This Yellow Flickering Beat

We're given this one little life.

This one little life. And we're told that if we're lucky, we get to live 100 years of it. We get to see the trees, the oceans, the mountains... We get to exchange smiles and 'I Love You's to every person that we've had the opportunity to see on our crossroads... We get the chance to climb hills, fall down them and pick ourselves up again - we get to journey.

We're given this one little life.
And I've spent so much of it crying in a corner, closing the curtains, watching the light in my heart dim as my hope for anything to turn around diminishes - for begging, pleading, and banging the walls for God to stop doing what he's doing to me.

We're given this one little life.
And we choose to focus on the terror that plagues the four corners of the world, we choose to close the door and hide in our rooms. We choose to gossip. We choose to see the rubble and the disgusting that reek the streets of our small towns.

We're given this one little life.
And we do drugs, drink alcohol, hide behind our screens to try to mask the terrible, awful pain that's stuck in our hearts, that just can't get past our throats - and out to the world. We take photos, post them online hoping everyone can see our plastic smiles, Barbie bodies and think ha, I fooled you! We think no one else in this world could possibly feel the way we feel, and we think that these things can make us happy. But it just doesn't work that way. It just doesn't - And that's fucking frustrating.

We're given this one little life.

And it's so simple.

But somehow, we still manage to fuck it up.

We still think we're alone, and no matter how many times your friends and your family tell you that things are going to be okay - we lay awake in a pool of our own tears at 2:22 AM asphyxiated by our crippling thoughts and worst fears. As children, we're told that the monsters were under our bed - oh, if it could only be that nice, we would have it soooo good. But no, the monsters are so much worse than we feared - they're in every bad thought we have when we come home from a long day, they're in every insult we make to try to tease our friends, they're in every moment we choose selfishness instead of selflessness - they're in the reflection in the mirror every time we look back - to fix that perfectly gelled side swept hair, or to comb out the little clump stuck in your mascara... And all you can see is that the monster is fucking. ugly. And the reflection of this cool, cocky monster snickering right in front of you, won't fucking disappear.

I used to think that I was the only one that laid awake at the dead of the night in this world - I thought I was terribly strange because at night when I worry about things I know I can't control, when I worry about the people I know I can't make love me, or when I worry about the nasty comments I hear about myself from a friend... I lay awake under the roof, hidden from the stars, my head more on fire, more ready to spin a web than ever, my heart beating faster and more intense then the first time I Love You slipped out of my mouth to the boy I thought I would spend the rest of my life with. I thought about how people could betray me, how could he possibly do this to me?!

What is wrong with me?

Nothing
This does nothing.
Digging a hole, hiding yourself in it, burying yourself under the dirt of this world, trying to hide everything that you feel - You're burying yourself alive. You're suffocating. And worst of all, out of all the pain you've created - you're alone.

The truth is I'm angry. Angrier than I have ever been in my life.
It's difficult for me to be angry because I know I am such a go-getter, happy kind of goober.
But sometimes, the anger bubbling under my nails, starts to sizzle out from my skin, the steam starts to spread from the top of my head - and everything that has been suppressed and stomped on throughout the year, finally prevails itself. The monster within me prevails.
I am not perfect. I lose it.

I realize that - frankly - I'm angry at the world. I'm angry that terrorism exists, that bankruptcy even matters, that people want to bomb other people - no - that people are willing to lose their own lives just to hurt even more people - people that they don't even know - and the worst part is - they think they're the martyrs. I'm angry that bullying exists, that self harm is a thing, that a perfectly good 12 year old girl thinks she needs abs or plastic surgery. I'm angry that dogs are abandoned and roam the roads eating trash. I'm angry that children don't get to receive fair education, or BASIC human equalities because of the color of their skin or because they were born in a different place. I'm angry that some people will never understand the struggle I face as a young Asian woman - I'm angry I won't be able to truly understand and sympathise with what it feels like to be African American, or an immigrant or a refugee. I'm angry that a beautiful girl, who was so much younger and kinder than me died because of one stupid accident, who deserved so much of this good from the world - I'm. Fucking. Angry.

But most of all - I'm shattered.
I'm tired.
I'm hurt.
I'm frustrated.
I'm frustrated that I can't change the world with a flick of a wrist, or a wave of a wand, and sometimes it feels like no matter how hard I try to kill 'em with kindness - I still fall short, my actions are still meaningless - and people still struggle around me. I'm hurt that I was cheated on, when I thought I was doing everything right... I thought I was doing everything right, man...

I'm not perfect, and so many times I just feel like I'm not enough. Sometimes some people have the ability to make me feel like I'm the damn devil.
But why?
I'm perfectly fine.
How could I possibly think that?
You just can't think that.
Because truth is, you're a good force to this world. Because even though you may feel like you are the devil, you don't want to be, because even though you feel beaten and can't get up anymore, you find the strength to fight the devil within you - to fight the devil within others - and see the angel in yourself and the angel within others.

That's you.
That's the real you.
That's the you God created you to be, that nobody who isn't you will ever understand the struggle - your own struggle.

I'm growing everyday, I work my hardest, I pursue my dreams to inspire people to do good, I try my best to help my friends and the people that are struggling around me, whether or not I know them. I make the effort to make the world a better place. Everyday, no matter what shit, what terrible excruciating painful thing is thrown at me, I still somehow find myself trying to be caring, I still find myself being extremely faithful, I still somehow find myself loving those who are out to hurt me. I make the effort to reflect God's love on others - and everyday I battle to choose good instead of evil. I'm far from being the devil.

I used to believe that one of my biggest and most fatal flaw was that no matter how bad situations were, I still had the vast amount of hope that things would turn around, that I could fix it. It's like having false hope, high hopes, only to have your dream crushed. And even after your dreams are crushed you still cling to whatever strands of persistence or take simple things as signs of hope. It's clawing after something untouchable - again, and again, and again, and again and again...

Yeah, sometimes it's so stupid to believe in something that has 99.999% chance of failure. But I'm that 0.0001%. Because I'd rather choose to believe in that 0.0001% of good, than the 99.999% of bad.

I somehow in this big terrible world - believe in that one 0.0001% teeny, tiny and terrified speck of hope.

We have this one little life.

And we take it for granted sometimes.
But what can you do?
You can live.
Live. You can make it through. because -
even if you're that 0.0001% - I fucking believe in you. With my whole damn heart. Yeah this heart could be pretty beaten up - but it's something -
There's still a little yellow flickering beat.
And I promise, that I'll give everything, everything that this yellow flickering beat has -

And you just gotta go with that yellow flickering beat within you.

I fucking love you.

                                                                                                   - this yellow flickering beat        

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