Life is magical

Once again I find myself sitting on a train on the way to university. A bit more than a year ago I was scared that riding trains would lose its magic on me eventually as I was forced to do it on a regular basis. Let me tell you, it has not so far.

As I'm sitting here now, my mind starts to wander. I know the way the train will take, there is nothing spectacular about that, but I'm listening to music, the sun is shining and I feel kind of strange. Not uncomfortable strange though, it’s more of a happy sensation. All of a sudden my mind starts to wander, song by song a little more.

It starts with the beauty of this world. Add a little sun and dull places become full of life, at least that’s how they look to me. It proceeds to thinking about science, how some people think to have found every possible explanation in it and me being thankful that I'm not desperately looking for an answer because I know it. Behind every little thing on this earth is some good old magic.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about witches, about visible sparks or anything like that. I speak about the little things that make life such an extraordinarily beautiful thing. Let me elaborate. I have friends who are in a relationship. They've found someone they are comfortable with, they found another existing human they seem to some sort connect with on a very deep level and that other individual feels somewhat like them. That’s something so rare in my eyes, like a treasure. How are the chances? For me, it is amazing.

If this is not enough, then let me proceed with someone I've basically known all my life. She is pregnant and very soon she'll have a baby. Just imagine that, I've known her when she was a kid herself and now there is literally a little human being growing inside her! Of course I’m aware about the biological process of how we grow and change and also about reproduction, but that sounds so cold and clinical, when it’s really extraordinary, special and simply a miracle.

Now if that is not enough, then I still have more. I just look at my own story and see how things have changed, how relationships with people have become more meaningful, how strangers became friends and sometimes even feel like family. How people get born and they grow up to be human beings with their own character. Also how time passes how people die, there is this ever-changing aspect of life that amazes me so much. You might think I’m naïve or just simple minded, maybe I am. I’m not saying I’ve figured life out at all, but I feel ridiculously close to an epiphany, as if the essence of life is just around the corner waiting for me to grasp it. But of course, I don’t and the moment passes me, not without letting me wish that I would’ve reached it.

At this point I'm very willing to admit that I know how weird it is to try to describe what is going on in one’s head. We cannot share our thoughts because it's a mixture of emotions, experiences and so much more. Just the fact that I'm able to contemplate my own thoughts seems impossible to fully take in.

This might sound crazy and confusing to you, which is okay. There is just one last thing I want to add, something I stumbled over today (actually the day after writing the above and thinking that I shouldn't post something that comes from the crazier/ more philosophical side of my brain). It's a quote by Einstein and there is a reason why I'm utterly impressed by this man, and it's not because of his work for physics.

“There are only two ways to live life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle". - Albert Einstein

I prefer mine to be filled with miracles and curiosity, strange happenings and pure happiness. I’d choose to be strange and weird and lost in thought over being well arranged and controlled any day of my life. Don't know about you though.

Cheerio.

My worst enemy

Growing up some people learn a lesson, namely that children can be cruel. I mean I was not majorly bullied back in school, but that was mostly because I tried to fit in a lot. Still I can remember moments when I was mocked. Especially music camp comes to my mind. Every person who slept with me in a room left for another, I was left alone. The kids locked me in my room with a chair under the door knob. I was called names (ok, I mean they actually called me the chemical name for water, but firstly I didn’t understand that back then and secondly they wanted it to be mean, the intention counts there). What I learned then was that words can hurt, but that I was also not going to take crap from every person who needed an outlet for the negativity in their life.

As a “grown up” there are very little people left who I allow enough power and access to my emotions to actually hurt me. I have trusted people but the scenarios in which they betray me, well they are limited I’d say. Still there is someone left who tears me apart on an almost daily basis. This person is a bully of an indepth knowledge of my every weakness that makes it seemingly impossible to get past it. I’m still finding my way out of this abusive relationship, but it’s a really tough call.

Who I’m talking about you ask? The answer is simply, it’s me. I am my worst enemy. I’m rather easy with forgiving others. My own mistakes? I carry them on my back year after year. One example for this stands out over all of the others though. There was this girl that I used to play sports with. I had nothing against here and I remember days in which we even got along fairly well. On the other hand there was this rather bossy girl (she did look innocent but she was rather manipulative), who had a leading position in our team. Both girls did not get along, why doesn’t matter. The bossy girl then decided to hate on the other, somehow convincing the whole rest of the team to join her, me included. We bullied her. Nowadays I cannot even imagine how I was so blind to do such a thing, but I was easy to be manipulated. Eventually the bullied girl quit. To my own luck the story doesn’t end there as this would be a very big shame.

