So it's done. With a dip of my recently manicured nail I voted! Now I'm waiting for the results and the ever expected aftermath. Post-election piece to come most likely.

Yeay! I feel all important and what not, stained my finger, partook in history and all this jazz.

...Now I'm no longer a voting virgin...;)

When I was a little girl, I remember reading stories and seeing movies of a man and woman in love. I imagined it to be so effortless, endless and an unconditionally happy experience to go through; and I couldn't wait to get older to go through that. Naivety is such a comical trait that we possess. Little did I know that the 'perfect' picture of a true love that falls into your lap, and lasts forever doesn't exist for most of us. I think that the first thing we need to understand that the idea of perfect love is just that, an idea, not something realistic.

Love is many things to many different people, it's rarely ever the same for everyone. Some people, well at least most people I know, like to have a defined and established definition of what love is. This idea comes from the Good Book, the Bible, in Chapter 13 of first Corinthians. It goes like this:

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects. Always trusts. Always hopes. Always perseveres. Love never fails."

If love is what is written here, then to be honest I've never truly loved completely. I have been loved and have loved very few times in my life and each time was different. Not once though has the love comprised or resembled what's written above. Don't get me wrong, I believe in a love like what's written, I hope to one day find that kind of love, because only then will the fantasies and ideas I once held as a little girl come true, because a love like that will be amazing to experience. But for right now, because time and life has made my heart a bit rough around the edges, I think that the ideals expressed in that Book are just that, IDEALS. Realistically as I said before, love is something relative, it means and is different things to different people. It means one thing to you, and it means other things to me.

Love is made up of various things; to some its emotional, physical, material and so on. Some loves are purely based on one of those elements, others contain even bits of one or the other. Life is taught me some lessons on love, it has removed the rose colored lenses that I had on and showed me to view things in a more realistic and practical lens.

The first thing I think I've learned about love is that it should never be painful, nor should it hurt us to be loved and to love another person. Love, to me, is one of the strongest positive experiences we go through and it should never result in negative emotions/feelings.

I also believe that love can change us, but it should be a good, positive change. Love should never change us to a point where we become unrecognizable to others, and most importantly to ourselves. It's like this; you can love someone and want positive changes for them but if they have to change so much to the extent that they become another person altogether; then that's not loving them , it's loving someone else. It's also not you loving them for them. So we can be altered by love, but never should we be disguised by it; meaning simply that who we truly are shouldn't be hidden.

Life has taught me some tricky, confusing and painful lessons in love. One of the hardest and most confusing lessons is that sometimes you can love somebody so much, but you have to let them go. Loving someone sometimes mean that you love that person so much to acknowledge that it's best for you both if you let go and walk away, because as I said earlier you should realize that love shouldn't hurt us. So while you can love them with all your heart, if it breaks your heart by being with them, I learned that if you love them the best thing you can do is to let them go, save that person and yourself- the hurt.

Most times people think that 'true love' means endless, life long love between two people. I've come to realize that when you love, if you're truly blessed and it is meant to be, it's eternal, while other times it's a seasonal/periodical experience. Love and relationships aren't like the movies guys and girls; rarely do we fall in love and it lasts till we die. Relationships end, love is often one sided and unrequited, and sometimes it ends sooner than we'd like it to. My parents are divorced, so I learned that not all loves are for a lifetime, but just because they end doesn't make them any less valuable in our lives. Each time we love is important, good things come out of it to make life better, and bad things come out of it to show us that life isn't a bed of roses but we learn and we press on. It helps me to remember that when I love someone, even if it doesn't work out, they were placed in my life for a reason that whether I understand it now or later is important to me.

With love, sometimes it's necessary for people to have to make compromises, to 'meet in the middle' so to speak. I believe however that while love is about compromising parts of ourselves, it should never be about compromising all of ourselves, or who we are. That is to say that if you have to compromise the majority or all of who you are as a person, it's not compromise anymore, that's extremism- and that's not right.

In love, sometimes unfortunate and hurtful things happen to those involved; and then comes the phrase of 'forgive and forget'. This is always easier said than done, and although you decide to forgive the one you love of hurting you or a mistake in the past; you almost never successfully forget what they did. To me loving somebody means that if they've hurt you, as unfortunate as that is, you forgive them and it, and you you forget it. Because by not forgetting, by not letting it go, you then hurt the both of you; I think it's impossible to move happily and comfortably into the future if you carry aspects of the pasts that are hurtful. If you really love someone, you forgive them, and you also truly forget.

