Maybe that won’t ever happen. And maybe I’m just trying for no reason and someday things will be answered for me. But until then, I’m sitting around like a waiting duck. And waiting is never a good option. This is my Big situation. Except my feelings were for AJL. But now I’m stuck in a commitment phobic relationship, where I’m the one trying to rid his feelings. I feel distraught and lost. I don’t even know what I’m gonna do. But this weekend is when I will think it through.

I’m not angry anymore. I don’t hate you anymore. I don’t wish the worst, and I definitely hope you find someone equal to you. I used to believe in a simple concept. I used to believe love was innocent. I used to believe love was simple and fragile and if you held it too long, you’d be lost in the dust of what you portrayed to be a broken fragment of something you thought you could change. Love isn’t easy. You can be hurt, and you can encounter deadly circumstances. I used to think you were the definition of love. And I used to think you would change. That’s what love does to you, right? It makes you think you can change the world with just one touch, and that the person you love will change because your love drove them towards that. Which makes you do crazy things. It changes who YOU are, not the other way around. We imagine love is so easy and at the will of your heart….the person loves you back. And it’s enough for their blind eyes to finally see light. But nobody explains to you that love is hard. It hurts and you might not always come out alive. It took two years of a war I believed with all my heart I could win. I won battles, but behind all of it, I was losing the war. And I was injured waiting for a miracle to happen. But it didn’t come. I gave up who I was to sign a peace treaty with you that didn’t come out as I expected. I was the one lied to, and manipulated. All in the name of love. But even the best wars are fought for love. The love of ones beliefs, the love of ones country, the love of the people in the country. Every war has even the slightest clue for love. One reason is small enough. I fought for so long I forgot why I was fighting I gave up. My heart will bleed, but it won’t break anymore. I became the iron man in this war. Where I could be hit but never injured. I am grateful, you taught me lessons that nobody else could teach me. And I found someone to fight for me, too. Love used to be foreign, and for once in my life again I remembered how to love.

There isn’t a real easy way to start out this kind of writing. I’ve written so many times about how unforgiving people in this world can really be. And I’ve come across people who I knew would screw me over eventually, if I ever were to have my back turned. I always had friends come in who would be quick to push me under a moving bus if it meant saving themselves. And I always knew people were horrible, cruel, and they weren’t easy to deal with. But I always had faith. I had faith because of God and because of the one friend in my life that always kept me afloat. She understood, and she pretended to like what I liked and at some point we both ended up having similar interests. We did everything together, for five years. We were inseperable, and people could point us out together in a crowd. High school is about finding who you are, realizing who your real friends are, and for discovering the meaning of a lot of different things. I spent four years just content with my life because I had one person that was rock solid. I never had a reason to doubt. I always felt the truth was there. Being friends with someone you think is true but ends up screwing you over: that has come to be the hardest thing I think I’ve ever dealt with. I’ve had family members die, family problems, almost been kicked out, been heart broken numerous times, screwed over more times to count. But nothing tops this. I had faith for so many years because I had someone who made me feel safe. That anybody else could come and go, but she would always stay. I had faith, and now it feels like i’ve been stabbed in the back. Like a part of me is missing, a part I’ve held on for so long that it feels as if I’ll never be whole again. And as dramatic as it sounds, I don’t care. I’m a human being, with a huge heart. And it’s been broken and stabbed and hurt so many times that I was so close to giving up on everything. But I always had someone to bring me back from the dead. I always had that one safe zone. I find out it’s all fake, that everything was a lie, I get pushed to the curb, and a part of me feels missing. And that’s the worst feeling a person could ever have. I thought for a long time I could keep being positive and have hope…..now I’m not so sure anymore. Everything now feels like I have to question it. Every relationship, friendship, person who comes into my life: I feel the need to question them. I don’t have trust, and for people like HER. It’s because of them: my ex, my ex friends, the people who broke my heart, who hurt me in the past, the people from school, the rumors, the hatred for no reason, etc. All of that has given me a high view. The wall I put up to prevent myself from getting hurt has really weighed me down. I wish I could fall asleep, dream of the beautiful things in life. Pretend I’m not surrounded by a cloud of evil and of regret. I want to pretend I’m not stuck in a world where people hurt each other, or stab their backs. I want to hurt someone, I want to close myself off. This is it. It took five years, a bunch of heart breaks, a bunch of lost friends, and all but ONE person made me change the way I look at this world. I’m finally done being nice. 

I love you. Those are the most powerful words i have ever known. Yes, they are just words. But imagine a person being able to look you in the eyes and say them to you. Imagine having someone look you in the eyes with the words hanging off their still lips. And not being able to control the urge to kiss them away. Imagine feeling that way. Love: it’s giving someone the power over you that nobody else can have. It’s letting someone hold a piece of you that at that moment feels timeless. It’s feeling a horrible, numbing, broken feeling in the thought of them with anyone else. Love is the most powerful emotion to date. It causes wars, but stops them. It gives life, and sometimes takes it away. It makes rash and hasty decisions based on the irrational feeling. It makes you different when you tell other people you’re the same. You glow as if something is shining out of your rear end. In the middle of it all, love can either destroy you or put the pieces back together. Love is a horrible heartbreaker. It leaves you paralyzed in fear, jealousy hits you worse than ever, and you become paranoid. Just remember that if there’s no trust, there is no relationship. Love dug itself inside me, and as much as I try my hardest to admit it: I love someone. And it’s been almost two years since I last felt something twinge in my heart and it’s difficult. Knowing there’s no way a person could accept those three words without the speculation of over-thinking or walking away. Yes, love can hurt you in ways you never thought were possible. It can make you cold and unforgiving. It’s given me a blind eye. But at the end of the day, when you feel your heart beating in the middle of a sentence when the mere thought of him comes up, you know you love someone. It’s not going to be easy after that, after you come to terms with it. But what I know for a fact: love is always worth the fight, heartbreak, tears, and hard work your heart deserves.