Two or three years after her leaving, the formerly bullied girl and her family joined our church. I kid you not, when I first saw her again I was in desperate search for the deepest darkest hole to hide in and never get back out. Guilt is a terrible emotion, especially when you know that you’ve earned it. Unlike what I expected her to do, she did not blame me, she wasn’t mean to me or anything. Even better, she forgave me very quickly. I remember her sitting on my lap during Sunday school (we are talking about a person who is not even cuddly!). While it was ok for her, it was not for me. It took me years for what she did in weeks. I even remember one evening more than a year ago. Another friend and I had spontaneously spend the day at hers, playing video games. In the evening during the family dinner suddenly her mother said jokingly: “Who would’ve ever thought back in the day that one day you’d be eating at this very table”. I mean we had all talked about it and shared some laughs about my stupidity, but even back then it still had an edge to me, even though I’m mostly ok with it now.

There is a saying that goes: “If you talked to your friends the way you talk to your body, you’d have no friends left at all.” I probably call myself stupid twice a day, ugly probably once. I don’t trust myself. When I think of my goals, the only thing I see stopping myself from achieving them, is me. It’s like I’m constantly trying to fight my own shadow, and I’m losing. It’s a circle of negativity.

If you know this blog then you might’ve understood that I never end a post on a negative note. So there comes my life lesson. I am fighting my shadow when there is absolutely no need for that. There are worse problems than my poor little ego around on the planet. The most effective way to get rid of a shadow is to shine light on it, fight it with happiness and don’t let the negativity get you down. You might think that getting past yourself is impossible, at least you know every single trick of yours, but a shadow is just a pathetic poor and colourless version of you, so move on!

So now that I have successfully cheered myself up I should really write that paper that I’m not going to mess up, just because I failed another paper! I’m better than I was and I’m better than my failure

Cheerio.

Writing is a lifestyle

I call myself a writer. I feel like I'm defining very well with just this one word. I might not be a good one yet, but my life is somewhat pulling me into that direction more and more so I might as well be prepared to get better. Since I really took up that attitude I've realized certain things that cannot be unseen about what being a writer means.

First of all I'm open to plot bunnies. Plot bunnies are things that you observe around you that give your imagination a boost. For example recently I've seen a little plot bunny in form of a woman in her thirties, with her hair tied together in a bun. What was special about that detail was that in order to hold together her hair she used a pen and a pencil instead of anything else. So you see, it is very good to have open eyes during your everyday life.

I also started to channel my emotions. That doesn't mean that I'm able to control them, instead I use what I feel. If I'm jealous I'll write myself a note why exactly, the setting, the people involved and I try to describe it. I do that in case I want to ever use a similar situation in a novel. Of course I should not see my own life relatable to everyone, but right now it is so much easier to just start with what I understand instead of finding a general context.

By now I use about anything to form a story, as long as it just triggers my mind. Last years NaNo novel was formed out of the combination of a nightmare I had three years ago and the name of a guy I meet at a camp. The guy himself did not leave that much of an impression though, it was just his name that made my creativity buzz.

To be honest sometimes I feel very awkward about the whole writing attitude. Like when I realize that my next story will be entirely inspired by a guy with whom I've only talked very briefly, or that my next female main character is a product of me trying to draw my male main character and failing. 

It is also inconvenient when you have to be anti social because you just need to write down your thoughts immediately so they don't get lost. For example I'm writing those lines right now, seated on a train. Next to me I have an old lady that is nearly deaf and I already had to repeat a train announcement in a shouting voice in order for her to understand even though I nearly missed it myself. On the other side there is another one that looks at me kind of angry because I seem to be one of these teenagers who just sit in front of their mobile phone the whole time, when all I do is writing this blog post.

All in all, I love it. I don't care how many people get annoyed with me whilst I write because it's one of the things I love doing the most. I'm happy to be an observer, a dreamer and sometimes a stalker, because it feels very "me" to do that. I hope that all of you reading have something that makes you look insane when all you do in fact is living your dream somehow.


Cheerio.

My best friend is beautiful

So I was not sure what I was going to write about this week, there was a tie between two topics that I had in mind since I started blogging again. The friendship topic won obviously. So friendship in general means a lot to me, I don't even want to imagine where I'd be without the amazing people around me, but today I want to write about two special people. I was fortunate enough to not only find my best female friend, I even found a guy to be my best male friend too. So here I want to write about those two people who mean a ton to me. 