For me, when in love with someone, we should be able to love ourselves, to be truly happy and comfortable with the individuals that we are. Loving somebody shouldn't result in you loving yourself as an individual any less.

Another critical thing I have learned about love is that while love can infuse us, it should never consume us. When all that you are is wrapped up and contorted into loving someone it tends to get dangerous. If all you have and are is loving that person, and everything in your life is consumed by this love, then God forbid should it end, then you'll have nothing. I believe love should enrich your life, but it should never engulf your life. Okay one more, love should be a significant part of your love, but not your entire life.

As corny as this is going to sound, love is 'you', 'me' coming together equally to bring about 'we'. Being in love shouldn't be the elimination of 'you' or 'me', the 'we' shouldn't take over those two elements. Basically I think that when you love someone, the two of you as individuals shouldn't get lost or be less important than the two of you as a couple.

Love is a tricky thing. At the same time, it's the one thing that we all pretty much want to experience, and it's something we all should experience before we die. Love to me has been and should be something emotional, physical, practical/logical and spiritual. I think it should be all those things neatly and aptly combined to result in something that makes me, and the person I love happy ultimately.

Wanting is the disease I was afflicted with

Giving up is the cure that will heal me and kill me all at once

You can’t expect to sleep with the devil and not get burnt a little

And for some time my comfort was in hell

With You

Now I am scorched, and being burnt never felt so good.

Going to the dark side was the temptation

It was delicious torture and I loved every minute of it.

Never could something be so bad for someone and so good at the same time.

So I revelled in it

I let myself lay comfortably with you in this darkness

Shut the light out;

The light which is laced with truth

In the hell I go to with you the lies we tell ourselves to feel better become the only truths.

Now that I’ve left the hell the burns still sting me

The scars are all over me; the burns remind all of me what you once were to me

Burnt are my eyes;

Cause I still see your face

Charred is my skin

Cause I still feel your touch

Scalded are my lips

Cause I remember your kiss

Blistered are my ears

Because your voice permeates around me

Scorched is my heart;

It beats and burns….each beat says your name…each beat burns more and more

All that’s left now is residue.

Remainders of what once was; our hell

We walk around burnt, scarred from what we wanted but didn’t need

You can’t see the scars but we feel them,

Every time we look at one another.

Somehow forgetting hurts more than remembering;

Walking away from the fire that engulfs our hell, we stop.

*this one is from a good while back. Found it while combing through all the stuff I did and am currently doing.*

or lack there of in this case...

So this one wins in terms of ultimate 'are you serious?!' moments for my week thus far! The other afternoon, my mum and I set out on one (of our many) junk food outings- to Burger King. Before hitting there however, we needed cash so we decided to go to the drive through ATM at Royal Bank right near our junk food restaurant of choice. So it's about 4 in the evening and of course at a bank, there's traffic and last minute rushing into and out to get things done. The line for the drive through ATM machine was about three car lengths long when we joined it; so we waited our turn. There's a silver Almera in front of us waiting for the car at the machine to drive off, this happens and the guy in the Almera doesn't proceed to drive forward. So there's no one at the terminal, and he is currently holding back other cars, including yours truly (and at that point- truly hungry!).

So in an attempt to get him moving, my mother pops the horn a bit-nothing. She waits about five minutes and then repeats the action-still nothing. About a few seconds after, a woman exits from the car and proceeds to go into the ATM (not the drive through machine mind you), and this silver Almera is still parked up holding the rest of us back. Now try to stay with me here; he is parked in the drive through line, keeping the rest of us back, but yet has somebody out the car using the other machine. STUPIDITY.

At this point, I'm pretty much fed up of waiting in a line that is moving nowhere. So in a hungered and irritated rage I take my purse and step out of the car to the 'walk in' machine. On the way I obviously have to pass by the stupid Almera and get a glimpse of the total fool driving (or rather not driving) it. Imagine my facial expression and over all reaction to see that this man is at a stand still, and keeping the rest of the line back because he is currently 'going down' on a box of food. So essentially this fool is eating, refusing to move and keeping me back from getting my money so that I can go get my food. NO THOUGH. As I'm walking by I let out a bad word or two and don a mean face; and head in to get money. I'm done now, and as I'm heading to my mum's car, passing the Almera guy, my face is still not pleasant and I am still muttering things under my breath.

