Miles Rafael Bairley-Ujueta
Bio
Stories (16/0)
The Road to Contentment
One can never attempt to be profound. I suppose that’s an ironic thing to say as someone who uses ‘one’ in every sentence so I can to try to seem more profound but I suppose after writing it a thousand times this truth has finally come to me. Revelations are like the wind; when they come we feel as if all of creation is animate again, as if we have just discovered something so profound that it could never leave us. And yet, inevitably, someday it does, and sadness and confusion close in upon our light once again. I’ve spent my entire life attempting to fight this cycle but what I’m finally realizing after it’s swallowed me up and spit me out a million different times is that this cycle is a revelation itself, a revelation that sadness and stasis can’t take away. Change is inevitable but it’s more than that; we have to forgive ourselves for our own feelings. Sometimes we feel sad when we’re supposed to feel happy. When we have everything people below us wish to have: a roof over our heads, loving families, food in our stomachs. Sometimes when we’re supposed to feel safe we feel as if we’re in danger, when we’re supposed to feel angry we feel forgiving, and when we’re supposed to feel calm we feel enraged. And it’s all okay; the truth is we don’t have control over ourselves, even though we do. We are the actors upon our own minds; the forces which shape our every move and yet, though we may be the most powerful of these forces, we are never the only ones. There will always be actors outside of ourselves; our social environment, our family, the weather. Each of these things is like us, constantly changing and as much as we try to reinforce our own agency against these forces, at the end of the day we will always change with them. We will move gracefully or we will move clumsily but nonetheless, we will be moved. How then can we hold ourselves together against the roiling currents of life? The answer to this is another cliche but it doesn’t matter: we can reinforce ourselves against inevitable change by remembering our values. By selecting a few things from the composite entities of existence that matter to us, for the largest portion of our waking hours. These could be passion projects, duties to the ones we love, or moral values we intend never to erode. By clinging to these things and allowing others which feel less important to fall away, we can remember ourselves. When we wake up and feel smothered by an impenetrable blanket of sadness and self doubt we can remember that we are a person who finds it important to be clean, and take a shower. When we barely have the motivation to move we can remember that we are a person who finds it important to be with our grandmother on her birthday, to watch the waves crash against the shore, or sketch the dappled light which trickles through forest leaves. Life is hard, and even when you believe it will become less so, it often remains just as hard as it used to be. In order to survive in this weary world we need to remember why we’ve survived so long. For those of who can struggle with suicide it can often be hard to articulate to others just how difficult life can feel, whether our lives take the shape of something our elders would describe difficult or not. It doesn't matter what they think! What right does a parent have to tell a child the sandbox isn’t coarse and dirty when they haven’t stepped foot in it for decades? Or lecture a student on the ease of education after they’ve been away from it for longer than the person they’re lecturing has been alive? None of us can ever truly perceive one another’s perceptions, because how can a woman on the second floor understand the view from the fifth? They are simply unable to and that’s okay. Forgive yourself for all those things the people around you say aren’t hard enough to make you feel the way you do.
By Miles Rafael Bairley-Ujueta4 years ago in Motivation
A Faceless Future
Sometimes he was lucky enough not to dream of her. He dreamt of fiction; of a faceless future with which to fasten his faith. A form that held curls and soft skin but never managed eyes; the love of eventually that was just perfect enough to live for. She granted him the gift he dreamed of, the chance to unload his heart without consequence, a someone he could fall apart in front of in intimacy and tell just how much it had hurt, just how much he had loved her, and explain it wasn’t that other kind of love that teenagers gossip of in hallways it was this kind, and she’d know because she would, and because some kinds of love are like deep sea fish whose lights are blank in daylight. If she could give him this he could become hers, could become someone’s again. If she could be strong enough to bear the ice of jealousy, determined enough to listen to ten months of love she’d never feel he could be hers and give her ten years more; but who could do that. Could he? Could he if he really cared, if he'd dreamt of the girl like he’d dreamt of this one?
By Miles Rafael Bairley-Ujueta4 years ago in Humans
Loneliness is hard damn
I'm writing this because I just watched the music video to "Watermelon Sugar" by Harry Styles and...it was really good. Frankly, this is somewhat upsetting. I've never liked Harry Styles before, I've always found him pretentious and irritating. Why then, has he just encapsulated all of my fantasies as a mixed Latino man in a three minute music video? Do y'all know? I'm quite confused.
By Miles Rafael Bairley-Ujueta4 years ago in Humans