The last reason is a given: I do have those times when I’d grab a book, leaf through the first ten pages and then throw it to the side if it doesn’t grab my fullest attention. The first two reasons, however, are interesting. My state of mind plays a huge role in picking what to read next. For example, during the time I was heavily burdened by a whole lot of things all at the same time, I grabbed Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters To A Young Poet. It was a particularly slim volume but that book outweighs many 900-page hardbound bullies I’ve finished. Read it when you feel everything is not making sense because that book will illuminate aspects in your life that you thought were lost or gone. Now, my heart’s health is a very tricky category to deal with. With all these years of reading and books piled on top of the other as proof, I guess I can say that I have authority (the littlest possible authority in the world) to say that the presence or absence of love plays a role in how we read. This is coming from someone who clutched a dog-eared copy of Norwegian Wood, crying at its heartbreaking prose while on a bus. Someone who sent a copy of Murakami’s Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman all the way to Japan because physically being there wasn’t a possibility. Someone who read Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dream and dreamed of all the possibilities its fiction has to offer which reality was clearly denying me. I could go on and on about how much books helped me make sense of all the emotions I wasn’t articulate enough to express.

These books that I chose fall under one of those categories. My choices may not be very impressive to book snobs or those with highbrow tendencies but I don’t give a fuck about all that. I loved these books at certain times of my life and in case I may once again encounter a bump along the way, it is comforting to know that all I have to do is open a book and be understood.

• Einstein’s Dreams – Alan Lightman

“Time, like space, has three dimensions.

A young man was sitting in his balcony, wondering whether he should visit the woman he loves. How does he decide?

1. 1.       He knows she will make him miserable so he doesn’t go and eventually marries someone who doesn’t make him miserable.
2. 2.       He decides he cannot live without her, so he goes. She throws things at him and makes him miserable but he is madly in love and perfectly happy in his misery.
3. 3.       He knows he must see her, so he goes. They have a polite conversation. Afterwards, they shake hands, he goes home and they never see each other again.”

I rest my case.

• Franny and Zooey and Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

Of course, J.D. Salinger is a must. What made these two books relevant to me was that I could see pieces of myself in Salinger’s characters. Both books are all about finding your place and identity amidst the whole confusion, the difficulty of growing up and deciding who you want to be. Isn’t that a universal dilemma among people our age?

“Enough. Act, Zachary Martin Glass, when and where you want to, since you feel you must, but do it with all your might.” – Franny and Zooey

And also, Catcher in the Rye provided me the best possible way to describe what I feel after reading a particularly good book:

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you feel like it.”

I would definitely give you a call, Mr. Salinger.

• Letters to a Young Poet – Rainer Maria Rilke

I read this book at a time when I felt people were slowly drifting away from each other. Or, when you begin to reassess the people you surround yourself with. I was in a phase where some people didn’t make sense anymore, didn’t do anything to my growth as a better person and was just dragging me down to a place I didn’t want to be. I’d rather be alone with few trusted friends than be with a crowd of people who didn’t really care for me.

“Be happy about your growth, in which of course you can’t take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don’t torment them with your doubts and don’t frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn’t be able to comprehend. Seek out simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn’t necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.” 

• Life of Pi – Yann Martel

I was never a religious person and though I may have issues with it, I always have respect to those who doesn’t have qualms talking about their faith. It is a courageous thing to discuss beliefs and try to enlighten people like me who are leaning towards the other side of the spectrum. Someone I knew and was important to me was very religious and it was a topic we’d always discuss in passing but never really gotten around it. It may be due to apprehension on his part and fear on my side. When we like someone, we try our best to understand them – not change entirely for them. Reading this book was a way of trying to understand him and religion better. I urge you to read this book not because of some guy but read this book because it presents how faith works in a completely hopeless situation. Faith is how you clutch and don’t let go of something you strongly believe in and how complex it is even for words:

“There is Brahman nirguna, without qualities, which lies beyond understanding, beyond description, beyond approach; with our poor words we sew a suit for it – One, Truth, Unity, Absolute, Ultimate Reality, Ground of Being – and try to make it fit, but Brahman nirguna always bursts the seams. We are left speechless.” 

• High Fidelity – Nick Hornby

Ah, this book and the movie. Intelligence, wit, honesty all rolled into one. People could go on and on; quoting line after line from the movie but you should read the book, too. There are always those little hesitations, subtle resignations and sheer jubilations that an actor cannot convey that words do.

