Have you ever broken your mind with the simple question... 'What am I?'
I have, on numerous occasions, and from that question came a dream and a story about an ideal that would define what I am. 

I used to feel this eternal emptiness deep at the nucleus of my soul. It was as if the dead were calling out from beyond the underworld, and I could feel their struggle, so I struggled with them, as if to defy Hades....

    The math teacher's voice was just a monotonous buzz. The half-asleep students were supposed to take the exam for the eighth grade graduation in a week. A quivering hand scratches the scribbled-on desk.
    Our teacher announced the end of the class. Me and my best friend, two hearts lit by enthusiasm, ran to the exit.
    The excitement chilled when the landscape was flooded with the weather-eaten outlines of a rusty building. Polyclinic? Hospital? There had been conflicts on this topic...   ...

    I've always asked to be told stories. Since I was tiny, being told stories has given be a wonderful tingling feeling up my back and through my head. My parents have been very accommodating. They've told me hundreds of stories in my life, usually about they're own lives, and then those same stories over and over again. My Papa used to tell me a story about when I was a baby. The doctors told him I was close...

I had a difficulty- a problem with describing people. It might seem a bit silly, pondering over which adjective to use to describe people when what really matters is their substance which can be made out in an intangible way through the worth of their actions and imprinted in the tangible.
But what is tangible? My friend always had this retort, to a completely different question, which can grace us with a cameo in this situation: Memories fade photos don’t...

I’ve gone through many phases in my life. I don't mean the edgy, emo, rebellious teenager, though. When I was seven, I had an obsession with birds. At twelve, it was BBC Doctor Who. I’ve also always been a very nervous person, with a particular focus on different fears as I evolved.
    When I was very young, I was afraid of computers. Everything new, everything I didn’t understand, I was afraid of. Needless to say, Internet Explorer was my...

    Growing up in a small town isn’t as innocent as it sounds. And growing up and living out our lives means at some point in time we will experience death. Some experience death differently and at different times. Whether it be a family member or a friend, or even a friend’s friend. This story is 100% true, although some of the details are still a bit fuzzy. We aren’t really encouraged to talk about things like this, but I remember...

    I was walking down to the grass field to my classmates whom I considered to be my friends at the time. They looked over at me and started turning their backs towards me. I approached them and asked if I could join their game. One of the girls looked me straight in my eyes with a cold stare and told me that there wasn’t enough room for me to join. I walked off disappointed and saw another girl approach them...

Dear dreams,
You remembered that child who once promised to fulfill you? That little young mind is me. So I thought to write to you and let you know once for all- “I didn’t intend to go away.” 
The closer I think you are, the farther you move away from me. You know that I had promised to be an excellent Chess player when I was young, I'm sorry I didn't made it so...
I'm sorry I actually monitored those...

Recently I had just gone back and visited Guatemala, it was my first time back. It was a trip of a lifetime and I had many valuable experiences for life and that I will never forget. The one that stands out the most is me doing the bunk bed project."We went to the remote village of Yalu and we delivered and put together bunk beds. It was heartbreaking to see the conditions of the people there.It was challenging to keep your negative thoughts and emotions to...

    Here I tell of a time where I was too young to share my story; too young to comprehend that even if I told it well, no one could possibly understand.

    "I am afraid of the garage door." I read my daily journal aloud. For a moment, everything fell silent before the mocking laughter of my classmates crowded through the room. 
    How dumb! A boy's voice shot into the air, followed by an array of shouts...

                            As a kid, I always thought you had to like barbies, skirts, sparkles and pink things. I look at pictures when I was younger, I always had blond silky soft hair short but not too short. Shoulder length or shorter. I always got hand-me-down clothes from my older cousin Jolie. Or we would go to Target to buy some pretty pink shirts and glittery shoes. I was your practical little girl growing up. Until I got into elementary. Now I have something...

I was born on December 19th. When I was 3, I went to preschool. I loved it there. I made friends, I loved the teachers, and everyone was so friendly and loving. I learned to read very quickly, and soon enough, I was the best reader in my small preschool. When I had finished a year of preschool, I was 4 years old. My parents and I went to my local school to enroll me for kindergarten. The principal seemed...

