Half a light blue vase.

 

I bought myself flowers, red African daisies and white chrysanthemums, because I deserve them.

I lit two rose shaped candles and watched three flies flutter around the room.

There were birds chirping, two wicker baskets, half a light blue vase. A powdered sugar shaker and bright yellow oven mitts. A fake plant.

A breeze drifted in from the open window, carrying the conversations of the 200+ humans who live in numbers 11,13,15,17.

I tucked my feet beneath myself on the couch, wearing my light blue nightgown, wrapped in my pale cream robe.

I stared. Straight ahead.

I thought. I wondered. And I realized, I had created a beautiful moment for myself.

It was all for me.

I found beauty, and I kept it all to myself.

~

So I sing a lullaby. Softly and sweetly I whisper the tale of two broken hearts, and gently I lay the story to rest. At least for today. At least for tonight.

~

Ella

 

“A love like this is seen no more, secrets kept in my heart for years, images between silence, between words, a broken heart becomes a song, silence becomes a melody.”  Idan Raichel

Remember the Truth

Isn’t it crazy that you write the truth and then forget how it feels? You believe in looking at things as beautiful, but you simply don’t remember to. Because bad monsters clout everything, because you can’t remember what it’s like to feel like yourself, because sadness is so overwhelming while happiness is so fleeting.

But yes. For the first time in forever, you feel like you’re going to be okay. And for even just a few days, you felt good. You existed under a new sky, you rediscovered what it is to hope, you felt optimistic about new opportunities and you felt worthy of love. You also believed in it.

A new sky…
(Taken in Baveno, Italy, this summer)

So relax. Take a deep breath. Tell your brain that everything is going to be okay. Sleep well. Dream happy.

Just live. Isn’t it beautiful seeing the magic?

Ella

Song Quote:

I just want to be ok today. –Be OK, Ingrid Michaelson

(The third in an unintentional trilogy… Some Truths, Actual Truth, Remember the Truth.)

The True Reason You Should Be Kind

How cool is the world? I mean, seriously, how cool is it? Because I think it’s pretty freaking cool. There are just so many people. Every single one of them has a name, has thoughts, feelings, and a story. Then I think of how many people have lived since ever, how many nights have been slept through and how many sunrises watched. How many breaths have been breathed!!! The average person takes between 17,280 and 23,040 breaths a day, and there are about 7.2 billion people alive today. And that’s just one single day…

I am the only person who will ever be me, and there is so much to me. That means that… it’s just… wow. I can’t wrap my mind around the vastness of it all.

I think these thoughts more often than is probably normal (we’re talking at least once a day, usually more), but especially prompted by two things: good news and bad news.

The good news is when I’m uplifted, when I realize how awesome and incredible the world is (in other words, a Big Thinking Moment). Things like the “Project for Awesome” remind me how many people have good values and are creative and inspiring. Music and books and movies remind me that I am not alone. Nature brings me back to earth (literally), and it’s when I feel peaceful and whole that I value the beauty of our surroundings and remember to stay connected to it. My family and friends remind me how lucky I am to have them. Or all of these at the same time.

Had quite the onslaught of Big Thinking Moments as I stood staring at this and wondering how the colors could possibly be natural. I didn’t edit this picture at all — it was real life, in all it’s glory.

The bad news is when I hear about suffering. War makes me sad, and I become sadder when I realize that if we haven’t yet found a way to eradicate it, we are not as developed as we think we are. My hopelessness strips away the beauty I previously saw. Racism, cruelty, prejudice, hate, torture, rape, murder… I lose my faith in humanity, if only for a few moments. This is when I realize that if there are so many people in the world and we each experience hardships, there’s a sh*t-load of hardship going around.

The bad news is also what leads to me keeping things in perspective and not taking anything for granted. So on the personal scale I suppose you could say I find a way to make something positive of it, but in reality it just sucks and I hate the world sometimes.

I would say I range from being realistic and practical to being truly optimistic, and this is what keeps me going. My ability to find good and change the way I look at situations is something I have worked to cultivate and plan to fall back on throughout life.

