What makes you happy?

The other day, a guy asked me this question. It just poppped up in a series of back and forth messaging. 

"so, what makes you happy?"

I did not answer his question, because I felt it's something so personal. And quite frankly, it would unnerve me thinking he would automatically know me so well so soon. 

I'll try to be as spontaneous as possible coming up with answers to that.

Having Starbucks carrot cake with a bitter Americano. A goooood cup of coffee. Good books. A great party with all my favorite songs and never ending dancing. Dancing with someone special. Bubble baths. A great meal. The Ultimate Mudslide. Praying. Reading my holy Book. Hiking. Exercising. Cooking an awesome meal. Being with extended family. Being with close friends. Meeting strangers who are friendly, sharing their bits of life with me. Watching a good movie. Soft bedsheets. A big, clean, organized bedroom. Mozart or Chopin in the morning. Night drives, me driving or someone else whom I'm so comfortable with that I could just sleep if I wanted to and they'd play me music. (I've done that twice and it was amazing. One of my best memories)

and these are the few of my favorite things.

Today I choose to write LOVE.

I was once in love. I think I 'loved' 2 people romantically my whole life. 

One certainly did not deserve it and I seriously do doubt I loved him because I simply cannot believe I was there at one point in life. There. Loving him. It seems like a ridiculous place to be in. 

And the other. The other will always be special, no matter how many times I push, pull and play around with the thought that he never was. He was probably the first guy who talked to me about my personality, wrote letters and placed it outside below my hostel room door. The first one I played Guitar hero with, the first one who bought me flowers more than 3 times (in fact, 6 times), the one who bought me my first book on lions (my favorite animal) and the first one I knew who would eventually marry his cousin. 

And he is the first guy who actually tells me he prays for me. When he went for umrah, that was all he could talk about when he sent me daily messages. 

Does it hurt I cannot be with him? I do not know. 

You see everything sounds so lovely in retrospect, on paper, in sugar coated words. But was it? To some degree yes. In other aspects, no. 

I choose to think I'm like a dandelion, floating to my next destination. Lame comparison I know, but we had a tonne of them in Russia often crippling people with allergic rhinitis (yours truly included) so I have experience in judging the nature of their existence.

 You see, a dandelion can be ugly and pretty simultaneously. It's just a weed.  No love is lost if it is crushed, no love is given if it is plucked and admired for its fragility, it's like snow in summer. Soft and weightless. It would also, quite often, be put to the test of being blown to a hundred directions by an irresponsible adult. 

So let me be one. 
I'd have many 'spores' or fluffy pollen I can afford to just shed. Once part of me is blown out, I grow again somewhere far and await the same circle of fate. 

But I know I can be alone. Like a solitary spore. I love being alone. I am accustomed to it. Because nobody has ever made me feel like I belong. That I can be a part of them. 

That is why a dandelion is a perfect comparison. It is never a part of even itself. There's nothing so special about it. True. And there's nothing special about myself if you were to compare me to girls with the fairest of skin, nicest of booty, straightest of hair and friendliest of nature. 

But, I know my worth. I exist in that quiet sense of being, of comfort. I love my own skin. I'm happy. But quietly happy. Like a floating dandelion. It knows despite the harshest of winters it suprises everyone the next time the sun is up in summer.  

So, back to love. 

Love will never be something I chase or pursue anymore. If it happens, I'd let it happen quietly so it can quietly leave when it ends. But silence, that is love. 

When it resounds in that state. And you have absolutely no doubts. 

Where all you see are actions that prove it and never words that betray it.  

And it is in that same silence a dandelion grows, journeys and dies. 

The tree.

Would you agree that so much can happen in such a short time but you can hardly notice any changes until one day, you sit down and it occurs to you that this friendship has stopped. this person has stopped calling. this person has stopped loving you.  you're no longer studying. you can suddenly drive.  you're on your way to working a relentless job.

it digs a hole in me each time I come to those realizations; be it after surfing around on Facebook in the wee hours of the morning or while getting stuck in traffic on some lazy Sunday afternoon.

I reflect upon my life lived and I see changes which are both sour and sweet. 

I'm no longer friends with my high school crowd. The girls I used to sit with each recess. I would say we are now just acquaintances. I have no complains, I can only accept. Perhaps what I shared with them were more fleeting than deep. I think I'm probably the reason, because as I see it, they are all stil friends. It's a bittersweet feeling seeing their pictures sometimes on FB. I'm so happy they turned out to be beautiful, successful girls. I wish I could turn back time to see where I went wrong, but I know it has to be for a reason. 

I've made the best friends I can possibly find over the years. There's a friendship I managed to save, a friendship formed when I was 8. She's still the same and we're still familiar. I can never see us drifting apart. And through her, I've made a new friend I can see myself being close to in the coming years. I'm still friends with a high school senior I never thought I'd be close to. She is the realest person I know, someone who loves me genuinely and someone I can just be myself with.The kind who'd buy the Kite Runner just so I could read it.

There's my dearest uni roommate whom I know will always be there for me and me, for her. We may have had our ups and downs but I guess I will never find a bond like that with anyone else. I would say, she knows me best and accepts me really for who I am, temper and all. I've made very few close uni friends, I can safely say that I was close to just my roommate and this other girl whom I will be close friends for life. Not the shopping everyday and gossiping kind of friends, but the friends you secretly know will always be there for you. 

And then there's a friendship which has suffered so many blows, like a withered tree so beaten by storms and the sun that only when you uproot it you realise how deep the roots are and you try so hard to save it; fearing really for the consequences of your actions - will it grow again or just succumb to the uprooting? it's the kind of tree you built swings on, climbed when you were a kid, stumbled down from, plucked its leaves carelessly, harvested its fruit and then abandoned for some time without tending to it nor watering it; just looking at it from afar each time you come by to visit it at your own backyard, feeling sorry for the state you left it in.

You just close your eyes to hope that someday you might just see the tree bloom its pretty flowers again. 

And if they don't, despite all your efforts to resuscitate it, you would probably saw off a branch and carve a beautiful piece of furniture out of it, get it done so intricately just to remind you that sometimes preserving memories out of something that was truly alive is perhaps the best way to honor it. a concept so shockingly terminal but beautiful at the same time.

But you will never feel it alive again. 

And that is the painful aesthetic message of preserving what is dead.