Hi.
My name is Mensur.
People also call me Mera.
I’m twenty two years old.
Born and raised in New York
– Brooklyn, to be exact.
I was born in the spring
To an ethnic Albanian family
From Montenegro.
I’m a guy, forgot to mention that.
As long as I could remember being alive
I’ve had this feeling inside of me.
It’s a strange feeling,
But definitely not one that is entirely my own.
Others certainly feel as I do.
What does it mean to be happy?
Or better yet, what is a fulfilled life?
What defines it, and if it’s totally subjective,
Then I must have my own answers.
I always thought that the truth lies within me
And if I were to want something that I knew was vital
To my existence then I’d eventually find a way to get it.
But here I am.
Young, yet so old.
That’s always been my problem.
I’m too old for someone my age.
I mean, I know how to act like a person my own age,
But I’ve never preferred it.
Such an obstacle.
To be told that you shouldn’t behave in ways most natural to how you really are.
I’ve been this way since childhood.
Thinking and getting lost in these thoughts are the only life I know.
In elementary school
Playing with my friends wasn’t easy.
I found it useless.
It seemed more productive to read,
Or learn about things I don’t know about.
This was me at eight.
This is still me at twenty two.
Only difference is that I’m am adult now,
And with adulthood comes difficulty.
Responsibility, work, money, and other varieties of bullshit.
As I kid I would like girls.
Nothing has changed.
In fact, its gotten worse.
But when I was a kid I would be serious
With my crushes, falling hopelessly in love with girls
Who didn’t know how to like me back.
I was too mature.
Then in high school I was apparently immature.
Now, I’m back to being too mature,
Or so I think.
But to get back to my original point,
Ever since I was a little boy
I felt this weird emotion,
Almost like I was the only person on earth who was alone.
I come from a decently big family.
Two parents, three siblings, hundreds of cousins, dozens of aunts and uncles,
As well as countless relatives who were equally unimportant and annoying.
Yet, despite all the people I had by my side I didn’t feel complete –
No, not complete.
Maybe a better word is whole.
Yes, I didn’t feel whole.
Something was missing inside of me.
I still feel that way.
I’ve fallen in and out of love a handful of times throughout the year,
But it was never what I wanted.
People get lonely,
So you take what you get at the moment.
However, there was one time,
And it was recently too,
That I thought I may have stumbled upon something real.
I was ecstatic.
But life, being imperfect as it must, didn’t deliver.
Here I am.
The same guy.
Just doing my thing.
Trying to live my life the way I feel is most fulfilling and purposeful for me.
Yet, I’m still empty.
I’m not whole.
Before anyone else could interjects
I won’t forget to add that I found God,
Once or twice before.
I still believe in God,
And can’t see myself as a disbeliever.
It still didn’t help.
I love God.
I think He rocks and is truly the best,
But He didn’t create such a complex universe just for shits and giggles.
That’d be pretty shitty.
Thankfully, God is cool.
He made people complicated as well.
Which sometimes reassures me that I’m not as alone as I thought.
But still, not fully whole.
At least spiritually speaking.
I know that everyone wants love,
And that we find it in different things.
I love people. I really do.
As much as I hate people I still have regard for them.
Think about it, people are meant to be loved.
I don’t care who you are and what you believe.
Everyone deserves love and has the ability to offer it.
Just think about how happy it makes you when someone helps you
When you’re in need.
It feels good.
Or when its your birthday and your friend calls you, and maybe even gives you a gift.
A pretty awesome feeling, right?
I remember meeting random people by chance, bonding with them,
And then feeling an immense sense of joy for having met them.
God created us to love one another.
There’s so much beauty out there.
But why search for it when it is lying right inside of us.
Like I said before, we all need, want, and must offer love.
But there’s different levels of love.
The love I want is the love I don’t have,
The love I know exists,
The love no one has yet to have offered me.
That is what plagues my heart and soul.
I felt it for brief moments,
Fleeting moments that came,
And are now gone.
It was like listening to your favorite song then having the device break right before it finishes.
The truth is that I will never feel right
Until I find that girl.
The girl who will make me whole.
I know you can’t limit your happiness by implying that someone else will bring it.
But I believe that that will be the answer for me.
How do I know?
How could I be so certain?
Well, does God exist?
Could you be so certain that He does?
Exactly my point.
Faith. Hope. A little bit of intuition.
They go a long way.
You see, I’m not in love with the idea of love.
Though it seems as such.
The feeling is one all too familiar,
Yet so alien.
I do know one thing is true:
Only time will tell.
Love and time are always I’m synch with one another.
It’s basic science.
I guess that’s what changed most in my strange way of thinking.
I developed a sense of time-related understanding.
My past taught me that you can’t force love,
Nor can you really look for it.
Like God,
It comes to you when you least expect it.
When that happens you look at all the shit you went through differently.
Instead of seeing it as misfortune
You recognize it as the path you had to take in order to get to where you needed to go.
As I write this I’m thinking about something that never came to me before.
The thought is absolutely new and fresh.
But that’s where I’ll leave it for now.
For what it’s worth, this is who I am.
This is who I always was.
Written by Mensur Gjonbalaj
February 17, 2013
