love me cancerously

i’m here again because one of you told one of the girls who goes to my german class that i was on tumblr. will tumblr ever stop haunting me? never probably.

anyway, that got me wandering back to my posts and gosh golly goose. how i write, how naked i was for all of you and now i’m wondering if i ever made you feel naked too? i’m pretty sure i’ve told you before why i write as so. people always say to try to be mysterious. but i’ve always hated that. i see a person i like on the internet or IRL, i want to know everything about that person. so since i can’t quench my thirst every time, i try to quench yours, maybe even if you didn’t ask for it. 

but i’m cheesing as i read through my posts. the last person i have been writing about, he’s still in my life, i actually married him this year. :)

wow, we’ve come a long way, haven’t we? you’ve seen me through almost everything. from high school, saying i’ll save myself for marriage, i got to college, shaved all my hair off, got a job, then i fucked half of my city. you’ve seen me find and lose and find and lose myself so many times. it was so messy. it was so awkward. and so so painful. but i don’t really regret anything. and weirdly enough, through it all, i’ve never deactivated this blog. never saw the point in it. 

and i won’t.

this will be here until the ends of the world. i’m writing to you now as a formal goodbye, a lil thank u for reading. i just really wanted someone to read what i had in my mind, words always overflowed, there was always place here for all my words. no matter how deep or shallow they were. all the silly reblogs and quotes will stay. i have about 9,000 things here. that’s insane. i was a little shit and very problematic at some point but they will stay here, because they were still important. i’m not sure why but they are. the only thing i ask of you though, is to never use anything i have said here against me. it would just be weird because i was such a different person when i was here before. 

i hope i have at least inspired you to live a little more. because that’s what i always aimed for. that’s what my mom always said when she wrote dedications to me, to march to the beat of my own drum, to paint the town red, to live life to the fullest. lil cliches but it was nice growing up to that. i thought it was a usual thing people tell each other but not really. we just tell each other to take care. so trivial. 

i’ve always wondered before, when i was going to stop writing here. what my last post would be. now i’m writing this and it feels like this is it. goodbye feels right for this. so. yeah. i’ve recently, just so very recently got into instagram (https://www.instagram.com/z________y_______/), so you can follow me there if you want to. but i don’t think i’ll be here again. so yeah.

heart is tender

i can feel it on my breasts

i hear it when i raise my voice

i can taste it on my hot wet tears

still an ocean

not just a glass of

water

too much but

he’s perfect

he loves to swim

to swim as far as he can

although

like anyone else

he gets thirsty

but he keeps coming back

so

the tears have long gone

become a part of

the ocean

and they have stopped

but the heart

is

sometimes 

it was cut into four parts unlike the original plan which was just two. the dentist told me she had to cut not only my gum and the sleeping toothy but also my bone. i was quite nervous the whole time because i’ve never had a surgery my whole life. i told leon (who is now a good friend) and he knew about the shit i’ve gone through since i started traveling from getting very sick in osaka and he found me the best doctor in japan to getting bitten by a poodle when i was in songkhla and then getting into a really bad motorbike accident last month in kep (i only tweeted about it but it was so bad, my leg is fucked up and shit and i am still actually recovering from it) and now this god damned tooth that started to have pericorinitis the week before. leon said i’m totally living my life since i started to get out of my country. true, it’s hell but worthwhile.

