I used to write until I was set aflame, or I was already on fire when I put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, tears falling from reddened eyes.
I don’t write anymore – not destructively.
I used to cleave myself open, re-open scars, have the blood become the ink, the fuel to the fire, then ask myself why what was left was charred bones and embers.
I don’t write anymore – not when the feelings grow heavy.
But today they are strangling me: The feelings I’ve left, the words I’ve lost and forgotten. The paths my words paved are now overgrown and unkempt.
There’s a lump in my throat telling me it’s my fault – for feeling, because it always is.
And now I am lost.
Because the words that used to feel like breathing escape me.
The metaphors, the vocabulary, the ease of it all – the ritualistic slashing at wounds, the revelling in the pain, dipping quills into inkpots of blood, carving words into bones with jagged knives, hands shaking, breath hitching, tears falling.
It is lost to me.
I now feel the pain of it.
Where it used to feel like a victory to put this amalgamation, this monstrousness, into words, into something beautiful.
It was macabre, but I was special – special in my suffering, special in the self-infliction, special in the permission to feel.
But it hurts now – to dig back into the well that was once the well-spring of what gave me life.
It tastes like ash, feels like cheap tequila I force myself to drink – grimacing in pain with the sharpness of it.
Maybe that is a good thing, to finally realize what was feeding the fire was also killing me.
Or maybe I have grown – learned that I am no god, realized that feelings are what they are.
Or maybe I have finally grown weary – of the rage, the fighting, the thinking, the writing. Tired of this grief I call inspiration, but unwilling to fully let it go.
I squint through mists in my mind trying to find signs of life, listening for the death rattles that kept me company when the feelings became too much.
But that, too, I have lost.
For what use is a warrior in a garden?
What point is there for a weapon in times of peace?
What does a monster do, when there is nothing worth haunting?
Fingers to keyboard, tears straining in my eyes, chest tight but breathing – I retrace weed-covered, bloodstained paths, wondering if finding what was lost is worth it.
Wondering if losing all of it was worth it, at all.
I’ve recently started asking myself what my life purpose is. You see, I thought I had it figured out – leave a lasting legacy in helping people, in making the world better for the future. (Very Aquarius of me, I know.) But recently, it did not fit so snugly anymore. It felt like a jacket that still looked good, but was slightly too tight on the shoulders, a little too short on the length.
It felt like I was wearing someone else’s clothes – and as someone who loves getting hand-me-downs, I should know. So here I am, 10 days from turning 33 and wondering what my ideal life looks like. It’s strange, looking back at pictures of lives I thought I wanted and finding them lacking or just plain disappointing.
There’s the standard picket fence, three bedroom house, 1.5 kids, husband and a dog, Barbie dream house we’re programmed to want as kids and teens. And if this is the life you really want, or the life you’ve ended up with, kudos to you, friend. I just realized at 20 this was not the life for me.
Then there’s the hustle boss babe lifestyle – big city, penthouse, high-ranking job, phone calls and meetings everyday, jet-setting and breaking glass ceilings. And if this is your life, I respect you immensely. I saw the sacrifice needed to get there, I was unwilling to make it.
Then there’s the soft, cottage core life. The life where you wake up early in the mornings to brew tea you harvested from your gardens, cook food you grew yourself, live with the land and find fulfillment in it. Truly, if you have this life, hit me up, let me know how you did it because it seems truly impossible in this economy. Give a girl some tips.
None of them truly fit, economically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally. They seemed like templates I was trying to fit my life into – jigsaw puzzles with missing pieces.
So what do I want? If my life purpose is no longer the same, is the life I am building, working towards -vague as it is, still the life I want?
I was told to think of it this way: if resources were not a problem, what would your ideal life look like?
I wanted to say it looked like a sprawling house in the middle of a farm with modern technology – off-the-grid systems and farm animals being raised organically, fruits and vegetables grown in zero-waste conditions, giving back to the environment and the people as I lounge on my porch with a book or in my kitchen cooking.
But that doesn’t feel quite right, either. It feels easy, unearned – like I am unworthy even to dream it. I know there’s so much hidden sacrifice in this dream: the building, the planning, the raising, the growing, the living of it all – even with all the money in the world, there would still be work to be done.
And once I have done the work, would I feel worthy of the easy life, then? What’s stopping me from having an easy (albeit smaller) life now?
I have enough – for me, for what I want. I have more than I ever dreamed was possible, truly. Ten years ago, if you told me I would be this stable, actually enjoying life, I would not have believed you.
So why do I feel unworthy of it? Why do I feel like the other shoe is about to drop some time? Why does this life feel unearned? Like it belongs to someone else?
It might be because I am unaccustomed to happiness, to balance. I am truly not used to being able to breathe freely. This feeling of calm, of abundance, is foreign to me. I feel unworthy of it, like I haven’t bled enough for it.
I think the bigger question really is what is the point of searching for a life purpose if, in the end, struggle is what validates my existence? It’s very Catholic Guilt of me, I know. Imagine thinking existence means suffering and suffering means you’re earning your right to live?
Because what am I if I am not bleeding? What am I if I am whole and unburdened? What is there for me to live for if there is no more suffering, no more pain?
I don’t know. Who am I without my wounds, without my scars and the skeletons in my closet?
This year has been… Novel, so far. Did you know that when you celebrate your birthday, you’re celebrating the year BEFORE it?
So on the culmination of my 32nd birthday, I woke up, looked at myself in the mirror and, for the first time in the history of my recollection of birth days, told myself “Happy Birthday”, and meant it.
I have always hated my birthdays. I have always disliked hosting and preparing for parties in general. I can say it’s because I hate the stress of having to cater to people, to smile and nod and be NICE to guests, most of whom (when I was younger) I barely knew.
My mother used to throw great parties, full of food and games, and people. She would say we were celebrating me, but at the end of the fanfare I never felt celebrated. I felt wrung out, exhausted, and wishing, most of the time, the party never happened at all. As I got older, the parties became my responsibility, so I never threw them.
I think I changed in the past year, there was so much enlightenment, so much growth and , surprisingly, a lot less tears. I think 32 was when I found myself, my true self, unhindered and unencumbered by expectations of those around or beneath me. I was finally able to get to know who I was, metaphorical warts and all. I feel that this Pluto in Aquarius season has begun such a drastic change across societal norms that I finally feel comfortable baring my fangs and showing my claws.
There is this internet trend: I met my younger self for coffee, a walk, something. Such a fun and light way to be able to look back on how much you have grown and changed, what flowers bloom in your heart, how large has your garden become and what plants are thriving.
So I met my younger self while walking through Silliman University the other day. (The original story post is the feature photo here). She was dressed as inconspicuously as possible, jeans too short and tight, shirt too loose for a frame so thin, the fullness of youth still hung on her cheeks. She had not yet grown into the bone structure that would come in her thirties. Her sneakers were scuffed, as were mine – a trait I never outgrew, and her curly hair, long and stringy without the knowledge of proper care to help it, tied up in a haphazard ponytail.
She walks beside me, huffing and puffing at life’s injustices, so sure and confident in what she was set out to do, but not in herself. Her movements were awkward, but she hides it well behind good posture and semi-sure steps. She has a few more inches to grow, I almost giggle at having to tell her she will never find proper jeans that fit in any of the local stores.
“Did we do everything we planned?” She asks, voice sure and strong, but I know that she thought about this question several hundred times, deciding on the tone, the stress, the delivery, before asking it.
“We planned?” I smile, “honey, you don’t even know me.” And it’s true. I am as much a stranger to my younger self as an adventurer is on uncharted territory. So different are we, and yet I know everything about her.
“That I planned,” she rolls her eyes at the semantics and waves her hand impatiently, asking me to answer quickly. I was always expressive in my movements. I still am.
“Nope,” I answered with a shrug, “but it was all for the best. You have ADHD and clinical depression, dear. We would never have made it out alive.” I look at her, slightly deflated now, failure was never an option to my younger self, “But it was all for the best. You have more than you have ever bargained for.”
