things falling apart

Image from here.

Things are falling apart in our house.
There is the light in the living room with the faulty starter,
the light in my bedroom which pretends to be working until I replace the glass lid and then it doesn't,
the fake old wood varnish that is chipping away from my cabinets,
the creaky front door that sags and scratches the floor when you close it,
the invisible leak that jacks up our water bill,
the ratty couches with their springs exposed,
the wooden floorboards that have become uneven over time.
This is not really my house, I just live here.
But there is the feeling that I am supposed to be doing something more than taking note
of all the things that are getting run down
because these things are happening on my watch, and my parents
are now just watching me
grow into the supposed adult shell that I have developed.
But I haven't.

1:33 AM March 5 2013

somethings and nothings

What lovely words. Image from here.

So November has come and gone without me even writing a post, which is really just baaaadddd.

It has been a mix-up of good and bad things and mostly me trying to struggle with deadlines and me trying to sneak out to get to a lecture or to have time to see friends and attempt to have a life.

I have been busy yet there is this feeling that the busyness that has taken over is filled with such insignificant things.

It's not a bad place, where I am, but I am always questioning why I am unable to move past this -- to wow myself and the world in ways that I thought I would.

There is the feeling that I have been filling my days with "nothings" and this is why I haven't written -- but then again, I suppose things it is up to me to make "something" out of things. What makes a moment, a thing, a person special anyway?

When I began the idea for writing this, I was thinking of how I felt left behind by my peers -- My body has forced me to graduate through certain phases of my life, but I don't necessarily feel as though I've recovered.

There is that feeling of always just needing to catch up on life.

Now though, all thoughts turn to a dearest friend who has encountered a sad thing. Why do things happen the way they do anyway?

Limbo

Image from here.

There is a churning feeling in the pit of my stomach, this in spite of the realization that I have spent a over 5 months living life as a grownup, what with the job and the not-too-shabby salary and the grad school units even.

I tend to flip-flop with the way I feel about my life now. At times, it feels pleasant (or is it dulled down?), and then I find myself subdued at the thought that I am finally growing comfortable with my life.

And then there are moments like these - when I am faced with all the things I am scared to do, like leaping really big. Like letting go of what little ties I have made in order to try for a bigger thing. Like taking a risk.

All of the pleasant feelings I have had about my life so far have felt like settling down all of a sudden. And not in a good way. They feel like giving up more than anything. On myself. On my dreams of finding a version of me that is better than this. I want to swim away, but I can't.

I want to absolutely love the life I am living. I want to not merely be able to tolerate it.

what do you sacrifice for your dream?

Image from here.

I haven't written so much this summer, which is a bit ironic, because I thought I would be writing up a storm. Well, I am, but not the kind of writing that I thought I would be doing. I've been working. A lot. Just as summer began, I literally found myself swept up by a work opportunity, and so my days went there --- I was (still am) being paid to write. Nothing literary: releases, newsy types of articles, manifestos and the like. I don't like the writing part of it much, because it feels too technical and thankless at times. But it is for a cause I believe in, and it pays well (particularly when combined with another writing job that I have), and I suppose this is why I am sticking to it and have committed myself to it for the time being.

It is by no means easy, and there are times in my day when I have to ask myself why I am doing this. The answer is really quite quick to come: I am doing it for the money. It came as a surprise to me, especially after the decade that I had, how I could find myself earning as much money as this -- a lawyer's salary almost, even if I am not a lawyer. On the one hand, it feels good, knowing that I can provide for myself well enough by my writing skills alone. I know that I am committed to doing this (and to not writing literary stuff for the time being) because I want to save up enough to fund my dream of studying and living abroad.

This new mentality comes as a surprise to me because when I started working, there were so many things that I wasn't willing to put up with. But maybe that was because I found advertising to be so thankless. Or maybe, I really was just too idealistic going in. I'd like to think that I was able to draw the line somewhere, and move in a progressive way, learning from one job to the next, finding myself better and in a better place to work too somehow. Now, there are still parts of the job that I find difficult to deal with, but I find myself more pliable to the things that are thrown my way. I see myself being able to stick to it for longer, far longer than I ever have before.