So the way I approach the bad news? I try to be nice. Because yes, there are those with a vision who can change the world, and yes, I could set myself the goal of being one of those people, but that isn’t me (at least not yet). What I can do now is see people. I can notice when they’re having a hard time and need a kind word or gesture. I can tell when they need to be recognized for their personal successes and their abilities, and I try to do that for them. I also just say “hi” and ask how they are because I genuinely want to know. The ways are endless…

This doesn’t mean I’m perfect. This doesn’t mean I’m a good person. What this means is that I’m trying. That is all that can be asked of a person, and that is what I ask of you: please, try to be nice to all of those around you. Small gestures can make such a difference to people, and I’m not going to get all cliché and say that together we can change the world, but together we can make someone happy. Maybe that’s enough.

In the words of the great Ellen Degeneres, be kind to one another. Bye-bye.

Ella

Song Quote:

So, so you think you can tell heaven from hell, blue skies from pain. -Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd

Cousins’ Babies

I pretty much looked like this when I found out the news…

 

A few days ago, my mom gave me the good news: my cousin’s wife is pregnant. I smiled, we laughed, and then I started crying.

I’m the youngest in my family, and therefore never got to have little ones in the house that weren’t, well… me. This is the difference between my friends and me: they have baby cousins, and I have cousins’ babies. My oldest cousin, the one who is soon to be a third time father, was 25 when I was born. He’s the oldest of the oldest (my dad’s older sister), and she got married young, and I’m the youngest of the youngest (my dad), who got married late. There you go.

Anyway, back to babies. I love ‘em.

I truly, truly, simply adore them so much. I don’t think I can even describe it. I just feel this connection to them (don’t let your mind make this sentence creepy). My family and friends have decided I have “baby heaven”, which contrary to its literal meaning (=where babies go when they are no longer alive) actually means I look and feel like I’m in heaven when I see babies.

As of now, I have five cousin’s babies (a new one two weeks ago!), but god willing, soon there will be eight. It’s so amazing!!!!! Two of the soon-to-be babies are girls, and the third is as of yet unknown. I can’t wait until they’re born, and we have this whole next generation in our family! Eight babies. That’s a lot. The oldest is… four? So technically she’s not a baby anymore, but still. Also, two of the new ones are meant to be born within a month of each other, so birthdays every year are going to be super cute.

I love babies!!!! I don’t think this is going anywhere. It’s mainly just, I LOVE BABIES.

Oh, I can tell you why I cried, I guess. I was in a bad mood that day, because of how horribly sick I was feeling, and my mom was trying to cheer me up a bit. I had been in school when my cousin, his wife and their two daughters came over, so I wasn’t around when the news was shared. I was alone at home with my mom, and she came and sat down near me on the couch and told me. I got this immediate grin on my face, so wide it hurt my cheeks and jaw terribly, but I couldn’t stop smiling. The two of us were smiling really wide, and then we just started laughing a bit. But instead of laughing a bit more, I started crying. The tears were falling freely. My cat, Squirt, is amazing, and I will tell you why. The second after I start crying, he’s there: it doesn’t matter where in the house I am and he is, if I start crying, he shows up and purrs next to me.

I don’t have a particularly close relationship with him, not like the rest of my family members, but the two of us (me and the cat) have come to terms with this, and we just live amicably side-by-side. He doesn’t sleep on my bed, I don’t sleep on his, but I’ll fill up his food and he won’t scratch me. That kind of thing, you know. But this, the crying dates – they mean a lot to me. Thanks, kitty.

Anywho, I started crying about the new baby, and Squirt came and purred on me. My mom didn’t want me touching my face while I had cat on me, so she brought a tissue and kind of stuck it in the collar of me shirt to collect the tears. I just kept thinking how awesome (in the literal sense awe) it is that my cousin’s wife has a person growing inside her right now, and that in a few months time she and my cousin are going to welcome another beautiful human being into their family. I may only be sixteen, and therefore wholly unready to start a family, but I already know that I have a whole lot of love in my heart, and I’m going to start my own family one day, and love each and every member with the whole of my being.

I can’t wait. I love babies.

The world can be awesome.

Yours truly,

The coolest cousin-ish thing ever,

Ella

 

Song Quote:

I was sixteen with an open heart…. When I was dumb and the world was young.

