Christina Perri

Jar Of Hearts

I know I can't take one more step towards you
Cause all that's waiting is regret
And don't you know I'm not your ghost anymore
You lost the love
I loved the most

I learned to live, half alive
And now you want me one more time

Who do you think you are
Runnin' round leaving scars
Collecting your jar of hearts
And tearing love apart
You're gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul
So don't come back for me
Who do you think you are
I hear you're asking all around
If I am anywhere to be found
But I have grown too strong
To ever fall back in your arms

I learned to live, half alive
And now you want me one more time

Who do you think you are
Runnin round leaving scars
Collecting your jar of hearts
And tearing love apart
You're gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul
So don't come back for me
Who do you think you are


It took so long just to feel alright
Remember how to put back the light in my eyes
I wish I had missed the first time that we kissed
Cause you broke all your promises

And now you're back
You don't get to get me back

Who do you think you are
Runnin' round leaving scars
Collecting your jar of hearts
And tearing love apart
You're gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul
So don't come back for me
Don't come back at all
And who do you think you are?
Runnin round leaving scars
Collecting your jar of hearts
And tearing love apart
You're gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul
Don't come back for me
Don't come back at all

Who do you think you are?

Who do you think you are?

Who do you think you are?

"Lucky I am in love with my best friend..."

"Lucky I am in love with my best friend..." - sang Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat.
I strongly believed in this until I lost my love and my best friend at the same time.
It is true that when you are dating your friend and especially a best friend, it seems that your relationship will be stable and fun because you already know almost everything about each other, from your interests to past relationships, you have same hobbies and friends and feel comfortable sharing whatever is one your mind even if it is the most ridiculous and random thought.

It is not surprising that a friendship between a boy and a girl will develop into something more. One day you when you are hanging out with your friends, you will suddenly want to stay behind for a bit to spend some time with each other, you will give him this long hug that you habitually give each other every day, but one day it will be a bit longer and a bit more affectionate. One day you will realize that he is so special to you, you will notice something in him you never paid attention to when you were "just friends". You will think about him all the time, but you will be too scared to admit to yourself that you like him, because friendship is so fragile and you don't want to make it awkward for both of you. Luckily, he feels the same way and tells you upfront, but you value your friendship too much to put it under risk. However, after couple of weeks, you can't resist your feelings that grow stronger anymore, and you decide to give it a shot.

... Your relationship was perfect and wonderful, and fun... But well, things happen and you just broke up. You are brokenhearted and confused. You have so much memories that barely fits in your head. You can divide your life into two distinct parts "friendship" and "dating". You have a choice - go back to the first one or go each his or her own way and never see each other again. You try to think rationally: "Well, we were friends before, so we can just go back to the status quo and cherish the memories of our love" But no, it is not that easy. Yes, you can still hang out with him and your common friends, go to the movies, parties, laugh together... But you will always miss calling him with a funny nickname you randomly came up with, you will miss your long walks in the park, you will miss taking care of him when he was sick... And one day he finds someone else you will be legitimately happy for him, because he is your best friend, but only you know that deep inside you wish she was you.

Your Ex-Lover is Dead - Stars

God that was strange to see you again
Introduced by a friend of a friend
Smiled and said 'yes I think we've met before'
In that instant it started to pour,
Captured a taxi despite all the rain
We drove in silence across Pont Champlain
And all of the time you thought I was sad
I was trying to remember your name

This scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin
Tried to reach deep but you couldn't get in
Now you're outside me
You see all the beauty
Repent all your sin

It's nothing but time and a face that you lose
I chose to feel it and you couldn't choose
I'll write you a postcard
I'll send you the news
From a house down the road from real love

Live through this, and you won't look back
Live through this, and you won't look back
Live through this, and you won't look back

There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave
You were what I wanted
I gave what I gave
I'm not sorry I met you
I'm not sorry it's over
I'm not sorry there's nothing to save

I'm not sorry there's nothing to save.

Forgetting

It's not easy to forget. I'd say the first step is to close off every door that makes the past accessible to you. It's easy to want to turn back because it's familiar and comfortable - how much harm is a phone call or a message every now and then going to cause? You cared a lot about this person before, so why would it need to change now? How much harm is a simple seashell sitting on your windowsill going to cause?

A lot.

You might come home one day after a long day at work, stressed out and tired, after having missed a bus and fallen asleep on the second one, coming home hours after you were supposed to come home, and having a lot on your mind. You're worried about writing a standardized test and your daily scores maybe aren't as high as you'd like them to be. You need to figure out groceries, utilities, and rent money. You need to study, eat, sleep, and get up for work tomorrow.

