Emotion

I love you from the bottom of my hypothalamus!

The hypothalamus is located just below the thalamus. According to the American physiologist, Walter B. Canon, the hypothalamus is the seat of all human emotions. And of all emotions, it's love that strikes us most of all. Love comes with all sorts of definitions basing on how each individual has experienced it. But how does it begin? 

Scientifically, love comes alive through the sense of smell. We neglect to dig down deeper that this emotion happens to be produced by specific substances with effects that are the same as when one takes drugs. One substance is commonly known as pheromones, these triggers and affects our hormones. Hormones are chemical messengers inside the body that are released and basically creates our reactions. Dopamine is one of the hormones secreted by the body and it is addictive. It is associated with the reward system of the brain and so it is the reason why you want to see someone you really like badly. It gives off a feeling  of excitement, energy and motivation to do anything. The process can be so long but to summarize it, the caught smell is received by the hypothalamus, then comes the secretion of hormones, and thus creates a feeling of attraction between two people.

Although these are hard cold facts, some people would just prefer to believe that love is an emotion felt by the heart. I always have to argue that the heart is only a muscular organ that pumps blood all throughout our body. I don't belittle its significance by just defining it simply that way. After all, without it, I would most likely be dead. But it just somehow annoys me that others can easily define what love really is. It's either they're really lucky enough to have found its true meaning or I'm just a meticulous being. 

Tonight, however, I prefer to question my own belief. It's around 2am, the sky has just enough stars. The moon is blurry and hidden behind rain clouds. It's one of those cheesy nights where I just read for the nth time a novel written by Nicholas Sparks. True to his name, he sends sparks and makes me feel all giddy by the end of the story. He writes the most extraordinary and relatable plots about sadness, guilt, hope, happiness, and love. It is without a doubt, his way of writing about love and the way each character shows conviction of the emotion, that makes me think twice about my idea about it. When I start to formulate the what if's in my mind, my heart starts to race. It somehow shrinks as if someone's squeezing it dry. And maybe it's simply because, when I think about love, I have a specific person in my mind. I know there is a logical explanation to why this kind of reaction occurs. It's a another lecture of how the body works. But in this moment, I'd like to take a risk and forget about what knowledge I was educated with. 

And so I define love as an emotion that is truly felt by the heart with which only one person can make it beat faster and slower at the same time. Love is what I see when that person encourages me to become a better version of myself. Love is what I feel when I see that one person cross a room with other people to choose from but prefers to look only at me. However I define it, love will always be just love, an emotion that can break me but can never stop me from loving just the same. 

~myeviltwin

Bitter sweet

And we give you a grade of re-oral.

"Figures. The paper wasn't done. It lacked the necessary information to be proven worthy of a passing grade."

To create a thesis paper is one of the major highlights in college. It somehow represents how much knowledge you have gained in your 4 or more years in the course you have taken. An oral presentation of your thesis paper is the make it or break it moment wherein you will find out, given that you passed all your other subjects too, that you will join your ceremonial rites for graduation. And here I am, working my ass off to prove that I am worthy to be called a soon to be graduate.

The oral presentation did not go all too well. And yes, my partner in the process got all distraught and heart broken. I, for one, do not see it as something negative. It became an inspiration to push myself forward. The fight for me wasn't over yet. People expected me to be sad at that point. But seriously, how can you be sad when an opportunity was given to make better what you've made and of course, to make better your whole being?

I've recently accepted the fact that failure is indeed a part of life. The feeling, to put it in lay man's term, sucks. And there are times when you just want to give up and run for the hills. But then again, to fail is the most important aspect in learning. It teaches one a lot of values that include, maintaining the atmosphere of positivity, to understand that there is and will always be room for improvement. It teaches one to be humble, to be inspired, to be challenged. Most importantly, it teaches one that you are not perfect. There are some people though that you feel expect you to be perfect and believe me, these are the kind of people that are being bullied to be perfect too themselves. The trick is to hold true on what you can give, you may not be perfect but hell, it doesn't stop you to become the best that you can be.

Failure has a lot of definitions. It's either you see it as something negative or something positive. For others, it means: This is the end. Others say: I simply don't care anymore. For me, failure simply means: Get off your effin' ass, you are better than this and you know it. When it seems as though a situation is too hard to handle, I find it best to remember that everything has a meaning. And that in every sticky situation there is always a way out. 

