Not ourselves.

Who knows us best? Not ourselves. For you to truly know who you are, you'd have to stand at the end of your life and review everything you ever did. Look at how you acted, and how your actions affected others. Listen to what you said, and find out how others heard you. Dive into your own thoughts, and analyze how these affected how you acted, and how you spoke. 

And them? Do they know you? To some extent, of course. But most of who you are, and what you are, is lost in your attempt to be. 

To be what? What are you trying to be? And more importantly, were you successful in being? You were trying to be what you thought you should be, and what you thought people thought you should be. In the process, you realized that you should stop trying and just let yourself be. 

And then you ask yourself again: Who am I?

So you go through life, attempting to figure out who you are. When you get to the end, you still haven't figured out who you are. So you review everything you ever did. 

Limitations part 2!

And just when I finally convinced myself.

I'll go to bed early! Yeah! Then get up early, have a hearty breakfast, go on the treadmill for half an hour,   read a bit, have lunch, fix my bookshelf, read again, have dinner, and then go back to bed! My day will be healthy and wholesome! 


Here I am at half past 4 in the morning, eating donuts and drinking Pepsi while watching a show about a werewolf.

I like limitations. They remind us that we can't do everything and that not everything is possible. You can only consume so much sugar and then BOOM! Diabetes. You can only drive so fast and then BOOM! Car crash. Limitations keep us grounded, and I don't like it when people (most especially myself) think of themselves too talented or important.

Limitations can be self-imposed, of course. Eat only this, drink only that. Watch just this number of hours of TV a day, stay on the computer for just this number of minutes a day.

I've been blurring my limitations lately. I take 5 showers a day, leave the air-condition on for more than 12 hours a day, place the modem near my bed so I can go online while lying on my stomach.

I wet my bed today.

I wish this were a metaphor for something. Sadly, it isn't.

It's like I've been pushed farther and farther, and now all I'm holding on to is the end of a rope. And the rest of the rope's been cut. So there's no going back. I stay here forever. Or I let go.

Forever. Or I let go.

YAH? YAH!

I think about myself a lot. Most of the time about what kind of person I am. You know how when someone's described as "strict" or "punctual" or "uptight," they actually are, all the time. I've been called all three, but I don't think I'm like that all the time. Only with certain people and in certain situations. I'm really fussy about time, though. Especially if you scheduled and you're late? LOL WAZ WRONG WICHU GURL! The reason I asked you to set the time of our meeting is so that I'm assured you won't be late. Apparently, people don't think that way.

I think I'm quite ordinary, but at the same time, not. For example: I don't go clubbing and I don't DJ. At the same time, I'm sort of popular (sort of nga e, wag ka naman masyadong negative) on the Internet and      just a tad more popular in real life. People look up to me for inspiration and leadership (no, really, they do. believe me, it's weirder for me than it is for you).

I'm not mean on purpose, and even though I say I'm a bitch, I don't think I really am. I mean, I don't snap at someone just because, and I'm actually quite nice. Ish. I'm always afraid of people noticing the little mistakes I commit, but when the tables are turned and I'm the one doing the scrutinizing, I just pass their little mistakes off as slips and they're not to be condemned for those.

OMIGOD ARE YOU STILL READING.

I really was going to write about how I don't care about what people think of me and at the same time how I obsess with my appearance and my actions, but I got sidetracked, so...

All is fair in love and war.

No, all isn't. It's not fair when you love someone so uncaring so much.

So who do you choose?

*Inspired by Season 1 of Awkward

What would you do if had two choices, and not choosing isn't an option? 

On one hand you have the guy you know won't hurt you. The guy you know will always be there for you, and happy being there. The perfect gentleman. He won't insist, and you know in your heart of hearts that you're safe with him. He won't let anything hurt you and he'd sooner kill a baby angel than hurt you himself. He's your best friend, and you can count on him all the time. The problem is after some time, all of this will get boring. You know what he's going to do and what he's not going to do. You always follow a schedule, and he makes sure you don't miss any of your appointments, and he's there to pick you up after work, so goofing off with the buddies is a no-no. But hey, you know he's never gonna cheat on you and he's got your back all the time.