“It seems to me if you add music (and books, probably, and films, and plays, and anything that makes you feel) at the center of your being, then you can’t afford to sort out your love life, start to think of it as the finished product. You’ve got to pick at it, keep it alive and in turmoil, you’ve got to pick at it and unravel it until it all comes apart and you’re compelled to start all over again. Maybe we live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship.” 

• The Hours – Michael Cunningham

With this one, I didn’t have the need to watch the movie to cement this book’s place in my list. Its’ like literary Inception ala-Virginia Woolf and all the wisdom in this book is magnified threefold and that makes it more moving. I remember riding the jeepney one hot Saturday noon and I was reading this while in transit. I was crammed in the corner and I was trying my best to steady the book in my hands so I can highlight one beautiful line after the next. In case you borrow this book from me, please excuse the elementary, squiggly lines you’ll find all throughout my copy. The jeepney was rather fast.

”It’s stores, it’s the whole thing, all that shit everywhere, ‘scuse me, that merchandise, all those goods, and ads screaming at you from all over the place, buy buy buy buy buy, and when somebody comes up to me with big hair and gobs of makeup on and says, ‘Can I help you,’ it’s all I can do not to scream, ‘Bitch, you can’t even help yourself.”

• On the Road – Jack Kerouac

This book has filled generations with wanderlust, all yearning to drop everything and hit the road. If I was asked to choose a life from any book, I would love to be pals with Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty. What isn’t there to love? The occasional drugs, hop from city to city, work to afford the basics of a life free from the traps of consumerism, end up in some shithole and spew a magnificent literary piece in the process.

“…and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’”

• Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami

“Once the plane was on the ground, soft music began to flow from the ceiling speakers: a sweet orchestral cover version of the Beatles’ Norwegian Wood. The melody never failed to send a shudder through me, but this time it hit me harder than ever.”

Simply put, this is the book I’m most emotionally attached to. The reasons are like ingredients to a cocktail mix: a tad too personal, a bit shameful, swirls of regrets and more parts hurtful. (And I also wrote something about the movie adaptation here.)

• Into The Wild – Jon Krakauer

Everyone should learn a thing or two from Christopher McCandless/Alexander Supertramp. First, it is one thing to believe in something and actually doing it an entirely different thing. Here was a man who was straight out of college, wealthy and with his entire life waiting for him. Yet, he chose to donate his entire college fund to charity, burn his remaining money, travel across the country in a beat-up car, enjoy the wilderness and basically live, in the truest sense of the word. This book broke my heart and it took me weeks before I recovered. I printed out a picture of him and pasted it on my Moleskine to serve as a reminder of his amazing story. It was like carrying Alexander Supertramp’s spirit in me and made me wish I was as brave as he was in real life.

“Don’t settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron, and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience.”

• We Need To Talk About Kevin – Lionel Shriver

This book is scary; this book is scarily good. After reading this, I couldn’t stop talking about it. I would try to re-tell the story to friends who are willing to listen but I know that my attempts at trying to convey to them how amazing this book are nothing compared to the experience of actually reading it. It terrified me to the point where I have to put down the book, let out an expletive or two and start the torture all over again. Needless to say, I was a willing victim. Things I learned from this book: sure, motherhood is scary but nothing is more beautiful than a mother’s love for her child.

“What we talk about is what we think about, is what our lives are about. I’m not sure I want to spend mine looking over my shoulder at a generation whose lineage I’m personally helping to truncate. There’s something nihilistic about not having children, Franklin. As if you don’t believe in the whole human thing. If everyone followed our lead, the species would disappear in a hundred years.” 

• Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling

My tattoo of a line from the book sums up how much I am indebted to the series, how much of a fan I am and how long I will keep these stories in my heart: Through and through.

• One Hundred Years Of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It took me a hundred years to finish the book, which is an obvious exaggeration, but books like these are meant to be taken in slowly, like slow cooked food that takes hours to come up with a culinary masterpiece. Hurrying through the book would be doing a great injustice to Marquez’s beautifully complex storyline. I remember going back and forth the illustration of the Buendia family tree at the beginning of the book just so I can keep track of which Arcadio or Amaranta was I reading about. It is a magical and mystical story of an ever enduring family that built a history that only a genius like Gabriel Garcia Marquez can do.

“He [Aureliano II] had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.”

• The Unbearable Lightness Of Being  -Milan Kundera

A single metaphor can give birth to love.

“The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?” 

Now and then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it’s an ache I still remember

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I’ll admit that I was glad that it was over

But you didn’t have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don’t even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
No you didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don’t need that though
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know

Now you’re just somebody that I used to know
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know

Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I’d done
And I don’t wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you could let it go
And I wouldn’t catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know

It began with a tragedy.