June 7th, 2012. The first day I laid eyes on you. I knew that I was trapped. I felt the need to run, to never look back. I was nervous and my insides were turning into a big melting pot of confusing emotions that had been dormant in a cupboard somewhere for two years. And when I saw you, I knew. I felt all of those unkept feelings surface like cattle to water on a dry summer day. I felt what was the first beat of my heart since I had it crushed in another’s hand. When they told you they couldn’t bring people back to life, they didn’t look into your eyes. And my heart beat like it hadn’t felt the rush of adrenaline since birth. And these two months of just constantly being around you made me feel alive again. Like the sun needs the ocean to gleam off of it during the day, and the ocean needs the moon to help the sailors at night. You gave me a purpose. Something to look forward to. You gave me inspiration. A reason to do things like I never wanted to before. You taught me strength, resistance, love, humor, happiness. You gave me the smile that I lost two years ago and thought I’d never get back. You led me to believe I wasn’t alone and no bad would come as long as you said you were there. My heart didn’t feel cold anymore. I gave up the game for you, hurting people wasn’t fun anymore. And when I looked into your eyes every single time, I felt my heart beat out of line. I couldn’t understand. Why one single look from you changed my whole perspective on life itself. How one person could make me so happy. Where you came out of. It all made no sense, but I prayed to god every day for a reason to smile and God gave me 60 reasons. All 60 days spent with you made my life better, made my heart better, made me better. And today, July 25th, I can say you’re mine without having to explain to people. And I promise you, there won’t be a day I won’t make you happy. I promise you will never be hungry for a gracious look, or starved of fresh humor. When I’m around you, I feel brand new again. Like the broken pieces never were broken. I feel like the world is where it’s supposed to be and nobody knew what heart break was. I fe like nothing is wrong again and I couldn’t have asked God for a better reason to smile than the one who holds my hand.

What are the warning signs? Where are the sparks and fireworks? When ate you supposed to know? You meet someone who grants you that one magical wish: to be happier than any one person can be. And you say yes, because what sane human being wouldn’t? The magical feeling stays with you and suddenly you feel like the world is spinning. A few weeks feels like forever and you never want to leave that moment. When reality stops, when is it safe to finally land? God said he had someone out there for every human being that walked this earth. He never said it’d be easy to find that person. I gave up. I let love walk away because I had given up on the fact that it existed. But when I gave up, stopped looking, let my feelings delve on something else….he showed up. I don’t believe in fairy tale endings, or love stories. I don’t believe in love at first sight. But there is something magical in the sparks of something real. When you look into someone’s eyes and you just know you belong there. When there’s never a moment you feel out of place, lonely, or scared. I was scared before. I had no way of knowing whether this would be the same unhealthy relationship I had before. And I still don’t know. Time always plays tricks on the heart. But with time, he’ll show me this is real. But I’m not scared anymore. I’m more sure of something I’ve felt for a month than something I had for two years. Destroying my trust took seconds for Anthony. But for him…it took a month to rebuild. I feel my heart going a million miles per hour. Maybe….love has recaptured my heart strings? I can’t be sure. But with time, he’s proven to make me happier than I’ve felt in so long. And I intend on holding that for as long as I have to. He’s gone for a week now and it feels like ages already in three days. God, time plays tricks on the mind. I honestly have never felt something more real in my life. And it’s awe inspiring to feel such a tug at my heart strings again. To feel like Cupid hasn’t forgotten about me. To feel like love still exists in the world. For a second, I was lost. But when I opened my eyes, he pulled me out of the darkness. And I can’t wait to see him again. Hold him and kiss him like he never left. Finally able to say, I’m falling again and there’s no stopping me now.

A pulse. A single pulse keeps you alive. It beats an average of 60-90 beats per minute. And those beats are what keep you alive. They center you, when you’re at rest. They make you feel alive. Literally. When you see the person you love, sparks fly. Your heart responds in fluttering beats like a butterflies wings and you find a reason to be still. There is no expressing the love you feel for someone. There’s no replacing it. There’s certainly no person that can give you the same feeling. I was in love once. And I’ll never be in love again. It will never be the same for me. And I think that’s the hardest thing to realize. That when it comes to being in love, nobody will ever replace what I had for him. The only guy I gave my entire heart to with a single beat. It was death at first sight and nobody ever saw the way my eyes burned out when he threw it back in my face. Nobody saw the way my heart stopped beating the same way. Nobody knew what happened inside of me. But I did. And I continue to feel it and see the difference every single day. I need a reason to stop the flutter in me. Because I gave my heart to someone totally wrong for me. And I’m stuck in that place of not knowing what to do. I’m completely in love with the wrong idea of love.