2020

I became a lost chest with treasures stolen as they were stowed.

It was not so long ago when we lost you. I lost you. The moments were stolen, just like the memories, they were expected to fall apart.

I remember wanting to know me. But as the Sun rises and and still my eyes are closed until it does open, I open it with nothing.

I am left alone and I refused to think about it. Now, I’m begging to be in solitude.

I look and then I see. There it is, something that I am reaching for. A smooth pearl, I want it. But go away. For a moment, leave me alone, my pearl.

I’ll come back for you as sure as the noise enters my parent’s room at 1:49 AM.

I must move forward, look at everything because I fear mortality. Oh, to just see it all and never forget how I wanted to see it all.

Tomorrow’s always the start. But I never start, I never start.

Maybe because of the neighbor’s lazy echoes that rupture every cell in my body, it also ruptures my soul, my plans, my dreams, my hopes, my aspirations, my goals.

I blame the tall, brown man, and his brother, and his other brother with the feet all twisted. I blame it because I fail to blame myself. I fail to see what is beyond because I chose to blame the tall, brown man with the creases separating his cheeks from his lips and chin.

I look at The Times. It’s already 1:53 AM. 7 minutes before the pathetic siren. I must set another siren. I wish I could never forget.

The TV is there beside me. The TV will depict my fears. The TV will slap me with reality. The TV will give me back everything. I rest my head to the TV.

And then after that, I’ve succeded. The virgos and capricorns will be all so jealous. They would want to kill me before I could even stab the knife to open up my cranial bones and see for myself the tumors that I hope were never there.

I don’t have to live like this. I had a life—but now it’s gone. I’m looking for the god(s) and I’m my god right now. To do my best, yes, it’s that I’m trying to slide on. I’m tired but I’m barely doing anything.

Since I gained consciousness about what I want in life, it has always been a constant battle. It felt like I was fighting myself for what I think and what I think the world thinks. And the nature of that was me being lost with no one to guide me.

But I get it. It’s my fault that I’m in this situation. Kids my age should have figured it out already. 16 to pick a field, 18 to pick what I’ll do in the next 20 or 30 years of my life. Graduate mid 20s, go do the job and save to settle down after decades. It has always been like that. That’s the story written for all the kids like me.

That being suffocating is one of the multiple things trying to kill me today. I’m at the age of knowing better. A generation of breaking and changing the rules because the rules were dumb from the start anyway.

Dom, it’s capitalism. Remember that. The world is not for you. It’s for itself. And you want to be a part of the world. But the world doesn’t get to cast you. It’s not their film to produce. It’s my agency to want to offer myself to the world. Not the other way around.

Today I try to understand what being part of the world really means. I get to embark on a journey again. I get to be scared and excited again. Tell me, when’s the last time you felt like this? And when has it been what you want to become to be in this world?

It’s nice to fall in love at 40. And it scares me that I might never find that intense, undisturbed burning love that lasts for decades to come. I felt their bond and I was jealous of it. It just sets the bar so high. Oh, to have the strive for something new midlife. It was maybe too suffocating for me. I can’t just buy it.

Julie’s relationship with her partner juxtaposed that of Julia’s. It was also ridiculous. I mean, the consecutive, breathless bites of bread that left no room for even swallowing? And the alleged delicious cake that was smushed up? I call bad screenplay!

I don’t know if I’m just too nitpicky. But to be honest, I enjoyed the film. It was citrus and vinegar and acid for too much butter.

I promised myself that I should watch this again at 29, 10 years from now. I just related to Julie’s crisis from working in a dead end job, living at some place that needed a machine to block sirens outside, to her falling silent while her girlfriends talked business on their flip phones.

She’s dead and needed something to be alive. And it was in that obnoxious bread eating scene that I hate so much she found her calling to do what she had the passion for—writing and cooking.

With her setting 365 days to achieve her goal, I saw myself in. In a world where too much is not a thing and you’re just your small you, a realization should come up someday. And in that, you find yourself again in the pool of the material world and reinvent yourself.

The reason behind her transcendence also cut her wings off. In the film, it was never really explored too much. But the heartbreak of being told by the reason of your hardwork they never cared for you? It crushed me.