february 14th. valentine's day... a day for the hearts. it is a day where people perpetuate an emotion that has existed for minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, even years in order to proclaim your love for someone. often times the stigma we attach to it as some 'commercial holiday,' an excuse to spend double, triple on simple gifts to confess our love for those we care for. and what is more beautiful than professing our love for these individuals? each day we live our lives caring, concerned, thriving off of what our heart dictates, so why not dedicate one day out of the year to do from the simplest of deeds to maybe the most exaggerated so these 'special someones feel touched by our actions? with all that is wrong in the world, these simple gestures make a lot of people feel right whether it is temporary, or forever. its a lovely notion... invest in it.

silence is the worst. it enables these wheels to turn in your mind. it brings what was once in the background to the foreground. it's not a bad thing. it just is what it is, what it always was... just thoughts that i've never dealt with. and now this silence magnifies these thoughts. these marathons are being run in my brain and i sit here baring witness to it all like a fortune teller looking into their magic ball except i don't see what the future holds - i see what is current, what exists at present, i feel like i see what most people don't. and even though it feels a bit traumatizing, i accept it wholly and fully because in dealing with the present i can leave space and create what will be my future. it is a step in the right direction.

the past four and a half years have come to an end. eating, sleeping, breathing what is and what was co-dependence will no longer plaque me. i left what was 'our home' to begin this new chapter of being... on the 27th day in the first month of this new year of 2008, i sit here contemplating who i am? i have only known myself through others. i don't recall what it is like to live my life for just myself. subconsciously i have always existed to complement other peoples lives. it is what i now know is one of the most unhealthy lifestyles one can endure. you dedicate your heart in order for others to be ok and you concentrate solely on what it is you must do in order to make their lives more promising that you don't realize your own shortcomings. all the passion, time, and faith you have spent on them could have been used on yourself. and in not utilizing that i am left here to experience what it means to exist independently. the simplest decisions used to feel like these mathematical equations that could never be answered, but now that i am left here to stand on my own two feet- these answers come with ease and simplicity, without critique from others, without the anxiety of making the wrong decision... it is with certainty that no decision is the wrong decision. all my decisions will be the right decisions and in doing so, i will be left without regrets creating my place in this world. and with that i breathe a sigh of relief knowing i will be ok.