Love is making sacrifices. Love is being patient. Love is having faith that things will happen even if the timing is not what you thought. Love is not letting someone control you. Love is not accepting put downs. Love is not disregarding your own dreams just so someone else can be happy.

false promises

False promises laced with hope, Intertwined in an endless silent symphony I feel numb, senses lost, A puppet in a masquerade, Unsure where to go, who to turn to, Alone in a crowded room Lost amidst the hubbub Cars swerve, people rush, Where they are going, I'll never know, Then there's me, walking so slow I almost feel As if I'm going backwards Either that, or immobile Frozen in time, every instant fleeting People leaving me, so here I stand alone With no one to turn to, nowhere to go, no one to lean on, No one to be there for me when it matters most So in the meantime, I'll just stay here alone

behind these dark walls desire consumes us unrequited love promiscuous purity unadulterated hate hiding, loving, wreathing pain, a stream of nothingness poured upon me amidst a never ending waterfall a glimmer of hope twinkles beneath the night sky looking upon the moon i know that we are looking at the same one although it feels like eternity i know that the day will come in the meantime i feel endlessly alone partially loving, partially resenting, endless confusion and unknowing your life bound to an entity that i detest a symbol of death, a beacon of demise a prophecy of nothing unfulfilled while i wait and stay alone drenched in lies and temptation serpentine seduction lingering before me i took a bite of the apple in the garden and so i had my fall

it's not like you can just put a band aid on the scar and patch it up, make it heal forever it's a wound that takes time to heal and that's the only solution you just keep trudging along, paving a new path, until eventually, you find your way I'm a puzzle piece forever missing, an unsolved mystery until God knows when

pushing

Sometimes all I can do is push forward, When I really want to push back I feel like I'm living in an organized chaos Where I have a strict schedule, a strict plan for the future, A planned map of exactly where I want to go, and I feel like that map is now burning I feel like a spinning compass, a lost traveler, A sky without a North star to guide, A ship without a captain, A soul without another to unite A barren wasteland, with emptiness echoing across the meadow A tumbleweed drifting off into the distance A dandelion seed flying into the wind A girl who thinks she's got it together But really doesn't have a clue And so the clock ticks, the wheels turn, the pendulum swings And only tomorrow will tell What will come of us

23

I've broke a lot of hearts
and had my heart broken,
I've whispered sweet nothings,
and had sweet nothings unspoken,
I've held the world in my palm,
and never felt so free,
cuz I'm 23.

Down the rabbit hole

There is a demon who can't let me see
The beauty that's right in front of me,
I'm so transfixed, all I do is compare,
All I want to have is what is not there,
A faded tear falls down my cheek,
I have a never-ending quest to seek,
A new image of self, of perfection,
Because when I gaze into my reflexion,
All I see is empty, all I see is plain,
I seem so superficial, I seem so vain,
But I can't help that it's how I feel,
I want to be plastic, I don't want to be real.
For I grow and I shrink and I eat and I drink,
I really don't know what else to think,
For I'm all alone in a strange place,
And my image of self has erased,
Call me a serpent, call me a maid,
I'll be whatever you call me in this masquerade,
For I am blind, yet I can only see,
the identity that you transcribe upon me.

a poem for a friend

This is a poem about friendship and a poem about love,
A poem about everything I can think of.
Through all of the darkness and all of the pain,
You were there through the rain,
The rain of my life,
You were there in the storm,
To give me shelter and keep me warm,
and although I haven't been the nicest to you,
I can tell you our friendship will always be true,
I feel so bad for what I said,
The way I used you and the way I fled,
away from you and into the arm
of someone who only caused me harm
I felt so betrayed, I felt so used
I was so easily tattered, so easily bruised
and for the only person who really cared,
I ran away because I was scared
I was just so young and so naive
Now I always mourn and I always grieve
for the true friend that I really lost
At at such a very selfish cost
Although we've both moved on and found someone new,
My friendship with you will always be true,
So I wish you happiness, I wish you love
I wish you everything you dream of,
because you're a great person inside and out,
I know that without a doubt.
So go ski down a mountain and bike through a trail,
and maybe sometime you'll remember a tale,
of the shy girl with the dark blonde hair,
whose life you changed in a way that is rare.