She nods and straightens her shoulders, I see her mind moving, see her practice at 20 x speed how to ask her next questions: “Why can’t I fit in? Why are people so mean to me when all I want is to be loved, to be accepted, to belong? Why is my intelligence frowned upon and ridiculed? Why must I know so much? Why must I feel so much, so deeply?” They gush forth, and I see whatever practice she did has been for naught.
I loop my arm through hers, her eyes show a slight panic, worry about speaking too fast, too loud, too vulnerably. I give her arm a small squeeze of reassurance, and I answer:
“You know too much because you hyper fixate, and you love to learn. It is not a flaw. Your intelligence is ridiculed because people do not know how to respond when you show them you know more than they do. So young, and, yet, so much knowledge. Most would feel attacked, but that is not your problem,” I look into her eyes as I say the last hit because it is still something I am grappling with, “You feel so much because that is who you are – empathetic to a fault, wishing to help everyone even those who do not deserve it or want it. Stop expecting people to match your energy, misery loves company, and some people love to stay in the dirt and make you stay in it with them. Leave them be, most people are not worth it.”
At this point, we’re across the Church’s field, and walking into the Science Complex and Oriental Hall walkway, to the Luce, always.
“You cannot fit in because you were never meant to.” I carry on, “You try to shrink yourself into containers that do not fit you. You walk into caverns to try and dim a shine that was never meant to be hidden because you are afraid to be perceived as an individual away from the herd. But you do not need the herd, darling, you are not of the herd,” I look at her and pause our walking, “You are and always have been different. You always will be, and thank God for that.”
We carry on walking. “It’s so hard, though, to be different, to be pointed out, to be seen” she pats the nonexistent stray hairs on her head, for comfort, for cover.
“It always is. You won’t find the right people until you have become the right person,” I sigh, “So many lifetimes that you live in the span of 10 years, so much growth, so many ways of being. Your tribe will come, and they will come bearing arms. You are fought for, you are loved.”
We reach the Luce, too soon, and I walk up the stairs to wait for my family. “The horrors persist, darling, but, by all that lives and breathes, SO . DO . WE.”
She nods, lost in thought. So much potential, so much life and love all wrapped up in other people’s expectations and societal norms. The trails she would blaze, the bridges she would set aflame, the skeletons she would bury as she found herself, all part of who she is and who she will be, to be me. She looks at me, eyes alive with excitement.
“There’s so much out there, isn’t there?” She asks with a smirk.
I have to laugh, “You have no idea. Persist.” I say as she walks away with a smile and a wave.
I met my younger self while walking through Silliman University. I realized, as I walked with her, she would do just fine.
I am and always will be powered by spitefulness, anger, and the need to be completely contrarian. Maybe it’s my Aquarius Sun, or my Cancer Mars, you could even blame my Chiron in Leo, but, truly, honestly, I’m just such a little bitch when I want to be.
Today is one of those “I wish I had died in the womb” days. The “if I wasn’t born at all, these problems wouldn’t exist” kind of day, you know? So here I am, writing about it because I stopped taking my anti-depressants years ago, and ashwagandha has yet to take effect. I was so proud that I did not have the need to put pain to paper last year, and here we are, second week of the first month of the new year, planning another suicide attempt.
I guess no matter how old you are, you never outgrow the feeling of being a mistake or the suspicion of being the root cause of your mother’s misery. I know, for a fact, she never would have married my father had she not gotten pregnant with me. I am the unplanned, unwanted, unnecessary weight that continues to ruin her life, and if I ever do kill myself, I hope she reads this and understands that I did it to make her happy, so she no longer needs to stare her failure in the face for the rest of her life.
My brother, she loves, so obviously and so differently – softly, kindly, nurturing. He is allowed to make mistakes, to be imperfect, because he was planned, he was prayed for, he is wanted. Me? I am a stain made of resentment, pain, anger, hatred and mistakes. I was never meant to exist. But here I am, crawled out from the depths of a hell that still refuses to take me back.
Take me back, please. I have nothing good to offer this world. I was never “love and light”, never soft or giving. I was born screaming, raised fighting against the judgement levelled at me by adults who saw my existence as an embarrassment and a blight on their family name. I have always been, at best, an inconvenience, and, at worst, a disappointing, useless, talentless, evil monstress.
I have always been powered by spite, raised in anger, physically hit, slapped, punched, pinched and emotionally abused until my mother’s rage had run its course and I would go to school with bruises the shape of handprints and the feeling of being unloved just carved into my mind like the tombstone that will soon adorn my grave. I was never made to be soft because I was never shown how. I was never taught to be soft, pliable, or sweet. Whatever kindness or sweetness I have now is stolen from people outside my life – friends’ parents, movie scenes, book plots, script lines, friends in relationships, people older than me who look at me with no expectations but give their love and acceptance freely. Shadows of experiences of sunlight that breaks through perpetually gloomy skies. I do not know how to love because I don’t believe I have ever been loved as a child, not without conditions or expectations, or the need for perfection. Whatever love I received I had bought and fought for because it was all I knew how to do.
But I CAN fight. I can fight with the dirtiest, lowest, pettiest of them all. I can bide my time, I can plot and manipulate, I can save every single point of anyone’s insecurity and fabricate it into a weapon not even the devil would use – but I would. All that I know is violence and anger, rage and despair, I live by the knife and so I shall die by it. I crawled out from the planes of demons and infidels, but they won’t take me back anymore.
Four times I have tried; a million times I have wished, since I was seven, to just die, to be taken, to return to the darkness that spawned me. But maybe I have grown too soft for the Void, but not soft enough for the world. Maybe, I am just meant to never belong. Maybe, I am a mistake all around.
Lately, the world has me thinking about my younger self – the beauty and ignorance of youth mixed with the optimism of a person who had never had real adversity thrown at her. The world was my oyster, as they say, but when I learned how to open it all I found was a wet squishy inside that engulfed me in darkness and smothered whatever misguided notion of ambition I had cultivated in my sheltered mind. There was no pearl, no shiny prize at the end of the struggle, just more struggle and a lessening of the self.
Strangely, though, I miss being young and naive, 20 years old with the fire to change the world and the hope to make it better. There was a magic in being able to find happiness in the smallest things, just enough money for an extra drink, enough for a meal in a fancy restaurant, enough to pay the rent, enough to come home, enough to live, and that was all I needed. Reckless youth with no cares or needs for a future that seemed too far away, too out of reach – I was busy worrying about the next hit of happiness and living for the sake of living.
It’s been 10 years since I’ve felt that heady rush of blissful, wide-eyed wonder that came with the lightness it took to laugh and I have been chasing it ever since. I now wish I was smarter, more aware of the consequences of youthful ignorance, more practical than I already was and more grounded in reality than flying high on the expectations to be reckless and lost but full of life. I revisit the places I used to go every now and then, looking for the remnants of my soul and the carefree nature of my 20-year old self. I try to find old friends and acquaintances in the hope that they may rekindle some lost part of my being that I was required to tuck away because I grew up.
All I ever find is melancholy and sadness for the child who was not yet an adult but tried so hard to be, who was unable to truly enjoy and be present for moments that will never reoccur because she felt that they would go on forever. I miss her, but the real world came in like a tempest, a hurricane uprooting and changing everything, rearranging my life, my brain, my blood cells. I don’t believe I will ever see or feel that youthful, reckless, blissful ignorance again. I may not even truly want it, this could just be me being maudlin, but, God, do I miss her!
I blame this blog post on Hozier. Here, listen to this so I’m not the only one reconsidering my life choices and trying to forgive the ignorance of a young adult who thought she could conquer the world:
There are moments when your fragility catches up to you – when the bones feel like honeycomb candy and the muscles feel like glass. It usually means you’re about to be broken. Your mind is waiting for the smallest thing to make you snap in half, and shatter in a million pieces so you can have fun putting yourself back together.