Failure is not the result of the build up of mistakes you have done. Mistakes are as inevitable as change itself. And the mistakes you make in life are the foundations of the better person you are now and the better person you will become in the future. Failure then is the result of giving up without even trying, without risking to make a mistake.

If you are afraid to commit a mistake or to be imperfect, which you already are in the first place, I feel sorry for you my friend. The brave may not live forever but the cautious do not live at all.

~myeviltwin

Love-ish letter

Dear you,

The pain is just plain unbearable, you see. I've always thought of us as an A couple, we may have been oddly inseparable in so many ways. But still, we were so attracted to each other because of our similarities which compensates for our differences.

I know I can live without you but it would just be as how Lord Voldemort lived a half life.

You know I'd kill a troll for you. I'd suck the life out of dementors with a vacuum. I'd have thestrals grow muscle and skin. I'd tame giants to feel as small as goblins and house elves. A boggart would instantly shape shift to my heart that only beats just for you. I know you're not much of a Harry Potter fan, screw you for that. 

In any case, you have been there for me all the way from hell to back. Did I ever tell you I often see you as that vampire named Edward from Twilight? You don't wear much make up and you're still a younger version of a virgin than him though. You make me feel all weak, you make my legs tremble, you make me feel like Bella. But then again, I have more brains than her. Why would I go off looking for a dead gay guy? And there's Jacob. Oh his muscles just explodes testosterone. You remind me of him in no way. I just wanted to emphasize your complete lack thereof of muscles.

In the end, here you are. You turn your back and you're ready to leave me. Romeo and Juliet could have not been as romantic as us. Niether can the witch of Portobello work her way in magic to conjure an everlasting love like ours. I hope ours was a walk you can remember forever. The alchemist cannot match the journey we have gone through. Now that you're gone, I'd like to decide to die but hell no. I would not do that for you. I just stated that to make this sound even cheesier. Then again, I wish you'd meet those 5 people in heaven after you lose yourself in depression.

And so love, as you jump of a bridge, crack your skull open, and die.
I wave both my middle fingers at you, goodbye. 

xoxo.

~myeviltwin

More than just that

The four goals of Psychology is to be able to define, explain, predict, and eventually control behavior.

In my years in college as a Psychology major, I have enclosed myself in a box. This box represents the foundations of Psychology. The theories, the coined terms, the famous people who contributed their brilliant ideas in the hope of further nourishing the knowledge that has already been born. Here is the box that is filled with the build up of purely facts.

Within the box is my layer of protective personal bubble. This serves as a solid barrier. The stand off point from where you and I stand. If I let you in then I'm giving you the power to either hurt me physically or emotionally.

Within that bubble is my exterior body, with which becomes an instrument of analysis because every move and reaction has a meaning. If you look to the left, you are lying. If you're pointing your feet to the door, you want to leave. If you forget a part of your past then possibly it was the time when your trauma began. 

All these attention to detail has become what I breathe and live for. But I knew there was something missing. I kept pondering on what it was and there, served on a silver platter came the answer to my curiosity. Expressive Arts Therapy. There's an art of healing you never get to hear of on a daily basis. At first, I could not let go of my inhibitions as I was deeply rooted to details and scientifically speaking, whatevers. As I gave my full attention to the possibility of it being an important factor to my growth, I felt that void in me fill up. And then I discovered something of great significance.

Now, within my exterior body is what scientists claim to be unreal and questionable, within me is my soul. You can define, explain, predict, and control behavior, yes. But you can never grab hold of what I have in my soul. It hides the real me. My emotions, my troubles, my happiness, my pain. No theories in Psychology can strip me of what I really am and what I really feel. 

Expressive Arts has become a safe haven for my soul and my whole being. There in that hall of four walls, it doesn't seem like an enclosed box, it's more like a piece of everyone's own idea of heaven. Expressive Arts teaches one to accept individuality, face adversity, and awaken one's sleeping inner child within. I realized then that in all of Psychology's completeness, it is after all incomplete. It lacks the ability to go beyond asking a patient, "and how do you feel about that?". This form of healing does not promise the resolution of problems or illnesses but it does in fact nourish a being and his or her soul through the most primitive emotion known to man that Psychology has forgotten. Love. 