Where were they when it all began?

One thing is for sure: they were not together.

Her story went like this:

During the beginning of the end, Marta was surrounded by her one true love: books. She cannot get away from her habit. If at a glance at her computer’s clock she sees that nine hours have passed since the first time she sat on her office chair, she would immediately gather the things on her table.(A half-empty pack of cigarettes, a borrowed lighter, iPod and bus ticket). Once out of the building, she’d pause to light a cigarette and start counting the steps towards the bus stop.

In her own world full of theories, she presumes that the number of steps needed varies on her urgency to end her day. First theory: if she feels like a hurrying director, she would immediately cut to the end of the scene with just 150 steps. However, just like today, if she feels like the world owes her and must wait for her, she would impose this beautiful delay and the end won’t come until her 250^th step. She feels as if it’s her right to visit first her favorite bookstore and take pleasure in looking down at all the lined spines of second hand books, choosing which one to add to her ever hungry bookshelf.

Theory number two: a man can never have too many books. It is during this remembrance of a theory that she felt it. Just as she was about to reach for a poetry book placed rather self-importantly at a high shelf, she was surprised to see the books move. If poetic license would permit her, she would say that the entire shelf trembled in anticipation of her touch but she knew better. Books don’t dance nor tremble. It was an earthquake. As she scanned the whole shop, like she would a favorite passage in a book, her last thought was “So this is how the world ends: in an anticipation of books crashing towards me, of words falling one novel at a time.”

His story went like this:

Luke, during the beginning of the end, was bound by his godfather duties. It was his godchild’s first birthday and nothing could be more irresponsible in his moral-dictated world than the idea of being an empty chair in the memory vault of this particular event. He takes responsibilities seriously and goes out of his way to make sure things that should be followed are followed. Today, he asked his boss for an early out so he could be on time despite the estimated two-hour travel. He calculated everything, down to the time it would take him to drop by the mall and buy a gift (nothing could be more practical than a set of children’s clothing). He doesn’t need to regularly check his watch to see what time it is. He was certain that he was within schedule. He would be at the venue before the celebration begins. He arrives just in time, just as the kids were being gathered around for the first of many games. He puts his gift on the table, making sure that he puts it behind the others. He doesn’t want other people to take a gesture as small as putting that large box in front of everyone’s sight as a sign of arrogance.

He nods towards the mother, her friend, and reaches out his hands to carry his godchild for a minute or two. One could get lost just by looking at those two big black pearl eyes of her godchild. He spends the entire event in his assigned seat and even participated in a game where godfathers were asked to be part of because that’s what he is, a godfather. A fairly reasonable one, that is.

As he was just finishing up the prepared meal, he saw more than felt the tables shake. He didn’t know where to put his hands. Should he grip the table to stop it from shaking or should he try to hold on to something to steady himself? This whole business of not knowing what to do shook him more than the earthquake itself, intensifying the tremors. And as he was in the middle of deciding of what to do with his hands, his last thought was, “So this is how it ends: in a celebration of one’s youth and termination of my own middle-aged life just because I didn’t know where to put my hands.”

What did really happen?

The decay has started. It’s as if the world suddenly grew these scabs and someone accidentally (intentionally?) scratched the hardened skin and the bleeding began. A scratching so strong, it hit 8.0 on the Richter scale. The cracks on the pavements can be likened to the first few attempts on writing: jagged, harsh lines cutting through smooth, unblemished paper. Buildings collapsed one after the other, reminding people of dominoes toppling perfectly. The seas made its way to the front page by swallowing everything in its sight: boats, bridges, cars, trees, people, dreams.

They survived, didn’t they?

They did, like how you would expect protagonists to do in a movie. Marta, wasn’t buried under a mountain of books. Luke, at the last minute, decided to dive under the table as he watched its legs quiver, like his knees.

Was that the end?

No one could ever be sure of that, not even Marta and Luke.

No, promiscuity is out of the reasons. This is simply the reality behind the life of a boarder. She doesn’t have an address that she can truly call her own, no place she can claim as hers because everything around her belongs to someone else. (This bed used to be someone’s bed, someone used to gaze vacantly at this window, someone used to pound the buttons on this old electric fan).

There is no such thing as permanent in her situation. The length of her stay depends on how strict the landlord and how high the rent is (these are the only items under her category things-to-look-for-in-an-apartment.) She is not the kind to meddle in other people’s affairs. She doesn’t care if the students next door are too rowdy, if the husband beats her wife then fucks her too loudly after an hour of quarrelling, if the baby cries right up to the morning. She doesn’t mind for as long as there is a thin wall separating her from the others, she can live with everything else. She doesn’t only pay for this small room, she pays for what is within her boundaries, the square miles of her room. The lives of others and what they do in their privacy are not included in her monthly rent.