I can still remember when I got to know my best friend, who usually prefers to go by the name of Marina on the internet. It was in the halls of my school, she was talking with our share friend Vanessa. As far as I remember, she wore a shirt with a printed tie on it and I thought how she seemed to have a good fashion sense. How we really started to hang out is now hard to recollect, but it took us quite a while. It went from eating lunch in a group of three to four, to a birthday party and finally to spending more time together more and more frequently. I may sound like I'm in love or something, but for me having a best friend, a sister, a twin, always felt like a huge deal. I wanted and needed something like that in my life.

I'm not sure if you can relate, but when you were younger did you ever watch so called BFF's on television, in cartoons or movies, and all you could do was wanting to have someone like that? or maybe you had people around you, siblings, parents, friends, who had that kind of thing. I was really girly about that, I wanted to have sleepovers, and doing each other’s hair and make-up, having long talks and doing crazy stuff together. The thing was, when I looked around in primary school there were nice girls, but none of them had the potential to be what I wanted to have, even though that may sound idiotic to you.

I remember being in 4th grade, praying to God that a family would move to our appartment house, with a girl my age that looked like me and went to school with me and basically was a second me. And of course that didn't happen. What did happen was that I met this crazy, extroverted, japanloving, cooking, caring and lovable creature, who is always late but no matter what, that I can call my best friend. She looks a bit like me, that's why people sometimes are confused about who is who, but apart from that we are not that similar, and that is the point. I didn't get a copy of myself, I got another half. Like you and your siblings might be quite different, so are Marina and I, but you know, you can't choose your family. I think what goes hand in hand with that is that I'm completely adopted by her family, I really feel at home when I'm at her's, even when she isn't there and I'm with her mum or her brother.

I would seriously not trade her for anything in this world and as far as I'm concerned we'll stay friends forever, even though this is even more girly. Plus she agrees with me and says that befriending Vanessa, who was the one to introduce us to each other, was one of the best decisions she made. I agree whole heartily. Oh and don't get me wrong, I have other people who are very very very dear to me, but as I said, the best friend title needed to be rewarded to someone. 

But where there is a female, there also needed to be a male version. For me being friends with guys was hard. I've always surrounded myself with females, because let's be honest, guys are annoying (at least that's what I used to think). The only males allowed around me where my brother and occasionally his friends, apart from them I just couldn't handle male beings. What made this even worse were the two years I spent going to school with only girls. At my school we had to many girls, so when they made classes (you have every subject in the same group of people, that's what we call a class), they decided to make an all-girl one. So at church I didn't have male friends, because that's just how it was, and in school I didn't have any either. That lead to me feeling very awkward around guys. 

So my best guy friend, who I like to call Coco, went to school with me for four years. If I'm honest, I first had a crush on him, which made it impossible for me to talk to him (I used to be terribly tongue tied when it came to that). After we went to school together for one and a half years, my class went to Spain to do a short exchange trip. One day we went to a theme park and the whole group started the day together. After a while Coco wanted to go on certain rides again, but no one would join him. You have to know that I'm terrified of rollercoaster, I really hate them, but I felt so sorry for him so that I decided to go with him, despite the fact that I still had a crush on him. I'd like to call that one of the best decisions of my life.

After we all got back from Spain we started chatting on MSN occasionally. Some time later he really started opening up to me and told me things that he never told anyone else. I was really flattered about how open he was, and I couldn't help but opening up myself too. For a certain amount of time I felt like an agony aunt, but we managed to get over that. In my opinion we have a lot of history anyway. Through him I learned that guys aren't just stupid and annoying, but that there is of course more behind all that. I don't know how to explain it, but I really grew on our friendship, even though it wasn't always easy. I think unlike Marina, he’d be embarrassed to read such a text about him, but on the other hand we were always cheesy anyway.

The sad thing is I've only seen him twice since we graduated last summer, but I hope to always call him my best friend because you know what? Friendship does not define about how often you see each other, or what you do when that happens, but about what you feel when you receive a text, you meet, or you just hear from them. I'm always smiling very widely.

So yeah, this was a little post about two people that are irreplaceable in my life’s story. I want to write about my other friends sometimes soon too, but that was all for today.

Cheerio.