There’s beauty in brokenness, and if it’s the only beauty you’ve ever known, it becomes what you crave. Because being whole is a foreign concept, happiness has a price and your feelings are not valid. In the moment when you begin to feel whole like your life has finally been put together and your demons and beasts have been appeased, you crave another bout of hurt, of searing mind-numbing pain because it’s what you know, it’s your comfort zone.
I have never felt more whole and happy in my life and yet I am utterly and completely bored and afraid. This fragility has crept up on me and I believed I was doing so well. But I am weary of my smiles and my laughter, of these chains I have made as I anchor myself to people I barely know because it feels comfortable. I am weary of my mind creating scenarios and making me doubt the choices I made eight years ago, making me question the feelings I had cemented in my subconscious.
I feel like a cat next to a house of cards, watching, waiting for the opportune moment to breathe upon the foundations to watch it topple in spectacular destruction because I am bored. I sabotage my happiness because I believe I am undeserving. I cancel out my successes because I believe they are never important, not ever enough. I question my reason for being because I still believe, after three attempts at creating my own ending, I do not belong here. I deserve nothing and should have nothing because I am inadequate.
I know this is untrue, that it is just my demons getting the better of me as I sit alone for the first time in a while. But it is so tempting to breathe on the cards so perilously swaying in formation.
14 days until my 30th birthday, and the shadows are working against my shadow work.
Self-portrait, 2019
In the depths of my mind there still lurks a darkness – willing and ready to be fed and re-engulf my world. Today, it rears its massive tendrils and tries to insipidly permeate all that I had built in the light.
But there is a relief in the panic attacks, the anxiety, the rage. There is a feeling of familiarity, a spark that feels much like home. If only it was not covered and followed by pain and massive destruction, I would succumb, happily, to its cold, feverish and melancholic arms.
The power that this anger and spite bring feels like a breath of fresh air in the stifling sunlight of happiness and contentment. In this moment, I see freedom for some reason. It makes me want to end all relationships, to wallow in the feeling of loneliness and doubt, to end it all – to sleep, indefinitely.
I am only 29, 14 days shy of turning 30, and I feel the weight of past lives and past selves weighing upon me. As if they despise my rise from the ashes that self-inflected fire created, like jealous, spiteful, malevolent spirits claiming what I have is not rightfully mine.
I refuse to go back to who I was when all I wanted was to survive. Survival brings out the worst, the ugliest, the strongest and the most self-righteous. I refuse to just SURVIVE.
I want to feel the sunlight while tending to my shadows, to grow upward and bloom as my roots dig deeper into the psyche and spirit of my Self.
But, oh! The glorious feeling of self-destruction, the marvelous warmth of self-inflicted burns. There is so much beauty in the ravaging fire that I once allowed to ruin my castles and fortresses. There is so much maniacal freedom in the destruction of the Self. The art that I created as I ripped myself open repeatedly for applause was stunning.
I would like to feel that freedom again, that inspiration. But no longer at the expense of my peace and the destruction of what I have worked hard and paid for.
I am no longer lacking in my self -confidence and in my identity. I am no longer surviving. So I acknowledge this darkness and welcome it with open arms. I hold it in reconciliation, for it has been too long. This beast has its place in my kingdom, it is home and it is welcome.
Florence and the Machine sang “The older I get, I find that happiness is an extremely uneventful subject”, and she’s right. I have found it difficult to find the passion or even the need to write anything now. I’ve realized my writing was a release, a cathartic pen to paper, emotion to letter outpour of words that helped me cope. It helped me understand how I felt before I decided to pack it all up into a little box and put it away in the increasingly minimizing closet space of my mind.
Lately, I’ve started to take a couple of those boxes out. I’ve reopened one or two of the dustiest ones and found that, truly, these feelings do fester. It’s horrible to look upon the monster you created and then forgot about – how powerful it has become, how all-encompassing, how destructive.
I’m trying to find a way to discover inspiration without having to hurt myself anymore. My pain had become a compass for me, a guide to see where my thoughts would take me as I slashed open a new wound over the canyons of scars I never allowed to heal. I’ve found that writing in a heightened state of self-acceptance is monotonous. You can only write so much about unicorns, rainbows, happy endings and hopeful romance before you choke on cotton candy fumes. But pain, heartbreak, betrayal, anger – those could write novels of themselves. There’s always someone willing to gobble up your destruction for their peace of mind, and that’s fine. You take your comfort where you can take it, and your catharsis is your own.
But I’ve decided to try and find a way to be happy and not have to inflict pain on myself to be able to write. I’m not saying all the days have been good, but I’ve been able to deal with the thrashes better than before. I’ve begun freeing the demons I have kept in my dungeons and I am trying to see if they can still be saved.
I might write about how I get along with my journey to self-acceptance, or I might not. Either way, if you need sympathy and my words help you, if you find your building blocks in the wake of the self-destruction I have written in my words, by all means, take it. It’s here for you. But I hope you never feel the same way I did at my lowest point.
There is hope out there, you know. It’s hard to see it now, but if you hang on a little longer – with faith, trust, pixie dust – you’ll find it.
It’s one of those days when the flames of your toxic negativity are being fanned by something, the planetary alignments, the moon, your hormones, the wind, SOMETHING. The flames grow into a forest fire and it engulfs all the magnificent gardens and forests you have planted over the battlefields filled with the bones of your dead selves.
The fire breathes and consumes, and it laughs as you flee into the stone fortress of darkness you abandoned long ago, but it’s the only safe place right now. So you watch from the tallest tower as all the good you have planted is turned into ash by the flames of your toxic moment. The giant trees cracking and snapping as your anger overtakes them, the flowers and beauty choked and devoured by your own despair. The sky goes dark and you go numb.
Then it crosses your mind: What if you give in? Walk into the flames, live in it again, let it be the air in your lungs, the blood in your veins, the curls of your hair. Burn everything you touch once again, it felt good to be the bringer of death once, didn’t it? Walk through the plains of the wars you fought within yourself and resurrect the rotting carcasses of the voices in your head. Let the monsters free from the dungeons you abandoned and wreak havoc upon yourself. Self-destruction has always been the most cathartic of all annihilations.
In the distance you see the flame dying out, it has found nothing left to burn. Nothing is feeding it, and nothing controls it. It has swept through your spirit and destroyed everything you worked hard for, in the span of a split-second, your mind is barren. But the fire calls to you with its familiar warmth and the enticing tendrils of power it shows.
You know it will take a few days, maybe weeks, for this to die out. Stuck inside your fortress again, alone except for the skeletons in your closets and the monsters clawing at your dungeon doors. Trapped within yourself and powerless to the anger you once harnessed as your weapon.
I always liked sunsets. I don’t know if I’ve told you this already, but they’re one of my favorite things. You took me to our first sunset yesterday, April 24, 2016. The first sunset I’ve ever shared with someone not from my family. I realized, after you kissed me, while we looked at the pale pinks and pastel oranges that riddled the darkening sky, that this sunset was you, and I needed to take a picture of it. I needed it photographed. I need it, so that I will be reminded that you aren’t the dark purple storm clouds that have hovered above my skies from the time of my first heartbreak. I need it so that I’ll remember you aren’t painfully bright, iridescent oranges that blind me every time I fall in love. I need it to tell me that you’re not the drastic, dark blue of the night sky during a storm cloud filled sunset. I need it to always remind me that you aren’t them. You’re you. You’re this sunset, and our city on a sleepy Sunday when there’s no traffic and no bustle. You’re a different kind of sunset, and I love you for it.
I still look at the photo and smile, four years and a few months from the day I took it. I still remember how it felt, on that rooftop with a cold drink, holding hands and laughing at our awkward silences and tries at light humor. There was an underlying heaviness in the air, something electric, something we did not know what to do with. Then there was this sunset.