So for now, I am sacrificing my time, doing the work because I know that it will help provide for the dream that I hope to achieve. It feels almost grown up, to be honest, to give up something of my self for a bigger goal. I haven't felt very grownup in a long time, but I do right now.

clean cuts

Image from here.

I'm beginning to think that clean cuts aren't at all possible.

I cried today. It was the first time I've let myself cry in a long, long time. It was during a conversation with a friend whom I had cut out of my life. She was just trying to be a good friend, thinking that I had already recovered from all the things that have haunted me in the past year. But I haven't. I think, with the passing of time, that I've gotten worse. At handling things. At hoping.

In the middle of her begging me to meet her, I just found myself blurting out every reason why I couldn't see her. Ever. And it made me cry. Because she was still so nice. Because I was reminded of why she is a much better person than I am.

Because she is an example of someone living out my life the way it is supposed to. Orderly, successful, driven. Instead I am here. Cutting off people left and right. And then sobbing right after that.

I suppose it was coming. You don't spend two weeks in isolation and then deal with your worst insecurities on a daily basis and not pay for it somehow. This is the true price that I am paying for my desire to handle this job I think. I wonder what it is about me that reeks the most of strange?

Parents

Photo from here.

So my parents are at a funeral tonight. It's their 3rd one in the last 5 days. Thankfully (not for the ones who've lost their loved ones, of course -- may they rest in peace) tonight's wake is for someone who is older than them (one of their friend's dad I think); but the other 2 were relatively contemporaries both in age and and lifestyle. Having my parents go off to these funerals feels terrifying and unsettling for me. While it is a fact of life that people die and that more often than not, our parents die before us, I question whether I am ready to survive a life without them. Most days, I think I am not. I question whether they have taught me (or whether I have learned) enough life skills to live on, and I also question if they feel like they know me well enough to make a pronouncement on whether or not I have made them proud as a person.

A lot of the time, during the most random things, I find myself looking at them and thinking about things I will miss about them when they are gone. Like how my mom falls asleep every time without fail when praying the rosary, even if she is the one leading it. Like how my dad's shirt hangs over his belly when he's sleeping, exposing his midriff to the cool air of the electric fan. Like how my dad bangs on my door in the morning to let me know that we are eating breakfast.  Like how when I look at my mom, even when she is being obstinately difficult and irrational, I see a sense of survival that I find myself depending on and that I am not sure I have. Like how when I turn on the radio in search of happy sunday music (mostly standards), I often see my dad's rounded figure tapping his fingers out on the table because he loves those too.

I am thirty now. It is such a strange and scary place. I thought I would know more, be more -- but I'm not sure I do, I definitely know that I'm not (as I imagined I would be at this age). What I can pride myself on though is that I am trying. Always trying. With weekend plans, with my daily life, with my plans for the future.   But what I am sure of is that I am thirty, I am not quite ready to be without parents yet. Not to move out, not to get married, and certainly not to fend for myself in the case of untimely demise (DEAR GOD NO). Who knew that I would be feeling this way at thirty? I know sometime in the future I must be ready, or at the very least, willing to live in a world where I have the most grownup opinion that I can count on.  But not yet, God.  Not yet.

On turning 30

Image from here.

I turned 30 a few days ago, and it went very differently than I thought it would. For the longest time, I have been dreading turning 30 because of recent developments (or non-developments) in my life that have set me back and changed my views of the world from how I perceived it a few years ago. For one, nearly my entire twenties was spent working in attempts to survive law school. All of this work was geared towards becoming a lawyer at the end of all that work and hopefully settling into a financially stable and exhausting (though rewarding) work life. When I turned 29 last year, I got the most devastating (I'm still recovering from its trauma) news of my life learning that I had failed the bar. The knowledge that I could fail something I had put so much into really crippled me, and I cut off many friends and hid from the world for a year trying to recover from the news. I couldn't make myself take the exam again and I had to really ask myself if I was willing to spend another year of my life working towards something that felt so futile and so thankless.

