My Despair.

I feel like I am inside a sphere made of despair. This sphere is contracting and I am at the center - pressure builds up as it tries to crush all that I am. I have been trying my very best to escape for the last few months. I look as hard as I can for some way out, but every point in the sphere seems to be exactly the same as any other - despair is all around me. I can see myself projected into the spherical surface as it contracts - it tells me both the present, the future I wish I could have and the future I will not have.

• I can see myself waking up sick and anxious in the morning, after crushing nightmares.

• I can hear the sound of silence when I am alone - a whisperer to joyful memories of the past. The unbearable feeling of loniless and solitude in this world.

• I can hear my heart beating as I run to escape depression and catch up with happiness.

• I can hear my heart stopping as I see my mother and grandma, alone in their own houses. They are decaying and I can do nothing to stop it.

• I can see my grandfather trying to give me the strenght to carry on.

• I can see my brother playing the violin as he remembers how much mom and grandma have done for us. How much does he miss grandpa?

• I can see the ocean and the waves at the beach; I feel the sand under my feet - I am happy in a summer that has long past.

• I can feel the embrace of someone who does not exist but who I need so much. Someone who can quench the suffering that I am feeling, even if for a while. I know I should not wish it - but I cannot help wishing it. Precisely because of that, I know I will not have it.

My dreams of salvation will not be fulfilled. My expectations, my needs, will not be met.

Help will not come.

Suffering will not stop for now.

The sphere will not stop contracting.

For the first time in a long time, I am afraid.

For the first time in a long time, I feel impotent in the face of adversity.

Hunter (x) Hunter

Suffering rarely hunts alone and partners with other hardships. Lack of sleep, sorrow, solitude and sickness are often seen in this disastrous pack, trying to take down the victim with their infinitely sharp fangs and claws, shredding through metaphysical flesh and bone of those which have the capacity for feeling. It is interesting to note that their hunting is not an easy task. Most victims do not fall down easily before these psychological overweights - but they do fall down eventually. 

When I was a kid, I used to fall down pretty quickly, to the point, I thought, of no return. You cannot turn a psychologically-damaged kid into a fighter, I thought. I am what I am, I do not remember ever being any other way - I do not remember not being a perfect prey for hardships in life. I will probably grief until my physical life is over - then, if there is not afterlife, I might get some rest.

Today, things are different. I have been through my fair share of suffering in the last months. Lack of sleep goes for my neck, solitude tries to drag me to the floor and suffering hits me in the stomach so hard I go to sleep and then wake up feeling sick.

However, something changed in me which I cannot fully describe. One one hand, these hunters do not bother me so much anymore. Their wounds still hurt as if I was in hell - but now I know I am not in hell. I never was. If I was in hell, suffering and sorrow would be obsolete - they would probably leave out of boredom because I would have nothing on which they can feed themselves. 

If I was in hell, I would be dead inside and still living.

Yet, I have never felt so alive inside. There is something in me that screams for more, which I do not know what it is. More of what I am right now. More of what I can deal with - and it feels so good. I am suffering and paradoxically I have never been happier. These days are, if anything, the most interesting days of my life.

I feel no fear of whatever is coming. I know I will take it face-to-face with hard will. I know I will not bow down to what the world expects of me - to fall down on my knees when I am struck with grief and shut down my feelings so that I can take the bites and live another day. To separate myself from the external world and avoid risks at all costs - even if it means hurting someone I care for. To lie to myself about what I might have done wrong because I cannot take it that I made a mistake. To hang on to someone in hope that the flesh of us combined will be enough to feed the hunters. 

No! I will take none of it - I will drink not a drop of it - of weakness.

Weakness is the price you pay for an easy, short-sighted route to escape suffering. 

I have taken what little I liked about me as a kid - my sensibility, my intelligence - and taken on the world when it challenges me, without falling into the traps of life hardships that so much of us fall for - without weakness as means for survival. I finally feel that I am on my own shoes, after years and years of trying to figure out what was wrong with me.

Now, it is almost as if I am enjoying the journey and the challenge of being alive. I have not reached any point at which I cannot handle the world because I am sick of it - I have reached the opposite point, at which I am ready to take anything and I love the adventure.

So yes, I feel awful;

but yes, I feel awesome.

I am still prey to the hunters. 

What I am not, is a victim to the hardships that are trying to eat me away.

I think that is because I am myself searching for something. I am a hunter in a certain sense (as all of us are). I am a hunter for more. I don't know what more is, but I have a feeling I will never get to it - and I also don't want to. If I get to more and I eat it away, there is no more.

...

The sun is not shining today - outside, that is.

Bird's Eye View XIII

What makes sex a wonderful experience is not the ephemeral pleasure one gets during the intimate moment, but what it reveals about what it means to be human. The veil of rationality falls to the ethereal floor, revealing the utter nakedness of the being underneath.

This unveiled nature is weak, because it is not in control of itself.
This discovered nature is powerless, because it surrenders to pure feeling.
This wild nature is feeble, because it lets itself sink into gasps, appeals and screams.

Two souls that have shared their nakedness with each other create a strong bond made of their mutual weakness.

The Game of Life for 2 Players.

|| Obstacles are walls in the game of life. You've finally reached a wall that you cannot destroy. ||

A relationship is a soup of feelings and experiences: love, partnership, fun, pleasure and sorrow. Different soups have different quantities of each ingredient, but they all have one thing in common - they all die. Their death comes either before or after people die - generally before.

So what makes it good?

What makes it good is what makes everything else in life good - the experience is worthwhile in its finite duration. It is good while it lasts.

Right? It makes sense. Except it is wrong - as wrong as could be.

What makes it good goes beyond the duration of any relationship. 

A relationship is an opportunity to expose your own faults as a human being. The true treasure that all relationships can provide - even the ones who die off early - is the opportunity for any person with self-awareness and drive to spot and improve as a person.

If you are a jealous person and that fact is damaging your relationship, it's your own fault - not your partner's fault, not the fault of both. This is often a serious problem, because people lack the courage, honesty and maturity to see it for what it is; it hurts that the problem is with them and not with the world around them. Realizing that jealousy almost always sprouts from insecurity and lack of self-confidence and should be improved upon by yourself, for yourself is itself a great reward that is not taken by many jealous people during and after their relationships.

A relationship is the game of life, now being played by two intimate, close players. They have to cooperate, help each other, learn from experience, be courageous and overcome obstacles or see their partnership die a slow, agonizing death.

For those ever-thristing souls, for those minds aiming for the high skies of consciousness and happiness - this is often what a relationship can bring to the table, independently of its duration. 

My self-love and strength were unburied after my first relationship. My happiness and confidence were unburied by my last relationship. Specially for the last, I am truly, wholly grateful.

|| I will go back and gather the debris from all the other walls and jump over this one. So goes the game we call life. ||

Contemplação Aritmética

Se contemplar por uma dia,

Aquilo que fui há uma hora,

Encontro uma barca vazia,

Onde viajei, outrora.

Se observar por uma hora,

Aquilo que fui há um minuto,

Encontro um nada que chora,

Por um qualquer defunto.

Se reflectir por um minuto,

Naquilo que fui há um segundo,

Encontro um vácuo profundo,

Restos de outro mundo.

Seja qual for o intervalo,

Infinitesimamente existente,

A contemplação irá cortá-lo, 

Até a mudança ser aparente.

Seja que espaço-tempo for,
A reflexão desembainha a espada,
E com um golpe indolor,
A realidade converge em nada.