It felt like the sunset I always wanted, and you were there, and it was the happiest I had ever been in years. It was a new beginning at the end of a lazy day in the middle of our city, I was young and cynical, you were handsome (and still are) and hopeful. In that moment I realized that it was time to let the defenses down, it was time to let you in.
I was terrified. Terrified of how you would react to the monsters I had hidden in my mind that no one else had ever seen before, terrified you’d take one look at the darkness I keep and leave. But you saw them all, you’ve seen them all, and here you still are. Here we still are, crazier than ever and still together. You took one look at all the pain and scars that I’ve hidden from the world, shrugged your shoulders and smiled. You never asked me to change, never demanded unreasonable things. You aren’t the unreasonable one, after all. That’s me, I know. (Thank you for staying even in my most unreasonable moments)
Looking back, I only regret not meeting you sooner, maybe when I was younger and less cynical. But then, I wouldn’t be the same person I was when we met. But, damn, am I grateful 23 year old me decided to take the leap.
We’ve changed, grown up and grown together, and there were moments where we were fighting to keep what we had only to let it go to get where we are now. But you’re still my sunset. Colors might be different, some darker and deeper, others lighter in shade, but you’re still you. I’m still me. We’re still us.
To say I’m grateful and happy would be an understatement.
A month or so ago, I decided to fulfill one of my many teenage dreams. This one involved owning a tarot card deck and learning to read it. I had my reservations, of course. My family is Catholic, we’re not in any way devout, but we have our beliefs, and Lord knows OTHER family members have their own “beliefs”, too. Apart from that, there seems to be a stigma that surrounds people who are spiritual in our country. Long ago, before religion and the Spanish Invasion and Conquest, our people worshiped the places where they felt profound power in nature. If you’ve been to the beach, or to the top of mountains, in the presence of old trees, or in the middle of a storm, you’ll know what I mean.
Once upon a time, it was called respecting the elements, respecting the Earth, respecting what was and is around us. Of course, this was before we were all told that this was evil and against the Church. But you see, I never felt God in a church, I never felt his presence in those statues that people pay penance to, I never felt his presence in a sermon. But I feel the presence of an ever-seeing, ever-breathing being in the breeze of the sea, in the wind that rustles the leaves in a quiet corner of the garden, in the heavy air around a thick forest on a mountain hike, in the light of the full moon and a clear sky.
I wanted to buy a tarot card deck for the art and, mostly, the “cool factor”. I never thought it would be a journey of spirituality and lead to a deeper knowledge of myself and all that surrounds me.
My journey began with the purchase of The Wild Unknown Tarot by Kim Krans. Here I was, 12 years after I saw a tarot card and book set for sale in National Bookstore, finally with a deck of my own. I remember practically begging my father to buy me the card and book set, to which he replied “You’re crazy enough as it is.” He was right, though. I’m a lot crazier now. Somewhere inside the many caskets of dead selves in my mind, a bit of life stirred. I began to study the cards using the Kim Krans tarot guide book that came with the QR code on the box.
I realized quite quickly that the cards don’t really tell you your future, they show you what you don’t want to admit to yourself. There are truths you understand, and know in your heart, but you refuse to see because it either hurts too much, or you dislike the outcome. For me, the cards have shown me honest perspectives to my predicaments, and the predicaments of others. I use them as a guiding force, something to help process the muddled thoughts in our brain, bits of sunlight that can break through the haze of doubts and speculations.
A couple of friends have started to let me read their cards every now and then. I never claim to be completely right, because no one ever really is. I shuffle the cards, picture them in my mind, and even if we’re only chatting over messenger or DM-ing on IG, I lay out a 4 card spread, and tell them what the cards mean. I’ve read for people who laugh and they deflect and make jokes about the readings, and that’s their prerogative. I’ve learned not to force views on people unwilling to open their minds.
Some people may believe that reading these cards will cost me my “soul” or put me into eternal damnation because I’m consorting with spirits and the Devil or something. I guess those people have never really read cards. They’re harmless things, sheets of paper with drawings and meanings, like a book. It’s your interpretation of their story that decides whether you are damned or not. I’ve met witches and tarot readers who have better attitudes and actions than people who preach at churches. I’ve met people who believe in other gods, and people who believe in no god, and for some reason, these people are still so much better, nicer, more HUMAN than those who make their religion their weapon to judge others.
The most important lesson I’ve learned on this journey, so far, is that people will judge you, no matter what. Do what feels right for you, your spirit, your heart, and whatever is left of your soul. At the end of the day, it’s your happiness that matters.
You feel the song before you hear it, and you know it’s there: In your bloodstream before it even hits your brain. The first drumbeat reverberates through your maxed out headphones. The world fades away. All that is left is you, the music, and the beating of your heart to the sound of the drums. Your eyes close, and in the middle of a crowded terminal, your mind dances. In circles and circles, you step and twirl, feet prancing with the drums as the strings carry your arms into patterns unknown. Your breath is held as the first vocal note unfolds into your heart, and it’s love. The lyrics transport you to a green grassy field within the druid circle of your mind. The time flows, too quickly, and it’s dark and light as you dance in your mind, the sun giving way to the moon in seconds. Months pass as the moon’s phases change and you’re still dancing.
You feel the song in your veins, telling you what you need to know, bringing you to places in your mind you dared not explore. But, still, you dance into the forests and past the battlefields now overgrown with flowers and tree roots entwined in empty armor and armaments. Still, you dance into the caverns and the darkness to face the demons, if only for a moment, and to dance before them to show your strength, for this moment, in this song. Still, you dance across the seas and into your sunset, and the moon greets you with a smile and the stars twinkle in welcome.
You throw your hands up in this visceral and divine three minute ritual of a song, and the drum beats die. You open your eyes and look around, people are lining up for your bus. It’s time to go. But you’ve already traversed your million lifetimes.
As you sit and settle down, you play the song again and close your eyes. It’s time to dance.
Years ago, I started reading Julia Quinn’s Everything and the Moon, I only got as far as the 3rd or 4th chapter that time. I don’t know why, but it seemed so painful to carry on reading after Robert, heir to the Earldom of Macclesfield, found out that his betrothed had fallen asleep on the night of their elopement, or so he thought. The truth was Victoria was tied up by her father, the vicar, and had her back to the window, where Macclesfield was peering through, and was actually crying silently and could not move as she was bound hand and foot to the bed. He drew the conclusion that she was an “adventurer” and only wanted him for his money and the earldom. He promptly left for London and did not see her again after seven years.
For some reason, 20 year old me found this so unbelievably painful that I completely stopped reading it, put it away, and forgot about it until two days ago when I finished reading Julia Quinn’s Because of Miss Bridgerton. I remember how it felt, reading the last few lines of that part: the devastation, the heartbreak, the constricting pain in my chest. I was such a drama queen. I still am, but not as much anymore. I still do squeal like a school girl every time something cute happens, and I am not averse to throwing a book clear across the room when I get frustrated, but that whole “my heart is breaking for you” scene in my 20’s was quite too much.
I’m trying to recall why I felt that way. I had never been in love at that time, not really. I hadn’t even been kissed yet, not properly at least. It was stupid. It was sad. It was idiotic. I reread that very same part (quickly, since I wanted to get to the juicy part of what happened after) and I did feel … something. I mean, it was stupid of me to think they’d never end up together, this is JULIA QUINN. The whole point of me reading her books is because the ending (and the journey getting there) makes me happy. They were going to end up together by hook or by crook anyway.
I’ve been reading and rereading Julia Quinn’s books since I was 15 years old. I remember reading It’s In His Kiss in the schoolyard of my very Catholic School and blushing like crazy, no one noticed since my skin color is quite… brown, and it hides blushes very well. I swear, I had not giggled more in my life. I’m still partially in love with Gareth St. Clair, he will always be my favorite. My first ever Romance Hero. Quinn never fails to inspire, amaze and bring me joy. She is one of the authors who has shaped my creativity.