Home boy then decides to put down his glass, and shout out to me 'why don't you haul your ......!'. The explicits I left out are painfully obvious to figure out so insert them where I didn't. Upon hearing this, and already beyond hungry and now seething mad- I stop in my tracks and spin around. I hear myself shouting as I'm taking steps back toward his stupid car 'WHAT did you just say to me?!!?', he then proceeds to repeat the phrase to me, this time louder and with more emphasis. Then I completely lose it, because not only is this man wrong, he has now totally disrespected a young lady with shouting, and repeating this obscene expression. Again I hear myself shouting toward him 'Is that how you talk to a lady?! That's the way you speak to a woman? *pause for dramatic effect* That's great 'insert word here'! Good job!' and then I walk back to my car.

Now I admit that I was wrong in saying something and sporting the 'screw pan' face at the man, and to his wrong I added another, and two of them surely didn't produce a right. But it's just a bit disturbing that a man, sorry, THAT man, sees it fit and right to speak to a lady in that utterly lewd manner. When did it become okay to talk to women, no scratch that, other people in that way? Did I not get the memo? CLEARLY I missed it. I am taking responsibility for my actions and saying that the way I acted was not the best, and I should have just ignored it. But the issue here is not the way I acted, the issue here is the total lack of drive through decorum, or common 'brought-up-cy' this man lacks. I hope that for his, he's a rare type, because if that is what men or all people are evolving into, it's a sad, disrespectful and dismal future for us all. When it's acceptable and okay that we speak to one another with such a total lack of respect and 'brought-upcy'.

Just for the record, I did eventually get to satisfy my junk food craving; and I hope whatever stupid, rude Almera guy was eating that kept me back and caused that whole incident tasted horrible! LOL. Ok, I kid, I kid.

:)

*In the midst of working on another piece, and struggling with writer's block (hisss!) I decided to comb through the old stuff I've written and post 'em up here... This one's from a while back.... retro!*

Everything around me is gone; broken, tainted or destroyed,
Still I stay.
The place is empty around me
The breeze blows, still.
Still- I stay.

There is sadness at my right and confusion at my left
Despair behind me and uncertainty ahead
All is not clear; there is a haze in every direction of where I look
Still I stay.

As I blink blankly about me, the wind suddenly becomes strong
Before I know it the tiny pieces that my heart has shattered into surround me
Millions of pieces seem to contain me and remind me of the hurt that surrounds me
The gust of wind stops and the millions of fragments fall to the floor beneath me
Everything is shattered, broken
Somehow
Still I stay.

I stand amongst pieces of myself,
Parts of who I was, segments of who I am, and dregs of the person I hope to become
It all circles me- waiting for me to pick it all up, piece it back together and move on
Walk on
Leave here
Still.
Still I stay

I blink with every moment that passes; hoping that when I open my eyes I will fix it all
Then there is a cold, wet feeling running down my cheeks
Tears
They move, they run, seeming to want to escape the hurt that produce them
Still I stay.

Then there is a breeze again, it’s coming on again
Strong, fast
Yet I am still. Still I stay.
The wind seems to say something, millions of little somethings
I close my eyes and listen to the whispers surrounding me
They whisper of happiness, of certainty, of love, of the past that once was
I hear who I was, who we were,
I feel what we felt, that love that was once there
And almost instantly with the blink of my tear stained eyes the breeze is gone.
The happiness
The certainty
The love is gone
You are gone.

Still. Still I stay.

The place about me is empty, devoid of anything to hold onto
It is tranquil, silent, nothing moving
I see beyond where I stand, to where I fear I should be,
Walk to, be at, move to
There is where I will not be hurt, there is where I need to be
Still I remain; hope in hands and hurt in heart
Still I stay.

"Sometimes, when it seems that the world is against you, it is tempting to side with the world"

-Brick Lane by Monica Ali

This is true; but to that i add- Hold your head up high, and walk ahead to your unknown future, for the pain is in the broken past, but the future is yours to build.

When life hands you one thing; don't think that it's the end all and be all. From lemons we get lemonade. As corny as it will sound, sometimes the closed door to our faces alerts us to an open window, or to doors and windows that were open all the while but we didn't care about those.
Amidst the fall out, i'm heading back to the open doors I left behind.

Life goes on. You hurt, you lose, you confuse, you become confused, and you move on; move FORWARD. Looking back just makes things worst, don't dwell. Dwelling festers the wound, and from that we never find the cure. Don't shun your scars from past hurts, they make us who we are.

For all those you've hurt, ask forgiveness.
For all those that have hurt you, give forgiveness.

'An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind'- Ghandi. Speak on that!Lol.

If you've lost something, someone that you thought was concrete, learn from it. Strenghten your foundations with the people and things that do matter and are worth your time and energy.