But you can't even get beyond the fact that suddenly everything in your room is a blatantly obvious reminder of the year you just went through. You can remember this person looking at your wall and wanting to tear down all of the posters and pictures you had that were covering the entire wall. You can remember this person walking through your room and moving your things around while you weren't looking. You can remember this person sitting on your chair and discussing the future with you.

You sort of feel like you have nowhere to run to and hide because you let this person into your hiding place - the place where you could sit in your PJs and play your guitar, the one place where you could feel small, or feel like the king of a castle, and take off your mask and rest your outdoor voice - the one safe space that usually isn't privy to a lot of people because not a lot of people see your room with the door closed - the X-Men poster plastered on the back of the door is your own little secret; the glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling that you put up by jumping up and down on your bed and hammering away at your ceiling with a plastic coat hanger can't be seen unless the lights are off. But you let them in.

So you change into your at-home clothes and start packing away all of the stuffed animals, the cards, the letters, the postcards, the event posters, the event programs, the flowers, and that seashell - you put it into a bag and stuff it into your closet. Then you tear down all of the pictures and posters on your wall and stuff those into your closet too. Lastly, you rearrange all of the furniture in your room so nothing looks the same anymore.

When you finish, it's nearly time to sleep, but you just feel better - like you've already forgotten.

Starting to learn

At a formal event, my friend drank too much and told us his life story. Well, more like stories about his romantic life - nothing too big, nothing too small, nothing too unimportant, nothing too important.

He ended off with, "I can do school, I can do dance, I can do almost anything with my life, but when it comes to girls, I can't do that."

Is it true then, do all of these pop songs, all of these fairy-tale ending movies, all of these glorified love stories in the tabloids, all of those articles in the magazines - are they all a sham? Act like this and you'll be happy, just say this, do this, and you'll be together forever.

But we don't live in the idealistic, emotionless pages of a glossy 245-page magazine, or a 136-minute chick-flick with happily-ever after perfect kisses in the sunset, find you before you board a plane and fly away and tell you I love you and that you're the only one. We live in a world where I talk, you listen, you talk, I listen, (we converse), I act, you react, you act, I react (we interact) - it's a two-way street.

Yes, I am used to working hard to make things work, or to achieve what I set out to achieve - work hard, study hard, get good grades; send out resumes, prepare, brush teeth, put on professional clothes, thank the interviewer, get a good job; go to lessons, practice, stay disciplined, play piano at a professional level. All of this is accessible to me with hard work and perseverance, and never giving up.

But the sad truth is that I can only give as much as you are willing to take. I can work hard and try to make things work between us, but only if you are too. Because it takes two to make something like this work.

To every boy who has ever broken my heart

To every boy who has ever broken my heart:

(Whether it be through his actions or through his words, regardless, it happened.)

Maybe I was too sensitive, or maybe he was too insensitive, or maybe it was a combination of both. Maybe he just didn't understand. Maybe it wasn't the right timing, or my dress wasn't low enough, or I just didn't have stimulating conversation topics, or maybe I just missed all the telltale warning signs along the way. Maybe I'm just not cut out for this, or maybe he isn't, but we're just two stubborn people who think we can have it all and then some.

Whatever the reason was, I'd actually like to thank you-

For giving me stories to learn from, stories to tell myself, and stories to tell others.

For opening my eyes to my own self-worth and what I actually deserve.

For letting me go.

Because when you did, I found out what it meant to be truly happy.

About things...

It's surprising how much you can learn about yourself when you are going through a break up. For example, I never thought it would be so hard for me to get rid of his presents. Well, not to really "get rid of", but at least to hide them somewhere. From myself... Ok, so I figured that I can get very attached to things which remind me of something valuable, someone I love. It took me about four months to remove the stuff animals from my bed...

One is a beaver and another is a penguin... They both have names and stories behind them. I "won" the beaver in a bet. I don't remember what were we betting about, but it was a funny story. He gave it to me the day before my flight home. He wanted me to bring it with me, but I decided to leave it at his place because it was too big. I got the penguin from him after my trip when we went to the CNE. He won it in a game and I picked a prize. I was happy like a little child. First of all because I adored penguins, secondly, because it was from him.

So yeah... Four months. Every time I was going to put them into a box, I just couldn't help it and held them tight as if it would bring him back... And they ended up at the same place. But recently I put them into one of my suitcases after the trip to another city. It felt weird and empty at first, but well, it was a big step.