On the other hand is the heartbreaker. The bad boy. He will sweep you off of your feet with his romance and his ruffled hair, and then leave you gasping for more. You never know when he's gonna be there for you, and getting a straight answer out of him is out of the question. He's always goofing off and being the boy he is, and that's kind of adorable. Sort of. You know you're taking a huge risk with him, because he's not the most reliable of guys. He has the attention span of a 5-year-old with ADD and no one can really ever tie him down. But when he looks at you, he makes you feel like you're the only person in the world. And when he's with you, you feel so loved and wanted. He takes you sky-diving and base-jumping, and when he kisses you, you melt into him. Your relationship with him is like a fairytale: magical, but just a tad bit fictional.

So who do you choose?

And in 5 years, what?

When we were kids, we were always asked where we see ourselves 5, 10, 20 years from then. I've been thinking about that question (for about 10 minutes, and then I decided to write about it) and I'm not particularly sure where I see myself in 5, 10, 20 years.

Please don't answer "in the mirror." Don't.

Anyway. In 5 years, I hope to be working. I'll be 4 years out of college then, and maybe even have an MA under my belt. Working where, though? I'm taking BA Language and Literature, and that doesn't present such specific work opportunities as opposed to, say, BA Comm or BS Nursing. 

Most BA LL students go into teaching. I took a crack at that and found that I'm actually good at teaching college students. So maybe that. What else, though? Writing? I've always said that the only thing I see me doing is working for a magazine. Now, I'm not so sure. 

In 10 years, I'll be (gasp!) 29. I hope to be living apart from my mother then (although I'm not so sure she'll let me), and earning enough to actually buy stuff I want. Like a car. Or a really nice computer? I also hope to be able to travel by that time. Not out-of-town trips, but actual travelling. You know, Greece, France, Singapore. That kind of travel.

In 20 years, I hope to have a family. I'll be 39 (okay then, 40) and I'd like to have a brood of mini-Luis and mini-Xs. I'd like that X to be Yohan, but we can't really tell, can we?

I just hope that as I go through life, I have people going through it with me. Not necessarily a boyfriend or whatever, just... people. I'm tired of feeling alone in the middle of a crowd (oh god really?), even though I don't really feel alone in the middle of a crowd.

Let me tell you about today

I got up at around 9AM and decided to just finish the paper I had to submit by 5 PM. I already started a couple of weeks ago so all I really needed to do was, uh, finish it. I dicked around on the Internet, of course, while writing, so it took me around 2 hours to finish. I asked my housemate to pass the paper for me since she's going to school for an exam anyway. She did, and I'm now free!

Well, no. I still have one more paper to write, but it's not due until the 12th, so...

I stayed at home, screamed at my download to finish, and basically just bummed. Around 2 PM, though, a strange feeling of nostalgia hit me, instead I wasn't longing for a certain time in the past. I just felt... empty. Was it the nice weather? The quiet atmosphere? The playing kids on the airport runway in front of our house?

I realized that I actually like Baguio on my last day here. 

I felt guilty, because I felt that I took Baguio for granted. It's not like it did anything bad to me, it just so happened to be situated approximately two hundred and fifty kilometers from home.

Around 5 PM, I started gathering my stuff. I was meeting my mom at the hotel since our house really is quite far from civilization. What's unfair is that she has a car, and I have to commute. Another unfair point is that she told me she'd be leaving Manila at 2 PM. She left at around 4. 

So I'm at the hotel now, and an hour ago I decided to go out for dinner since I really couldn't wait for my mother anymore. I went out and had Jollibee after buying a couple of hair clips and scrunchies. I walked from the hotel to the mall and back, and I couldn't help but feel, er, pretty. The weather was nice, and BoA's Implode was playing on my iPod. Again with the past-less nostalgia. 

and idek?