She has her own world. She leaves at 6:00am everyday for work and goes home almost always at 9:00pm. In the remaining hours of being awake, she has everything she needs to keep her company. No television, only books. She lives by the idea that real life is too gruesome to be shown in a box. Everything is one-dimensional and repetitive. You hear the same crimes but different names, the same calamities but different places, the same lies for different reasons. Shutting herself out from the world at large, she began to turn to the other boarders for entertainment and, in turn, became perceptive to their habits. Their bathroom patterns, to be precise.

And what a variety they were.

At half past nine, she would hear steps towards the bathroom. It was only recently that she became sure that the 9:30PM bathroom visitor was a man. Firstly, by the weight of the steps and secondly, she saw a leather thong sandal by the door when she peeked outside of her room one time. She’d hear him cough rather badly during the first few minutes (a chain smoker, she thought) and the flush of the toilet after the coughing subsides. He was rather thrifty with water use. She would only hear up to 15 loud splashes hit the tiled floor during the entire time he was inside the bathroom. In her mind, he is an old man who thinks of bathing as a nuisance but is bound by its necessity.

Though she is a light sleeper, she always manages to fall back to sleep after sometime. She would always find herself awake every Tuesday and Friday at 11:30 in the evening, just as she was beginning to drift into her deeper sleep. The slow trickling water being poured (probably into the arms first) always snaps her out of slumber. After a succession of slapping water getting louder and sure, she would then hear the scrubbing of skin, hear bubbles lathering, the day’s grime and dirt being drained down the water pipes. She bets that the perpetrator is a girl for what other creature is as insistent as being clean and pure before going to sleep? She always took men as lazy beings who would jump right into bed, dirty and smelly, if they can get away with it. Once, becoming too intrigued with the 11:30 bathroom visitor, she went inside and faked a call of nature after the visitor was done bathing. When she opened the door, she was instantly greeted with the heady smell that only girls can stand. Shampoo, conditioner, face cream, feminine wash, moisturizer: a modern witches brew, she thought. The entire bathroom floor was still wet, the toilet seat still warm and the mirror all fogged up. She spent some time trying to recall from memory the scent of the shampoo, the soap and the conditioner. It was as if the girl who just left was still inside the bathroom, a bather in a different world just across her room.

But among all of these characters in her little bathroom fiction, the one that intrigues her most is the one who gets to use the bathroom right before she does. As her alarm clock springs to life at exactly five in the morning, she knew that a few minutes from that point, the bathroom will be as wide awake as her. As she lies still in her bed, teetering between the state of being awake and asleep, someone would start their morning ritual. She’d hear the scraping sound of towel and clothes being hung on the hooks placed above the door and then the faucet will come alive. The thing that amuses her most about this one is that he (the gender her own conclusion) would hum the same tune day after day. The first time she heard it, she knew she heard it before but just couldn’t place her finger on where or what occasion that was. This bathroom singer would hum this ghost of a tune in the same volume and cadence everyday. As she stands up to brew her first cup of coffee for the day, she would try to copy him and hum along. She will then wonder how he ended up like this:  where he would wake up at the same hour and hum the same tune every time.

On her way home from a rather ordinary day at work, she sat across at what first seemed to be an ordinary old lady on the train. She has this habit of always looking outside the window, watching the scenery with intensity as if seeing it all for the first time. From the corner of her eye, she noticed that there was something odd with the old lady. She would twitch and twitch in rapid successions and she was trying to limit her movements, as if it was something embarrassing to be done in public like picking your nose or sneezing loudly without covering your mouth. After a few minutes, she came into a conclusion (it was always her damned conclusions) that the old lady probably has Tourette Syndrome . She was trying hard not to look straight in front of her. She focused on the things whizzing past her: homes, trees, other commuters but it was all pointless. She knew it was rude to stare, to express her wonder and awe at this condition placed right before her very eye. She tries hard not to look at her but from the corner of her eye she sees her involuntary spasms. She acted as if the old lady was not there but she is there. She tries to shake it off, this need to look, to stare, to ogle but she could only think of the lamest metaphor to describe what is unraveling right in front of her: it’s like the wind, you don’t see it but you know it’s there, like her bathroom visitors. For months she tried to treat their presence as mere winds, just brushing past her but is enough to give her a chill, a feeling in her skin. Somehow, she is a wind vane in the midst of a field, going with where the wind blows. But what if she can trick the wind? What if she can make them go north instead of south? What if she can make turbulence out of a breeze? What if? What if?