–Beautiful, Ben Rector

 

 

On a sadder note, the baby that was born two weeks ago was born into hard times. My cousin’s husband’s brother (the baby’s uncle) passed away shortly before she was born. Her middle name is his. I send all of that love that’s in my heart to the family. I can’t even imagine what you all must be going through.

What A Wonderful World

Took this on the plane on the way to London! Just realized it looks like every other cloud picture ever taken, but oh well….

Hundreds of years from now, an old notebook will be discovered, in which a girl wrote about her thoughts and experiences as she travelled. People will marvel, at those things called ‘paper’, and ‘ink’. They will get a sense of what it used to be like to travel, with planes and trains, cabs and busses. They will be shocked at the fact that once upon a time, someone had to sit down and write what they were feeling, that they stopped because their arm was tired.

 

But for now, in the present, I’m very simply keeping a diary. I’m a week and two days into my vacation, and my notebook has about 100 pages full of words. I’m now in London, and before that I was in Budapest (Hungary), and Bratislava (Slovakia). I’m travelling with my parents and two older sisters.

 

It’s been amazing, seeing these different places where people speak these weird languages (not England, clearly), and lead different lives. There were a few things I saw everywhere I went, and these were them:

 

–       Babies! I just absolutely adore babies!

–       Couples, who were holding hands/ hugging/ kissing/ all of the above

–       Monuments to people the locals killed (which totally pissed me off. Let’s go murder people, then we’ll erect a statue that says how tragic it is they died. Yay! Not.)

–       Outfits/ fashion trends/ clothing. This has been particularly fun, because my sisters and I have taught our dad to notice it too, so every now and then he’ll go, “I liked that dress”, “That looked interesting”, or “Is that a mini, midi or maxi skirt?”

–       Other tourists.

 

Of course, there were many more, but I happen to not have my notebook with me right now. It’s actually not been such a great day, that’s why I have time to write. Here’s the part in most posts where the Fibromyalgia* segues itself in, and this post is like any other.  It’s been hard travelling while not feeling well, extremely hard. It takes away from the enjoyment and the sense of peace and wellness you usually get on vacation. I so wish I felt better, I wish this didn’t have to segue in all the time (though I like the word ‘segue’).

 

Despite all of that, and my bad mood today stemming from feeling like dog poo, I have been having a great time. It’s nice to not be at home, or at school. Change of pace, yeah? That was in a British accent. Almost everything they say here ends with a question, right? There it was again. In fact, I’ve been reading all of this in an accent. Random craziness, no?

 

I’ve met bunches of interesting people, had experiences that I’m not sure I liked, but that I’ll never forget (and that’s worth something- I’ll probably write about a lot of them in the near future), and felt like I gained world perspective again and again.  You know me, and my Big Thinking Moments**. Let’s just say that I feel like I have been living Big Thinking Moments most of the time here.  No matter what the rest of vacation is like, it was worth it for those.

 

As I wrote in my notebook (I just found it),

“… had like this barrage of Big Thinking Moments. I realize I’m really hopeful about the world and about life, and I’m just realizing how amazing everything is. That we are alive, we have thoughts, we have bodies, they have functions. We all look different, act different, dress different, but are built the same. There are families, and places around the world, and beauty, and genius. There is creativity, and history, and society, and money, and… all of it! Everything!     ……

     I have so much respect for life, and I just want to live, experience, learn, and love, and I feel like those aren’t just words, like I know what they are and what they mean. I’m really just excited, not in a rush, living and feeling in the here and now, and I want to say this: I LOVE LIFE. I do. No matter what, life is the most incredible thing out there. I hope and pray I can feel like this for the rest of time.”

 

Wow, well I’m glad I found my notebook just now. I don’t have anything else to add to that, I just really agree with myself.

 

I hope you love life too,

Ella

 

Song Quote:

The heart is hard to translate, It has a language of its own, It talks in tongues and quiet sighs, and prayers and proclamations. –All This and Heaven Too, Florence + The Machine  (This is one of my absolute favorite quotes, I reserve the rights to use it again!)

 

*Check out my new page, “Fibro- what?!”, for info on what that is.

 

** I hope I actually did explain those well enough, because I’m using the term as though everyone understands what they mean. Should I add a page about them? I recently discovered that you can add pages. It’s cool. I think I’m in love. Not really. I just like them. We have a friendly working relationship with them.