I think Everything and the Moon just threw me for a loop. It was the most wonderful beginning of any of her books. Whirlwind romance from page 1, and then a few chapters in, UTTER AND HORRIBLE HEARTBREAK, followed by more heartbreak and frustration and then just… I don’t know how she does it, but it was just absolute Julia Quinn charm and wit, and it made me so happy. I guess it just wasn’t what I expected after binge reading the whole Bridgerton Series for the 70th time. Maybe it just struck a chord. Maybe I wasn’t emotionally mature enough to actually understand that even in fiction, there can be misunderstanding and heartbreak.
Having reread it now, I did feel that familiar tug at my heart but in all honestly I was more frustrated than I was sympathetic. Then I remembered the protagonists were very young. Then I also remembered when I first read this book I, too, was very young and naive. I find it quite funny that I have reread it now, 7 years later, the same amount of time Victoria and Robert hadn’t seen each other in the book. It might be coincidence, but it also might be the universe finally telling me my brain is fully developed enough to process complex emotions. If you’ve read some of my previous entries, you’ll see I am not good at emotions or feelings. But maybe that’s changing.
Lately, I’ve been trying to put a face on my demons. I think being able to see them as objects and things help me visualize getting over them. For example, my overthinking is always Medusa, it holds you in her claws and when you look into her eyes you are petrified, turned into an empty statue with only the last thoughts you had echoing in your mind. Meanwhile, my emotions are dragons: gargantuan beasts of every color and elemental power, beasts you do not want unleashed, monsters you keep locked away in the dungeon of the largest pyramid in Meereen. (Hey, Khaleesi)
Watercolor Blue Dragon
Lately, however, a new creature has been pacing around my mind, and it took me a while to be able to put a name to it since I hadn’t really suffered from it before. But I was having palpitations, and I had no idea why. Everything was racing in my mind: work, family, love, friends, money, time, death, life, health– I was overwhelmed. I ended up crying myself to sleep while literally asking myself, out loud, What’s wrong? Please tell me so I can fix it.
This happened twice in a week, and it happened again a few days ago. I realize now it must have been an anxiety attack, but I have no idea what triggered it. A few days ago, I started painting again and all I wanted to paint were lions, angry, growling, snarling lions, and so I did. Here I realize, this was the creature that was stalking my mind. An ambush predator that I have no idea how to deal with, like Medusa. The dragons I can keep under lock and key most of the time, but these other two they’re hard to catch and even harder to control.
I’m just blabbering, really, just trying to make sense of my mind which is in continuous disarray. Whatever monsters may lie inside, they are mine and they are me. But that does not mean I should let them control me. This is my 2020: I will fight these monsters, and maybe set the dragons free, finally.
I wrote this blog post four years ago now. It’s called Opposites and Synonyms and I don’t know, or I refuse to remember, the head-space I was in when I was writing it but it feels so profound to me. Four years ago, I was 22 years old and, at the time, the loneliest I had ever felt. I want to go back and tell that girl there are worse things ahead, more hopeless situations, more emotionally scarring moments, more betrayals, more times that she would feel inadequate and be unable to control those feelings. But we survived or, at least, I did.
With the new year, I’ve decided to revisit a few of my old writings just to see how I’ve changed. But this one still rings true, it’s so unerringly accurate I find it fascinating. My mind still really works the same way it did 4 years ago.
It’s a storm inside this heart, underneath the chest muscles and the bones, and the self-made fortresses. It’s a hurricane in this brain, under the hair, the skin, the skull, the obvious consciousness. It’s a mess, this body under the perfectly pressed clothes, under the practiced smiles and lined eyes and painted lips.
I don’t understand where I found the words for this, but the place I was in must have been dark, indeed. I don’t think I could write like this now, it’s just too much emotional stress and we all know I have more than enough of that. But this next one is what made my eyes water:
It’s a mess inside this body, it’s all bruises and self-inflicted wounds. It’s casket upon casket of dead selves with flowers sprouting from breathless chests and hearts clutched in frozen fingers.
Casket upon casket of dead selves. I see what I meant. Every year, every day even, we change and become the newest version of ourselves. We evolve, but there comes a point where our growth is hindered by our past, and that’s when our old selves need to die, move on or stop existing, whichever you are more comfortable with.
A new year has come and with it, I think, a new self. Another casket to add to the graveyard of familiar faces with the same names on the headstones. I dig the grave, ready for the change to happen, and I paint my own headstone. Now all I need to do is wait for the newest version of me to form and finally bury this old self, this old heart. Maybe she’ll be stronger but softer, more attuned to emotions I lock away so tightly. Maybe this is the year I finally find the backbone enough to dig out that chest in the corner that holds all my issues. Maybe this is the year I finally open my doors and befriend my demons and monsters. Maybe this is the year I finally figure out what makes myself tick.
But until then, 2019 me will wait by her grave until she comes along. It will be painful, as all growth is, but it is necessary.
I don’t think I have depression. I mean, I think there are a few things that I feel that can be labelled as depression, but I don’t think I have it since I have never been diagnosed. Depression has been romanticized by people who believe they have it but really don’t. However I am not a psych major or a psychiatrist. I am just spewing things I have read on the internet.
So, I have established I am not depressed. But, what I do have is a serious case of over-thinking. I am, very much, afraid, alone and over-thinking. It was different to be able to over-think when your family and friends are around you to tell you with their words, their actions, their presence, that your thoughts are unprecedented and have no basis to even cross your mind.
For example, if my boyfriend didn’t call me while I was back home, it was fine. I knew he was safe, I knew I’d see him that weekend, I knew we were fine. But now, with this distance, it’s straining. I keep asking myself “Does he still love me? Is he still interested? Am I doing anything wrong? Does he even miss me?”
The same goes with my friends. It’s as if the fact that I am being left out of things, the same way I was while I was home, cuts so much deeper than all those times before. Nothing has changed, but it’s like the stark contrast between how they treat each other and how they treat me has become even clearer.
All these thoughts that always play and replay, broken records that I can’t throw away, they chip away at my sanity bit by bit. The distance does not help, the voices have nothing to silence them here. I try to distract myself: listen to AWOLNATION, Fall Out Boy, 80’s music, anything that makes me dance or sing; I try to exercise, but that never works (because I don’t exercise, sorry, mom); I try to draw and write, but anyone who’s creative knows that when the spark’s not there it really JUST ISN’T THERE.
So I end up feeling more lonely, getting more anxious and terrified, and overthinking. I allow the thoughts to drown me, and I cry into my pillow as I try to gasp for air, reach for a hand to pull me out of the sea of thought I allowed myself to be dragged into. There’s no one to talk to, because all those that would understand are back home, and even those people don’t really care. They’re busy with their own problems and their own battles.
If there’s one thing that I can take away from all this, it’s that FAMILY, it’s always family that will be there. I call my mom every week, my sister any time she’s online, and it lets me know that no matter what, there will be someone in my corner.
Yes, I am alone. Yes, I am afraid– terrified, in fact– because the future is so unknown and seems so bleak from where I am standing now. Yes, I am over-thinking, but I am trying my best to calm the voices down, because let’s face it: the more I’m going to over-think the more of a basket case I am going to become, and society does not like basket cases.
How to begin? I teach IELTS for
teens and I require them to write 250 word essays, but I never tell them the
hardest part of an essay, of anything actually, is the beginning. What do you
say? Where do you start? IELTS, I have found is easier. You write about a
specific topic given to you, the only challenge is the 250 words and starting.
This essay, however, has been a challenge. But that, I believe, was the point.
Broad topics are the hardest to begin and the hardest to end. I had done a blog
post about dreams a few months ago, it was about how dreams change, and with
every new dream comes a new self. Dark, I know, but I was in a dark place then.
What is a dream? According to some
fairy in a Disney movie, “It’s a wish your heart makes.” But who still believes
that? Pardon the cynicism, but you don’t survive to be twenty-six nowadays
without developing a little bit of cynicism. So here I am, trying to figure out
what to tell you about my past dreams and my past selves while Regina Spektor
sings “Firewood” on loop in the background.