What happened on that day has left her shaken. It’s as if something inside of her has come alive. For a long time she managed to live a life as dull as a faded wallpaper. Nothing in it was spectacular or worth noticing but she liked it that way. Surprises were something she never really liked. For her, it was all just bothersome, a ripple in a perfectly silent water. She didn’t mind living her life by the numbers. She wasn’t expecting something to happen in her life that would change the order of things and she sure wasn’t going to do anything about it. She was certain that Tourette was not something contagious, that you could get just by being physically close to one who has it. But somehow, she felt afflicted by the twitches and the spasms of the old lady. She felt something inside of her snap, as if she stepped on a twig and heard its crisp crack under the weight of her feet.

Maybe that is what they call a passerby effect. And she was trapped between the indifferent and the caring.  She didn’t know how she would react, that a non-infectious syndrome had infected her to put her place in the old lady’s. Maybe this is how indifference feels: her bathroom visitors, like the wind, come and go and she couldn’t care less. But what if she did care? But what if what her neighbors’ affairs mattered? How would things go if she did not enclose herself inside her own world of books, a decent paying job that pays her rent of unstable residence, and bathroom visitors?

She went home, carrying that little change in her, like a secret she suddenly came across the floor of the train. Sleep was a mere concept to her that night. She felt like she needed a good scratching to take that itch that suddenly got into her. She spent a good deal rolling around the bed, rubbing her body in her sheets, the blanket, anything that can provide friction.  She looked at clock. It was nearing 9:30 already. With all her strength, she willed herself out of the bed. She opened the door of her room and saw a portal: the bathroom. Like a crazed woman she went inside and locked herself in. She tried hard not to look at her reflection, afraid that she will see an entirely different woman staring back at her. She sat at the toilet seat, cupping her head in her hands. She didn’t know how much time has passed. Minutes turned into centuries. Then she heard it: the unlocking and the slow lift of the door. She got up instantly and barred herself against the door, putting all her frail self in keeping the door closed. Urgent knocks vibrated inside the bathroom and in her mind the knocks had a voice. Let me in, let me in. She held her ground, pressing with all her might to keep the door closed. She can feel the push and the full, growing weaker by the minute. All she heard was footsteps walking away, the sound getting weaker with every step until she can hear nothing. Then she felt nothing, not even a single itch.

I’ve been building in my head the ultimate work space. All wood, white, full of shelves and conducive to working and my futile attempts to write. I found this online application, Olioboard, which enables you to create a design board without needing Photoshop or mad editing skills. I just drag and drop all the photos I see online and create a collage of what I aspire for.

In my little ideal world, this is the home I look forward to having. I just want a clutter-free life and to have all my books arranged by author in a towering book shelf. I want a naturally-lit space in neutral tones that exudes comfort and ease.

If you know me in real life, you would know that my fashion style is limited to three basics: a nice shirt,  jeans and sneakers. I take pride in finding shirts that catch people’s eyes. I make sure that even though I may not be as flashy as the other girls, at least I can make up for it by wearing something that is truly me. I could not count the times guys have started conversations with me because of my shirt. “The shirt always get the guys,” my best friend even told me. The shirt that generated the most conversation is a tie between my Ely Buendia and Kurt Cobain shirt. People even stop me at malls just to ask where I got them.

I wish to start following the design board above. I cannot wait for my messy hair to grow long, start dressing up in stuff other than a shirt (but I still refuse to wear a dress) and shop for the things I’ve been dying to have (i.e. satchel, basic watch).

Something to remind me why 25 is my favorite age.

Of course laziness played a part but it was mostly a conscious decision to keep mum about what has happened to me the past month. I decided that I didn’t want evidences of what happened lying around in places I can easily find it (ie notebooks and this blog). I just let things brew inside my head and I let reach a point where I am not bothered about it anymore.  I spent the last 30 days welcoming distractions and looking for ways to help me focus on more important things.

To be very honest, I am really surprised at how little it hurt this time. I am now a firm believer that things are only scarier when we let it sit on our minds. It’s like learning that the monster under your bed is nothing but a scurrying rat. All this imagined fear I’ve been carrying for more than a year all turned out to be nothing but a little bump in the road. Sure, I was devastated but it was only for two or three days. What I just needed was a couple of people that I trust most to let the story out of my chest and I was good as new. There is nothing more helpful than knowing that you have friends who are just willing to listen and not pass any judgment.

