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]

Details

You remember sitting in a jeepney. Passing by a police station and a small branch of a big-name grocery store that sounds more like a rip-off of 7-Eleven. You come across a church. You forget to make the sign of the cross as the jeepney goes past it. You forget, or you just don't.

July 3, 2016
Seoul, South Korea

Those were the bigger details. Now your eyes travel to the smaller ones. The loud chatter of two high school girls at the far end of the jeepney, near the driver. Your right ear ignores it. Your eyes, however, cannot. So you stare. You run your eyes along the line of passengers across you. An elderly woman grips the handles of 2 large SM plastic bags as she snores, her head lolling around her neck. Someone from across stares at you. He's attractive, flirty. He keeps his eyes on you. Travels downwards. Until he sees the fingers locked with yours. He looks away and you swear you could almost see a small smile there, as if to say, "Of course not."

Ah. The fingers around yours. The ones owned by the person wearing the other earbud. You're connected by one set of earphones. You're too broke to buy a splitter. The music ranges from 50's folk rock to 60's German metal to 70's neo-psychedelia. It's only a 15-minute ride, but you do this all the time so you've heard everything.

He likes to surprise you with music. You love music. You're just not a musician like him, but he talks to you like one anyway. You mostly nod, ask questions. Mostly things you've read in your favorite book. Ever heard of an augmented fourth? The Devil's tritone? You wait for your turn to speak. To talk about yourself.

You zone out sometimes when he talks.  It's not unusual to be on a jeep with him when you're tired. You're always tired. He likes spending time with you. Or so he says. Whatever. He talks so much and you so little. But you love it anyway. Or so you say.

Whatever.

He's nice. There are days when he looks at you like you're the only person he can see. You feel stupid for looking for happiness anywhere else when all you need is right there in front of you, suspended in a single moment. Even though your intuition tells you it's all pretend. Because that's what you get for dating an actor.

Whatever. You sometimes confuse intuition with emotion. You're in love with him. That's what matters. Right?

You accidentally grip his hand too tight as you think all this. Whenever you're sad, you always clasp your own hands together and squeeze them, as if you could wring out the sadness from your bones. You can't, of course, but it stops you from crying. Just, this time, your fingers happened to be intertwined with his.

He asks you what's wrong and you smile at him and say, nothing. Like you always do. You lay your head down on his shoulder to assure him, soothe him. You're always soothing him.

You loved him once. You've convinced yourself you still do. You're desperate. It's not the loneliness. You're just a perfectionist. You wanted your first to be "the one".

Of course not.

You had a year together. You should've left earlier. Because now you're sitting alone in a jeepney heading home—45 to an hour—and you can faintly hear everybody hurts... sometimes... from the earphones of the person beside you.

You're remembering again. Afternoons spent in cramped jeepneys with his favorite songs playing in your left ear. Always the left ear. Maybe it meant something.

You cry in the jeepney. Nobody cares. All the strangers are tired and you're just another one of them. 

You like "Everybody Hurts". You liked every single one you listened to with him. Remembered titles in such great detail, artist and all, that you could name them in anywhere that you could hear them—during a neighbor's karaoke night or in a grocery store with your mom. Mundane, but effective.

These are the kind of details you notice. These are the details he never cared to know about you.

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Is this non-fiction? Maybe. Maybe it's fictitious. Maybe it's the fragments of a healing girl. Who knows.

[on medium.com]

Last Say

A long time ago, I was the luckiest girl in the world.

Lucky in the sense that I was in a happy relationship with my best friend and everything that once felt out of reach had suddenly fallen into place. Everything suddenly made sense—why we met, why we grew close, and everything in between.

And, for once in my life, I believed that it was something I could keep forever.

I was a naive girl back then. Ruthless when it came to grammar rules and spell checks, but undeniably gullible when it came to love.

I was a naive girl back then, but I was happy. It even reflected in my monthly laboratory results: I was doing a lot better than I did months before. My abrupt emotional upheaval could have been the cause of that.

To this day, I still believe it was.