As I was saying, dreams change as we change. Once
upon a time I was a four year old girl whose definition of a dream was a
college diploma and a well-paying job. Advanced for a child that age, I know,
but it seemed to be such a feat to be able to march down that aisle of the
Silliman University gym, where all of my family has marched down before, and
finally be able to say “I did it.” Yes, my parents graduated from Silliman, as
did everybody on my mother’s side. So it automatically became my dream to
graduate from the same institution, as well. When I was a teen, I may have
dreamt of having a husband and a family, but it was never important and never
the main dream. It was more like a bonus round in a game I was playing, I could
live without it. No, my main dream when I was a teen was to put up a restaurant
or a café, become some sort of billionaire overnight and own houses in Bali,
Fiji, Milan, and Paris. I still want the restaurant and café, but the houses
may be a little too ambitious. However, I still hope for them.
I graduated college in 2013, without any honors, but
I marched down that aisle with a signed contract for JPMorgan Chase & Co.
waiting for me at home, and I was proud of myself, because my four year old
self was proud of me. Dreams take time, which is why we change them so often.
We forget, in the moment, that at some point this is what we prayed for, and
this is what we dreamt of. We forget this because we’ve changed, therefore our
dreams have changed. I’m not sure if I will remember this in the next two or
three years, but my dream now is to buy myself a house, get married, and have
one child. Yes, just the one child. This was never part of my plans or any of
my dreams. Okay, maybe once, in high school when everybody was getting into
relationships and I was busy planning to take over the world with my café and
restaurant chains and pondering what jet to buy for when I needed to go home to
Fiji. There was a little whisper that said “You should dream of not being alone
forever,” but I never did really listen to it.
At some point as I was working in Cebu at my first job, I had dreamed of being in a happy relationship, which never came to fruition while the dream was still at the forefront of my mind. It seemed like a lost cause, a lost opportunity, but looking back, I see it was the right dream at the wrong time. To move on with my life, I gave up that dream, stowed it at the back of my mind in a chest I had conjured and labeled “dead dreams” and forgot about it. Four years later and the dream came true, and I was panicking because this was not part of any plan anymore. You see, I had forgotten that I had that dead dream stashed away somewhere, and it just took some time to have it come true.
But dreams and sacrifice go hand in hand. In the
pursuit of so many dreams and wants, we give up pieces of ourselves: our
childhood, our desires, our expectations, and the people in our lives, the
people we are or were. I’m not sure if the dream I want right now will be the
same dream I want in the next few months, because a million things can happen
in a day, imagine in a year. Growing up has put things into perspective:
dreams, at times, are just meant to be those. Just dreams, unmet, unachieved,
undone—wishes that your heart has made when you believed in wishes.
Various personas of me have been
created based off my different dreams. For example, the twelve year old Camille
once dreamed of being a pianist, but that dream never came to be, and in order
to move on that 12 year old needed to grow up. She needed to change as the
dream changed around her. The same goes with twenty year old Camille wanting a
relationship, and moving on from that dream in order to focus on bigger, better
things. The different versions of me that have existed in my mind and my heart
have sacrificed themselves in the pursuit of the current dream. In my blog
about this topic, I had titled it “Dream Chaser, Grave Digger”, because that is
what happens when I chase new dreams: I dig a grave for the current me to make
room for the new one.
In the current dream, I have a morning beach
wedding, at six a.m. so it ends at nine and we can all get on with our lives. I
have a three bedroom house, three dogs (an English bulldog, a Samoyed, and a
Labrador), a large garden, and an SUV. I will have put up a couple of café’s
and various other businesses, maybe even own a farm. Then in a year or so, I
get pregnant and have the one child, and life carries on in a “happily ever
after” kind of way. But I know deep down I’ve already been making subtle
changes to the dream, I won’t be able to see it any time soon, but I know the
changes are there. In the next six or seven years, if the dream does come true,
I hope I can remember that at this moment, while writing this essay, I stated
that this was my dream.
It scares me how specific this current dream is,
there are no what ifs and buts. This is detailed, mapped out in my mind and
planned. This is going to make the failure of it all the more painful, because
there’s always a chance that this dream will return to the dead dreams chest.
However, I choose to be optimistic, and if the dream changes once again, it’s
just another grave to dig, something I’ve already done many times before. But
if it comes true, oh, what a sweet victory that would be; against all odds and
all the changes around, the dream stayed true and I stayed true to the dream.
It’s All Souls’ Day in the Philippines tomorrow, and I’m not sure I can light any candles since weekends are our busiest days here. It’s tradition to remember the dead on this day, the family gets together to visit graves of lost loved ones, and honor their memories with stories and prayers.
I never missed an opportunity to visit these two, Lolo Joe and Mama, my great-grandparents. I was their eldest great-grandchild, an honor I wear like a badge. I remember when Lolo Joe would ask me multiplication questions out of the blue and let me recite the poem Trees by Joyce Kilmer. I had to memorize that poem, because it was his favorite. I still know it by heart. I remember Mama always making me sit up straight, hold my spoon properly, and serving too much rice on my plate.
There were so many questions I wanted to ask them, so many missed chances. Mama’s mind went first, eaten by Alzheimer’s. She had no idea who I was already at the end of her life. But I should have asked Lolo Joe about the war, about how he met Mama, how life was when he was a star athlete. You see, I thought they would live forever. I thought there was still tomorrow. Then I got the call in the middle of PE class in my second year of college, he was gone. He fell asleep and never woke up. Mama went the same way a few years after, but I felt like we lost her decades before that. She didn’t even know Lolo was dead, or she didn’t realize it. She just kept asking where he was, and they’d tell her he was out walking or at a meeting, or driving, or meeting friends. She took these answers and seemed to accept them, the Alzheimer’s not letting her know any better. But there was a clear day when Uncle Ben told her the news, finally, and all she said was, “I guess I don’t have long anymore.” and until now that makes me cry. They were together for so long, had four children, I don’t know how many grandchildren and great grandchildren, and were teachers at the biggest university on the island.
Lolo was a track and field star, a PE teacher, the head of the university’s athletics department, and a World War II veteran. Mama was a folk dance expert– she wrote and published a book about it, also a PE teacher, and also became the head of the athletic’s department at one point. She was a terror teacher, but she was disciplined, and she wanted her kids (biological or otherwise) to be that way, too.
What a grand life they must have led, but I’ll never know, because I never asked. I miss them very much. Sometimes, I lie awake at night and ask myself if they would be proud of me, of where I am, what I’ve become. But this is just one of the many questions I’ll never have an answer to.
Tito Christopher and Me, 1993
This is Tito Chris. Tito is like saying Uncle in the Philippines. He’s one of the best men I have ever had the privilege of knowing. He died last year, November 14, 2018, because of bone cancer.
I visited him once in his hospital room. I couldn’t even talk to him, I was on the verge of crying every second, and he recognized me still. He asked how I was, as if it mattered, when he was the one bed ridden with the disease eating him from the inside out.
It was painful for me to watch, and I don’t even want to remember it, because I want to remember him like he was in this photo: Happy, Healthy, Alive.
I left that hospital room in tears, because I knew when I said goodbye, it was the final one.
I don’t think I ever got to process their deaths properly, or at least, I never wanted to. As if holding on to the pain of losing them makes them more alive somehow, or maybe it’s just because I’m not good at processing emotions. I tuck these away, hide them under lock and key and revisit them when they need remembering like at 2 in the morning when everything is dark and quiet, or on days like this.
I think they are the most difficult loss for me because they were all pillars of my childhood, a part of me that I have lost to the years of growing up and being in the world. So I think I mourn them, but I also mourn the version of me that they knew, that they saw, that they loved.
Some days are sunshine and laughter, and the smell of strong coffee in the morning. Some days the demons stay at the door, they scratch and knock, and try to kick it in, but there they stay: away.
