Reminiscing Cebu

Went back to Cebu, not with you though but with friends and colleagues. Surely I miss the times we spent together here: your smile and your makulit face; small surprises and grand gestures; how lakwatsero you are and a couch potato at the same time; and most importantly, how your hand always held mine and how we had fun. Thanks for introducing me to the amazing experience of flying and travelling. This was what we promised each other before when we were stil together. But now, sad but proud to say that I can fly now on my own. I missed you, yes. Especially while at the Cebu Airport where I imagined you standing outside the airport doors wearing your red shirt and that charming smile that spelled-- I-miss-you-too! Glad-you're-safe! I did wish that somewhere behind those doors you were there waiting to carry my luggage. But no. You're not there. You will never be there for me anymore.


It is certainly my fault for letting you go. It was something i had to do. Another life's numerous "what if's?" Yes, I resolved that issue already. Thank you very much. I already know now what I want in life and where I will be most happy. But I guess I was too late. You have finally moved on. And so must I. I was hoping I'd be able to muster enough courage to communicate with you again just to know how you are now. But I found out that you have decided to find your happiness with somebody else and so I have decided to leave you in peace. I don't want to cause you any trouble nor to deprive you of being happy with some one else that's why I'll go away now. I'll keep everything in a box and stash it away... Somewhere... Under the bed or in a cupboard. Any place where I can't easily see or touch them. I don't want to be reminded of the things I've lost forever. You have indeed moved on and so must I. I hope this will be the last time that I'll feel a slight pain in the chest everytime I go to the airport; board a plane; land in Cebu; or roam the city. I wish to remember it as something worth visiting. Not for the memories but for its colorful and historic past. I want to be a stranger to this place. I hope I'd lose the familiarity soon. I really do wish you well. So tonight, allow me to cry for you and regret everything that I've lost one last time.

A Message to a Friend

Dear Friendship, I am in such mental and emotional chaos that I'm actually prepared to fail the first sem of grad school. I'm sorry, Friendship, I went phoneless yeterday. I am still trying to work on my papers though, no matter how blurred my thoughts are. Thanks for being there. Don't worry I have no plans of killing myself. I'm too gorgeous and smart for that. Mao

Fragments of my Mind

Some people just don't know how to translate love into something concrete and believable. Words will always be words. At some point it will lose it's meaning. Eventually, you will wake up and realize that some people, no matter how much they try aren't really capable of loving you.

Playing hide and seek is getting too exhausting for me. So please, stop running away and face me.

Invictus by William Ernest Henley (1903)

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

How to be alone

HOW TO BE ALONE by Tanya Davis

If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you've not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren't okay with it, then just wait. You'll find it's fine to be alone once you're embracing it.

We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You're not supposed to talk much anyway so it's safe there.

There's also the gym. If you're shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in (guitar stroke).

And there's public transportation, because we all gotta go places.

And there's prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you're hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously (electric guitar plucking) based on your avoid being alone principals.

The lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they -- like you -- will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner. A restaurant with linen and silverware. You're no less intriguing a person when you're eating solo dessert to cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor till the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one's watching...because, they're probably not. And, if they are, assume it is with best of human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you're sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life's best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.
Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there're always statues to talk to and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might've never happened had you not been there by yourself

Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. but lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.

You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther for the endless quest for company. But no one's in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.

Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school's groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cuz if you're happy in your head than solitude is blessed and alone is okay.

It's okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can't think like you, for this be releived, keeps things interesting lifes magic things in reach.

And it doesn't mean you're not connected, that communitie's not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. take silence and respect it. if you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. if your family doesn't get you, or religious sect is not meant for you, don't obsess about it.

you could be in an instant surrounded if you needed it
If your heart is bleeding make the best of it
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.