There are many things I learned from what happened and all those lessons made the pain all worth it. All the cliches about being stronger and coming out of it as a changed person are all true. I didn’t know that I could be as strong as this, that I can control my emotions, think clearly and to be really understanding.

There is no anger whatsoever in my heart. Only relief and gratitude. Right now, I have no right to sulk with the great things that have been happening to me. Life has been amazing for me this year and I should focus on this what was once a lost opportunity but is once again alive: the exciting prospect of working in the US.

I am nothing less than happy with the state I’m in. I can feel the amazing way of how the cogs of the universe is working to put everything in its right place. As for what happened, I’m gonna chalk it up to experience.

Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

Thank you Steve Jobs for being a reminder to us that doing what you love is what matters most in this life. Here’s to finding someone like you for the next generation to look up to.

#howifeel

1. It is a constant thing, rediscovering and reinventing yourself.

 The things I thought to be true about myself when I was 18 were just mere shadows of what I am now. Looking back, I was so afraid of changes in myself that would, in my opinion, compromise who I really am. I strongly adhered to things that are truly me. I vowed to never outgrow my ‘jeans and shirt’ phase and never be caught dead wearing anything remotely girly in fashion. But hey, as I am typing this, my nails are pink and this huge elephant ring I wear on my right hand is staring at me. It’s a nice feeling to surprise yourself now and then. Also, I dig the look on the faces of the people who are shocked to learn something about me that they thought I didn’t have in me. Like when topics on getting married or having kids, I swear I saw jaws drop when they heard me and my intentions of having a family of my own in the near future. (Get over it guys. I always dreamed of carrying my kid to a PTA meeting, full sleeve tattoo and all. Also, to wear floral Doc Martens with my wedding dress).

2. Money matters.

Early this year, after staying in my job for a whole year (the longest ever in my life), I resigned.  It’s not so much of a boss-employee thing, though sometimes there are days when you just want to get those goddamn internet cables and make a  noose out of it. It was just that I felt like I had to do something drastic so I can say to myself  that I bungee jumped off a imaginary cliff before I turned 25. I told myself that I don’t want to be a year older and be stuck in a job that didn’t feel good to me. So I quit and now I am trying out the concrete jungles of Makati.

What came with this new job was a new and stronger reserve to save money. Imagine the fear I felt when I realized that I’ve been working as a writer since I was 18 and I have nothing in me to serve as proof that I was actually earning something! More than for myself, I felt fear for my family. God forbid but what if something terrible happened and I don’t have a single penny in me? I mean, don’t mind me. I honestly think that I can get by on my own. I would probably walk away when hit by a car or something. What I can’t bear is the thought of not being able to do something for my family when they need it the most. Everyday I get to hear people rant on how they are saving for this and that.  I feel a bit of envy creeping up on me because here I am, with a considerable amount on my bank account and I can’t even buy myself a new pair of shoes or a brand new book. (I always buy from BookSale).Last night while watching Project Runway rewind, this designer/contestant said something about his jacket that he needed to deconstruct just to make a new dress which was part of their challenge. He said that he didn’t care about it and he did what he have to do in order to win. One day he’ll be rich and he’ll buy millions of it to make up for that single jacket he had to ruin. That’s what I think, too. I may not be able to buy all that I want because I am saving for something more important. All the jackets in the world can wait.

3. A Thing That’s Worse Than A Heartbreak? Losing A Friend.

If you knew me in real life, you’d know what I’m talking about here. If you don’t, let’s just say that I experienced the worst break-up one could go through. And that person wasn’t even my boyfriend. She was a very good friend and I had to cut ties with her because it really wasn’t doing me any good to be still friends with her. It was very much like a bad relationship that went from worse to worst and I always found myself on the losing end. I always end up compromising a lot of things to that person’s advantage. I did what I could. I held on to our friendship as long as I can because friends are not exactly like things you can throw away and find a replacement instantaneously. It takes time and a special kind of trust to be the way I was with her with someone else. Admittedly, I am not a very easy person to be with and the fact that I lost one of the very few people who understood me was really the worst feeling imaginable. So we’re not friends anymore though lately, there have been attempts on her part to reconnect but I guess I am not ready for it. There was just too much hurtful words thrown both ways. I don’t think I can just look at her eye to eye and tell her that everything is okay because it is far from being okay. Now don’t think of me as a heartless monster. Forgiveness is somewhere in the future but now is not the time.

