My emotions are complicated and fairly intense especially to those I feel the most. Besides my family and a handful of people I personally grew up with, I doubt that anyone knows about it. Throughout years of trial and errors, I have discovered a way to cover up the dust from my swirling vortex of emotions. It is almost up to perfection now. I feel as if I have drawn a line of boundary where my vortex lies, no one dares to venture close enough as either they don’t care, they are afraid of getting hurt, they don’t give a damn or they assume they already know me well.

All my life, I’ve just been waiting for the ones who acknowledge me enough to cross this line of no return. Only to find what really lies inside the vortex – the eye of the storm. To realize how bare and vulnerable I really am, to discover all my secrets and fears, to honestly understand my feelings and emotions without the façade.

I might sound heartless to say this but many of my friends do not actually cross this line, not many really understand what storm my vortex is fighting and what I’m really thinking. To think of it, no one really asks me about what I’m thinking inside, I mean seriously. They don’t ask, what are you thinking, but instead what are you doing. It’s so ironic I want to laugh. I know before it’s because I distant myself, but now even when I have opened up heart, still no one bothers to ask me explicitly. It’s as depressing as having lain down your assets bare yet having people trampling over you instead.

Perhaps what I’m looking for are soul mates, the other part of my heart. Maybe I should not fault my friends for not being sensitive towards me, but rather because they are not the one I’m searching for. To be honest, 21 years has passed and yet I still haven’t found my soul mate, I’m getting afraid that it would be too late when I find them. I want to spend more time with them! I did found one a few years back, but circumstances sent the person away from me. The separation was horrible and heart-breaking. Apart from that, things haven’t been going smooth sailing for me these years. I have gained and I have lost. I have learned and I have forgotten. I have loved and I have despaired.

Today was another of my blue gray days where the colors has been taken out of the world around me, I felt like running away, I felt like hiding, mostly I felt like crying. It was then I realized that God has given me another simple gift to cope with this intense one. He has given me the gift of cheering up. The gift which gave me the ability to find light and laughter in everyday simple happenings, the gift to smile at myself as I start painting the blank canvas over again.

-Alice Sun