i am four. i don't want to be a princess. i tell my mother i want to be an astronaut. as young as i am, i am already wanting to be with the constellations. i am eight. at this point, i have wanted to be many things. the weirdest: a bee keeper, after a field trip to some zoo. i stick, however, to consider being a teacher; to children, i hoped. specifically kindergarten. or maybe a football player?

i am ten. i have it all planned out. i'll be taking up Mass Communication in college and i'll work as an author, or a journalist. i consider being a newscaster. or a National Geographic photographer. i am fourteen. i do not want to be anything but dead. six feet under with my feet pointing the way the tulips grow.

and now... i guess i just miss how simple it all was. how i was so convinced i had my **** together. how there weren't entrance exams to worry about, or wrongly-chosen tracks and courses and electives to regret. because it gets harder to hold it together, gets harder to hope for the better, gets harder to love and live when there are galaxies upon galaxies calling out your name;

i want to be wide-eyed and four years old again; arms outstretched to the sky, the stars at the tips of my fingers. i want to be that little girl again. that little girl who was excited to get up in the morning and face what the universe had in store. that little girl who wasn't cynical for tomorrows she was not promised. that little girl who smiled bright in pictures, and actually meant it.

your leg still bounces up and down when you're nervous.

i still bite my fingernails when i'm bored.

some things don't change.

(like how i'm always missing you.)

i am fascinated by the connections high school forms. who knew that that friend of a friend who was my sixth grade enemy’s classmate was the ex of my best friend? it’s a labyrinth of familiarity and camaraderie, and some might call it a trap; if it is, then it’s the most beautiful maze i’ve gotten lost in.

one too many times, i’ve made a list of my own; of people i know, of faces i recognize and of everyone in between. i’ve mapped out names and drawn lines to them like a game of connect the dots, all those relationships overlapping like venn diagrams with open ends.

with that being said, oftentimes, i wonder how the people i know describe me to strangers. i wonder how many times my name has shown up in conversations i was pushed to be part of.

i barely have anything to say about myself, so what would they have to say about me?

that kid with a camera. someone who can write. pretentious tweeter, Tumblr girl, member of a few clubs and organizations. student. *****. daughter. sister. ******. friend. it’s a possibly endless list and a mess of adjectives.

most days, i don’t know what- rather, who- i am... but here’s one thing i know:

i don’t want to be just another person in a story.

i’m not just ex girlfriend; not just used-to-be classmate; not just girl best friend; not just someone’s crush or someone crushing on someone else. i’m not somebody else’s past or future or present. i don’t want to be just that, don’t want to be confined to a constellation of connections that someone has created for themselves. yes, i may not know who i am yet, but i won’t let myself be a pronoun thrown around, a fill-in, a joke to tell. i’m not your punch line. not your ice breaker. not that one person you should talk about when the rivers have run dry, if you know what i mean.

i’m a bigger believer of coincidence than i am of destiny. i am here because of my choices, a build up of everyone else’s words and actions over the past years. i am here not for a reason- i am here, and along the way, i’m making my own reasons to be.

you know me not because of a bigger plan. but maybe because i ran in to you in a hallway. maybe because the administration put us in the same group when we were transferees. maybe because you complimented my music taste. maybe because i asked if i could tag along to your auditions.

we are whatever we are because of choice; of coincidence; of chance. call it luck. call it unfortunate. call it karma. this is what we have; this is what we are; this is what i am; and it can only be accounted to you, and i, and so many other people, and so many other factors.

you are bright and warm and beautiful. you are a constellation without them. don’t let yourself be a secondary character. this is your story.
be the villain, be the hero, be whoever you want to be. believe this:

you are not what other people say you are.

once upon a time, you were every story in my head. you were fantasies woven during day and prose written at 3AM. i saw so much poetry in you, in everything you did. that was a sure sign that i felt something for you, that my love ran deeper than plain infatuation and crushing.

i wrote about how your smile could light up the darkest of days; my sunshine, my flashlight. i wrote about how beautiful i thought the callouses on your hands were, i wrote about how your flaws were never imperfections to me. i wrote about the lyrics you remind me of. i wrote your name in cursive on the back of my hand along with words of promise and endearment. i scribbled you through the margins of my notebook with poetry and song.

but oh, it wasn’t all just fairy dust and wanderlust.

my pen bled ugly words, rage and heartbreak and jealousy. prose after prose of how you’d leave me in the rain, how you always made me feel like i was either too much or not enough. they were angry taps to the keyboard. pens tearing in to paper. the horrors of them made e.e cummings turn in his grave, the curses of young love would have made shakespeare proud.

you knew about that. you knew about how i meticulously wove words together for you, words that would have made other people fall in love. and not once did you appreciate them; you threw aside my gifts of poetry and prose like they weren’t about you. like they didn’t mean a thing.

if you read them, you would’ve seen how much i adored you. if you read them, you would’ve recognized a love so unprecedented, unrivaled, untouchable. but you didn’t. you never got past the first stanza, the first paragraph, the first three words before giving me a half-hearted thanks and changing the topic.