The best thing that I got out from this experience was that I’ve become so much appreciative of all the friends that I have right now. I also realized that you need not be with a friend 24/7 in order to qualify under the category ‘strong friendship.’ What’s best is that you get to spend time apart, get to do the things you both need to do with your lives and when you finally get to see each other, it feels like not a single day has passed. I love the set of friends I have right now: friends from the neighborhood I grew up in and friends I knew from college and a few from high school. I hope you don’t go through this whole breaking up thing with a very good friend. It’s horrible.

4. One can never have too many books.

Books. Where do I even start?

I love books. I love them so much that there are times when I’d go inside a bookstore and all the money that’s left in me is just enough for my fare back home. I love them so much that my Mother scolds me for having too many books scattered in my bed. I love them so much that I even told Yayo that when I die, I want him to take possession of all my books. (Yayo said yes though a few hours later, he told me that he didn’t want them anymore because he didn’t know what to do with all of it.) There are times when I just want to take a vacation and bring with me all the books in my shelf that I haven’t read yet. That is the ideal rest and relaxation to me. It’s true, I buy more books that I can read at an acceptable pace but I have no regrets. Nothing at all. I am just looking forward to that day when I can say hasta la vista to this day job I have, put my feet up and have all the time in the world to do nothing but read.

 5. Take a breather from all the bullshit. Take the time to be alone. 

One of the many quirks in me is that I get this sudden and urgent need to be alone. One day, I’d be surrounded by all of my friends, enjoying a night of beer and belly laughs. The next day, I wouldn’t want to even get out of bed and get out of the house to talk to anyone. (No, this is not called a hangover or PMS.)

It’s not bad to be alone. Sometimes you just need to get  away from all the crowd and all the bullshit that comes with it. Don’t you just hate it when you spend all your energy the whole week trying to zone out from all the bad vibes surrounding you? There’s too many reasons (people included)to  be in a real toxic mood and this is what I’ve been avoiding lately. There are people who feel compelled to cast you in all their unnecessary drama or those who do nothing to you personally but somehow you just feel this unexplainable irritability whenever they  are around. I’d rather stay at home and read a book than to feign interest or pretend to listen to someone’s selfish banters. I can go on and on ala-Holden Caulfield about the kind of people who qualify as emotional vampires. People can be annoying. Period. Run.

I still owe Con Cabrera a Filipino translation of this one. Teehee. Listen to this and have great ideas on what to do when you just want to be alone.

6. Patience is a virtue never truer than when you’re older.

Patience is not very different from courage. It just takes longer.

I am not the world’s most patient person. If we agreed to meet up somewhere and I arrived at our meeting place first and you are not there within the next 15 minutes, I am most likely to send you a barrage of text messages asking your whereabouts repeatedly. If within 30 minutes and you are still nowhere in sight, visualize me doing breathing exercises to calm myself. By 45 minutes, you would have received from me text messages in this manner: “Tangina mo. Nasaan ka na?” What would happen within an hour? We would never get to that point because I would most probably have gone home.

I know that’s  a shallow representation of patience but I just liked to give you an idea of how much I hate waiting. That said, I am now slowly teaching myself, with a turtle’s pace, to be more patient. The things we want more than anything else in this world don’t just fall into our laps, just like how that apple fell in Newton’s lap. And no, gravity don’t help. Our generation got used to having everything in an instant: fast food instead of home cooked meals, email instead of snail mail, etc. There are times where I wished I could just add water to things and immediately have them in front of me. Let it be clear first that by waiting, I didn’t mean that you do nothing else. Waiting suggests a kind of surrender and this is the reason why people hate waiting. Yes, you submit yourself to wait for that something but while doing so,  do other things in your life. Be better at your job, establish better relationships with people around you, build a stronger faith. Anything that will make you forget about waiting and remind you that you don’t have to shut yourself from the world while patiently waiting.  And waiting applies to an entire universe of things: love, a better self, a better job, a  fitter body, the works.  As for the thing I am waiting for the most, I remember someone told me, “Things are gonna be the best if you just wait.” So here I am, doing the things I need to do in life while waiting.

7. Believe in the kindness of strangers.

I have always loved those moments when people I don’t know display kindness not just to me but to other people. It’s a reminder that the earth is not a cold dead place. (Kudos to those who get the music reference. Hehe.)

One of the best things that happened to me this year was the Deftones concert and how it was made possible by probably the kindest stranger I’ve ever known. (insert link) I share that experience with my friend, Jeyem, and I know five or ten years from now when we’d find ourselves talking about that day, we would always go back to that guy who let us inside the VIP section.

One of the things that never fail to uplift my spirits are Facebook messages from people I don’t know in real life. Apparently, these people have read some of what I wrote and took the time to search for me in Facebook and tell me how they liked it or that they were glad to have read it in a certain time in their lives. In such circumstances, I am reminded that I am blessed to be given this kind of opportunity. What I do may be simple and not at all grand, but at least I get to touch other people’s lives.