But I was young. I thought he, my best friend, would never think of committing a grave fault against me. After all, he knew about my issues. He knew about the state of my family. And he knew I was barely recovering, and 2 years had already passed then.

Maybe I overlooked his issues, too, but it doesn't matter now. All I know is, after that, we fell apart and, no matter how much we tried, we couldn't piece ourselves back together. It often felt like sitting at a table for dinner and only occupying one seat. Even when his flesh was right in front of me, I had never felt more alone.

I felt my existence transform into an apology with each passing day. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that. I'm sorry for taking up your time. I'm sorry I arrived too early. I'm sorry for waking you. I'm sorry, just go ahead without me; I might take a while.

From Tokyo Ghoul episode 5 "Scar"

I was once the luckiest girl in the world. I was in a relationship with a boy I could call my best friend, was in love with a boy who could sing wonderfully and accompany it with every strum of his guitar, and a boy whose creative and eccentric mind was something I could never rival.

But he, too, was also young and naive.

Maybe his hands kept shaking as he held me up, all the while carrying another personal weight on his back. He could no longer keep up with my sporadic but frequent bouts of jealousy. He was only human, just as I was.

We both had our issues. And maybe my first mistake was not leaving at the first sign.

But it doesn't matter now.

I really was once the luckiest girl in the world. I was happy. We were happy.

It's best to leave it at that.

But from now on—no more.

Always,
Claire

P.S. It's all very dramatic, but this is just my attempt to explain why I'm going off the 'dating scene' for a while (or a long while). It's hard to explain in a few words. All I know is I'm not ready yet. And I probably don't deserve to be with anyone again after all the damage I inflicted on my ex. Still, things could change, but, for now, no more.

Note: This is from my perspective; I don't mean to invalidate what he went through with me.

Overthinking in Broken Conversation

"I'm so glad I met you."

"No. You're not. You shouldn't be."

"I am not someone you can imagine in the long run."

"There is no future with me so you need to stop. I'm not worth it."

"I am shitty with break-ups when I am not the one doing it, so this is me doing one."

"Trust me, I am doing you a favor. Save yourself. I will only hurt you."

"You deserve better."

"You don't need someone like me in your life. Life is so much better without having met me."

"I have a doctorate in Professionally Hurting People. Don't expect to be an exemption to that."

"I am not good for you. You know that, deep down."

"If you start this, it is always guaranteed that I will end it. Because that's just the kind of person I am. I'm a quitter, and worst of all, I'm a quitter at the first and only sign of doubt."

"You will only ever love the idea of me, and that's what I want you to love. The real person is a dark place. And you will not be saved."

"I am going to run away before I do any damage - it's still early. It is safer this way. For both sides."

"If you value anything that is yours, don't let me have any piece of it. Don't let me take part of your life. I am a parasite. I will drain you and leave you to find the next willing host."

"Protect your heart from people like me. I am not anyone's soulmate. I am a lesson. Hopefully, the only one you'll ever need."

Always,
Claire

P.S. I may or may not have actually said some of these things in real life.

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4ynDu7Hrlk

Warning Labels

I've been meaning to write about my first semester in college, but something happened when 2016 began that I just lost the drive to write about it. It is currently sitting in my drafts, unfinished and rotting.

But what is finished, however, is a certain relationship. I am not strong enough to recount to you the entire story since the "breakup" only happened exactly a week ago today. Though I am slowly accepting the reality of it, it still hurts. 

Here, instead, is a part of the story.

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I remember our last day together perfectly. It was a day that we had set a month prior, in December 2015. When we planned it, we just wanted to meet. We weren't planning on breaking up.

But something happened between the day that we planned it and the day we actually met, and while I will tell you that I had already changed my mind about leaving, you thought differently.

We weren't even officially together. Just old friends (or, rather, exes) who (still) had feelings for each other. Just best friends who found comfort in each other that trumped everyone else's version of it. The kind that said, "I can't find this in anyone else but you." You know what I'm saying? Even Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake in Friends With Benefits got nothing on us.

We'd been texting since October last year, just two months after we ended our 8-month relationship. It first started as a normal "how are you?" "yeah, I'm good, MedTech's been killing me" "Please take care of yourself" kind of conversation, as was our habit even before our relationship. Eventually, it evolved into something more than that.

