Some days I go through my writing journal and I think to myself,

“I can’t write like this anymore.”

There was, at a point, when I was very young, I wanted to experience everything I read from books, saw in movies, heard from adults. I wanted things to happen to me because I knew the best writing can only come from experience. How do you write about love when it has not happened to you? Of flirtations, confessions, confusions — feelings that get you so drunk, drama that burns painfully but beautifully make you make things happen in an attempt to take hold of that flame. How do you write about the slow process of breaking — the expansion of cracks that makes holes but in their deterioration creates an object more precious? How do you write about the exact feelings of disorientation, lostness, fear and anxiety and anticipation for the worst?

I welcomed the best things and accepted the most horrible and most painful because I try to convince myself, I have gained experience and one day I will write beautiful words with it. Maybe this means I can understand more people — understand their pain and help them with better advice so they may have better stories and happier endings.

But at that time when I was making that wish, it never occurred to me that residuals of many aftermaths can sometimes rock the soul. Gently, harshly, unknowingly, leaving marks that can either bring a smile to the face or tears when left with the solitude of silence.

And where am I now?

Sort-of at the process of filtering. Going through things that happened. Deciding what I want to forget and what are those worth keeping. Tucking away things that still hurt because I can’t deal with them. Floating, not going anywhere. In no hurry, just drifting along with the waves, wondering if I could ever really just run away.