 last saturday, i tried fasting. another thing crossed off the list called “things i find unnecessary and i will never ever NEVER ever ever do uuggghhh noooppppeeeeeeee” like i know people who do this to “listen to their body” and to “restart their body after overeating and drinking to the brink of alcohol poisoning with zy” but i always thought it’s not for me, i’m all into zen but i am foremost a hedonist. it’s complicated. anyway, my boyfriend has somehow persuaded me to try ayahuasca with him. he has this fortuneteller friend originally from new york but has actually been living here for years and she hooked us up with  this shaman from south africa. we met him a few days before that and i was expecting some chill dude maybe around 50 or 60 years old but we get to his apartment and he’s barely 30 and white but a chill dude nonetheless, he briefed us on what would happen and i pretty much knew everything because my boyfriend showed me jan kounen’s documentary about it but he also warned us not to eat shit like stinky tofu and that people sometimes literally shit themselves during the trip. honestly, i have no problems with ralphing, i even got us a really cute bucket from daiso for it but shitting, i’m not so sure so i was determined to fast. nothing is coming out of my butthole, bruh. i planned to fast starting friday, a day before the ceremony but i was making my boyfriend lunch and i watched him eat as usual and i was like FUCK IT, FEED ME and he did and i was like WHY WOULD YOU FEED ME I TOLD YOU I WAS FASTING so it was really bad so i ate when he left and then joined him for dinner that night telling me i could just fast on the day and besides, i’m tiny. the next day was spent daydreaming about food and also panicking. i have never tripped balls in my life because i’m boring, i like being sober, i don’t understand the appeal of drugs (i’m probably that one student schools successfully veered from them after countless times of showing us “informative” statistics). but i was convinced ayahuasca would be good for me because it helped you out a lot to figure out your shit and i’d have visions that would be good for my art. i made my boyfriend promise me to take me out for mexican food the next day. the next thing i know, his friend he met through work and also his brodate was in front of our building and we had to wear something over or underwear and we had to gooooo.

this was in someone’s journal before i was born, even before my mom was born. it’s so fascinating how someone had the same ineffable feelings like you have now years and years before you were in this planet. and it makes your brain hurt to wonder about your whereabouts before this and moreso to think about the universe’s expanse and what’s beyond it. 

and then i think it’s kind of lovely how we all just have these little worries about these actually trivial things, we get so wrapped up in them that we no longer remember its insignificance and sometimes we hurt each other. then we make each other feel better by making our skins touch and drink fruit and smoke leaves. 

most of the time, i just go to this world in my head i’ve built with abby where we’re traipsing and holding hands while we carry little sloths like backpacks and they have they own little sloth backpacks, like lala the penguin. not a care in the world.

but i’m really here, all alone in this huge apartment for the first time in a long time, i am all alone again. the boy i love had to catch a flight to siem reap this afternoon to film. i sent him on his way and i walked back to the apartment alone and napped. i woke up with this almost deafening silence i’m sure i was so used to about a year and so ago. i’m used to making dinner for us and then tangling my limbs with his on the couch for the rest of the night until we get up and go sleep in the bedroom. i’m so used to it that it’s a little weird. i initially was quite unnerved because i didn’t quite know what to do with myself. i listen to camera obscura to match what i feel: sad and lazy. it was a little painful. i have done what i have always done yet again, i’ve built my world all around a boy. however, this is one of the things i strongly never want myself to feel guilty about. i’ve always thought it was beautiful. in a romatic catherine breillat way, it’s indeed devastating. it’s somehow like holding something incredibly searing but i can’t seem to let go of it. it’s tenderly aching but good for me, because it provokes my writing. i recognize the pain eventually, it’s the kind that makes you grow up a little and i welcomed it. and i loved myself even more because this kind of pain could be easily mismanaged. example, i was trying talking to him and he seemed too busy for me and it could have gotten awry but i accepted it, we needed time off each other. and that’s okay and no one has to be careful about offending the other because there’s nothing to be offended about.

the bigger picture is that every night, i fall asleep with his arms around me and i’m in my favorite blanket in the whole world and the bed is warm and cold at the same time. i cook everyday and i love it, i ask him sometimes shortly after we’ve just eaten if he’s already hungry because all i want to do is cook now. our fridge has all different kinds of cheeses and vegetables. lately we keep staying up until the wee hours of the morning because we just keep whispering to each other in the dark and then some little green light from the airconditioner, talking about everything and nothing. i can’t bear ruining something like this.

our relationship is wonderful, of course sometimes it’s taxing but it’s okay because we’re fighting because we essentially want to make it work. it’s gotten to the point that i barely talk about what i have around my friends because well, it’s so boring to hear about. i guess. it’s gotten to the point that i’m alright with just keeping it between the two of us.

and i’m daydreaming about the next countries we’ll go to. mostly just living in the cold mountains for a change. 

i guess what i’m saying is, i’m happy with what i have now. and my heart is ok. these are things that’s in my head. it’s totally ok to drown yourself in a person if you don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. i refuse to apologize if it seems so deplorable but the opposite if i were a boy.

anyway. what was it that beau teplin said? that my body is not a temple?

