On the nature of compliments

I have a funny thing about compliments. I cant accept them gracefully and it's not because I'm fishing, I just don't react well to them.
In all honesty, deep down its because I don't feel deserving of the comments. I think they are a lie to make me feel better while secretly they are judging me, thinking the opposite of their words, their eyes weighing me accusingly behind my back.
Sometimes they will make me smile and stand up taller, but the next moment I'm second guessing them, wondering what game they are playing, where it will come back to hurt me.
And isn't that just fucked up.

 I think a large part of this comes from the development of social media, and also society in general. We are told from the beginning, whether it is to our faces or subliminally -barbie dolls and ballet, makeup and the colour pink, supermodels and size four clothes - we are told how we should look, what a perfect girl should be like. And if we don't fit into that mold, woe on us.
High school is the hardest, made worse by social media. They smile and then behind your back, whisper things. School has its own society, and to be at the top requires ruthlessness, and the ability to claw your way there. One must stand on their 'lessers' to walk as giants.
And social media - that strange and abstract platform, where nothing feels real. Where one can be anyone, say anything, without real-world consequences. I cannot think of anything more dangerous, for without limits, we can become monsters.

Presents

I love giving people presents.

There's something to be said for imaging that person, every aspect of them, examining them in your mind, their likes, wants, interests, things they have said to you in conversations, and finally hitting upon the perfect object-the one they spoke about with longing, or something you know they will love.

Carefully wrapping it and then drawing a card with something quirky, something unique, something that is entirely them, even if they don't realize it.

And then the best part, when they rip through the wrappings and see the gift.

But the true gift, the one that makes it worth all the money and time I could spend, is their faces.

It's selfish almost, the amount of care and enjoyment that I put into gifts, it's not just because I want to make them happy; to show their friendship means so much to me that I try to translate it into the care of finding the perfect gift, it because it makes me feel good, I get a rush off knowing their happiness, seeing their disbelieving faces when I present them with this thing I have picked.

I probably sound pretentious, and it's not like I give the best presents in the world, but I do my very best. And to know that I have made them happy, that their eyes are shining and they are grinning and look on top of the world-that's because of me-that's something unique, something I love.

It makes me feel special, and worth something.

There's a hole in my story 

There's a hole in my heart 

And this storyteller is falling apart

                                  -The Passenger

Exit

The final exit in a play,

those last few words across a page,

penultimate speech the actors say,

upon that hallowed stage,

last act, the final scene,

swift and quick emotions rage,

as shattered is their dream

his face all harrowed flesh,

That final froth-corrupted scream, oh-

 Exit life, and enter Death 

A.A. Milne

I think I need to read Winnie-the-Pooh again I discovered the authors writings are beautiful.

'Some people care too much. I think it's called love'

'I used to believe in forever, but forever's too good to be true'.

Winter

Sometimes the hills look like fallen giants, their spines arched convulsively in death throes, now long grown over by the tall grass and trampled beneath some farmers feet.
The spine of the world, and suddenly the name makes sense, the angled mountains so sharp animals do not dare brave their slopes, the rivers wend an alternate path to avoid this geometric oddity and the sky sets itself at a crazed angle as the sun struggles to stay above the reaching hills.

Deciduous trees cling grimly to the mountainside, their roots arched in agony, the weight of the world bowing their bony fingers. They contrast sharply with the deep green hillsides and plush valleys that fall alongside these reaching giants; their pall like snow has freshly settled on their branches, all dead, all bare.

Their contorted limbs seem to whisper it with the dry rustle of their golden leaves now shed like robes and pooled between their roots.

Winter is coming.

The walls are painted red.

Why did they paint them red I wonder? They look like blood, or roses, or wine. That deep rich red that looks almost soft to touch. I feel like if I put my palm against the wall, my hands would come away crimson.

Did they do it to evoke warmth? Red is a warm color. Its also the color of passion and rage, jealousy and death.

It wraps around me, tinting my eyesight rose, in this universe of walls.

“The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.”

                                    -Carl Sagan

Nightmare

I can find no silver lining to my cloud, only the tormented rain, beating out its own agonized misery upon the rooftops of the dead. And where lies the horizon from whence summer should rise, the tendrils of a blood red dusk creep higher, promising the destruction within, wrought from my own obscurity, I am a prisoner of my own soul.

 The lucid torturer who comes each night with brutal whispers of derision is none other then myself, in all my vicious candour, I persecute myself, for the wrongs I shall not commit. No life lies upon this plain of desolation, my sanctity is broken, my dreams shattered, disillusioned beyond repair.
My cold, cynical heart holds the grey desire of a thousand murderers, painting the delirious heavens a devilry of discrimination and maltreatment designed to beguile the most vindictive of spirits.

 If you enter into this bitter jurisdiction, you will find no sun to this shade, no hope to this despair, and no dawn will light these frigid skies. So upon your broken wings my friend, fly if you have the strength left to do so. Fly before this nightmare, before you too, find it your reality.

Red Wine

Sordid, it calls to the darkness within

Sickly, sinister as sin

Red gluttony spilling down my throat

Around my lips doth liquid choke,

More, more, my scrambled mind cries

As one more brain cell dies

Awakening sounds within my head

Voices I thought long dead

They whisper secret things

And to my mind an illness brings

Grotesque affliction of mine

That deadly, dark red wine