daming ebas

I always, always find myself going back to that certain in scene in "Frances Ha" (2013) where its titular character, Frances Halladay, runs amok across the streets of New York, with David Bowie's "Modern Love" playing in the background. What I most loved about it, all these years, was how it played it out for a full minute without having the concrete meaning nor development as to why why was the scene necessary. It just is. 

Frances is struggling to make a career out of dancing--she's stumbling upon every situation that both brings her closer and farther away from her dream. Right before her dream becomes realized, something gets in the way and she seems to fall back to square one and start over again. It's an endless cycle for the first half of the film. It looked as if she was running for her life with no substantial reason why or who is she running from. She's just running!

This whole year was about running and figuring out along the way where I'm headed or what I'm trying to escape from. It's not that deep, though. Maybe this is just me shedding off so much of this year's accumulated pain--kind of like blowing off the smoke in the glass so I could see better, to break the glass that divides me from what I'm meant for. 

It has been fear that has kept me here, rejection of any movement that I'm required to exert so I could reach my "full potential," or whatever the fuck it means. Months ago I lamented about how I'm so much more than the everyday routine I find myself in, but conversely, I couldn't reject it because this is what keeps me sane and at ease over everything--first and foremost, financially, because it keeps my bed space. It introduced me to such great heights, both glory and shame (more on shame). It gave me tough lessons to learn, like how to enjoy my pay check without jeopardizing my rent dues. (I'm still struggling over this, 11 months after.)

But having this vision for a purely stable life without any struggle to bring myself out into the world, without having to take risks in what I've always wanted to do, seems myopic. It's slowly becoming unbearable for me to accept that I am on loop 24/7 because of a taxing job that revolves around... social media. I don't mean to sound like an ingrate, a rotting Gen-Xer. I just miss being out there. I fucking miss writing, but that's very unrealistic--it doesn't, and will not any time soon, support the lifestyle I have, or pay my bills, to begin with. 

Fucking appalling how I chose to expand the "I miss writing" sentence into five unbearable paragraphs. It's the girl who cried ABUSE BY CONDENSED CAPTIONS. 

reklamo lang

There was a time back in high school when I discovered this song by Arcade Fire. I instantly liked it, because it sounded so sunny and new, and Arcade Fire was then still a growing name—the era of 8tracks and bandcamp. 

Back then, this song only really meant so much to me. I would imagine the song gurgling on in the radio while driving somewhere sunny. Easily speaking, it was then just an innocent track. I was 14, I was naive and  gratefully dumb.

Sometimes I wonder if the world's so small

That we can never get away from the sprawl

Years went by and I having plans, I became a bit smarter—armed with a little of this and that. I still find myself finding more dreams I want to achieve as days go by. It’s been seven years since I discovered the song and in between those seven monumental years, so much has been unpacked and tidied up at the same time. But I never would have imagined myself crying over the same melodious, pitch-rich song, seven years after. 

I’ve had this job for almost four months now—still somehow short for someone to cry “Wolf!” But I really am seeing something far off the valley of my tended, protective sheep—is this the millennial hubris, the burden of dreaming too much in an era of uncertainty? Bless me, it’s 2019. The thick veil of security I’ve so carefully curated over the years is starting to chafe. My sheep’s wool are falling off—I thought I was gonna be okay with wherever I put myself in, as long as it’s giving me financial and social security. And it’s in this moment where I realized that it’s true: give yourself too much to think about and plan for, and you’re dead meat. Somehow the security blanket you’ve wrapped yourself into suddenly finds its way to be suffocating, a choking agent.

Maybe in some alternate subplot, the boy was crying for the wolf. Come get me, mutt! All these wool is itching the shit out of me.

Can we ever get away from the sprawl?

