-

I have this habit of falling into seclusion from others, and it randomly slaps me in the face that I just. Don’t. Want. To. Talk.

I don’t want to talk, even when I feel like there’s something aching to get off/out/lifted from my chest. Even when it’s threatening to suffocate me and at night I end up staring into a blank space. In the mornings when the sunlight is seeping through the mask on top of my open eyelids.

Even when I’m in the car or on a train, an airplane, a boat and listening to the happiest of music.

I feel alone.

I rarely feel this sudden melancholy nowadays. I’m getting good at pushing the dread down my throat. But some other days I get weird, and this is what happens.

I’m fine with being alone.

I guess I’m too young to be catcalled?

Generally, I’m very open to new experiences, so when my mom invited me out to go shopping in Divisoria, I was like... oh cool, why not??

I’m used to dressing to impress. When I am confident in my stride and in my aura, it usually has to do with my clothes. Whether I find myself shitting around in jogging pants in Aura or rocking this romper in Landmark, my outermost expression, like many others’, is my clothing.

So when my mom told me that we’d be roaming around in this shitty side of Manila, I figured, hey, I’ll wear jogging pants to school tomorrow so I wouldn’t have to change from my uniform before I went down the car. So eventually I went around with my phone tucked in my underwear and my eyes wide like shit if I get assaulted

It’s all good the first hour... and then I’m passing by these two men/guys/shits too skinny for their lives and they say something along the lines ‘hello, sexy,’ and almost immediately I shit myself because I felt threatened.

Being me, I had to look at it in a objective manner: why do I feel this way? Should I tell mom? I need to talk to someone, but saying it out loud makes me seem like a self-absorbed bitch with a head too big. Besides, the low lives couldn’t have been talking to me. Like, um, hello, I’m a sophomore and totally wearing this slacky outfit. Sure, my nose might be turned up and mom’s usual air screams ‘we’re not taga dito,’ but to accost a fifteen year-old would be a different level of low.

Then, to my distress and my mom’s obliviousness, we pass by the two shits again, and guess what? They catcall again.

I’d thought it over in my head again and again and again and I was cussing myself for being so maarte, but man I really hope no one else has to feel that way. It was when I was reeling from major panic attacks, and I was hyperventilating without anyone knowing. I’d known how to calm my breathing by then, but still, what happened made me so paranoid that I couldn’t even lift my head for fear of them seeing how scared I really was through my eyes.

Maybe they were catcalling my mom, maybe they were talking to a person right behind me - two different people the whole time. But that strays away from my point:

It’s not cool to catcall. It may seem harmless and maybe some people wouldn’t find it offensive coming from a ‘good-looking’ person, but believe me, not everyone can live with it. Admittedly, the thought of going through that hell again makes me uneasy. However slight it may be, however insignificant a few words may seem, it hits many people hard. Especially ones who get anxious easily, and that number is rising in population to date.

It’s been months since the incident, and it feels hella good to get it off my chest; I’m pretty sure I’ve learned quite a bit for it.