university

I’ve dedicated almost four lives to the University system and I feel so imprisoned and limited by it. When I was in elementary school, and even high school, teachers brainwashed us that University was somehow “better” than college. Personally, I know so many people who completed their degrees at University, then went to College after because they couldn’t find jobs. I also know people who stop going to University after a few years and decide to go to college or do internships to gain practical skills. University develops writing skills and analytical thinking skills. It does not provide any practical experience- excluding certain faculties of course (such as Nursing or Engineering). I am mostly talking about the Arts faculties- Visual Arts, English, and French. Does learning English really provide you training to be a good elementary school teacher? Sure, it develops your writing skills, however it does not provide any experience with group control for a large classroom. You have to learn those things on your own. Yes, that IS why they have teacher’s college- but that is only a year!

Love

You.
Traces of you. Everywhere I look. In the droplets of morning dew. In the gentle cascade of a waterfall. Clinging to each step I take, each word I speak, grasping onto each breath. Giving me goosebumps, casting a blush upon my cheek, a shiver up my spine. A rush. A neverending high. An intoxication. A motorcycle ride. Ecstasy. Butterflies in my stomach. The thrill of a rollercoaster ride. A warm summer breeze brushing against my face.

Nice quotes :)

Southern lady at the train station, talking about her place in Nice: “we found out that if we make a left turn from our place, we move AWAY from the water” (wow what a stroke of intellect)
Kristina: (talking about her baguette sandwich): This is really large, and hard to swallow.
Waheeda: That’s what she said
Kristina, while drunk: “I have no gag reflex!”
Waheeda: How did you find THAT out?
Fat woman: “c’est la mediterannee! Si vous imaginez une apartement mieux que ca, vous revez. Vous REVEZ ! »

sometimes i want to curl up and die. sometimes i want to run away so far and never come back. sometimes i want to go back in time, back to those moments that i love so dearly. sometimes i want to take a glance into the future and see how life will be when i'm older. the truth is, i'm scared. so scared. i'm terrified. i feel like being in your 20s is a bittersweet experience. i love being young. you can wear cute clothes, party all night, and be wild, and no one can say anything. but i hate not knowing what the future has in store. i hate having mixed emotions about things. that's the thing i fear the most about myself. i always think that the grass is greener on the other side. i need to just like things the way they are. i'm uncertain about my boyfriend, my career, everything. i don't know if i'll find a job as a teacher in this economy. why is everything so difficult?

smoke and mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors.I look in the mirror. I see a beautiful girl. Long, dark blonde hair and sad, hazy grey eyes. Bangs that sweep across my forehead just above my eyebrows. Pale skin. Humble-sized breasts. Large hips. Very tall. Yes, beautiful. Yet plain. A plain personality. An incredibly soft voice, sometimes only a hush, a whisper, barely audible. I long for someone to see beyond the plainness. Because plainness just doesn’t seem to stand out in this world. I just don’t seem to stand out. So I seek consolation and validation in another world.I take pictures. Beautiful pictures, capturing myself at my most perfect, beautiful angle. I brush my hair and do my make-up like so. To the point where I am hardly recognizable as plain, and instead, I look beautiful. I remove my modest clothes and put on revealing clothes, ones that show the curves of my body. I look like a model from the magazines. I look like I stand out from the others. I write information about myself, encapsulating my wit, my intelligence, and a few brief facts about myself. I post everything online and I feel spectacular.I wait a little bit for someone to respond to my virtual world. I long to hear a compliment. Any compliment. After a few moments, I get one.Hey hotty, what are your plans for tonight?I grin behind the computer screen. I feel a little twinge of happiness. Someone actually likes me- someone thinks I’m beautiful.I write back:Not much, u?I eagerly anticipate a response. In the meantime, my inbox is flooded with messages.hey I kno u’ve heard this before but i think ur really pretty- we should meet for coffee sometime.. where u from exactly?Hey beautifulur cuteThen I get a few strange messages:Hey, I’m just looking for some fun, nothing serious. Are you into something really wild? Me and my girl are looking to explore our options by bringing another girl into the bedroom. You interested?Ew. Delete.This one message in particular catches me eye. I decide to add the guy to msn. All of a sudden, I’m adding guy after guy to msn. It’s like an addiction. All I’m doing is talking to these strange men- boys, really. They’re all between the ages of 18 and 25. I look at all their pictures, and a lot of them seem really cute. Maybe one of them will want to meet me- maybe one of them could be the man I’ve been waiting all 19 years of my life for.

