Because...

In Creative Writing class we read Jamaica Kincain's poem/prose titled Girl and as an exercise we were supposed to write something similar to that writing style. Oddly enough, the day before I had started writing something that gave birth to the following excerpt.

Because the Christian walk is not always a smooth path down the yellow brick road.

Because the choice is simply mine. Because I am the only one that has the power to say “enough.” Because I am the only one at risk here. Because I am, ultimately, the only one dying here. Because I have the power to end this madness. -Stay here with me- it tells me. -I just want to love you and lavish you with attention, it’s all about instant gratification-. I can’t, because I have to keep moving forward. Because I simply can’t go back to where I came from. Because I can’t keep on betraying the One that loves me. Because I need to stop being so selfish. Because I need to die to self. Because sooner or later I have to make a choice, because -No one can serve two masters.- Because I have already been there. Because I can’t possibly make the same mistake more than twice. Because I can’t possibly choose to live in misery. Because I can’t go back into the darkness. Because I am at a risk of losing something greater than life. Because it is no longer about guilt or fear or punishment or death itself. It is merely because the Love I’ve had, I can no longer live without.

Sincerely, Me

Sometimes you come around a passage of writing that so perfectly and beautifully describes exactly what you've been dying to portray with your own words and fingers that you can't help but wonder if in some other dimension you might've written that yourself through the hands of another. Such has been the case for me in the following paragraph written by singer Lana Del Rey. I must say, although I am in a different mental state of mind now, I still can't help but admit that this sounds very much like the girl I once was. Hence, a part of me still shivers with the cold that sweeps over me as these words bring back to life the ghosts that once upon a time haunted me. In my present, I have found solace in the love of a God I have come to know and learn to love but being that I am a human; an imperfect one at that, I can say my heart still resonates with every single word she writes, more so with this line: "there's no use in talking to people who have home. They have no idea what it's like to seek safety in other people - for home to be wherever you lay your head." My past is my past and for one reason or another, I always felt like I was always on the move searching for a place- or person- to call home. A piece of that past is somehow still being dragged behind by my present, and maybe it will until God brings me across the man - or place - that will become my home here on earth.

So here it is:
"I was in the winter of my life, and the men I met along the road were my only summer.
At night I fell asleep with visions of myself, dancing and laughing and crying with them.
Three years down the line of being on an endless world tour, and my memories of them were the only things that sustained me, and my only real happy times.
I was a singer - not a very popular one,
I once had dreams of becoming a beautiful poet, but upon an unfortunate series of events saw those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again, sparkling and broken.
But I didn't really mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted, and then losing it to know what true freedom is.
When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I'd been living, they asked me why - but there's no use in talking to people who have home.
They have no idea what it's like to seek safety in other people - for home to be wherever you lay your head.
I was always an unusual girl.
My mother told me I had a chameleon soul, no moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality; just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean...
And if I said I didn't plan for it to turn out this way I'd be lying...
Because I was born to be the other woman.
Who belonged to no one, who belonged to everyone.
Who had nothing, who wanted everything, with a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn't even talk about it, and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me." - Lana Del Rey

Once Upon a Time

You think you know what you're doing until you realize that sometimes things just are. They don't need questions or reasons for their mere existence.

Once upon a time there was a boy...

The things they carried

                         

                                                    The Things They Carried

It is the worry carried under their belt. 

The child's tear that cannot be held back.

The weight of a broken love carried on their back.

It is the weight of the things they carried under their belt.

The tears held back with each goodbye.

The silent pain shadowing what is to come.

It is the present dragging the past behind.

It is the weight of fear silencing every word of freedom,

Leaving an echo playing in the back of their mind.

Death is only but a rest stop.

It is the loss of a friendship and the absence of a lover. 

The lucid dreams of love gone mad and him coming back.

It is a dream, a dream with no color.

Like the things they carried, of a dark gray color, under their belt.

What would it be like if we all stopped pretending that our lives are better than anyone else's and just be?