What Do I Know?

“You ever wish you didn’t feel things so intensely sometimes?”

Now, there’s a question you don’t get asked often. Even worse, there’s a catch: it’s not something you can answer in one or two words.

Pretty easy to formulate it, though. You find a girl and you realize she cries over pictures of cute puppies or the thousandth rewatch of Love and Other Drugs. You discover she cried for 4 days out of the 6 that you were away on field work. You look back to that one fight you had and you realize how petty it was. How she’s a child. You’re 4 months in and then you realize maybe this isn’t what you signed up for. You knew she was sad, but you didn’t know just how much.

Funny how some sentiments resonate through the stories we tell of other people. “Hey, you know,” you started telling me while in the middle of discussing a friend’s failing relationship. “He knew she was sad. I mean, he said he expected this.” You paused after this. I realize now you were trying to find the next line’s least damaging form. “He just didn’t expect her to be this sad. You know what I mean?”

I do know.

Still, I can’t help but think that maybe the only time we mean what we say is when we’re not using words of our own. We write love letters and somewhere down that letter, there’s always a quote or an homage from a book you like or, at least, read out of boredom. We get into fights and write long, winded messages on the technological apparatus afforded us and, still, we find ways to use the words of other people. We write prose and still we quote Hemingway or Fitzgerald or Parker. Maybe, when we write, we’re not meant to make legacies of our own the way they have, because we only speak in borrowed words.

So. You ever wish you didn’t feel things so intensely sometimes?

The short answer is no. I wouldn’t know happiness otherwise. The long answer, however, is yes, because number one, to have a “long answer” is the only justification for an even longer explanation.

See, this girl, she cries watching Love and Other Drugs because, in the gritty reality, sick people are difficult to be with. This girl, she cries over puppies because they make her happy. Her temperament is melancholic. Her primary response is to cry. She would not know herself otherwise.

This girl, she’s emotional. She can’t make rational decisions when it’s her heart that carries all the weight and not her brains. For all her acclaimed smarts, she sure can be pretty stupid. You find a girl, you see something in her — only God knows what — and you decide that, hey, this doesn’t seem so bad. She doesn’t look that sad.

But five months down the road and you realize she is. You won’t allow her to put words in your mouth or put assumed regret somewhere in you, but she knows. You won’t say, but maybe at some point, it was what you were thinking.

See, this girl, she absorbs the sadness of other people. She breathes in the dark of other people and carries them as her own. It’s a black pit she keeps filling. She doesn’t tell. She doesn’t open up. Not as much as she used to, at least.

You give her power over you, this piece of shit we call love, and you know you’re only signing up for the sadness. So you do your best and ask her you ever wish you didn’t feel things so intensely sometimes? in an attempt to find the reason you’re involved in this madness.

She wishes she could control it. You find out that she can’t. You put up with it. You think she’s a child. You think she’ll grow up. But you’ll grow white hair and acquire a limp and she still won’t get past the six-year-old that thrives inside her. You give her attention and you’re only watering the seed of a child who won’t grow.

And then, one day, you won’t do any of this. You won’t ask, you won’t give her the time of the day. You’re tired and you just want to sleep.

But you get a poem. You find it in the mail.

She says she’s sorry.

Always,

Claire

On Medium.com

Building. Rebuilding.

This was the 3rd journal entry in my Literature 3 (Literature, the Individual, and Society) class. We were discussing solitude and our professor asked us to include the following lines from Khalil Gibran's Mirrors of the Soul in our journal and write a reflection from it. This was mine:
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Flying over San Francisco, California, July 3, 2016

"Your inner soul, my friend, is surrounded with solitude and seclusion.
Were it not for this solitude and this seclusion you would not be you and
I would not be I. If it were not for that solitude and seclusion, I would, if
I heard your voice, think myself to be speaking; yet, if I saw your face, i
would imagine that I were looking into a mirror."
- Khalil Gibran, Mirrors of the Soul

Khalil Gibran speaks of solitude as a friend and I believe this is the only proper approach to solitude. As something that seeks to help us rebuild ourselves, solitude is a friend that only wishes the best for us.

