Trouble sleeping

This is the third time I'm rewriting this post. Because really, I have no idea what to say.

It's 1 a.m., I'm supposed to be asleep, but thoughts keep circling my mind like pesky bugs, questioning, questioning, and no answers to be found.

It's late and I'm feeling so tired
Having trouble sleeping
This constant compromise
Between thinking and breathing

And that describes what I'm feeling right now. So tired, but mentally jumpy.

The clock goes tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock -

Shivers down my back. It's so quiet, and dark.

Is everyone asleep right now? (A quick check on Messenger proves that I'm not the only red-eyed one now.)

That one question about love hovers in the background, quietly observing my thoughts. What is it you're thinking, Lynn? Still can't find the answers?

Well, I can't. I still can't. It's not that easy to define it - love - and especially right now, when I'm confused and cynical about so many things.

Reading about Love on some encyclopaedia doesn't do much to answer questions. Listening to people talk about their own experiences with love is enlightening in some ways, but some personal questions persist.

D'you know what?

You can only understand love when you experience it. (My mind is slightly muddled at this moment, so forgive the meandering, senseless statements I might make.)

Love cannot be defined.

It can only be felt.

So is it a futile effort for me to continue looking for the answers to my questions?

Perhaps not. But they are personal truths that only I can understand.

Love and hate. Hate isn't the absence of love; it's the other side of love. Indifference is the absence of love.

Can you love and hate a person at one and the same time? Possibly.

Is it true that you can stop loving someone? Maybe.

Can you love someone without realising you do? Probably.

And so the what-ifs and endless possibilities present themselves to this young girl who is unsure about the decisions she should make.

The should-haves and could-have-beens: tragic phrases, these.

(Damn am I hungry.)

Dreams and the imagination - one and the same. Can they be translated into Reality? I would like to see that happen; because, right now, the idea that a Malaysian teen would ever make an impact anywhere seems to be further out of reach than the possibility that we could have a Utopian world.

Nothing is ever what you want it to be; nothing is ever perfect. Expect nothing and you will not be disappointed, that's what I have been told.

But when you expect nothing, hope seems dead - then what do you have to hold on to? Love? Intellect?

Frankly, I do not know.

Maybe I shouldn't have written about love in the first place.

And nothing is ever as you want to be

You lose your love for her and then
It is her who is lost,
And then it is both who are lost,
And nothing is ever as perfect as you want it to be.

In a very ordinary world
A most extraordinary pain mingles with the small routines,
The loss seems huge and yet
Nothing can be pinned down or fully explained.

You are afraid.
If you found the perfect love
It would scald your hands,
Rip the skin from your nerves,
Cause havoc with a computered heart.

You lose your love for her and then it is her who is lost.
You tried not to hurt and yet
Everything you touched became a wound.
You tried to mend what cannot be mended,
You tried, neither foolish nor clumsy,
To rescue what cannot be rescued.

You failed,
And now she is elsewhere
And her night and your night
Are both utterly drained.

How easy it would be
If love could be brought home like a lost kitten
Or gathered in like strawberries,
How lovely it would be;
But nothing is ever as perfect as you want it to be.

~ Brian Patten

It seems out of place here - I know - but.