The atmosphere of the stage blinds me, literally. the cartoonish, giant stage lights and cameras, the giant, over exaggerated props and set pieces, but the biggest factor is the boring audience, they’re either looking at their phone, focusing on shoving litres of soda down their disgusting throats, and even some people nodding off to sleep.
I wish I was in that environment, nope, just waiting in a cramped little space at the back of a classroom, running for class president....

When I was a wee little lad, about the tender age of 4, it’s not really clear these days, I watch my mother and my sister, who was aged around 3, create a little house and put it in the garden. Now I know you may have questions, well, this was about the time my sister and I watched a film called Tinkerbell, a children’s movie that describes the life and a tinkering fairy. The little house was supposed to...

    The human mind is a funny thing. I know this because some days, I laugh, cry, and smile without him ever crossing my mind. Yet on other days, the bitter memory rushes back to me, digging its jagged claws into my skin. When I look at the stars woven into the night sky like diamonds, all I can think about is how he would never see them again. 

    On that fateful day, none of us were prepared for what was...

Waking up from my summer dreams, I walked down the 19 steps to the brick floor of our house. Yes, it was brick floored. I waltzed into the kitchen, to grab my toaster waffles and the maple syrup. As I turned towards the toaster oven, I noticed something in our living room that hadn’t been there when I had gone to bed the night before. Some wooden box, covered in intricate designs. It was oddly shaped though. Beautifully crafted, but...

I  used to hate myself. Granted then, I didn't realize. I thought I was ok. It never occurred to me like that. It never clicked how negative and hurtful my head screamed at me everyday, creating this false identity that absolutely absorbed my true self, or the self that deep inside my heart knew I could be..
Before I was 8, it only mattered that my clothes were pretty and could twirl like a princess. Singing like a superstar, posing...

To my first love,
The highschool lover: I think it was class 8th when I saw you for the very first time. You were sitting next to me though the distance between us was much high... I suddenly turned around you and my reaction was "who's that girl?!"... I was just looking at you as if I wanted to capture every shadow of you.. I remember this was the first time I ever felt something like this..  I asked...

We've never been ones for planning. We're notorious for it in our extended family - we still haven't lived down the time we led the whole group, baby and all, on a 19-mile walk because we spontaneously took a different path from the car park and got more than a little lost. We don't live by reason when we don't have to.

It bothers me sometimes. For a scatterbrain, I'm fairly obsessive and the result is a mess of underplanning...

      True love is one of the greatest feelings to ever experience. It can bring you joy, happiness and a light in an otherwise dim world. However, there are some considerable drawbacks to think about in a romantic relationship, especially if your significant other isn’t the one meant to be. In the heat of the moment, the one you previously loved heart and soul is the one to face your unjustified fury. I never believed the expression “Love...

The four of us sat there, together, in silence, making so much noise that too many of the others came out of their rooms to quiet us down. The hour was late despite the promise I’d made to myself to be in bed earlier that night, much earlier... By the time we were sitting there together, I was laughing carelessly at my foolish motivation to do something so ludicrous as to be in bed on time. We were all laughing,...

WARNING! Do not do ANY of this at home! This is a field guide to ruining your life; read for bad life advice.

Tyson? That’d be me. The stuff-up, ruin-up and bad-at-life kid, who you wish you’d never known. My life is a location joke, you gotta be in it to win it. Win what, you ask? The best stories to tell your friends, family, colleagues and peers. Now, let’s get to the juicy stuff - the last three years...

 I am about to finish my twelve years of education. I need to decide on a path. I'm hesitating between a road that can be safe but obliged to suppress my instincts to follow the rules of society, and a road that is risky but instinct driven and free from the society's pressure. As I constantly debate between the two, a story of dogs and wolves came to my mind and I discovered that their world was the exact reflection...

    I tapped the toe of my rain boot on the wet cement. I was sitting at the bus stop, waiting for the turrential down-pour of rain to end. The faint roar of the double-decker bus sounded in the distance, and as the ground vibrated beneath me, I felt cheerful, yet melancholy. I was going into the town, to buy some sugar. My stomach had been grumbling persistantly, telling me an empty stomach and lurching bus did not meld...

It was cold. It was dark. And I couldn’t help my smug smile. Icy water dripped down my hair sending goosebumps down my arm. But I didn’t care, because the cold breeze paled in comparison to the frigid pool water ahead. I watched hands clutch at lane lines, heard the heaving gasps of my teammates in the precious seconds before they had to dive back in, all from the safety of my plastic chair on the pool deck. I saw...