In the book Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (yes good ma’ams and sirs, I am comparing myself to a nation and urban planning), the components and effects of the sprawl are shown, along with ways to combat it. What the book is trying to convey would be the effects of gentrification: how housing subdivisions, shopping malls, office parks, some civic institutions and roadways are changing the ways of communities. Technically speaking, sprawl identifies itself in the modernization of our day-to-day, the fast-tracked process of everything: from housing, urban development, and the gross, if not irksome, rise of shopping malls in every corner. City-building is taking too much of our lives.

In one click, hey, maybe I’m a sprawling city? Slowly melding along and blending in the half-light of the sky. I don’t want to call it b*rnout—because then I’d use it too much to describe this struggle, and that’s not how I want this to pan out. (Maybe that’s the case, but there is still so much to figure out.)

Maybe I’m just asking for too much, for having too many dreams—too much for one person to think of. It really doesn’t pay that I live alone in such a dense city and I’m being surrounded by so many people penetrating the world they want to be in—the art scene, the writing industry, prestigious law schools. Everything is happening all at once. Once I was so afraid to complain and admit that I feel stuck, but I feel stuck, alright. And I’m here waiting for something wonderful to happen, even working hard for the sunshine to come in my life, but it just won’t. My learned helplessness really propels me to believe that I don’t deserve a break from all the endless cages the world puts me in. 

This is urban loneliness, I guess. Whatever sadness prefaced, my dreams will conjoin with it and I’ll feel an absolute need to just shut up and stop myself from being too colorful, too loud, too me. I’ve never felt so ashamed to be myself the moment I was called out by a boss and told me to stop being so me. 

They’re screaming at us, ‘We don’t need your kind!’ 

I know there are countless ways to counter this kind of patterned lifestyle I wholeheartedly chose months ago, but it’s so taxing to think about how it’s slowly killing parts of myself. Because in the end, I may end up with nothing. I’ll leave this place, one day, I know, but what will be left of me once I step out? I’ve already cinched so much of myself; it feels thankless. I know this is part of my crusade toward a  journalistic victory but everything is so confusing and scary. I know I’m not wasting my time, because I have my own timeline but I feel like I still have to beg the whole world to let me breathe in such an unforgiving environment.

If you’re reading this and you’re waiting for some vindication at the end, then I’m so sorry. This was supposed to be just a question expanded into an essay-length inquiry, a shout to the void.

I really do feel lost, and I’m hyperaware that I’ll be a little more lost in the years to come as a struggling 20-something. 

i don't know what i want

I am still struggling to find what I really want out of this life—with the career I am keeping myself busy with and the call of independence and adulthood. I am absolutely in love with where I am right now and what I’ve been choosing to do lately. It all seems so routinely for me, though—going to work and going back at the condo to cook, work out at night, then go to sleep. Give it a few hours and I’ll be doing it again, for five times a week. But I do hold it dear in my heart, being the captain of my own ship. 

But there are days where I feel stuck. Sometimes I tell myself that I’m only doing this to get over the past trauma from 2018 and to run away from my own emotions and other mental burdens. I haven’t been this sane in a whole year and I’m grateful for the little peace I’ve made with everything. 

I have been out of therapy for almost three months now. There are days where I ask myself “did I really have to spend so much time and money for therapy when I could have done this and that to be better?” Setting my mind in the timeline of when I was at my worst, I’d like to think that I would have killed to be where I am right now. This was the mental and spiritual state I’ve always dreamed of, especially in October 2018 when everything was falling to shit at successive patterns. It was definitely the worst. It was all so gruelling, the task of keeping myself sane everyday. It came to a point where I couldn’t eat or breathe properly anymore because I kept having these ugly little thoughts. I couldn’t afford therapy then, and my meds were pricey as fuck. Somehow, Sertraline tablets got more expensive over the months. It wasn’t the most endearing thought, me having to ingest candy-like contraptions just to survive day-to-day basics. 

Right now, I am doing okay. Mostly. But the past three months really made me think about some decisions I had to make, and continue to make. What really bothers me are the plans I have—and the fear that most of them won’t ever pan out. Somehow, there’s this part of me that just knows it won’t pan out. Primarily because of the financing difficulties I’ll inevitably come across with. With the current job I have and the budgeting set up I have, it really is financially impossible for me to go through the list of things I want to do. 