it was the coldest morning i’ve had here in this country and it was a little dark outside with some rain and it was quite somber but in a way i liked. we slept really late because our fight lasted until 2 in the morning or so. during breakfast, he kept touching my arm and i looked at his eyes, which were startlingly green today, and my heart wells and warms up because everything is ok again and i love his skin.

when he left for work, i waited for sleep to come back but i’m here, feeling like i’ve had my usual eight hours of sleep. i’m still in this ineffable stupor over yesterday afternoon, when i was filled to the brim with ardor for everything i pined for in this world. i was all alone in the apartment, i was all over the place: writing, painting and walking in circles. i was beside myself. this was one of those fleeting moments when i’m so smothered in all my sloppy vigor and i want to do everything all at once: see if i can find the big snail again that i saw by the street when we were walking to a cantina, paint with paints, write, swim in the ocean, bike in front of the palace. and knowing i will never accomplish anything because i’m overwhelmed. then i messaged my boyfriend to tell him i’m going to his office because i couldn’t bear it anymore and i just wanted to see him. i struggled to put all my hair in a high ponytail and then put on a green shirt and my denim shorts. i felt naked so i put on this large red button down shirt for men that i got in manila ages ago and i pretend it’s a coat then i put on my prescription glasses with black rims and the deepest pink lipstick. i made sure i had my ipod on as self-defense against anyone who would try to open their mouth and ruin my day and then proceeded to walk for about fifteen minutes, trying to ignore the bewildered stares. i start longing for big cities again where i wouldn’t be considered an oddity.

i proceeded to enter the lobby and just furtively glanced at everyone and then found my way up to my boyfriend’s office. my heart starts beating normally because he’s near me. he stops working because i’m around and i insist that he continues and i promised to be quiet and drew on the bottom right of his white board a sad cloud. it was about to rain. he gives up and we exit around 6 in the evening. we find a bakery and had bread for a little while and stopped at another place where they serve snacks and we had mashed sweet potatoes and grilled corn. when we went out of there, it was already raining. it was strong but i barely felt it because of my pretend coat and my big hair. but it was messing up my glasses. we find out that where we wanted to go was closed so we proceeded to go home. we were two blocks away when the street was quiet and dark blue and i tried to look at him and rain drops dripped and dropped on my glasses some more and he looked at me too and i tell him i love him. he smiles and i tell him something like i want him in my mouth. and he grins and holds me closer. i tell him, am i not romantic for saying that under the rain?

i slid it all in one plate and put cilantro on it and he’s surprised and asked me, “you’re not having breakfast with me?” and i look at him and tell him i want to watch him eat. and i really do. i love him eating all the things i cook. he eats vegetables, especially the greens like they’re the tastiest ever in the world and he just eats a lot and i find that so endearing. i love watching him put all these mayonnaise and soy sauce and mustard on everything, sometimes it’s a bad idea and he still ends up doing it and then finally he admits it’s a bad idea, it’s amusing nonetheless. the oddest thing he likes to eat is oatmeal with soy sauce and mustard and pickles. he’s like a food terrorist. but then there are his eyes too, i have never been so fixated with someone’s eyes this much mostly because i really can’t tell what his eyes’ color would be at the moment. they always change. sometimes they’re brown with specks of gold, sometimes it’s just amber, then blue gray but my favorite is when they’re green. i’ve always loved green eyes. then i’d start humming green eyes, i’d run away with you

do you want to go to ho chi minh?