After a year of being inactive, of trying to grapple with who I am as a person and with what strengths I do have, I decided to forego taking the bar (indefinitely), choosing instead to work towards rediscovering my passions and capabilities. I am entrenched in the creative writing world now and on most days, it feels like this is (as it always has been) a much more comfortable fit for me than law ever was. Still, so much of my life feels like a question. I wonder always if not taking the bar is the correct step, if I will regret that I put it off for so long, or even if I could make as much as I did had I chosen to focus on becoming a lawyer and not on rediscovering creative writing.

I had thought that turning 30 would give me this clarity that would make me see things from an entirely different perspective, but the day crept in quietly, and without much fanfare. There were no glaring epiphanies or sudden directions or life paths discovered, only an awareness that I had been around for 30 decades now, and that I had better learn to enjoy the small moments as much as I look forward to the bigger ones. Life is made so much of the smaller moments, and I suppose these are the things you remember when you look back on your life later on.

If this year has taught me anything, it would be that life too is so much about having the courage to take chances. I had thrown myself into the ringer by accepting a project that allowed me to travel to 5 different cities in less than 10 days so close to all my deadlines, leaving little time for me to work on them. But I did it anyway and came out (for the most part unscathed).  So much of my life and my decisions are based on the prudent options, always foregoing adventure for what is expected, what is practical. This time, I just really wanted to do it without questioning if I could or couldn't.

I took this lesson and applied it to my birthday, and how I wanted to celebrate my life from hereon. It was an exercise in deciding how I wanted to do things, and then finding a way to do them anyway. I heralded its arrival with a few friends who stayed with me till midnight, over tapas and sangrias. I spent time with my family, and then gave myself the chance to relax and take it all in on a weekend jaunt to Baguio, one of my favorite places to visit. As I sit here now, by the balcony, enjoying the cool air while writing off the delicious food I had from the buffet, I feel quite pleased at the idea of wanting something and then making it happen.

Hopefully this is the start of a more conscious, more deliberate life, focused on the little things as well as on the big things. I want to stop fearing things and do more of them. Off the top of my head, I want to dare to dream about standing on a surfboard, riding a bike, go to Europe, kiss someone, and maybe even fall in love. I want to try new food, meet new people, find something that I am absolutely passionate about, and reclaim my fitness. I want to really feel alive, finally.

oh yes!

Image from here.

So many things have happened since I last posted. I stopped thinking and started doing and although I haven't had decent sleep and my muscles are all aching and my neck hasn't stopped twitching from all the stress of deadlines ending side by side by side, tonight my idol writing teacher said I had talent and I feel like I could go all the way to the moon and back. This coming from the same professor who began calling me "You" because he couldn't remember me for nearly the entire semester and who inadvertently made me cry after he called my way of thinking pedestrian. I have been on the edge and I have questioned my self-worth but just having him call me by name and tell me that made all the pain and exhaustion just so worth it.

There are so many other things to be grateful for, and I will outline them once I have finished all of my requirements -- but I didn't want this moment to go undocumented. Thank you universe! And thank you kind Sir!

So for all the times you question if it is all worth it, let days like this remind you :)

Read this and it resonated with me. Not that I am preparing for failure, but I have to let go of the pressure to be perfect. I have to be okay with the fact that I will fail sometimes, and it will be okay. I'll let Liz Gilbert speak for me during this mad dash to more knowledge.

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Let's just anticipate that we (all of us) will disappoint ourselves somehow in the decade to come. Go ahead and let it happen. Let somebody else be a better mother than you for one afternoon. Let somebody else go to art school. Let somebody else have a happy marriage, while you foolishly pick the wrong guy. (Hell, I've done it; it's survivable.) While you're at it, take the wrong job. Move to the wrong city. Lose your temper in front of the boss, quit training for that marathon, wolf down a truckload of cupcakes the day after you start your diet. Blow it all catastrophically, in fact, and then start over with good cheer. This is what we all must learn to do, for this is how maps get charted—by taking wrong turns that lead to surprising passageways that open into spectacularly unexpected new worlds. So just march on. Future generations will thank you—trust me—for showing the way, for beating brave new footpaths out of wonky old mistakes.

Fall flat on your face if you must, but please, for the sake of us all, do not stop.

Map your own life.

- Elizabeth Gilbert, On Failure and Living Well.

You can find the full article here.