Yeah I believe in labeling theory. More importantly, though, that I am a product of it.

Forgiveness. Noble, difficult, impossible.
Painfully slow.
Sit by windows and watch worlds go by, wait for yours to move. Maybe to wake up one day, and think nothing at all.

Hope is all we have, all we can aspire to.

Let's all be tortured poets letting our words bleed into stories of where this world, this life, these times will take us. Get caught in traps that never were and be a series of not-quites only to feel sorry for wasted talent and promises of youth that we couldn't live up to, and then spend the rest of our days in unexplained silences only we understand. We have anthems ready, innumerable tales of the sorrows we constructed, crafting them carefully until we could envelope ourselves in covers of disillusionment and call it wasted potential. We are the new nonconformists, the anti to your now ancient modern social constructs, the dregs of your baby-booming, money churning, soul crushing pursuits, the self-discoverers, the subjects without your objectivity clouding our judgments. So watch us, watch us as we tap into our inner selves, run after the ultimate spiritual experience, and leave you behind as we chase our quest to be us. Just watch us as we crumble and collide and self-combust.

When spontaneous becomes another word in your vocabulary, it's just a sad realization that growing up wasn't as glamorous as you painted it to be.

"I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination."
From The Third and Final Continent, one of the short stories in Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies.

Young and?

Close your eyes and breathe it in. The smell of grass growing out of melting puddles of snow, the smell of sunshine and new-bloom. Let's waste time and make dreams, do it until we're tired and giggling. Then let's do it all over again, for the rest of our days here. Let's not think beyond now, or today, or this moment right here, beyond these days. We're no longer young enough, but if time should have to stop, this is where we should let go of it and never ask for it back. Because the coming years won't make us any prettier than we are now. It's just right now these all-nighters won't kill us, only now that we have nothing to lose. What is a zit in the face of everyfuckingthing?We know we are blessed, how can we feel guilty about it all the time?
Don't ask what we've got to celebrate. That is a stupid thing to ask, if there ever was one. Just close your eyes and smile when the sun shines on you.
Why, you ask? Because you are beautiful young people, and you deserve to stand in this moment.

In my veins

are twisted streets, filth-filled alleys, a wreckage in the name of urban planning, the threat of bombs and blood and death, clear skies with no stars, excruciating summers with hours of no electricity. The face of  all that is deprived, and hopeless, and downtrodden. The stench of fish and sewerage, the musky smell of bodies in crowded bazaars, and dirty street-side food. The children and the disabled and the old, knocking on windows, begging and selling- begging for more than money, and selling more than flowers and tacky made-in China toys. Selling lives and blood and dreams.
In my veins are 4 am sunrises in a place that never went to sleep, waves crashing against hot sand, the feel of bug-infested grass under feet, skies in shades I will never find anywhere else, the vivid, nearly tangible threads of hope that clings- a whole life. And all the people who live in that universe that sprawls and sprawls and sprawls. That cruel, beautiful city- it's difficult to come from something that is more than around you.