what a weird question. i'm so sleepy. i want to say yes. yes, kuya, i want to go to ho chi minh. where's the bus? i want to go everywhere, kuya. but i'm home. not really. but i have an apartment here. my clothes are there. my journals, so i guess big chunks of my blithe self. i have a bed there that i so lovingly share with my boyfriend. we'll go to ho chi minh together. share a bánh xèo, toke and make love on a bed in a cheap hotel. listen to thousands of motorbikes zoom, wait for the moon to wane, avoid conversations with other travelers, toke some more maybe. yes, i want to go to ho chi minh but only if my boyfriend is coming with me. i'm broke. but he just got his money from filming, it could get us by. but he's so worried about the plants that we left in our balcony. it was raining on the island that we went to. but we’re not sure if it does in this city. everyday ok not everyday (there was one time we fought) but mostly, i would wake up beaming because i feel his hands on my tummy and it’s nice to know someone wants to be with you, sleep with you and feed you your favorite food. it’s so easy to make me happy, really. i open my eyes and he's beaming too. and he kisses my face and it's morning and it's raining. we can’t see it but we hear it and so we sleep some more and the rain would be gone when we wake up again and it would be sunny and where our skins touch would be a little clammy. he asks me if i'm hungry and i just move closer to him so he can kiss me, so i can kiss him. he doesn't even have to ask what i want for breakfast, he knows. maybe we'll make love. then we'd get dressed and we'd eat at one of the many unassuming restaurants on the island that were evidently built on art and love. then we'd go for a swim. we'd never stay too long under the sun because he turns pink easily, like a baby shrimp. one time we went to the other side of the island to another beach, where there'd be less people. went went up a mountain and then through the jungle. we've been planning this trip for so long. but a day before we left phnom penh, i told him, we need to be more spontaneous. don’t get me wrong, i love our routines, he comes home from work, i make him dinner and we’d be on the couch watching a film. but we had to get out. the next day, he said, pack your bags we’re going. so back to us walking in mud, going over fallen tree branches, going down a cliff of enormous rocks that were probably older than our grandparent’s grandparents, he says, is this spontaneous enough for you darling? finally we get to the beach, we walk a little and i walked towards the sea and the next thing i know, he's running behind me naked and laughing. mostly after that, we just swam naked, even with a couple of people around us. he's filmed the sand on my hair, my naked body, and then some. i sit and stand next to plants and he keeps taking photos. i felt like a queen. he'd still want me to hold him even if his skin's been burnt by the sun. during this trip back to phnom penh, i couldn’t sleep in the bus at first because he was so sleepy next to me and he was holding me and it all felt all right. i remembered it was just a few months ago when i was holding myself, so cold and lonely, i begged a girl for a kiss and she just smiled at me sweetly and said, it’s just beer, and she went back to sleep. i feel so happy for that rejection, in a weird way. i guess because i sort of know in my heart of hearts i’m with this boy not because out of loneliness but because of the push and pull and the white hot and sticky and the loneliness without and the happiness with and the waiting like a puppy for him to get home. honestly, the apartment here doesn’t feel like home really. home is him. sometimes we fight and it’s terrible and i cry to my mother because it’s so difficult. everyone is so discouraging. but my mother says it will be ok and it will work out and my heart feels lighter. and i go on loving him some more. i wanted to tell him i love him every time we were in the water and all i could see behind him were some islands and the sky and the water were so blue, the kind of blue that would make you long for a person if you were there alone, but i was with him so i felt all the happys flowing and ebbing in my tiny human body and it’s intense. and i think to myself, this is what i wanted. what was it that herman hesse said, you say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. but i didn’t get around to tell him because he’d say, that’s enough for me. he’s all sweet: red and pink. he’s like sunset against the green, maybe surrey. i didn’t get around telling him, i love you, you are home. despite being all clammy, me crying all the time, all these sand flies, no a/c, i am here, i am happy because i’m with you. it’s a cakewalk but it’s also hella messy. and i love it, as long as you’re with me. 

last saturday, we spent almost the whole afternoon at the dentist and i had an incident with a witch. nighttime came, i was in my pyjamas and he was in his boxers and we counted each other’s teeth so his fingers were in my mouth, mine in his. we’ve been watching mostly hitchcock because he wants to know more about cinematography. i don’t remember if it was that night that he was spooning me in our bed and told me he wants to be inside me while we stay still. he took off my clothes and put himself inside me and he was still spooning me and he kissed my nape and my shoulders gingerly. then he held my hands and we stayed still.

i was supposed to meet him some time last week at his office but it rained so i had to go to the coffee shop a block away from his office and the second he steps in the coffee shop it really starting pouring so we decided to skip the indonesian restaurant and just had fries. he held me in the couch and i was supposed to make him listen to a song in my ipod i was so sure he would like but then he told me later and that we can listen to the rain for a little bit. it was nice, i was warm and i didn’t want anything that very moment.

our first night here at our apartment, it was raining really hard and we switched off the lights and went to the balcony and he sat on a chair and i sat on him because he suggested we just listen to the rain. i listened to the rain and felt his breath behind my ear. 

i think it was just the other day when he was kissing me at the meeting of my thighs and my eyes rolled to the back of my head and i died a little and screamed and i panted and i tried to dig into his skin with my fingers and the first thing i said immediately after was “i want to paint!”