Last year, going to law school was the priority, and the only thing I had on my radar. Right now I don’t even know if I really want to go. The purpose is still there—helping people. But the gruelling, taxing years it will take me to get there really scares me. What If I end up killing more parts of me along the way, right? I couldn’t afford that. 

It is so hard to dream in a caged environment, really. It’s like a cyclical cage I keep ending up on—creatively, financially and mentally caged by everything. It’s like there’s this algorithm-run society inside me that I automatically fall back into once a small inconvenience happens. 

Why can’t I do what I want without having to go through shit? All my life has been about enduring bullshit. I think I deserve some struggle-free journey this time. Others would say that you create your own sunshine. But I’m really fucking tired of working for sunshine, or whatever idea of peace and light there is to achieve. Why can’t it come to me this time and get me? This year is becoming harder and harder for me to live with. I am at peace but not at all, at the same time. It’s like I’m constantly looking for a new place to begin. 

God, if You’re reading this, I hope You know I am trying my hardest to live. But what can I do if the environment I chose to live in is downright asking me to put away so much of myself for me to survive? 

It’s hard to get around the wind. 

These days, my life, I feel it has no purpose,

But late at night the feelings swim to the surface.

a hot shower, 2018

I set the shower heater too high earlier. 

I burned my scalp. The Dove shampoo I used already had a burnt, musky smell and the shower curtain's plastic gave off a scalding scent. Steam was already rising up the ceiling and I couldn't even care less to turn the running water off. 

This year, I realized, I burned myself way too many times I already lost count. Either I illuminated brightly or charred myself to exhaustion. Both ways, I still burned. Burned for myself, burned for others, whatever. 

Rediscovery was nice and gentle enough to come to my door and sleep beside me every night. I woke up to mostly bad news everyday, not to mention the endless battle I had with the nightmares that touched every corner of my eyelids. At four in the morning, they come and I have no other choice but to fight them myself. But rediscovery was bigger: I now know how to calm myself down. 

This may come off as an overestimation of time, but I never had a good night's sleep all year. Maybe ten months. I'm not sure. In discovering myself, I found that it's absolutely okay to be honest with yourself: I am not okay. I am insecure. I feel inadequate. And after that, the small discoveries come along. 

I have fear of heights. I easily get cold. My eyesight gets worse every month. I don't hate the yellow part of the egg as much as I did before. I have 15 moles on both my hands, and 14 all across my chest. And so many others that I was too busy relishing in that I forgot to take note. 

This year was all about enduring everything that came my way. A set of heartbreaks was hurled right on my face and I felt still for a whole moment. I knew I had to move and uproot myself from every adversity but I took pride in staying still and letting everything flow around me. I had to endure the loss, the pain, and the emptiness everyday. I turned a blind eye on everything. This seems like a prideful feat but making it this far sends me more anguish; what did I ever do to be left with no other choice than to endure?

But with discovery comes the deed of pardoning the ways of the world, and how it turned out for me. It is accepting everything that gets offered. It is in loving and giving more of yourself when one needs it. 

Here's to rediscovering myself more this 2019. Here's to never having a cold heart. Here's to forgiveness to others, and to oneself. Here's to me, for enduring. Here's to burning. 

Happy new year, Audrie. Let's love more. 

On impermanence

The last time I really wrote something for myself was almost a year ago. It’s really something  to be sad about, because I’m known as a writer. I should write. At least that’s what I'm paid to do, collegiately speaking. This considerably unbearable creative drought I’m in speaks so much about how I have poor time management skills: always lugging around, always everywhere, always online. The amount of time I've wasted online could have been useful for me to create or produce something; instead I decidedly chose to kill myself through useless scrolling and liking and refreshing. The internet is so exhausting to keep up with. So exhausting I somehow lost myself in it, forgot about the simplest goals I have.

