but you're my favorite, darling.

i had the chance to speak to several of my good friends whom i haven't heard from in a while this week, and it surprised me at how much things truly have changed since the last time we got to talk.

one of my friends recently got admitted to the hospital because an air sac in his lung exploded, and i just thought to myself how fragile life truly is. the idea that we never really know what will happen next never rung so true in that moment.

it's true that life isn't all ice creams and unicorns despite how much we want it to be; and most often than not, the better lot of us find ourselves being dealt the ugly cards of life.

these cards turn out so ugly and so painful that we can't stand to endear it. we can't even begin to imagine the light that we are told will eventually come to fetch us because...it's too dark. it's too painful. there's no way that things could ever get better. i've been there before, and i still find myself in that dark valley from time to time.

that being said, here are some of the things i have learnt from my own time of exile in the dark valley:

there is hope. there truly is. it may not seem like it during the dark days, especially when the pain and hurt is at its climax; but just like any conflict in the great stories we've all grown up hearing, right after the climax--right after the worst of the worst--is the resolution. things may not always end in a happy ending for you, but just the thought that you made it out alive is enough. because you might not get your happy ending now, but you will eventually get it someday. as a.a.milne says, "rivers know this: there is no hurry. we shall get there some day." don't rush your own happy ending. wait for it.

take time to take time. in a generation where everything is fast-paced and ready at our beck-and-call, we don't always give ourselves the time to draw things out and to just live.  --to take time to heal, to take time to recover in order to be ready to start again. to discover on our own, to thrive and not just to survive. the thing with the difficulties in our lives is that they don't always get resolved right away. it takes time to figure and work things out. you may not always like being stuck in the waiting period--who does? but with time (the irony), you will find, that the moments you grow the most as a person, the moments you learn the most from life, is during your waiting seasons. no farmer ever knows what will happen to the seeds he plants. he has to wait. but while he waits, he waters and nourishes those seeds. only time and circumstance will tell if the seeds will grow or die. but even then, he nourishes them. and if ever the seed dies...there is always the next season, and the season after that. ...and also because not all the seeds die out. some do live. remember that.

your circumstances don't define you. you may not like where you are right this moment. you may not like how you got there, or what you're even doing there. but you're there anyway; and to be frank, you might as well make the most out of your time there. what i've learnt with life is that we don't get to choose what we are handed. we do get to choose, however, how to either rise above the challenges, or to let ourselves be defeated. it is our moments of vulnerability that truly show who we are and just what we're made of.

you are stronger than you think you are. until someone points it out to you, you're unaware of just how strong you are and what you're truly capable of. so i'm telling you now. you. are. strong. let me put it this way. our blood courses through our veins and arteries; and since we have iron in our blood, it means iron also runs through us. now, i'm not a science expert--i'm failing science so badly, haha--but what i do know is this: the iron in our blood does not make us superhuman. what it reminds us, however, is that we have what building foundations, what bridges and satellites, are made of. and if that does not inspire you, then i don't know what will. ...or maybe i just did not paint that picture as well as i'd hoped to.

you will never please everyone. why? simply because you were not born to play that role. you were not born to get everybody's approval, you were not placed on this earth to earn somebody else's thumbs up. you were born to do great things, cliché as that sounds. great things that you will only ever achieve if you stop listening to all the voices--in your head and out here in the world. hit pause and do what pleases you, that makes you feel alive and accomplished. because chances are, those are the things that will matter in the end.

do something. even if you don't feel like it, even if you don't know what to do. just do something. pick up a brush, play those black-and-white keys, read a book. just do something. --because something is better than nothing. and who knows, maybe that's when you'll discover what you're truly good at.

talk to someone. your mom, dad, sister, brother, best friend. grandma, teacher, that sales clerk. just don't bottle it up inside where you're unreachable and invisible. you're not being selfless by not bothering others. you're being selfish by depriving the world from hearing a voice--your voice. and it's powerful.

you're not always going to be right. so if someone calls you out on it, be thankful. they're not doing it to embarrass you or shut you down. they're doing it to make you realize your flaws so that you can improve.

listen. as much as i'm advocating to use your voice, sometimes you need to just sit down and listen.

forgive yourself. while it's more hackneyed to say "forgive others," it's less heard-of and said to forgive yourself. oftentimes, we struggle with this the most. we beat ourselves up for something we didn't say, something we didn't do; something we could have done and said differently but we didn't. the bottom line is, we're filled with regret--and that's okay. but at the end of the day, you should know that things still happen for a reason. just like in the Apollo 13 story, had Ken Mattingly not been in Houston and been with Jim Lovell and Fred Haise in the spaceship during the explosion instead, he wouldn't have been able to help the crew fix the problems--from Earth; and Lovell and the rest of the crew might have lost their lives. it's okay to wish things had gone differently, but always keep in mind that everything will work out for the best in the end.

you won't always get what you want, but you'll always get what you need. this is the most important thing i've learnt, i reckon. i didn't want to have depression/anxiety disorders. i didn't want to have anorexia. i didn't want my grandfather to die, or for my father's business to close. i didn't want to lose my best friend just after i got him back. but i got all these things. and even if i didn't understand why they had to happen to me then, i'm slowly starting to understand now. steve jobs once said that sometimes, the only way we'll be able to connect the dots is when we look backwards. let me put my own spin on it: years from now, you'll look back and realize that these painful, unwanted events that unfolded in your life? they are the events that made constellations in the sky that you'll only be able to connect the dots of when you're looking back. you won't always get what you want. sometimes you might not even understand why. but in the end, you'll always get what you need, even if you don't understand it just yet.

and so, dear reader, i shall end this long-ass post with this clip from The Lord of the Rings.