this morning i chopped some garlic and gherkin and mixed them with mayonnaise and whole/grain mustard with a little bit of pepper and lemon juice. fried eggs and ciabatta. rolled onions in flour and deep fried them. some cheese and vegetables. watched him eat. i tell him, i love cooking for you. he said, i love it when you cook for me.

i wrapped myself in my blanket the whole time while i was at the apartment today, it was the only thing i did that comforted me. and i listened to sad songs and curled on the sofa. i wrote and drew a little. i felt so sad but moreso because i couldn’t cry at all. i feel like i just need a big cry. my heart is a lil bit tired.

then my friends picked me outiside of my apartment building. the driver almost ran over someone on a motorcycle and she toppled over. then he just kept going. then i saw next to his seat that his beer was spilling. then my friend said he was drunk then it made sense. then he overcharged us which made my other friend yell at him. then we walked over to the travel agency and it was closed. i said out loud that nothing was going right today. but as if on cue, the owner shows up and says hello. he went inside the office and came back with my visa. tybg. then went back to the cinema and said hi to my former khmer boss. (quit te job a few days ago). and he gave us gifts and we talked a lil bit about his trip in europe and he says he might be moving to berlin. everybody’s moving to berlin. i want to move to berlin.

now i just had dinner with my friends and we’re ignoring each other bc we’re on our phones and i got them hooked on tiny tower. my dinner was crap and it was expensive. we have a great view of the river.

also since he’s flying out tonight, he had to finish a bunch of stuff this afternoon at his office and was giving me short replies and i was like WHY R U SO CRANKY and he was like sending me kissy emojis tellin me he’s not cranky and he’s just busy and then he said that if i feel that anything was wrong, i should just tell him and he’ll calm me down?????? so much assurance and security up in dis bitch and i was like, u r literally the best boyfriend in the world 💖👽💖👽💖👽 !! but he was like sad bc he thinks it should be like that and i think it’s unusual that he has to be lauded for being nice to me!!!!!!! he was like, oh my poor girl.

but i know that, i just really happy i'm not settling and i have him and it’s just going well. we’re kind of moving in together tomorrow night at our apartment. it’s quite lovely, it’s one whole floor just for us and it has two balconies, one by the living room and one by the kitchen. the kitchen is super decent and i’m excited because i get to cook. so happy.

last night i was talking to one of the many friends i’ve made while traveling and i told him about how i’m staying here in cambodia to live with my boyfriend and he was like, oh i’m so sad that your travels have abruptly ended because of love which irked me a bit because that’s not at all the case????? i can still travel and in fact, i will, i have plans. i don’t think life adventures should end bc you found someone really special. @_@

yesterday was quite overwhelming too. life. either my friends are getting almost abducted in switzerland or swimming in iran or deciding how to propose to his girlfriend: in paris or on a seaplane over dubai, or crying a lot over their ex who died, or just really wanted to talk to me about japan because they’re there and i’m like no sorry i’m not in the mood for that. idk. i think leon’s dating a lot these days and it’s like, i don’t want to be with him anymore because i’m so crazy over my boyfriend but it’s like a competition that i didn’t even signed up for. so i hid him on facebook and i just want to focus on me because feeling like that was ok and natural bc we were together but i didn’t want it to affect me. and on top of me being upset over some customers, my boyfriend started to upset me too but didn’t mean to. so he came over to make sure i was okay. i was already ok before he came over but it’s always so nice to see his face. i wonder if we’re just physically attracted to each other but i think no because he keeps wanting to get past my walls and talking and talking to me. i keep finding good boys. good job, self.

this is a pic off photobooth yesterday while he was taking photos of me and i pulled him next to me. but then he had to leave for a bit so i talked to h over a video call, it was nice. then when he was back, i introduced them. then he took me to a filipino restaurant!!!!!!!! i finally got me some tocino tybg. he enjoyed the adobong pusit even though i didn’t like it. tybg he is not completely vegetarian. then we went back to cuddle and he had to work a bit. i tried so hard not to jump him while he edited the films he was making because he looked so serious and i just want him smiling all the time and i was just in bed, watching him but looking away when he tries to catch me. sometimes this russian guy calls him and then he speaks to him in russian and then his voice (impossibly) gets deeper and my vagina cries. what a babe.