Viktor Frankl once said, "Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the most innermost core of his personality.” And indeed, Expressive Arts has done that not only to me but for the rest of the members that comprise the organization who I now call my family. With the integration of concrete facts and the rebirth of humanistic transformation, I do believe that one can be  able to reach out and save more people.

This is more than just a testimony. This is a tribute to father Loreto Jaque, the backbone of this art of healing. Thank you for the opportunity, the all welcoming acceptance, and the unconditional love. You truly are an inspiration worth following. May you have more birthdays to come. Vive les arts! Long live the arts!

~myeviltwin

Alive

The termination of an activity or goal of an action. The end.

You race to go to work on time. You race to finish a work load of assignment. You race to get that good parking spot. You race to attain something of significance and sometimes of insignificance. Life is one hell of a race. As much as possible you have to be the first in everything because being left behind makes you feel like a total loser. Not only for one's own sake but other factors such as all these fast pace development around just makes you want to keep moving too. Remaining stagnant would seem like forever, we'd start to fidget and find something worthwhile to do. If boredom could kill then we'd be all swarmed with flies, dead, stiff, and cold. 

I went to another session of Expressive Arts Therapy, it's been awhile since I last attended. I've been busy with school work, on the job training, exams, and not to mention other stuff not related to school. Every morning became such a burden. I literally had to drag myself out of bed, forcing my brain to stop making excuses. There is no time to waste. I need to do this or that, need to finish this and that, my schedule's fully booked. I feel like a puppet and other people are holding on to the strings that allow me to move. I do their every command with no hesitation. Yes, my life sucks indeed.

The game during the session was racing. Here we go again, I thought. But then the rules changed. Instead of running fast, you needed to run slow. The slowest wins the race. What a peculiar turn of events. And so the game began, being one of the young people in the group, my friends and I decided to make it more interesting. To make ourselves run slower, we would do the robot moves. We were the last 3 people in the race, go effin' tripod! Then I started to get bored and so I ran fast to the finish line. I left my 2 friends behind and eventually they followed my lead. So much for wanting to take things slow.

Someday when I actually get my head on straight, I plan to drop everything and go somewhere. Leave everything behind, disappear, get lost and live. It's not that I'm running away from it all. It's more of like, I need a break from it all. I'm getting used to living with the fast growing lifestyle and that's a bad thing. I may be standing tall but I'm actually living the life everyone expects me to live. 

Living life to the fullest means not putting to waste each second that passes you by. It also entails that you actually live for you alone, live because you want to and not because you have to. If racing is a way of life then I wish to unlearn it. I won't be able to live by dashing off from here to there faster than the speed of light now, would I? It's not a race. It's just life.

And so for this moment, I close my eyes and take a breath. 

~myeviltwin

Make a choice

I am torn.

Matthew 6:24 says, you cannot serve two masters. Although I do not follow much of what is written in the bible or actually read it to begin with, I can attest that not in all things this is applicable. I can do my homework while listening to music. I can take a call and write down a ticket. I can eat and watch television at the same time. The term is called human multitasking to be exact. It is the ability of a person to perform more than one task at the same time.

However, there is one thing that ultimately becomes a contradiction to this. Love. Sure, you can love a family member and a special someone at the same time, you can have two boyfriends or two girlfriends, have more than one best friend perhaps. But then, someone has to be closer to your heart in all those people you claim to love. I don't believe in people who say, I love them all equally. That's an answer they use as a means of hiding what they really feel because people hate having to choose one thing over the other. We all want everything that makes us happy. Sometimes we want things that are not meant for us. We still work in order to gain it though we know it's only for a moment's time of happiness.

Contentment. I ask for this value each time I pray, which truthfully is never often. It's when you have contentment, you feel most happy in what you have. You don't just simply settle for something or someone. You embrace what you've got and feel like you're the luckiest being in the world for having attained that gift, whether it be in the form of something material, or in the form of an abstract feeling like the love of a person. 

I don't know the exact time span or what to do in order to have that. I guess it'll just come to a person. It'll be be the time when you stop asking for the latest gadgets or what's in trend. And maybe, when a person actually stops thinking, I wish I had two hearts to love you and another.

~myeviltwin

Sweetness

Ice cream makes me happy, love.