 It doesn’t have to be as grand as getting to see your music god face to face or anything life-changing . You would be surprised to know that even the smallest things can give us a smile. Awhile ago, I went out to buy lunch at KFC. I was told to wait extra five minutes for the fries. I looked for a place to sit and waited. I was pretty sure that it was past ten minutes already and my order hasn’t come still. Then this lady crew came with my order and I saw that there’s no gravy with it so I asked for one. She went to get some and took extra time to arrange the food inside the take-out plastic. Para hindi daw matapon yung gravy. And I was about to leave, she followed me up to the door and handed me tissue. I smiled as I pushed the door open.

8. Some people just thrive on being mean.   

True Story:

Back when I was a high school junior, my Filipino teacher asked me to read a story in front of the class. (See, this is clearly an indicator of what her intentions were. Why would she need someone to read a story in front of a group of people perfectly capable of reading on their own? Let me tell you something about her. I never really liked this teacher. She was abrasive, always playing favorites and just wasn’t charming enough to serve as an inspiration to adolescents.)

So I stood up and went in front of the class and began reading. I was probably into the second paragraph when I realized what she was really up to. It turns out that the story was about a fat girl and how she was eating everything in sight and destroying every weighing scale she steps on. She did it on purpose, that horrible witch. For her it was a joke worthy of a classroom full of laughter. To me, it was humiliation at its purest form. I have always been that fat kid and I didn’t need a declaration in front of all these people. I wanted to keep on reading and show that I have not fallen into her trap but every sentence was too much, like being stripped naked in public. I dropped the book (I think) and rushed out of the room crying. If you asked me about this incident probably five years ago, I would probably tell you that it left me scarred for life. But now when I look back, what I just get out of that experience is that sometimes people can be so fucking mean. Yes, even a teacher.

9. Own whatever it is that you turned out to be.

Things don’t go according to plan most of the time. When I was 12, I really wanted to be a scientist and come up with the cure for AIDS. I was really fascinated with science back then but high school physics and chemistry changed my mind.

During that time too, I was beginning to be involved with the school paper because I didn’t want to be part of the school’s speech choir. It wasn’t that bad after all because we get to compete in different journalism contests which means that we get to go to other schools. By the time I was in high school, there wasn’t anything else appealing to me in the elective choices other than the journalism class so I continued with it. I mean, can you imagine me sitting through a two-hour cosmetology class? The whole two years of Journalism elective was great and I even get to be sent to Cebu for it and meet lots of new people. College was amazing writing-wise. Aside from becoming the EIC of the student publication, that was the time that my whole take on writing was changed. I owe it all to the people who surrounded me that time.

I wouldn’t say that I got into writing because of the lack of choices in front of me. I got into it because I embraced it and learned to love it. I really love writing. I know that I am not someone in the world of writing but I am happy with it. I may not have a Palanca to brag about or anything close to resembling a remarkable career in writing but I am satisfied with what I have.

“My life might be little and boring, but at least it’s mine – not some assembly-line, secondhand, hand-me-down life.”- Chuck Palahniuk, Rant

I mean, what is more awesome than getting to do what I want most in life? I get paid to write. I get to pursue this one thing that I really feel most comfortable in. That is more than reason enough to be thankful in life.

I may not have invented the cure for AIDS but hey, being writer isn’t that bad at all.

10. The future is scary exciting.

The future scares me to death. The prospect of being a failure years from now is more terrifying to me than any other horror movie. Who knows what will happen five or ten years from now? I could still be the same person I am right now or by some wicked twist of fate, someone better. Or I could be stuck with a crappy job (or worst, unemployed!), a non-existent bank account and depressingly alone.

What we don’t know scares us. Uncertainties and doubts eat us. We have this constant need to be assured and we don’t get it, we resort to fear. I am all guilty of that. But I intend to change that. We shouldn’t let fear eclipse the fact THAT THE FUTURE IS EXCITING. Aren’t you dying to know where you will be ten years from now? For all you know, what you are doing right now is nothing compared to your future self.  Don’t get ahead of yourself and start thinking of the worst. I’d rather do something and confront my fear than to let it take over me and do nothing about it. It is not enough that you don’t like the rut that you are in right now. What matters is what you do to get out of the labyrinth.

“Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (…) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.” – John Green, Looking for Alaska

The future is an entire universe of possibilities and what it turns out to be is up to us. The future is what we make it to be. I have no one else to rely on other than my fearless self.