It’s been almost three months since I lost the drive to live. Admittedly, it wasn’t that bad, as I imagined it to be when I slowly sank into depression on the third week of November. But everything happened all at once. I wasn’t watching enough films (I wasn’t checking off enough titles from this little list I wrote in my head), I wasn’t writing enough—the only writing I did was for the school publication. Heck, I wasn’t even writing, I’m merely editing the works of others. And many other personal (too personal) events that made me conclude that hey, I think I should just stop. 

But I was wrong on the “not too bad” part. It was bad—nefarious, in all aspects you should check—and it felt like I was being swallowed by own insecurities and demotivation. It’s like I wanted this to be done, but I can’t, because I’m too sad to function or even think. Some days I’ll just lie awake in my bed, stare at the window for hours on end, and cry out of nowhere. 

I’ve recently read Sylvia Plath’s poetry collection, “Ariel.” I’ve read The Bell Jar months before I started reading Ariel, so you can imagine the transitional spur of emotions I had. Reading TBJ offered a lot of space for me to think and rethink myself, how I view myself, and how I should view myself. There were a lot of goings-on in the novel itself and to dissect it per narrative renders a vast number of perspectives. In this New Yorker article I recently came across to, it was made clear that one cannot read TBJ without treating as an autobiography of some sort. I somehow disagreed, but agreed right away after some rumination. By the time I finished the whole article, I can’t help but think that TBJ must have been a call for help from Sylvia herself. But a month after its publication, she took her own life. 

With this new, realized pain I have after reading the article, I can conclude that I’ve forgotten a big (massive) part of myself after I read the novel. The months leading up to when I bought and read Ariel were gone, invisible now to the cluttered trove that is my brain (my soul). What was I doing before I read Ariel as a whole? When the only poem I knew from the collection was “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus”? When “Lady Lazarus” had no certain thug, no cosmic pull, when I read it before Christmas, and regained a new stature in me? I don’t know. Beyond these titles, beyond these questions, I don’t know what happened to me.

There were waves of sadness, happiness and nothingness in those lost months, that I’m pretty sure of. I must have felt a certain kind of newness that spurred within me, but I also forgot about that, too. I remember how one line always stayed with through time, gelled in my brain with every situation I run into, fair weather or not. In my twenty years here on earth, with every interaction I faced, every heartbreak, every ecstatic moment, I always found myself crawling back to that single line. In the novel, it was associated with negativity. But with me, it always had different attachments. 

I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo. 

Reading the line, for me, must always come with wild imagination and reminiscing—both the good and the bad memories. Filtering these memories and putting them into categorized boxes when given the chance to reminisce, I realized (the hard way) over the years, is not very helpful. I learned that sometimes, to identify and connect with your whole being, you have to stop believing that only the good ones stay with you. And maybe, just maybe, this learned aspect I gained must have been the best lesson I got from the novel. Not the best lesson I could wring off of the story, but a conducive one, right now. 

So here comes Ariel. Reading Ariel appointed some newer, edgier sets of emotion. I regained a sense of self, somehow. And this is where the whole novel gains a new verdict from me, a rebranded closeness I should feel, a wrenching importance. Around this time, I felt so unimportant, so disregarded by everyone around me, so ignored. I felt more temporary than ever, and that ate me whole. I never fully appreciated how The Bell Jar helped me accept the fact that I’m sometimes, in many distant aspects, separated by a glass from other people, until I gave Ariel a read. Ariel gave me what I lost in The Bell Jar, during and after reading it. It’s not that The Bell didn’t have a momentous role in my life; it’s just that Ariel is, and always will be, for me, a symbolic thrust in which I should drown myself into. 

And Ariel taught me that sometimes to know yourself and your pains you really have to drown and suffocate in pain. And no matter how unimportant I must feel, today, in the future, I am calmed by the reality that everything, everyone is. 

So the time I felt stuck and dry and floating listlessly on the small spaces of my idle creativity, it was me just probing, self-questioning, thinking and sometimes praying. And it was just me preparing to move along.