Remember the ones you lost, forget the past hurts, disappointments and frustrations.
Cherish the ones you still have; appreciate the days, months years and precious moments you have with them.
Anticipate the ones that will come into your life in the future; the lessons to be learnt, taught and the impact to be made on both your life and theirs from just knowing.


Sometimes we forget who we are, because we are torn between what we were, what we don't wand want to be and what we hope to become.... settle the storm of anticipations, fear, regret and uncertainty and just accept and improve on who you are now... if some people don't like you for you you are, and repel you I bet you there are others standing behind you loving you just the way you are.

If it's possible I literally felt like doing what the girl in the picture is doing a few hours ago. Growing up you change in so many ways, both positive as well as negative and I have to admit that unfortunately I've changed in that it almost takes nothing to get me angry sometimes. I guess you can say my patience is on vacation- it seems like it may be permanent but I'm still hoping it comes back! As I grow, my temper follows suit, so much so now that I, like other people around me, am afraid of myself when angry.

In case you didn't realize it just yet- this is a 'vent piece'; if you don't feel like taking this in then by all means feel free to close the page. I just need a moment (or more than one) where I sit and just let it all go.

I've heard that 'he who angers you conquers you' and if that's true then I get conquered A L OT. Recently though, it only takes very little to set me off; but very little of the same, or the familiar if that makes sense. For those of you that don't really know me, this side of me is something you're not yet aware of. Count yourself lucky I guess, lol. For those of you that do know me, and very well too, you're well aware with this side of me, and also with the factors/elements that trigger me off. So I wont have to , nor do I want to delve into too much of the source of the anger, I just want to type till I've calmed down.

ANGER- it's one of the most powerful and also most regretful and shameful emotions we're capable of. It's sometimes so easy to get angry with someone, at something, but I find it difficult sometimes to get rid of the anger. How to deal with it is often my issue. I try so many things, it's often funny. My instant reaction as of late is to just walk away, and breathe as if the room's devoid of all air- deep, frantic breaths that are supposed to calm me down, but don't really do much. If that fails,I head straight to my I-pod and find my 'pissed off ' playlist, and just lose myself in the songs, somehow the anger fades while I zone out to the (most times) rock music filled with screaming lead singers. As of late I've taken to resolving the situation that angered me in my mind, I say,plead, and often scream what I want to but should not say to the person that's angered me mentally. No i'm not crazy; normal people can talk to themselves, it's the crazies that answer themselves back! LOL When the anger is just too much to even begin to deal with I often do the worst thing for myself and others involved- just talk then and there. If it's one thing I've learned in my life so far it's that whenever you're over come by a negative emotion, it's best to walk away, process things, calm down, and then come back and talk things out. Speaking to someone driven and consumed by jealousy, rage, envy or anger is never a good thing to do. It only makes things worse.

I've found that lately every time I get angry/upset about something, it's with a particular person/situation that just will not go away. Repetition is a helpful tool most times, in this case it's often a leading factor toward pissing me off. If I hear something a few times, especially when it's irritating or unnecessary, I get a bit irritated. But when it's over and over (and over) for a continuous amount of time, then my irritation progresses to infuriation. *think of The Incredible Hulk; he gets crazy mad and then BOOM! Turns into something very very ugly. It's like that! Just minus me ripping out of my clothes into a size that's a million times bigger than normal.lol*

I dunno, I just think that sometimes people should recognize that things they say, and things that they do rub others the wrong way. I do that, or at least I try to do that a lot. Make mental notes. If those don't work, invest in post its and stick them to your clothes or right onto your forehead where you'll always see it. Continuous, repetitive habits and tendencies, when coupled with stupid and rude attitudes are never welcomed with open arms by me. Things need to change- what's that? Change isn't an option?

You can't teach an old dog new tricks Gabby.

B.S. A whole steaming load of it! Every thing changes, at some time or the other, to some level- change is the constant. So where changing is concerned, I guess what I'm saying is that it doesn't matter to me if you will or won't (cus that isn't an option), it's more of you doing it in either large or small amounts- because it WILL happen.

I've heard that people with bad tempers get angry/upset for all the wrong reasons- that maybe true. But if anger is such a dangerous emotion, then I wonder is there ever a right reason to be angry? Is there ever a right time to be angry with someone? No, it just happens. We can't explain it. We just have to deal.

Right now, I'm dealing. I choose to be silent vocally but inside it's all spewing back and forth, what I said, what I want to say, and what I think will never be said. I'm dealing.

Would you look at that? Looks like I've type myself calm. Guess the time for anger has passed.

"Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power, that is not easy."-
Aristotle