There are still many other things that I are not ready to remove yet... Maybe it will take another four months?...

School times, good times... :)

I had crush on this guy when I was in grade two. I liked him for six years and I could not get over him until we got into high school. He was a cute blond with blue eyes. We was very smart, witty and one of the top students in my class. He was also incredibly gifted. He was amazing at almost everything: acting, dancing and sports. So it was not surprizing at all how popular he was among girls. I know that he liked me a lot for a long time too and even told me about it several times. But I was a mean girl back then, and pretended that I didn't care LOL Well actually it bothered me how much attention did he receive from all girls in school and how did it spoil him. So I have been hiding my feelings until high school.

Until then the only time where I could express my feelings without being hurt was on stage, during our shows. Luckily (or unluckily?) our drama teacher really liked us and almost always gave us the leading roles, and often of a couple or something close to that. We debuted in grade two as Mowgli and the Indian girl. It was a very cute musical based on the Disney songs. Also we always were dance partners even during high school. After high school we stopped talking, we kinda grew apart... and each of us took different paths in out lives.

Last time we talked was the day before my flight to Canada. He learnt from our headmaster that I am leaving, so decided to text me: "How are you, Canadian girl?"

Life is a funny thing. I found out few months ago that he is getting married this summer. And his fiance is a girl from our school. She was in grade 4 when we were in grade 8. Yeah :)

The name game

"You look like a peach," he said simply, ruffling up the front fringe of bangs I had recently gotten.

"I'm sorry, a what?" I asked, completely baffled.

"A peach!" he exclaimed, ruffling the bangs again.

"..." I didn't know what to say in response.

"Well c'mon, it was better than what I told everyone I thought you looked like before!" he said in defense of his previous statement. "I thought you looked like a horse!"

That was my cue to raise my eyebrows and give a nervous chuckle.

"What?! Horses are cool!" he shouted.

That's your girlfriend?

Well, she didn't exactly say that, but what she actually said was along those lines.

His mom met me through the background picture on his phone. It was a pretty bad picture, not going to lie; to this day still, I'm not sure who convinced me to get those bangs, but they looked pretty bad, and as a junior in high school, nobody looks like their best.

"She's fat and ugly," his mom had said, which he dutifully reported back to me the next day.

Tongue-tied

I was extremely nervous because we were actually just friends. I dropped by to pick up some paints for an English project that was due the next day and he asked me to say hello to his mum.

I walked up the stairs and saw his mum sitting in her room petting a-

"Oh! Doggy!!!" I exclaimed excitedly.

...How did that happen? I was looking at his mum petting their family cat, not a dog.

I guess I was just really nervous, but she never said anything and I never said anything about this first meeting ever again.

Without a thought

When you're young, there will never be a thought that will cross your mind involving your significant other when it comes to the decisions in your life. Things like, "oh, what should I eat for breakfast?" or "Should I go for a run now, or later...?" don't really involve anyone, and the bigger decisions still involving where you are going for school, or work, especially if these involve you moving to another city or country, don't really seem to concern anyone but yourself.

At least that's what I've always believed. Even when you're older.

It's been years, I guess, since that first time when I said I was going to go to another city for four years for my undergraduate degree and that was final, no questions asked.

I guess it came up again when I thought about going to another continent for more schooling.

It comes up in casual conversation, just over lunch or dinner, the casual, "I'm leaving in the fall for _____."

"Oh really?", which is then followed by a slight pause. Of course, there's a congratulatory outburst, but there's an unspoken, "so... what happens to us?"

They don't want to say anything because it'll make them seem like they're not supportive, and they really are, truly, happy for you, if that's what you want. You wouldn't want it any other way, and of course, you don't want to hear that unspoken phrase, because you know, that deep down, you value your choice and what you have chosen. If the decision was between this and the opportunity you have just taken, you know what you would choose first - in a heartbeat.

As selfish as it may seem, that's all that matters to you right now - personal choice and freedom without boundaries or restriction. And you know that if the roles were reversed, you'd be the first to push them away, telling them to go where their heart desires because how can you be truly happy if there are fences built around you?

Okay so I messed up

"Okay so I messed up", except he didn't actually say that. Instead he brought me a peace offering, if you must - a potted plant - more like an orchid actually, and presented it to me during lunch at my house. Then he walked me to class and then left.

"The future is scary. But you can’t just run to the past because it’s familiar. Yes it’s tempting… But it’s a mistake.”