sad story

I should be happy to be a woman, but instead I see it as a curse. Time is my enemy. It keeps moving forward, and I am living in the past. I try to cling onto my youth, try and make it last forever, but instead, I feel myself grow weary. I see myself grow wrinkly and old, this putrid decrepitude slowly impending on me. As men grow more handsome and desirable with age; we women become frailer, our fertility disappears as we slowly dry up. I watch models in magazines; I see them smirk at me on the glossy pages but ha! I know that their youth too will one day come to an end. This life is shorter than we can ever imagine and all our dreams, everything we achieve will vanish in the blink of an eye, when the clock strikes the Inevitable Hour. The years creep on you and you can’t escape from them, try as hard as you might! I have bid adieu to my teenage years and I see nothing good in the road ahead of me. I am twenty one, and I will be twenty-two in five months. I feel as if I have been alive forever, I feel so old, so disgusting. Birthdays used to be something that I celebrated. I was happy to turn driving age, happy to turn drinking age, and now there is nothing left. My hair will grey and my skin will become sallow. I can’t even appreciate my youth because I’m so focused on it vanishing. Oh, how I envy those in their early teenage years! The difficult days of puberty conceal its true appeal- the journey into youth! How beautiful life would be if we just stayed a teenager forever! Why must things change? Why must we age? Why can’t we freeze our beauty? why can’t we become moving photographs? Why can’t I embrace womanhood as a gift? Why must I be so scared to leave this world? I’m terrified to enter into a world of nagging bosses, marriage difficulties, and whining children. I’m scared to bring a new child into this world; a world of chaos, a world of war and death, a world that sees beauty as a quality pertaining mostly to those who are rail thin, a world who valorizes the young, the young whose youth lasts only a few precious years. I’m scared to give birth to a child, who will live, and who may enjoy life, or who may be a lost soul like me, who does not want to be in this world, but who came into it nevertheless. How is this fair? Why am I here if I never even asked to be here? Is it fair to give birth to a child who shares the same ideas? A child who, as it grows, will realize that it is a soul trapped in a body with features beyond its control? How is this fair? How is birth a miracle? Having no say of anything, no control, as we watch the world change as everything around us becomes a fading blur, spinning out of control…

why?

Today I got pills. Pills that I felt for the longest time would be the answer, but I know they are not. I feel so many things that I don't think anyone else does. I don't think anyone will ever understand. I feel so trapped in the constraints of time, of humanity, of this world. I feel like I can't just live my life without worrying. I wished for the longest time that I had a boyfriend. Now I do, and I feel like my friendships are slipping away. Why can't I just be happy? I feel like there is no solution. I hate walking around places alone, going grocery shopping alone. But at the same time, sometimes I hate being with people. Sometimes people annoy me and I want to be away from them. Why can't I just be satisfied? I get high marks and I'm still not satisfied. Why? What's wrong with me? I have everything I could possibly want but I still feel sad all the time! It's not even that I'm anxious about school or about the future- it's just that I'm constantly sad. I try to help others, yet inside, I still don't feel fulfilled, I still don't feel like I'm worthwhile. I feel like I'm useless a lot of the time- sometimes I just want to jump in front of a train. I've thought about just running away, leaving everything in life behind me and just ending my life. I don't know what I'm living for and what the point of everything is! I'm so confused about everything. I feel like I'm too old for university but too young for the "real" world. I just want to be able to chill out, to relax, to enjoy. Why can't I?

france

wearing flipflops in november. swimming in the mediterannean.

dirty feet. crazy drivers. language barrier. wanting to tell someone off but not knowing how to word it in a way they'd understand. feeling foreign. etrangere. getting pissed off at having to constantly use accents on words when typing. having an absence of something. discrimination. inconveneince. lack of customer service. actually, having no customer service. expensive things. profs that speak quickly and you can't understand them.

canada. going to second cup with my mom. drinking coffee in the morning with my dad as my dog sits on the couch and keeps guard for squirrels outside. random trips to tim hortons with friends. going to lakeshore.