Train thoughts

So I'm currently comfortably sitting in a train, and to be honest that's something I love. I love living where I do, but traveling gives me a sense of liberation, even if I don't go that far. I like observing what's going on outside of the window, I enjoy glimpsing just seconds of other people's lives. Also most of the time I ride trains I'm on my own. It's different when I'm with friends, but by myself I feel that sensation again that I tried to explain last time.

I never get on a train unprepared. My iPod is charged, my phone ready to take pictures, I have water and food and last but not least, a good book in my bag. The book is probably the most important. By having it with me I make sure that I'll always relate to that story as a train story. In my head there will be the link between the story and the journey I made. That helps me feel even more comfortable in trains than I do anyway.

Another thing that is great about sitting in a train are the conversation you might have. Usually when a train conversation takes place then it's with a lovely elderly person. Honestly I'm not the one to start a conversation anyway, but I'm always ready to engage myself in one when the person next to me starts it. That's not all though. I remember twice that I was sitting in a train and eavesdropped a conversation between others. A train is a public place and they were talking normally so there was no reason for me to feel bad. I can still remember what people said in both situations because it was just way to interesting to be missed. In the mean time I'm aware of how often people might've listened to me when I had a talk with someone, so it's about even.

Right now I have a good view on a guy sleeping. That is something I'll probably never understand. When I went to Spain a couple of years ago we went there by night train. The movement made it nearly impossible for me to fall asleep. Moreover I refuse to nap in a public place because you never know what you do whilst being asleep.

I only fear one thing right now. Next year I'll be riding a train every week, to get from where I'll be studying to where I live now. Will trainjourneys loose their magic then? Will they eventually become normal, and even worse, boring? I really don't hope so. I'll do my best to prevent that from happening!
So now I need back to enjoying my journey instead of watching my screen all the time. See you later guys.

Cheerio

Being alive feels like being in love. Constantly

So I don't claim to have understood it all, I don't say everybody feels the same, but right now, this is the only way I can explain what I feel.

You know how when you are in love for the first time you feel like nobody will ever grasp how you feel for that special someone? People can relate, but they can never understand how you as an individual feel exactly and you are sure that no one has ever felt as much as you do right now. Being in love for the first time means overwhelming emotions. Most of the time it hits us when we are young and unprepared, it feels like a never ending rollercoaster, with it's over joyous ups and its devastating downs and sometimes, your not even sure if you feel something at all.

Right now, in this very moment, and in various moments before too, what I feel when I think of the fact that I'm alive and breathing, is exactly that. When you're in love there are two types of days. There are the good ones, where the sun is brighter, the grass is greener than the day before and every love song is written just for you. Those are the days when only thinking of that someone is enough to carry you through a whole day, whatever might happen, it's enough to know that you live on a planet where he/she exists. You are just happy.. That's how I feel now. I'm happy, everything is good, and I can see a big amount of good things coming my way that I get the impression that it might stay this way forever, that  might feel like this forever. 

But you know what? Sadly there are the bad days too. Those days you realize that your feeling won't be reciprocated. The sad realization might hit you over and over again, because you are blinded by your feelings and you might even be in denial about it, but deep down you know that even if there ever was a chance for you, then there is not one right now, that everything was just in your head. Those are the days when you feel hopeless, like you'll never be happy again. I've had enough of these days, I know how heavy they feel on your shoulder, how they make you breathless and numb. At some point you might even try to gather the strength to end the relationship. In terms of life that might be a deadly decision, but most of us overcome this state of mind after a while.

The problem is, a human being might give in, you get a response to your feelings at some point, but life won't. it feels like it's better on some days than on others, but it's the same every day, so it is now time to change perspective. What if you see every phase of your life as a different love, not life in general but different parts of it?

As a kid, life is a good friend. Later it's your first love, you make mistakes and at some point you break up, which makes you feel sad for a while. Eventually, you feel better and fall in love again. This time it's more stable, you are ready for more serious things, maybe ready for forever. Of course this doesn't keep up, the feelings might fade away, but you need to keep holding on to it. At some point you realize that forever isn't as easy as you thought it was, that life is supposed to be a rollercoaster and that love alone doesn’t last forever anyway. When you get there, the only thing I hope is that you can remember at least Emily Dickinson words: "Forever  is composed of nows". Feel the moment, and at some point even what feels like forever will have passed in an instant. So don't love forever, just love now and you might be in love all over agian.

Cheerio.