- How I met your mother

The night before

It was the night before a standardized test for a few friends. This was the deciding test - score high and you open most doors to your future.

We hadn't spoken in two months now; the last time was over the phone when he confirmed whether or not I had received the textbooks he sent.

It's funny, really, remembering that at some point you knew this person's schedule inside out; they talked to you about their financial concerns, their future plans, future plans with you, problems within their family, or just about things that occurred during their day. But all that can just disappear in a matter of a second, and once again, you're just a stranger.

So here was one stranger wishing another stranger good luck on his standardized test. It took me a good hour to work up the courage to double click on his name and type those three words: "good luck tomorrow!"

He thanked me and asked how my standardized test went.

Then we didn't speak again until the fall.

It didn't work

"That night, I fed the pieces of the chair into the fireplace and watched them burn and thought only: I will save this. I will make passionate declarations and write patient, beautiful letters that our children's children will find and think, Holy shit, if this were any less dazzling or persuasive we wouldn't even be here! I'll be forgiving as a saint and deliberate as a killer. I will consult the experts, build coalitions and make bullet-pointed plans in motherfucking PowerPoint. I will outmaneuver this by superior wit and pure intention and be the bighearted superhero of love and-

And it didn't work."

-Adam Sachs

Pick someone you like

"We weren't-I don't think-total assholes about it. But baby, we were smug about love. We'd cracked the code. It was all so simple: Pick someone you like to do everything with and just be nice to them the whole way through. We were geniuses."

- Adam Sachs

Let the Post-It note do the talking

Post-It Notes. Those are what we used to communicate as we were sitting across the table from one another at a restaurant during dinner.

"Do you believe in long distance relationships? Can we do this?" he had asked me. He was going home for the summer break and was considering doing an exchange the following semester in another country. That would be around eight months. He had asked me this before, last summer, and we both had been alright with it. We didn't want to ruin the perfectly good evening by the possibility of saying something horrible out loud, so we passed post-it notes to each other and each picked up a pen, writing down our decision.

I remember writing down that "it is going to be hard, but I believe that we can do it." I passed this over to him and he cringed, knowing that his answer was going to upset me. I opened up his note and there they were; the words "NO TO LDR', in capital letters, with the word NO underlined not just once, but three times for extra emphasis on the NO.

"Oh," I responded.

"Sorry," he replied.

"No, that's fine. That's how you feel," I answered.

"So what happens now? I feel like I just put an expiry date on our relationship," he joked.

I remember asking him if he would regret walking away from this, and he said yes.

But that's all I can remember now.

A message from the past

Three days before Christmas, I put a painting in the mail, wrapped carefully in its cocoon of bubble wrap and an outer casing of cardboard. Surely the holiday post wasn't as tardy as I expected, and perhaps it would reach him by Christmas day, or before he left the West Coast for the city our school was in, but it didn't.

His family had been meaning to ship the painting to him, but they never did. He didn't receive the painting until he returned to his home on the West Coast, months after I had initially sent it. By then we had gone our separate ways. Any terms of endearment or affection that had meant so much in the past were just empty words now.

But he carried the painting with him throughout Asia and Europe, and finally, to his rented room in the city we both went to school and tried to return it to me when we met again in the library. I was on my way in and he was on his way out. I said that it was a gift; he should keep it.

It could be in any landfill now, or abandoned in any rented room now, in any continent, country, or city, who knows?

But at one point in the past, the letters and the pictures meant something. It's okay that they don't mean anything now.

Signal to Noise

If you ever took a Statistics course, you'll remember this diagram illustrating confidence intervals. The straight horizontal line with the random squigglies everywhere. The signal being the straight line, and the squigglies being the noise. The closer the squigglies are to the straight line, the stronger the signal is.

I never get rid of old emails,messages, or letters, and just keep them locked away in folders in my account. Who knows if you needed to recall something from the past and the proof no longer exists?

I was procrastinating on working on an essay for a class and went through the folders in my email account when he came to visit me in the library. After leafing through the countless emails sent from Shanghai, it suddenly occurred to me that I had carried a skewed version of the past with me all these years.

He asked me what I was looking at and I explained to him the context and the author of said emails, admitting that maybe the reason why everything fell apart was my fault. He said he never kept old emails and preferred to have an uncluttered account. He told me that he deleted all of the emails I sent him back from first semester. I asked him if he ever regretted this - if he ever wanted to look back, what could he possibly look back on?

He pulled out his wallet and showed me the origami turtle I had sent him in the mail during the summer.

He said:

"This is signal. The rest is noise."