Goals this school year:
1. Save up money for San Francisco
2. Get a grade no lower than 1.75 in any subject
3. Get a scholarship for Mint SF
4. Get out of this place
Is it weird that I spent 18 (almost 19) years in this place and it still doesn’t feel like home?
1. Call, text, or email a friend that you’ve been meaning to talk to and simply tell them, “I love you” or “I miss you.”
2. Visit or send flowers to a friend who is sick or just needs some TLC lately.
3. Tell your friends the truth but always do it from a place of love. Remember this little gem, “Love without truth is abandonment. Truth without love is cruelty.”
4. Listen to your friends when they just need to vent. Don’t try and fix it unless they ask. Just listen.
5. Be respectful when their choices for themselves are not always what you want for them.
6. If their choices are harming them, confront them with compassion.
7. Be genuinely happy for them when something good happens to them.
8. Show up when they need you whether it’s to a birthday get-together or an important event for work.
9. Don’t talk shit about them when they’re not around. Rule of thumb: Would you say what you’re about to say if they were sitting next to you?
10. Send a card or hand-written letter just because you love and appreciate them. (If you do this, you are automatically up for friend of the year.)
11. When criticizing, make sure it’s done constructively.
12. Sympathize with their weaknesses. Remember that you are not perfect and they have to put up with your shortcomings.
13. Don’t ever try to steal their thunder or spotlight. One-upping is tacky.
14. Get them out of their comfort zone in a way that won’t make them hate you for all eternity. (Because they’ll probably hate you in the moment.)
15. When they need to cry, provide your shoulder.
16. Always respect their feelings even if you don’t quite understand them.
17. Don’t tag them in pictures or posts on social media that you know they’ll be uncomfortable with.
18. Keep their secrets. Honestly, it is not hard keeping your mouth shut. You know what’s hard? Gaining people’s confidence once it’s lost.
19. Don’t treat your friends like possessions. Sometimes, you have to let them do their thing without you.
20. Don’t ever make a pass at their ex (without their permission). Ever.
21. Take care of yourself, communicate your needs and wants to your friends, and remember that they are not mind-readers.
Source: thoughtcatalog.com
March 2012
I remember telling a friend before how I’d probably never have someone special in my life. I have this defense mechanism wherein I don’t let myself fall really hard because I’m scared of being the one who gets hurt the most when it doesn’t work out in the end. Because let’s face it, the one who falls the hardest, the one who loves the most—loses. I don’t want them to have the satisfaction of knowing that they broke me and that’s why I shut down all romantic feelings before they get serious.
Some days, I think the probability of me being loved, to the very core of my being, is very little—too little actually.
I know that this heart was designed to be loved ([un]conditionally) by another person but the problem is, I can never meet anyone who loves more than I do. Maybe, this is a foolish assumption, a petty overanalysis or a fleeting post-midnight thought that will be gone in the morning but it is what I feel and I wish I did not have to feel it.
They keep saying that sometimes, “You have to forget what you feel and remember what you deserve,” but what if I do not know what I deserve, It is a process I keep on drowning in and I wish someone could just take me out of this bottomless pit of unknowing and help me see what I deserve.
It gets tiring, having a giving heart. It gets tiring to keep on loving people who will never know how much you care about them. It gets tiring having to stop myself from saying and writing these beautiful words filled with the purest kind of love, because they don’t deserve it. It gets tiring having to keep secrets from my own self and telling myself “It’s okay, it’s alright, you were made to love and to give love.”
It gets tiring sometimes, and I know it shouldn’t be, and I have to endure it with everything I am, but it is.
I wish feelings were as easy to forget as they were to remember, especially when what I feel makes me forget myself.
Someday, I will be loved but now, I must love myself.