As I tiptoe my way to open the curtains, I can imagine her sweet smile greeting me another wonderful morning. The sweet smell of her perfume still lingers on her side of the bed. As I walk down the halls of our dream house built on the foundation of our love, I can still feel her warmth walking beside me. That's how it has always been for awhile now, she's so close and yet so far from my reach. And if I listen closely I can hear the sound of her beating heart, I know for a fact that it only beats for me. I can still hear her voice clearly now as if she never left, as if she's just there, calling me.

"Honey, breakfast is ready". "I'm sorry love, I don't feel like eating breakfast, really" I said. She replied with that silly puppy eye look she gives me, "Oh please, won't you join me for breakfast? It's only the most important meal of the day, you know. And after let's go buy ice cream for dessert tonight. Pretty please?" And with that she instantly changes my mind. Seriously, no one can ever resist that puppy eye look she gives. Most importantly, I can never resist the whole of her entirely. She knows me better than anyone in the world, even more than I know myself. She has always been the light that guides me home. The one who plants a smile on my lips when I'm feeling down. My love for her grew a million times more than my own body can contain, when she had our first child. Our little bundle of joy just overflows with love. To top it off, she's the spitting image of her mother in almost every way. Life could not get any better than this. My two great loves, here in my arms. I thought the happiness would last for as long as I lived. And then the solid wheel of my life just went into a sudden halt when I heard the news.

"She's dying. Only about 6 months or less to live. I'm sorry". Sorry. That's all the doctor had to say. He breaks the most dumbfounded news and sorry is all he can give to me. I wanted to walk right in front of him and crush his skull with my bare hands. Just as I was about to make reality the image of strangling him, she held my hand tightly. I saw her tears flowing and I immediately hugged her. I asked her if she was okay, if anything hurt, most importantly, I hugged her to let her know I was there for her. She looked up and stared at me for a second, smiled through her tears and said, "Honey, let's go get ice cream".

She's on her hospital bed now. It's been a year since the doctor had set an expiration date for her. It just goes to show how strong she is. I'm proud of her and yet at the same time, it ultimately breaks my spirit when I see her in pain. If only I could take it all for myself. Just take me, please. Not my wife. She's always been so good and so wonderful. Why take such an angel away? I try to be more than just be a husband. At home, I juggle my way through work and taking care of our daughter. As much as I didn't want to leave her side, she forces me to continue on living normally. Our little angel is 3 now, she's smart like her mother. Too smart, she asked me one day when her momma's going to be home. I gently pinched her cherub cheeks and said, "Soon angel, I really hope soon". But the heavens did not permit that. As each day passed by, she grew weaker and her body failing. Despite this, she continues to remain optimistic. She still had that hint of glow in her eyes. And she still craves for that sweet dessert, you guessed it, ice cream. One day I said, "You know love, I'm going to get diabetes and eventually follow you". "Don't say that", she replied. I bowed my head torn between the two great loves of my life. I wanted to be with her but I can't leave our daughter. I'm sure she wouldn't let me. She startled me while I was in deep thought. "Ice cream makes me happy and I love you". At that moment, I broke down. The tears I kept just all washed out. "I love you too. So, please get better. Don't leave us. Don't leave me". I admit I was like a child but truth be told, that saying that goes, I can't live without you is true. Or at least, it applies to me. This time, she was the one who had to hug me. "I'm sorry this is hurting you. I'll always be here. I'll always love you. Be strong. Please let me go". 

She's gone now. Our daughter and I are sitting outside the church. The service had finished an hour ago but we both decided to stay. She's quiet and so am I. In a way, she got that gift of silence and drowning in deep thought from me. The final conversation I had with my wife was not easy but as you can see I decided to let her go. To force her to stay would just hurt us both. I didn't want to see her suffering anymore. I calmed myself down that night, kissed her forehead, and said, "I'll always love you too. Rest well my love". She smiled and held my hand throughout the night. In the morning, she was declared dead. I was heart broken and devastated. Our daughter cried in my arms when she heard the news. She's so young and yet she understands fully what death means. 

A few minutes passed, our little girl held my hand and said, "Daddy, let's go get ice cream". "You sound like your momma. Why do you want ice cream?" I said. She looked at me with her big brown eyes and replied, "Ice cream makes me happy. Momma always said, happiness is best shared with someone you love. And I love you, daddy". I was stunned, so the mystery of her mother's taste for the sweet delight has been revealed. I never really thought of it that way before, it makes sense to me now. I held on to my little girl's hand, smiled and replied, "And your momma's absolutely right, I love you both too".

~myeviltwin