this blog is for me

Dear Hopia,

It's been a weird few months and I got to read The Little Prince again -- around 60 of the most important pages. Just to keep me company in this weird time.

I'll be fine. I'll be better. Soon. Things will be better soon.

i'm no one's, and it's freeing, being on your own. until you feel the weight of it truly settle on your shoulders. it isn't a burden—isn't heavy when you carry it. but time drags and exhaustion seeps into your bones. it aches. because you're tired. and there is no one to share this all with. this weight. these words. these emotions. feelings.

-

i'm no one's.

oh.

for the occasion of when the moon is the roundest and the brightest. and families are as round and whole as the pastries they eat, sharing stories and laughter around the table as they bite into sweet lotus paste and salty, oily egg yolks.

my friend hands the tin of mooncakes over to me with a smile on their face. tells me that it's for the special people you keep in your heart. "you're on the top of the list," they say. and i smile and try not to cry. because they can't have known that mooncakes were my favorite. but they thought of me all the same.

and because hundreds of years ago, slips of paper were packed into the pastries and kept the rebellion as round and whole as families were on the mid-autumn. and the rebels succeeded over fractured remnants of an empire that thought they would've been eternal.

and hundreds of years later, the tin of mooncakes on my desk still holds messages that translate to love and gratitude and thanks. telling me underneath the harvest moon that it's ok to topple weeks and months of breaking and cracking open because here's a mooncake -- a symbol of love and unity.

let me tell you about my friend.

my friend and i meet once a week. we meet once a week and give each other the brightest of smiles and we hug and we laugh and we talk for 15 minutes before parting ways with the silliest of conversations processing in our minds.

he calls me his idol and he has so much belief in my capabilities, it almost hurts to know how genuine he is. it feels like blind faith, on my part -- and funnier because he's a priest and i'm a cynic.

perhaps we do make a good team. opposites that we are.

but sometimes i get scared, talking to him, that is. because of this blind faith. it makes me want to leap into things headfirst and carry his retriever-y optimism within me. that because he believes in me, means that i can do it. but what would he think when he knows the things i keep inside me? what if the illusion shatters and he sees the darkness inside? would he believe in me all the same?

because friends are supposed to know the light and the dark, aren't they? that keeping things from your friends is one step towards growing apart. and though i've been friends with him for years, it's not like he knows me inside out -- nor do i know his darkness.

it's always the 15 minutes of light we hold onto. and i wish i could learn to talk to him for more. he gives the best hugs and the loudest of laughs, and he has so much enthusiasm and passion (and humor) within him that i know for a fact is good not just for me, but for everyone surrounding him.

i wish i could learn to talk to him more. but we know the same languages in different fonts, and the only language we can communicate in fluently is a language that isn't our mother tongue. it's amazing how languages can connect the world -- and deeply sad how one can't understand the beauty of what another thinks just because we don't speak the same tongue.

and he's one of the best people i really do know. a true friend to lean on. so the question is, what do i do?

i sometimes wish for the brightness of day even when under the sun, or the crisp scent of morning even when i hate waking up before 8 a.m.

there are so many things i miss, but so little time to miss them—even when i yearn and long for its closeness. it seems i take missing it as granted as when i did have it. when i'm im the moment, that is. i don't want to miss things and not mourn them correctly. because it seems that i'm in a never-ending cycle of mourning. and sometimes i mourn without knowing what i'm even mourning for.

it's become so habitual that sometimes i wonder if i mourn for what my life would've been if i were braver. or perhaps... what it might have been if i'd been less brave.

there are days i feel uncomfortable in my skin -- an aggressive crawl that is not there, a whisper of a touch perhaps, i don't know. touch and feel are different from day to day. i only know that it is there, and it itches, but physically, the itch does not exist.

my breathing quickens, bracing for impact that will not come, or perhaps it will. i feel the tide changing and the wind turning, but i don't understand its significance. there is too much change surrounding me, i don't exactly know how to cope except to write to you.

there is so much inside me, unknown mingling with those familiar, coexisting until i confuse foreign and warmth. stranded in the in between, floating.

(i wonder if you feel that way still? i sometimes wonder if that's normal at all.)

i’m also a very curious person by nature so ignore me if this is weird question, but could you describe, in your own words, who hopia is to you?

dear @alwayscozyy, this is one of the sweetest things i've ever read! no worries about your curiosity -- we all born innately curious and that's a beautiful thing, really.

i don't understand why there's an indescribable feeling of dread that passes through me every year on my birthday. i hadn't felt it when i was eighteen and full of hope and longing. but i felt it at nineteen. and twenty. and twenty one.

and now i'm twenty two, and i feel the same gnawing feeling.

i always thought i'd be above crying as the hour strikes, but this time tomorrow played as the hour stroke, and brandi carlile so beautifully said, "When the hope that you hold tightly to has all but vanished / and there are no words of comfort to be found / you will know what it means to be lost and without love / May you fight to kill that deafening sound."

