pursuit of self: thoughts&things

beginning a chronicle of honest, vulnerable, raw self-assessments. how else does one pursue oneself, right? & what better time to start than now? 

i fall in love with people's quirks. usually things that they don't notice about themselves. i take things too seriously. words are important to me. i always mean what i say so i get disappointed easily when people don't do the same. i'm an avid believer in random acts of kindness. i think you can find beauty in almost everything. courage is the one thing that i always try to reach for but can never quite grab a hold of. i'm an old soul. i bruise easily. my scars take forever and a day to heal. but i'm not as fragile as i may seem. i spend a lot of time thinking about what it is exactly that makes people fall in love. i'm not a very good advice taker. nor a very good advice giver. i like to learn things on my own. even though on occasion that may take more than a couple mistakes. i'm probably very guarded. from what, i'm not entirely sure. what's wrong with being ordinary? nothing and everything at the same time. i'm indecisive. most likely because i'm so stunningly contradictory. 

what will be, will be.

one of my all-time favorite quotes. 

adjective

(of a feeling, esp. love) not returned or rewarded.

i miss you. i like you. i love you. those three sets of three small words are the most common, yet uncommon, phrases that are supposed to express some sort of affectionate sentiment we have towards a significant other. that person could be a brother, sister, mom, dad, friend, boyfriend, wife. we blurt out those words, not thinking much about it. after all, each word individually bears little weight, maybe with the exception of love. but somehow, when they are spoken together, spoken in that specific order, the phrase becomes a huge grand gesture, even in its simplicity. subject, verb, object. that's all it is. yet it becomes an almost physical manifestation of our deepest, innermost thoughts and feelings. every time we speak those words, it is as if we give a piece of ourselves (how big of a piece we are giving, we can't ever really be sure) to them, whoever they may be. it becomes an act of transfer. when we speak those words, we give ourselves away, usually in selfish hopes that we will get something back in return.

of course none of us can admit that we have meant every single word that we have ever spoken. undoubtedly there were the "i'll keep in touch's," the "i hate you's," the "i love you's" and other random customary phrases we exchange with one another, casually, on a day-to-day basis. most of the time we are able to play it off, make nothing of it because the things/ideas that the phrases signify mean little to nothing to us. we don't expect anything out of those empty words, those empty phrases. but, what happens when we do?

when someone says something to us, and we take them seriously (that is to say, we expect them to follow through with what they have said), what they say becomes a sort of unspoken promise. when it comes down to the moment in which whatever was said was supposed to take place, and we find out that it doesn't, the agonizing anticipation for that particular moment consumes us. sometimes, we continue to wait even after the deadline has passed. if and when this happens, we throw ourselves into a constant state of anxious anticipation, not knowing when the new deadline is or even if there is one. we just wait. and wait and wait. hopelessly, and often in vain. we replay the moment in which the unspoken promise was made, over and over again, to see if there was something that we had missed. at first, we delude ourselves into thinking that it will eventually happen, if we give it some more time. things come up...shit happens. people are busy. we know this. it's a part of life. but how much time are we supposed give before we realize that it's never going to happen? maybe a better question to ask is: how do we detect empty words that at first don't seem empty?