My brain vibrates with carefully thought out arguments and counter-arguments.
My eyes narrow
My eyebrows arch and fall, arch and fall, crease, arch and fall
My nostrils flare, working extra hard
with my lungs
I breathe and ramble on

My shoulders are tense
My arms swing wildly, dangerous and heavy
My hands clench, forming fists, loosen, turning dead
My fingers snap and grasp for whatever
in the air between us
My feet stomp the ground, breaking the earth

Underneath
My heart
My little heart tries to speak
My tired heart tries to fight
and break through the noise and action
I love you


My brain stops. My eyes blink
Furiously, fighting the tears
I inhale... exhale.
I relax. And I stop. And everything stops!

Except my heart.
I love you

My boyfriend sent me a text that just makes up for all the negativitay. He asked me what I was doing, and I said I'm writing a paper and I'm stressed and it's tedious.

"You'd ace that.  I'll sleep na ha. I'm proud of you. Guten Nacht. Love you."

This, now. What then, later? (written October 4, published, then made private, and now published AGAIN)

Obviously, things are shaky with us. I can't speak for you because you almost never tell me anything, so let me just speak for myself here. My needs aren't being met. Mind you, these needs aren't enormous. I ask for the same things the next boyfriend would - text me if you're going out, try and update me with whatever's going on with you, don't stay out too late, and don't do anything that may harm you. An addition is to show some enthusiasm. We've been together for almost a year, but that doesn't mean we can just assume that everything will be okay even if we don't talk. The longer we're together, the more apparent it becomes that you're 1. bored, 2. tired, 3. or just no longer interested. I'm working from context clues here, because as I've said, you almost never tell me anything anymore.

I understand that you have school. I'm not asking you to drop-out and live with me. I know you have your family, I'm not asking you to abandon them and elope. But "being busy" isn't an excuse. And I know I'm not your everything. I'm not asking to be. But at least try to make me feel that you love me.

What would really help is if you would talk to me. Any way you can, really, because I'm not getting anything from you now. Tell me, what should I do? Should I just leave you be until this sem ends and you can breathe? Should I just wait until you're okay and we can continue with out relationship? What?

I miss the old us, you know. We used to talk for hours on the phone. Every night. No matter how busy you were, I'd wait up until you were free to talk. There was one time, back when we were just starting out, when you asked me to call you. That was really nice, because it made me feel like you wanted me, too. We even got to the point where we'd say I love you to each other every five texts or so.

Now I'm lucky to get a reply from you. I really miss you, Yohan. Talk to me. I love you.
                                                                                                                                                                           
P.S. I don't want to break-up. Ever.

I just want to feel that you love me.

Aaaaaaaaand the story's just begun.

Are you stuck? Here, let me help you. No, no, don't fight it, it'll only get worse. Breathe for me. Okay, there you go. I'm going to pull you out, okay? Just try to make yourself smaller. Okay, 1... 2... 3!

So that's a no-go. Maybe we have to wait until you lose weight and you're thin enough to get out on your own! A cartoon did that, I think. Since I can't get you out, do you just wanna talk? Yeah? Okay, cool. So how did you get stuck here, anyway?

I mean, this hole is pretty obvious. There's nothing else for miles, just this hole! And was it like this when you fell and got stuck? Littered and stinky? There are shards of glass everywhere, and I wouldn't really want to know what that sticky-looking liquid is. Crumples pieces of paper, animal manure, or wait, is that human shit? So how did you get stuck here?

Wait, what? The hole wasn't this small at first? It was a ditch? No, wait, that's not the word. Chasm? Yeah, chasm! So it was a chasm before? A huge hole in the ground? Well that would be worse, because a hole that big you should see! Oh, it grew? The huge hole in the ground grew until it reached you and you fell in? Well that's a bummer. But... why is it so small now? You can't get out!

It... shrunk? How do you mean shrunk? ....well that's peculiar. And the shit? The glass? All this garbage?

They were flowers and grass? Oh, I see. They turned to all this garbage? How is that... no, no, I believe you! I believe you, don't worry.

Oh, so someone was supposed to come help you? Well, where are they? Oh, it's a man? So where is this man, supposedly coming to rescue you?

He's... what? Busy? But... You're stuck.

I know. I'm still waiting. Don't mind me, I'm fine. You can go your merry way now and forget about me.