I can testify to this. When I was in a relationship, we spent as much time together as we could. Every time we went out, we always enclosed ourselves in seclusion. We were better alone together. When he left me, I found it difficult to put myself back together. It was my first break-up (meaning: one that I did not initiate) and I did not expect that it would hurt that much.

The journey to self-recovery started with earphones. After spending a whole year sharing one pair of earphones in the jeepney while his music played, there was a kind of healing felt in being able to listen to music in the jeep alone, to be able to place both earbuds in my ear and feel the weight of all that had transpired. This propelled me to learn to spend time with myself and to get to know this version of myself after the break-up. A stronger, better, and much kinder me.

I think that is what solitude does. When once I only learned to build homes in other people with scraps for foundation, I have now realized that my strongest foundation is within me. I learned to build my home in my hands, my heart, my brain.

I am my own home.

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RELATED WORK: "Details" on Medium | "Details" on Blogspot

Andromeda's Time to Leave

I've always known what I wanted to do in life with anything that concerns family. I've always had everything mapped out for me. I am that kind of organized—even the future is already planned.

January 4, 2017
Basic masses integration (BMI) with the farming community of Brgy. Calsadahay, Tanauan, Leyte

While I still retain these characteristics, dreams and plans don't quite stay the same the older you get.

I'm not as consistent as I'd like to be as far as relationships with other people are concerned. But one thing I know I've always wanted is children. (Not now, of course. But at some point.)

By the time I was 12, I decided that I loved my then-6-year-old cousin so much that I wanted children of my own. A child I could care for and protect and love to the best of my being.

When I was 15, I decided that, if my first child was going to be a girl, she was going to be named Andromeda so that her nickname would be Andi (based on Diandra Xenia "Andi" Alpers from Jennifer Donnelly's Revolution). This was maintained for a long while. Almost all my friends knew this. Andromeda, though non-existent, became the symbol for my motherly aspirations.

In 2015, I found out that, because of the lupus, it would be hard for me to give birth if I wanted to in the future. It wouldn't be 100% safe.

And it could even cost me my life.

That took a while to sink in. I think there is always that fear at the back of every girl's head that giving birth is scary, not to mention extremely painful. But I was willing to go through all that if it meant I could have children of my own.

So when I was told it would be too risky, it fell heavy on me. This was something I was always so set about, something I knew I really wanted regardless of the consequences. And when I was told it couldn't be, it felt a lot like a rug being pulled out from under me.

Even then, I was still hopeful somehow, if the List of Names for Future Children I kept in my phone was any indicator. Another girl would be Valerie June (from June Carter-Cash, because I am a low-key Johnny Cash fan) and the first boy would be David Emile (from David Emile Durkheim, but for no particular reason; it just sounds good). I updated the list at some point, though. I renamed it.

"List of Names for Future Children (disregarding the fact that I can't have any)"

After more thought on it, I did understand the risk. I have lower pain tolerance compared to most people I know. I imagine childbirth to be something I'd be physically unable to do. There was also the consideration for the upbringing of the child.

The more I thought about it, and the more I dived deeper into my Personality class, the more it felt inevitable that I'd become an abusive parent at some point.

It hurts to think that this would be one of the foremost legacies of my parents, of most Filipino parents who don't realize the abuse, and it hurts more that it is all the more difficult to rectify this. It is already bordering wishful thinking to believe that this generation, my generation, could be the game changer.

"Why do you want children?" I don't know either. But I figured that if other children that aren't my own could make me so happy, what more could my own do? I've really considered it all: the caretaking, the diaper changes, the feeding, the eventual distance as they grow into adolescence. The inevitable reunion. The connection only felt with family.

Maybe, in a way, the want to have children stemmed from the need to rectify my parents' shortcomings.

I know, I am only turning 19 this year. It is too early to think about this. I don't even have a significant other. There's no certainty even with marriage. I am still recovering from the trauma of my previous relationship. There is still fear. There is still the anxiety that comes with it all.

But I am someone so organized that I plan ahead. I always plan ahead.

With that, I also crush my own dreams before anyone else could. I let go of plans that I've been set about before life decides to reject it for me.

This is a goodbye to the children I could never have.

Always,
Claire

[on medium.com]