Some days they break through, the whole rampaging, pillaging army made of the undead insecurities and pain you have kept locked away. They all have your face or a version of it, distorted, grotesque and familiar. Hands you’ve known all your life are tipped with talons and they wrap around your throat. They engulf you en masse, a horde of your own creation, embracing you in the way a python does its prey. Crushing your windpipe, breaking your ribs, constricting your lungs until breathing becomes a conscious effort instead of an involuntary action.
You make the conscious decision to breathe: inhale, exhale, expand, contract. What do they say? “Inhale the positive, exhale the negative” or some bullshit like that. They never tell you how difficult that is to do when the negativity is all that you hear, all that you have become in this moment. Your demons hold you down with their claws, and their thunderous roars that sound like every thing you tell yourself at 2 am when you can’t sleep. It sounds like the tears you use to cry yourself to sleep, and the sound of you vomiting your dinner after trying to drink your sorrows away. It sounds like the screams you muffle into your pillow and the sobs you choke down in the middle of the night. It sounds like paper being ripped to shreds and fire cracking as you add more of your dreams to burn.
It sounds like the end of your world, but it lasts only for a moment, and you ask yourself if it really happened. Was it real? Or was it all, truly, in your head?
Unpacking emotions and clothes from baggage can be a scary thing. On one hand, the clothes can finally be laundered and hung up to dry, then be neatly folded and put away until needed. Emotions, however, are a different beast entirely. No matter how neatly folded, how ironed, and how resolutely you put them away, they always turn into a jumble of feelings with knots that you can never truly untangle.
Bangkok, 2019
So here I was sorting through memories and emotions after my Bangkok trip, as the laundry has finally been done. It was such an eventful trip, with every moment punctuated by a single realization: Travelling alone is fun, but having someone to share the memories with would have been… euphoric.
I did try to make a vlog, of sorts, but that’s going to take DECADES to put up since I know zip about video editing (I should ask my boyfriend about that). Anyway, I took some pictures, listened to 90’s songs, and got a good bit of exercise.
Me, Starbucks
Bangkok is such a beautiful, wondrous place filled with hospitable and polite people. It’s such a 180 degree turn from other South East Asian countries I’ve visited (I sound like an expert, but I’ve only visited 4 so far). The Thai people were ready to help me with directions and they were so polite, which is a big change from some of the countries I’ve visited as I have experienced locals just wave their hands in my face and say “No English”. I think that’s a testament to how developed Thailand is: most of their people speak or at least understand English enough to be happy to help their tourists. This may also be because Bangkok is such a melting pot of cultures. It’s a city where you can find a Hindu temple a few blocks away from a Buddhist temple.
Entrance to a Hindu temple
I went to one temple, after a short bout of shopping at MBK Center, and all I had to do was ask for directions (do I turn left, or right from the mall exit?) and follow the screenshot I had saved from Google Maps. Lo and behold, I made it to the temple and did the usual touristy thing you do (take photos of everything you do not understand and hope the internet helps you). It was an experience, whether it was spiritual or emotional, I can’t say. All I know is it was an experience. After which, I walked all the way back to my hotel still relying on a screenshot of google maps.
Walking from MBK to Wat Hua Lamphong
Wat Hua Lamphong
Wat Hua Lamphong
Wat Hua Lamphong
Wat Hua Lamphong
Wat Hua Lamphong
The one and only park I went to was well kept and thriving. A large monitor lizard greeted me as i walked in, and a cacophony of bird song was in the air. Flowers were in bloom, and the sun was shining behind a few lazy rain clouds. I walked through half the park, because it was as wide as three city blocks and my scoliosis just couldn’t take the abuse anymore. The Pagodas were pristine, the grounds were meticulously kept, and it just felt like a piece of paradise in the middle of a bustling city. You know those places where you can walk to after work and just get lost in the feel of nature and unwind? It was like that.
Lumphini Park, Silom
Lumphini Park, Silom
Silom
Lumphini Park, Silom
Lumphini Park, Silom
Baby Monitor Lizard, Lumphini Park, Silom
Lumphini Park, Silom
Lumphini Park, Silom
Lumphini Park, Silom
Lumphini Park, Silom
Lumphini Park, Silom
Lumphini Park, Silom
Lumphini Park, Silom
Lumphini Park, Silom
Obligatory Selfie
Lumphini Park, Silom
Lumphini Park, Silom
Lumphini Park, Silom
Lumphini Park, Silom
THE FOOD! THE F O O D ! ! ! I have never seen a more diverse selection of food on one street, in my life. From Indian, to Western, Thai, Vegetarian, Healthy, Street Food, Fruits, Vegetables, Seafood, Meats– I had so much difficulty deciding, I settled on a salad and some grilled squid. It was totally worth it. I also had my first full vegetarian meal in Bangkok: Falafel. Incidentally, I have always wanted to try Falafel, thank you Magnus Chase, but I never noticed if my hometown had a Falafel place. A curry place, yes (hey Roti Boss, I miss you), but Flalafel? I don’t recall.
Falafel Sandwich at MBK Center
Nasi Goreng
Best Tom Yam Soup, Restaurant Ibukk, Silom
Street Food Stall
Street Food Stall
Grilled Squid Tentacles in Spicy Sauce
Mediterranean Salad, Jones Salad Bar
All in all, it was a great trip, aside of course from the bus not picking us up on time the night before we were supposed to leave because of a wrong booking made by THEIR people. This led us to take a taxi at 12:45 to catch the 1 am bus before it left for Hanoi. Our place is 4-5 hours away from the nearest airport and our flight was scheduled at 10:05 AM. Then there was the whole fiasco of the bus booking AGAIN when we tried to get back to our place. Let’s just say living in a country where 99% of people speak zero English has its challenges.
So those are the memories, at least, unpacked and laid before you in a blog post. The emotions, they’re still a jumbled mess somewhere in the dark places of my mind, the places I don’t like visiting. Those I will save for another time.
The most difficult days are when important things happen back home, and you’re in some foreign land with no family members to commiserate with. I wasn’t home for my Dad’s birthday for the first time. It’s exactly an hour before my work day starts, and I am quietly bawling my eyes out at my laptop, writing this down. But this has been eating me up for the past few days, and I need it off my chest.
Skyview Restaurant, Sa Pa, Vietnam
Blessings and blessings have been arriving, and I am grateful, but they all seem insignificant. What’s the point of success if you only succeed alone? I became TESOL certified last Monday, I went touristy for a day in Sa Pa, but it all seems… empty. It isn’t because I do not see the importance of these, or the magnitude of of how blessed I am to be working here, and thriving. It’s the fact that those I wish to share the success with are too far away to make me feel the happiness that should come with these gifts.
Is this how being homesick feels? I always thought I would be stronger than homesickness, more independent than all this whining and pining. After all, I was the one who wanted to leave, right? Happiness here seems like a betrayal to the people I left behind, but I understand that it should not be that way. Happiness is happiness, and should be taken where one can find it. I can’t help it though.
My family, Cebu, 2018
I just want to go home, but I am stronger than this yearning, stronger than I think I am, and stronger than this loneliness eating me up inside.
In the pursuit of living up to your own expectations, dreams change. They grow farther and farther away, every step closer is a step back, because you change the dream. You change it every time.
Once upon a time, I was a four year old girl who thought the definition of a dream was a diploma and good job. I was advanced for my age, but, oh, how those dreams have changed. What is the dream today? A house, back home, where I belong? A dog, of course (maybe even ten dogs), a family, maybe? An eight-digit bank account balance and a thriving business? Definitely the last dream. That’s THE dream.
Blue, Watercolor
Here I am in another country trying to make THE dream come true. Chasing it down with whatever I have, however I can – because we fight the good fight, and it’s a hard one. So I battle along, blood, sweat, tears (many, at the moment, more to come, I believe), to get to THE dream.