We found ourselves at the crossroads between friends and lovers.

Even at that crossroads, we still found many forks in the road. I was never really over you, even though I had a 2-week tryst after our official breakup and it was with a guy I didn't even like. And you, as you had claimed, were still in love with me and the pain was only making you miss me.

So I never really quite got over you, and that included getting jealous of other girls, of the same girls I was jealous of during our 8 months together. It was a bad itch that I, unfortunately, always scratched.

And you were the same, but we knew our boundaries because we weren't really together. What rights did we have?

That statement sure didn't stop us. Our toxicity to each other was never measured in our rights because, right from the start, we ignored our warning labels and went for the kill. Mine said "toxic material", yours said "fragile". Fragile because I was the one who left. I was the one who always left, needless to say.

We continued texting. I kept trying to push you away, kept trying to convince you that I was only going to hurt you, that even right now as we were texting, I was only making you hope, because we both knew that, after everything, I wasn't ready to be in a relationship again, especially not with you.

You always said that you were willing to wait for me, that if hurting while hoping was all you had of me, so be it.

You never were a fan of self-preservation. We were both the same that way.

What we did was a kind of cha-cha. Whenever you took a step forward, I took a step back. And whenever I took a step forward, you froze in your place, asking yourself if me making the first move was even real.

I'll admit, at that time, I had a cha-cha of my own. A one-person tennis game playing right in my head. My heart was scolding me because I knew I still loved you, and yet, there I was, dragging you by the neck.

In simpler words, I was leading you on. You gladly let me.

But you are still human, after all. Nobody has resolve that strong and the only thing I could tell you was, "You said you read the warning label."

So, on our last day together, after a year and 3 weeks of being together and not being together, including the actual relationship, I snuggled even closer to you, knowing that it would be the last. You were warm and comforting and you felt safe. I let myself bask in that because, even for a moment, I could pretend you weren't leaving.

"I love you," I said, for the first time in a very long time. Even in text or chat, I never let myself say it, afraid that it would only bring disaster to you. I said it a few times, maybe, but never enough to let you get used to it.

And for the first time ever, your reply was "Really?"

I struggled not to cry, instead choosing to just nod and bury my head in your chest, where I felt safer, and wondering why I never held you tight enough.

I had fears of my own. Plenty of them. They clawed at me daily, whispering things into my ears and I used to call you about them, and you'd accept them wholly, even when one of the causes for that fear was you, and you'd talk to me and help me get through it and, I don't know, there was always something in your voice that kept them at bay. Singing or talking—it didn't matter.

But you still left that day. There were many reasons: you got tired. You didn't know if I even loved you enough. And, mostly, you got hurt.

I know I screwed up this time. I had confessed to you, when the new year began, that there had been guys texting me. I never initiated conversation, but the fault in the matter was that I still replied. I did stop. It was never really difficult to stop texting mid-conversation. It was only difficult with you.

But I guess, even then, it was already too late.

The worst part of it all was that we weren't even in an official relationship. Then again, with us, labels never mattered, even the potentially dangerous ones.

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HERE'S WHAT I DIDN'T MENTION: For the first time in my life, I was the one being left behind. Before then, I always made it a point to be the one who leaves, never the other way around. The way I saw it, leaving was the lesser evil. It hurt significantly less than being left behind. But life has a funny way of biting you back in the ass and letting your sins finish you off. 

After leaving behind 3 guys, including him (who I left behind twice), I finally got a taste of my own medicine, and rightfully so, because I had never been hurt this much before now.

But I am happy to serve my penance because I know it is the only way I can fully understand the weight of my sins. 

I'll always be toxic material. What would you expect from a girl with an incurable illness and emotional instability issues? Tox(s)ic(k) material, indeed. 

Always,
Claire 

P.S. I had to keep a box of tissues beside me while writing this. That's why it doesn't make a lot of sense. But that's only a part of the story, anyway. I only write this in the hopes of getting it off my chest, but we all know I'm a professional at lying to myself.