and so i started to write about you less. my words began to lose it’s substance, my phrases got shorter, my metaphors making less sense. and you didn’t notice. you never noticed how you slowly faded from the thing the one thing that mattered more to me than anything in the whole world.

you faded, then you were gone completely.

i no longer write about you. wait, no, that’s a lie: i no longer want to write about you. i hope this is the last time i do, the last set of words i’d dare to pull together for you. you don’t deserve to know how i feel about you, you don’t deserve my poems or my words anymore. god knows my words are all i have, and i can’t love you if you don’t learn to love them. i’m sorry; call it selfish, or unfair. but these words, these words, my words. how can i write about you if you don’t– if you never– valued the best gift i had to offer?

you’re now just some left-over papers that i keep under my bed, one day to open and read with tinges of nostalgia, but never to re-write again.

i don't believe in ghosts (or rather, i don't want to)

but there's no other name for my first love who still haunts me, the reason why there are still times that love feels like bile in my throat;

and there's no other name for the nightmares i wake up from in the middle of the night, this echo of what i was never able to do for others;

and there's no other name for the girl i killed years ago; this version of me i murdered, this version of me who was potentially much better;  

i don't believe in ghosts,

but i have a few and i've named them so that they can keep me company when no one else can,

(my favorite ghost, her name is regret; she's often seen with what if and could have been)

and i have stories to tell, not at camp fires, no, but maybe over the phone when it's three a.m in the morning and i've had one too many to drink,

(let me tell you about how he left me; let me tell you about how many times i watched my friends die in my sleep; let me tell you about the person i was before i decided i can't be her any longer)

and i can't get rid of them, no matter how hard i try.

(i throw salt and offer prayers but it doesn't seem to be effective)

everyone has ghosts whether they believe in them or not; ghosts they want to get rid of, ghosts they can't get rid of, ghosts that only they see, ghosts everyone else can point out;

who's yours?

she weaves through crowds with little effort. she will occupy everything there is to be stayed in; your body, your mind, your heart; she will take any space she can get. do not think you can hold on to her. she will always slip through your fingers.

she walks like she is dancing, like she is floating. she is both in your lungs and on your lips; sometimes, it will feel like she is not in either. you will tread this thin line between love and necessity. do not call her your everything. once she leaves, you will be left for dead.

she speaks with a fever that reminds you of your own. she is the girl your mother warned you not to get too close to, but there is something enticing about the way she can warm you up from the inside. don't be stupid. a flame is always a flame, and flames burn.

she has been abused for far too long and yet she remains firm, and constant. she will remind you of the flowers in your soul and the callouses on your hands, tell you that they are equally beautiful. don't be fooled. her heart is heavy, and you must be atlas to carry it.

his name is josh,

and he would send me selfies of his other half and babble about her until i am almost praying for the tomorrows we are not promised, all because i want to see them together years from now. on nights when his thoughts are all over the place and he does not know what to do with his emotions, i worry; but he shows me that he can conquer anything and everything, eventually, with her hand in his. that really, sometimes, love can be all you need.

his name is paolo,

and he walks me home even though he doesn't have to. in between coke floats and sidewalks, i came to know a boy who would plan a spontaneous harana because he had a guitar and formal attire; who would find in his heart patience and forgiveness when it was he who should have been receiving it. on the days i fear he is on the verge of crumbling, he keeps his chin up and begins treading the walk home by my side with nothing but stories of admiration for the girl who puts the lyrics in his music.

his name is steven,

and not a day passes that he doesn't check in on me-- to remind me that i should eat three times a day; to ask me how i'm doing; to send me links to things as forms of harmless distractions. he has proven over and over again to be ideal despite certain setbacks. he is fiercely protective and he knows how to listen, and although there is no one for him at the moment, anyone he has loved and will be loved by him is lucky, whether they realize it or not.

his name is ian,

and whenever he talks about the girl he loves, he brightens and i am sometimes left to wonder if he is talking about some other thing; like the celestial beings of the universe, or the wonders of our earth. he is as balanced as a boy can be and as fair as one could ever hope; he is so many good things in the world, and yet, love holds him captive in the best ways known to man. i will never get sick of watching him fall over, and over, and over again for the same person.

his name is niño,

and though he is what you might call a reckless romeo, there is no one in love that has ever equaled him. the things he will do in the name of that four-lettered word has driven me crazy; i have watched him struggle with it too many times. but the beauty of it all is when he still stands after being kicked to the ground, how he fills the cracks in his heart with love and nothing but that. how he willingly gives out pieces of him to complete others. how he will adore his girl until the rest of the world shies away, until he has re-defined it for everyone to come after.

you see, if you ever plan to love me, know that i have stood as witness to heartbreak and heart ache... at the same time, i have also been exposed to the most beautiful brands of love; different fights and different names of courage and different reasons and different people to fight for, but still, all the same, in the name of love.

they have taught me to be brave, and patient, and kind, and reasonable; and soft in all the right places, brutal when it comes to it; they have taught me to be what a person expects in love and they've taught me what to expect from the person i love, as well.

i refuse to settle for anything less.