But dreams change, and, with them, we do, too. So I fight, not just against the world and all the challenges laid before me. I fight against my past, past dreams that need sacrificing for THE dream. I lay waste to previous me’s whose wants are now obsolete, who were never upgraded enough to catch up. I pass through graveyards of my past selves, praying none of the skeletons awaken to haunt me.
Digging Graves
Dreams and sacrifice go hand in hand, just like life and change. You give up so much for dreams, and, yet, you are unsure of whether they will still be what you want when you get them. Ah, life and its sick sense of humor.
When you dig the graves for the past you’s that you have sacrificed upon the battlefield of your dream, do you think of what you have achieved? Where you are? Who you have become?
So many versions of me lay strewn upon battlegrounds and ramparts in my mind, I can barely tell whether I am still me, fully and truly, or a figment of what society wants me to be. Who am I doing this for? Because the emptiness within demands this answer, it gnaws at the peripheries, it slowly eats me up.
Am I still me? Wholly? Or have I become some Frankenstein’s monster of my own making? Ripping limbs from dead Camille’s bodies and stitching them together to create a whole? Is my mind even my own? In this moment, as I write this, is it even the present me talking? Or some ghost of a past self rattling at the closet door?
I look back at the years I took for granted, the people I took for granted – those who have disappeared- and I ask myself, was it worth it? Would they be proud of me?
I look at the graveyard I have created, of dreams and skeletons with crushed hearts, and I have no answer.
I let Florence and The Machine’s “No Choir” take my heart by the hand and guide it down a most familiar path. A forest I have walked through before, the trees are larger and the canopy so dense now, barely any light filters through. But I know these trees, I’ve known them since the day I opened my eyes and realized what loneliness was. Down the path we go, deeper into “we had it for a moment”, further from “we were able to be still”.
“The loneliness never left me, but I can put it down in the pleasure of your company”, five minute calls, and staggered chats, and I put it down. Happiness is an extremely uneventful subject, but what I would give to sit and do nothing with you. The tears flow as the forest grips me through the song, and I succumb to the familiar pain in my heart, the one that feels like the heartstrings are snapping. No one said heart break could be so physical, and that ballads could trigger it in a way so primal it feels like the beast inside is begging for death.
But deeper down the forest path I go, with the song on loop and tears flowing down my face every time she sings “two people sitting doing nothing”, because I’d give everything back to sit and do nothing with you again.
This is going to be a sort of continuation of my previous blog on Blogger which, for some reason, can’t be found anymore. It used to be called “Everything Under My Purple Skies” but here we are, four years later and I’ve decided to rename and revamp.
I’ll be transferring some of the old stories, old rhymes, old heart notes left to crumble into dust. But this will mostly be new… ramblings. Ramblings of a heart older than she was four years ago, a heart far from home, a heart facing things completely alone.
You tell yourself, “You don’t understand,” and then laugh because how’s that possible? You’re talking to yourself. How can you not understand? But it’s there, isn’t it? The thought? The feeling? You like too easily, you care too much, feel too deeply, and YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND.
Then you draw it on your hand, on the back of your palm, you engrave it into your heart and carve it on your mind: I DON’T UNDERSTAND, I DON’T UNDERSTAND, over and over and over again until it consumes you; until it becomes you, until it IS you.
Engrave it so deep until it digs into every inch of your bones, on your tendons, your muscles, your arteries. Let it become your blood and let it run through you like acid until it melts away everything you once thought you knew about yourself; and all these unfamiliar songs that make you want to scrape your skin off with your own fingernails play on repeat in your mind and YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND, YOU DON’T.
With every single drum beat, with every unknown baseline, you feel yourself peel away bit by bit, piece by piece, until all you can do is scrape yourself off the floor and drip yourself into a mask and perfectly pressed clothes. You brave the world because they won’t understand, they won’t, you don’t.
You carry on day after day, year after year, and eons pass and still: you don’t understand, you don’t understand, over and over again.
You stop, try to rebuild, rename, recreate the shadow of yourself before you stopped comprehending your existence, but there’s nothing left. It’s just goop and bones tattooed with your mantra, and unfamiliar music blaring on broken speakers.
You turn to smoke, to burning liquids, to broken bottles and sharpened blades, empty vessels who offer hollowed out love. You build yourself up again and again, and… No, you don’t understand. My darling, they say, the answer is not in the powder you sniff into your system, it is not in the clear flames you pour down your throat, it is not in the nicotine you immerse yourself in, it’s not in the blood you spill on your bathroom floor, it’s not in that long-haired boy with the bright eyes and the promises that will shatter like thin ice. It’s in you, under the acid and beyond the horrible music.
But… YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND, you don’t understand, you… you don’t… I don’t understand.
No one held my hand as my tears fell and told me “It’s alright, let it out, let it breathe until you can.”
I was told to be quiet, to be grateful, that I asked for it – the spanking, the hitting, the scratching, the pinching, the bruising, the punishment. I was told to go to my room, to hide until I could get a hold of myself.
No one taught me how to deal with the feeling of inadequacy, the unerring thrum of knowing that I was the mistake that doomed two lives, and doomed two more. No one taught me how to process the heavy weight that continues to live in my chest, the little voice that tells me, everyday, that the world would be a better place without me in it – that life would be less miserable if I had not existed.
I was told to be grateful, to smile when people made me feel less than, to give it to God, to see that it was my fault I felt this way, my fault I was bullied, my fault I was loved less and expected more of.
No one taught me how to grieve – how to feel the loss of a childhood without violence, how to forgive the inability to protect myself from people who were supposed to be protecting me, how to forgive those who saw but looked away. No one taught me how to process the loss of the softness I could have had.
I was taught to be strong, that crying would make it hurt more, that I deserved it – the pain and the privilege, like I had asked to be born, that being fed, watered and sheltered was some sort of prize when it was ever the bare minimum. I was taught that love and affection were to be earned – in high grades and soft voices and walking on egg shells and making sure everything was perfect.
They gave me a tight chest and a loud voice and anger and told me I was the villain in my own story and in theirs.
No one taught me how to process sadness – because sadness made them look bad, sadness made them look at themselves and ask where they went wrong. They gave me rage because rage could be blamed on me, because my lack of emotional control was my own making.
Or was it? Is it?
I do not know how to cry and not feel bad about it. I do not know how to feel anger without the fear and guilt that comes with it.
I do not know how to be sad, but sadness is all I have most days.
They say water cleanses – the rain, the sea, the river, the tears. But water is also heavy with the weight of whatever it needs to slough away. Most days a soak is all one needs, a shower, a run in the rain or the waves around your ankles. Some days, though, it is the drowning one craves.
Some days, the things that cling onto us have already blocked our airways – crawling into our lungs and filling them with things unsaid, wants and needs we’ve put aside because we thought ourselves unworthy.
Some days the lump in one’s throat can no longer be swallowed, some days it expands and fills the esophagus, suffocating and all-consuming. Air tries to fill your lungs, but there’s no space – only a sliver of emptiness around emotions you’ve buried for years, stealing your breath and your thoughts.
Drowning feels like the most natural solution – you’ve no air already, what difference does filling yourself with water make? And doesn’t it seem so peaceful sitting at the bottom of a filled pool or submerged beneath the waves, looking up at the sky through the fractured light above you? Wouldn’t it be better, drowning, than gasping for air, trying to survive a world that refuses to take its knees off your chest?
They say water cleanses, but some stains are too dark, too ingrained to be washed away with words and comforts. The charred ruins of your rage sometimes cannot be built over, no matter how many times you’ve tried to quench the flames, to clean the soot and ash. Sometimes the grief is too thick, and no matter of scrubbing lightens the load.
Some days, it helps to accept that some things cannot be washed off. Some days, all you can do is tread water and hope you can save yourself. Some days, the sliver of space between emotions and the walls of your lungs are all you have to survive – and some days that has to be enough.
Purple Stars in Violet Skies 