and i don't know how i feel it's fitting, but it made me cry. teenage dream by olivia rodrigo has been echoing aimlessly in my mind as of late, and it turns haunting and taunting with every second i hear it. and i ask myself if i will get better -- and when i will. i've been happy, yet i've been so unhappy. and i know that it's champagne problems, but i want to rest for a whole day, and give myself the satisfaction of relaxation. i want so many things. i want to bake. i want to read. i want to write. i want it all. but most of all, i want to feel untainted.

and there's a part of me that feels as if i had grown up so quickly, i never had the time to be dumb and do dumb things. or enjoy the trivial things that children so often love. and i feel so tired on my birthday.

like i feel that death and sadness is around me all the time. and i feel so powerless, and i don't want to fight anymore -- even if not fighting means i won't stand a chance to fix things the way i want it to be.

i want to stay little, and i feel so bleak and so shrivelled and empty from giving.

I... I don't know what to feel because I've known for some time, but I think my head lives in denial, still. Maybe it's rumours flying, and maybe I...

I don't love him -- nor do I think I ever did or I ever will, but to know that while I did like him and continued to pour all my heart in everything I did for him. Put on makeup and laughed a little harder. Tried to starve myself to look prettier. Draw finer pictures, write letters. And still.

And still he liked someone else.

But what makes me sick to my stomach was that she was my age -- she was barely legal. And it doesn't mean that I liked him that I wanted him to like me back -- I knew the implications of that. Just because I wanted it didn't mean it was right of me to want it.

I feel sick. I feel like absolute fucking shit because how does this happen? Setting my past aside, how can someone I know be this selfish, this cruel, this disgusting? Love knows no bounds, except it should, it must.

How does a man fall in love with a woman, no a girl. She was just a girl -- is a girl, still, despite needing to grow up so quickly. Despite being legally of age. She is a girl who's been tainted by the world, and now, I know by him.

I don't understand how someone whose brain has developed and wrinkled can do something this twisted to a girl whose brain hasn't fully developed, whose mind won't know any better than to follow a man whose voice can be soft and tender, who can open his arms and show how much he cares. Who can tell her she's doing great and pretend he's young and beautiful, still. Who can tell her his favorite things and bring out his guitar to sing her all the love songs in the world. A man whose self depreciating humour said he was relatable.

Perhaps I should have known he wasn't as wise as he makes it out to be. That him reciting sonnets from memory just because I liked them didn't mean anything at all.

My God, I should have known better. But I was young, and he showered me with attention -- and maybe, he showered her with more. She didn't know any better.

But then again, he should've.

i reconnected with an old friend today. we wrote about him before -- before, before, back before the pandemic started. he's the first person you ran to, the first person you came out to. one of the first people who believed you can be where you are atm.

it's sad, you know, how friendships fade sometimes. not because you don't like the person anymore, or they don't like you anymore, but because it just... fades. and sometimes you think of them fondly because there's no wedge between you... just space. and time.

well, i spoke to him today, because i haven't in a while. and it feels nice to just do that. to talk to people you used to talk everyday -- not because you want the way it was, but because you want to catch up for a sec, or just tell them you're happy for them. to smile with them for one euphoric second.

he hasn't replied much because he's at work, but we got to talk a little bit, and he said he'll reply soon.

so yeah, i feel great today.

one of the nicer entries i've had so far, i think. and i'm happy with that.

love,

and on brighter days, i hope to write to you. so you can feel the joy that i feel too. and so i can preserve it in this little world.

i'm lonely. i'm so fucking lonely. and all i wish is for someone to understand what i'm talking about -- or pretend that they do. and smile at me when i'm unsure of myself, and not in that nonchalant way that makes me feel so small and tiny. i want someone to tell me that things will be fine even if they won't.

and that bad things are okay because they'll stay only for a time -- a short while, a momentary lapse. i want someone to talk to me and talk me out of my misery and give me something to hope for. i feel so lonely and dreadful all the time. and i'm tired of being lonely.

i'm tired of constantly having to fend for myself because i'm used to doing that. and independence. and making my own decisions.

i need someone to tell me that my decisions are bad or nitpick my style once in a while. i need someone to make me feel like i'm not perfect at all -- because god knows i'm far from it. i'm so lonely but there's that underlying feeling that at the end of the day, i'm a day job, a one-time meet.

the neighbor on the street you meet before they go back into their own world. or the book you claim is your favorite but somehow you're forgetting all the words until there's only a vague realization of the plot. or a temporary hiding place until you forget it exists under the floorboards because it's meant to hide, not to be seen.

i'm no one's, in a sense. a nomad floating around because they're used to floating around. and no one really minds their aimless, solitary floating anymore because they're used to it.

but i do want someone to mind. i want someone to care.