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I don’t remember if there was a single moment in my life when I never worried about not making friends along the way, even during something as mundane as a bus ride, I felt the need to make a friend. I relied on smiles and conversations. I thought that it was something, that in exchange of those small gestures, I was making a change. I thought I was more fun when I am in an indefinite chase of perceiving every romance as a platonic love. I was made more of a friend than a lover.

Considering I was that shy-timid-selectively-mute child growing up--it sounded off even just writing it now. I was afraid to speak. I never wanted to be seen, yet, I won’t also say I was born that way, I think of that radiance almost every one I know had when they were a child as something that I was somehow robbed of by my great old friend, poverty. With monkey-like ears that bequeathed me a nickname, with chipped teeth, and being exceptionally scrawny that it was a great horror for me to get weighed in front of my class back in fifth grade, just who would want to know they’re 19 kilograms?

I hated people.

When I was in my 11-year-old body, I couldn’t think of any person that was having it worse than I am. Looking for things to love about myself then was like emptying the water bottle pockets of my backpack, there was nothing but pieces of crumpled papers and candy wrappers, and how it would remind me of the feeling when you’re trying to hide you got a zero in a test and you need a parent to sign it. It was my own little world filled with things I wouldn’t know until now.

I was a glass half full of self-pity, that I’ve forgotten it was also that 11-year-old who made it possible to be a part of a chorale group, who was a girl scout, who loved writing more than I like it now, a silent worker, a pretend masseuse, the oldest sister that played the role almost like a mother, the girl who tried every possible thing to compensate to what she thought her misfortune. I forgot about all my silent achievements trying to be liked, I thought that was life is about.

I wanted to be liked.

The whole sense of belonging seized my ability to accept I did not need to be liked. I was trying hard to be this and that. I never quite realize that even I, had people I didn’t like. I would cry in frustration why, that even how much I tried, there were still people who managed to unlock my fear of not being liked. Why people always have something to say.

 I still struggle with my feelings. Turns out, I have never gotten old enough to understand that we’re not always the person the other needs.

somehow, we ended up as facebook friends last year and she happens to post her crafts on her stories, and she might not remember how warm she made me feel, or how her simple accidental kindness got to me, i just think i owe her one—i will only hope that my gratitude would sometimes, even at least once, visit her dream.

a post-it and a poorly written note, the unspoken rule of using anything except a bookmark to bookmark, an afternoon trip down memory lane.

along with whoever mark hawkins is and his boarding pass from american airlines, that i found in between the pages of thrifted books that i own, i also happen to unearth the bits of the amusement in whatnots that i would absent-mindedly keep somewhere, anywhere in the middle of the pages i’ve read; i found about the test i scored the highest, a lindt chocolate wrapper that you could say my favorite, kfc fries paper wrap, a bus ticket dated november of 2022, an acknowledgement receipt when i was in senior high school, a heart-shaped leaf.

and the note.

it’s beyond imagination, to think i’d ever come across this note again when i couldn’t even remember picking up another new york times bestseller that is still frozen in time when i decided not to flip through it again just after a few pages, leaving it in chapter 24, with an obvious objective to be found—but just how funny the timing is, just when i was struggling to find a reason, just when i was wondering what happened and why did it have to happen to me, just when i randomly decided to ransack the pile of books that sits in one of the corners in my room, i came a across it, a message from me four summers ago.

maybe growing up is rediscovering the scribbles in science encyclopedias

i remember being 7 years old, with a work of mind, and still, full of futility. i had nowhere to go but my grandparents house, stuck with rules and the dullness of olden beliefs. i was 7 with the peeking nosiness, i was 7 and it never made sense how i could be easily liked by anyone but my parents. they were too young to be one, and i was too young to ever understand.

nothing can make me cry like erin’s ending monologue from derry girls finale

i don’t think i’d ever recover from this. i never would’ve guessed i would be in this situation anyway; if only i knew what i know now. if only i could redo the last 10 months of my life. if only i could tell myself not to get washed out by the overwhelming weight of expectations, built-up resentment, and pride. if only i wasn’t an 18-year-old girl who was trying too hard to prove herself, that she was different, that she’d end up different. and if only my could have beens did not exist at all.

there is nothing i can do to change whatever i ended up doing, it might not make sense to anyone but it does to me, and that there could be only 2 side on this, that (1) i might’ve actually fucked it all up and lose the only chance i had or (2) i dodged a bullet and wasn’t committed to sunk cost fallacy.

and the scary news is—this is me now, this all on me now. this was my choice, i chose to be in this position, i fought for it. sure, this might actually not be the best option, that i downgraded, wasted a lifetime opportunity, that i was only a big coward who was so insecure, that i lost. but i can’t possibly have the guts to complain about it now, can i?

i am guessing i would have to let the years pass me by until eventually i find myself thinking this was only something i had to go through and it wasn’t that bad as how i thought it was. that someday, i’ll look back and see it all made sense.

It took a forthcoming break to understand that everything that exists and comes to life was already monotonous. I was too afraid to admit all of it to myself that I had to go through the trouble for the sake of recognizing how life bores me to death. I have nothing that could stir out the gray off my being; it even reminds me of the childhood wound I had once in fifth grade—the first time I ever spelled out 𝘶𝘯𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘳, the first time I cried for not having someone who can stand by me.

I want to remember the past however I please. I wanted to switch up the subject in some way that I could feel I am in control. I wanted the miserable ones to be euphoric; I wanted those euphoric ones to be miserable. Just how more often happy memories are associated with sadness than sad memories are to happiness. We mourn for what once was; that alone makes the world too much to be understood.

It took me a while to shrug off how sleepy I am right now even if I just woke up, I would not also be able to tell you when was the last time I made the bed. This is how my days are now. I wake up clouded with all the disapproving thought, and guilt, I get up to find out I am late for lunch, then it is afternoon and not later I would shower, and by then I will get my good night sleep.

I am a walking bottle filled with all the things I remember I feared, everything I try to avoid ends up happening that I see no point in trying. Maybe, that is how I ended up as coward. I never learned how to sit with the discomfort, and now I am living within it.

when life gives you tangerines

only at 4 episodes and i wouldn’t doubt if this will be the best k-drama 2025 has to offer. i am such a sucker for painfully realistic stories, and i thought to myself, wow, may katapat na sa puso ko ang my liberation notes. it even made me wonder if the love i had known my whole life is the wrong kind of love i should have witnessed, if there is an actual kind of love that will conquer and beat the odds if you are just fortunate enough to choose the right person.

AND WOMEN? women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. and they've got ambition, and they've got talent, as well as just beauty. i ache for the poet in ae-sun. HAY. life. i hope one day we can all tell our stories, and it will be a reminder that we’ve done well.