A Day in Baguette Land

So we have a grumpy old man in our building, who I decided to call The Blackhole of Fun, since he sucks the fun out of every situation. But Waheeda wants to call him Herpes or Turdsicle, and I think those work equally as well.. We were just talking at a normal volume in our room in our apartment and then old man walks in and yells at us and threatens to call the police on us. Then he tells his situation to the concierge.. who pretty much takes his side. I feel discriminated against because we're the only people under 30 in our building and we're english speakers.. i'm pretty sure if we spoke french or if we were more elderly he wouldn't complain. As I was walking in vieux nice today a woman carrying flowers decided to spit on me.. and she pinched a woman up ahead of us. And then, in our English class today, the text where we have to translate into English is short, yet the one that we have to translate into french is so long, and we're not allowed french/english dictionaries for our exam. It's times like these where I wanna fly back to Canada.. where people don't spit on you, and where we're not penalized for talking in our apartment.

...

the truth is, sometimes there's just that one person that captivates me, someone that has that je-ne-sais-quoi about them. i'm really into smooth talkers. and sometimes, that one person that we think was something else turns into being someone different. or, even worse, sometimes we know they are wrong for us all along, yet we're still inevitably drawn to them. i'm still wondering why. why would i get myself into something, something i know i'd regret? and i'm just so caught up in what i'm feeling in the moment that i don't consider the repurcussions of my actions. yet i can't help thinking it was somehow worth it because if i didn't do it i'd keep wondering what it would have been like. and that feeling would have haunted me. but now that feeling is instead turned into something kind of like regret. i don't feel used though. i don't feel angry. i just feel a little bit confused, and a little bit hurt. yet i was happy that i was filled with the passion of the moment.. i behaved in a way that was so unlike me. i became someone else for just one night. it was a way to escape, to become a sultry vixen, to expose myself without becoming vulnerable. i released my inhibitions and acted impulsively, instead of rationally. the only thing that haunts me is that i might be forgotten, and i don't want to be forgotten.

it took me some time to realize

that it doesn't really matter what other people think about you. it's how you think about yourself that counts. if you know, without a doubt in your mind, that you're trying your best, that you're working hard... then that's all that matters. some people are going to judge you harshly, but that doesn't mean it's true. it's just an opinion. subjectivity can hurt, it can be tough... but in the end, it's what you think of yourself that matters. those people are going to be in your life a couple of months... a couple of weeks... you are going to be in your life your whole life. try to do nice things secretly.. be humble about things... i think that's what's most important. don't do things because you want recognition.. do them because it's the right thing to do and you want to be a good person. a piece of paper should not define who you are as a person... a failed relationship doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you... and i have spent so much time agonizing over these things, these tiny incidents, blaming myself and hating myself and just not accepting the fact that people will hold opinions about you.. and you can't really change what they think or change situations... sometimes they just happen and are so out of your control. life throws shit at us from every direction... you need an umbrella to shield yourself from all that shit.. but you know what you gotta gain your composure and deal with it.... even though you feel like breaking down, even though sometimes you feel so alone..... remember, your friends help you save money on therapists. and friends are more valuable than any boy. because they will always be there for you no matter what, they won't pretend you're everything and then vanish at the next moment... they are constant, and they are amazing. so surround yourself with positive people, don't let sucky situations get you down, love yourself for who you are, and don't change yourself for anybody.

uggh

why am i struggling with myself?? i'm not even a teenager anymore, these things should be over... but i always feel like i'm so down all the time, and it's hard to put on a smiling face when you feel bad about yourself all the time..... i seriously don't think i can work with kids.. i enjoy their company but clearly i'm not good enough to lead games with them. i don't understand why everyone else can do it but i can't... and why i get shit evaluations when i try my hardest.