Catching Feelings

By J. G. Elas

How do we know that we love that person, and how do we know we are not making a wrong choice? Should love be based on principles and right decisions and not purely on emotions? Those are the central questions where Catching Feelings is based upon.

These are personal accounts of the authors experiences in life, highlighting the sensitive and emotional experiences in love. Those experiences that made us dance in the rain to hide the tears in our eyes, the intoxicating feelings we get while dancing with a stranger, the lonely feeling we get when we wake up alone after the wild rage last night, and how ridiculous we feel about it.

This is a collection of written expressions that explore compelling themes of falling in and out of love, coming undone, intense emotions, semitoxic relationships, frustrations, happiness, being young and needing confirmation for everything, wishful thinking, and in some cases, the unthinkable downfall. But most of all, this book is about love that was fragile and tentative.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524639068

J. G. Elas

J.G. Elas is a Filipino blogger and online content writer/contributor who loves to write at coffee shops. Catching Feelings is his first book, highlighting the relationships he had in the last couple of years. He holds a degree in Mass Communications-Major in Journalism and he blogs at jelasblogs.blogspot.com.

Book preview

Catching

Feelings

J. G. Elas

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2016 J. G. Elas. All rights reserved.

Cover Artist: Adriel Arriesgado

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/09/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-3907-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-3906-8 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Introduction

-SIDE A- PROSES

1.   My Unbecoming In The Last Twenty Two Years

2.   Catching Feelings

3.   To The Sister I’ve Never Had

4.   I’ve Lost You, But Gained Something Important

5.   Midnight Memories

6.   Sad, Beautiful, Tragic

7.   To The Second Woman I’ve Fallen In Love With

8.   Are We Out Of The Woods Yet?

9.   Dear Charlie

10.   The Day I Decided To Block The Noise Of All The Red Emotions

11.   Starter Pack For Certified Introverts

12.   To The Introvert Who Wants To Make A Difference

13.   A Dream Of You, A Dream Of Us

14.   Things I’ve Learned Before Turning Twenty One

15.   Twenty-one Signs That Suggest You Are A Certified ‘Hopeless Romantic’

16.   Dear John Green – The Labyrinth Of Suffering

17.   Our Life’s Decisions

18.   Even The Sweetest & Brightest City In The World Can’t Save Her Now

19.   Autumn Leaves

20.   Stephen’s Vermillion Letters

21.   The Wallflower

22.   The Promise

23.   This Is What Makes A Good Love Story

24.   We Might Be Okay, But We’re Not Fine At All

25.   I Knew You Were Trouble, But I Keep On Coming Back

26.   Pride And The History Of Us

27.   This Is Why Losing Touch With Friends As An Adult Doesn’t Have To Be Depressing

28.   A Friendship That’s Meant To Last

29.   What Every Twenty Something Millennials Need To Do

30.   This Is Why We Shouldn’t Be Afraid Of Change

-SIDE B- POETRY

1.   Books

2.   Ice & Fire

3.   The Writer

4.   Pain

5.   Coffee & Love

6.   Every Time

7.   Ode To Code Red

8.   To My First Love

9.   Untitled Love Song

10.   Someone Who Would

11.   Equilibrium

12.   Message In A Bottle

13.   This Is Me Swallowing My Pride

14.   To The Beat Of My Heart

15.   His Love

16.   Chasing Sunsets

17.   In Retrograde

18.   The Polaroid of You & Me

19.   The End

Acknowledgments

You took a Polaroid of us, then discovered;

the rest of the world is black and white,

but we were in screaming colors.

- Out of The Woods, Taylor Swift

For all the young adults who are crazy,

paranoid, Hopeless Romantic, haywire,

dysfunctional, and introverts.

Introduction

I am just like everyone else—a fan, a trying hard amateur writer wanna-be. But this material you have at hand is my album, a collection of tumultuous various semi-toxic emotions written like a song lyrics, kept at bay, arranged to mimic what I think is the universal language of love and a time capsule of a dysfunctional, haywire, life of young millennial like me, battling thru this age and time.

What I have done here is to show you how I handled emotions that drove me crazy—that made me hit the gas pedal from zero to a hundred miles per hour until I shake violently and just explode into a thousand shards of white light. What I have done here is write it down and hope that you will relate to it and let me know how you would have handled it.

These are memories of heart-breaking moments—moments of breathless delight. These are pictures in frames of love, happiness, frustrations, defeat, winnings, losings, triumphs and anything under the sun.

These were my stories. Now they are yours. And I hope they take you home.

-Side A-

Proses

My Unbecoming In The Last Twenty Two Years

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling 22. Finally! I am able to say that line without having to change the number.

The past couple of years came and faded in time; all the comings and goings led me to where I am right now. And even though the cliché is something that would no longer appeal to most, it still amazes me how time flies so fast in almost a flashing blur.

I was born in Zamboanga City, Philippines on March 9, 1994.

For most of us, birthday signifies a deeper meaning in our lives. How can it not be? It’s the day we came in to this world. To have reached a certain age is a celebratory milestone as some of us will not even reach a year old upon birth. On the other hand, for some, it’s just an ordinary day where we take a break off from the toxicity of our daily routine – a breather.

To be honest, I don’t have concrete descriptions of what birthdays are for me. Personally, I account this unknowing to my poor experience in the past. You see, I grew up to a frugal family. One that will not spend for birthday parties at school or anywhere. A simple celebration at home will do and it was enough for me to say I am still blessed and fortunate. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why my parents did that and I don’t have any bad blood. But lately, I have been thinking how things would have turned out if I got the chance to experience those things I have never experienced before. Perhaps, I would have better things to write about and my horizon could have been expanded to a wider margin where limit is almost non-existent.

But lately, a more insightful thought struck me. Every day, I’ve woken up not wanting but needing to make a difference in my life, to fight my demons and be brave, to stop asking and just trust my instincts, to take a leap of faith and trust that whatever is happening now, it will catapult me to a better disposition; and to realize that if things aren’t better now, meaning I’ve not yet reached the end of the journey.

And that’s the beauty of being young and enjoying life: you can’t love life in the dark. Every day, you are given the opportunity to make it better. Every day, you are renewed, cleaned by the waters you thought will drown you. We realize that we are always running, still crashing, still falling but that is just a piece of the entire tapestry. We cry today, but we find ourselves laughing at why we cried after the rain passed by.

For the past twenty two years, that’s what I have been writing about. I wrote about the successes I’ve had and how it became my truth and self-definition. I wrote about how I felt when I started to feel love and how it brought me to places I’ve never been to before. I think that you have to know