dawning

for the lack of effort i'm willing to put in, i'll just say that we live, simply put, on a mountain. and my room has a perfect view of every morning's coming.
from my bed, i put back my window shades and watched countless time already, as the fluffy, dreary, wispy clouds turned violet, then pink, then grey-ish blue, right before the first ray of sun break the horizon, and slowly slowly turn everything into brighter and brighter shades of sunshine.

just five minutes ago, i was doing the exact same thing, having had no sleep to speak of, for reasons i care not to say, or think about. but there i was, in any case, and through the hazy way, i caught myself thinking,"i wish it wasn't another new day yet.", and realizing that i was thinking it caught me off guard.

in the span of these past couple of years, in the midst of all the losing, waning, winning and waiting, i haven't once thought that. i was always..... hopeful. yes, for the lack of effort i'm willing to put in, i'll just say that i had always been, simply put, hopeful. and this new feeling was strangely foreign. and here i sit, hitting button after button, because i can't sit by my window anymore and just watch as the colors of sunshine break though my blinds. it's annoying. ..can you believe that?

the roosters are crowing somewhere near. --did i mention i lived on a mountain? -- i'm typing because turning the TV on in this quiet, in this fog, would wake the neighbors' kid who screams bloody murder every time he's annoyed. ....he's annoyed, i'm annoyed.... ...what's happened to me? *shakes head*

i think..
i think there was a line
and i think i've crossed it.

the story, finally.

"Sei sicura?", my friend Mari asked. was i sure that i wanted to part ways in Venice and wait the last hour for my train back to Perugia alone?

yes. i needed to clear my head. the difference between being plain stressed and being overwhelmed, apparently, is that you can't push through the latter. you have to stop.

in truth, i had no more sense of the bustle and trains rumbling along. for once, speaking in italian came effortlessly, just because it did listlessly as well. my heart was pounding, becoming heavier and sinking all at the same time. all i figured was that it was finished. and i screwed it up.

we'd already spent an hour, Mari and i, coming in from a nearby town. i didn't want my last hour with her wasted talking about a friendship i bulldozed before breakfast, so we talked as much as we could, but i knew she understood. Out of all the good things she did for me, i appreciated most that she let me be sad then, just because i truly was.

when we parted, i looked for my binario, and found a place to sit between an old man with a bicycle, and a kid with an i-pod, whose t-shirt read, "Gioia di Vivere". The Joy of Living. Huh.
The 6 hours to Arezzo passed slowly. i watched the Appenine mountains breeze by, and i kept myself from crying. not in a compartment with 5 more people in it, at the very least. The last train took us through tunnels i already knew well--- Passignano, lago Trasimeno... and it all looked so familiar; i realized that i was back in my safe zone. i'd taken myself so far from him again, and i wondered if he was thinking now that that's how it ought to be.

I remembered, that morning, pulling his sunglasses down to cover his eyes, because i didn't want to lose courage before i had done saying what i needed to say. i was just... through being a quitter, and i wanted to finally fight.
---but what if... what if what i needed to say, was something he needed to not hear? not now?
...i'm sorry if what i needed to do clashed with yours. i wonder if there really is such a thing as "right timing". but if there is... i'd waited a decade for it until i finally asked if it exists at all, or if you have to make it for yourself. so i did.---
i opened my window, and i stood up, needing air. the moment the first gust of wind hit me was the moment the first tear fell.

my eyes were smarting from tears and thoughts that were 8 hours coming. i sat back down, salty tears falling silently behind my dark glasses, shaming me and relieving me at the same time. spacing out, writing, head on my window, i heard the old lady sitting across me say to her grandson, "il fazzoletto per la tristina, amore." give the tissue to the little sad one.
i smiled as i took it, and felt guilty for my tears. i've been very blessed, even with this pain. i had La Gioia di Vivere. i was only crying because the wish and the good and bad possibilities were choking me, but i just didn't know how to take away feeling undone.
i want this so much. Dio, La prego solo di aver la mia' opportunita'. lo amo in una maniera spettacolare e solo volevo di non perderlo.
i prayed and prayed and my heart hurt from all the wishing, and finally, from accepting that things were how they were, and he was still processing and that there was a wait to be had now.

i arrived in perugia, and our despedida party was waiting for me.
"com'e' andata?" how did it go?
As bravely as i could, i put my biggest smile on, took a swig of vino, and jokingly said, "allora, il mio giorno ha cominciato con una dichiarazione d'amore." My day started with a profession of love. and coyly-- sadly-- i left it at that. it was true. the story really did end there.

--------

and that was all i did. there was something to say, something you had to understand, and i said my peace.
last friday, all i did was the same: you had to know, that 10 hours after we said our hurried goodbyes, you messaged me and you let the faintest hope burn inside of me that even now, 2 months later, alternately makes me feel amazing and amazingly foolish.
i didn't know what you meant.
what's your story?


This-- honestly-- feels like another train ride and you put me on it, taking me farther and farther away. there are questions, and no opportunity or will or shame left in me to ask them. i don't know where to stand on either waiting or letting you go-- and i don't know if you know how much the questions burn.

2 days inside a toilet

during the summer of 2002, i was in the states with my family.
one day not unlike any other day, i was on my way back to the TV room, i held an orange gatorade in my hand when suddenly, my sister came up to me and told me how she'd heard through a friend soemthing that would quite actually turn out to be the worst news of my life. i slapped her, again and again, threatened her to take it back, and screamed bloody murder until someone gave me a phone.

i called my best friends back home. "we didn't know how to tell you...". it wasn't a proper answer to the actual question i asked, but it was all the statement i needed to know that i had my answer anyway.

i walked around the house for quite some time, more numbed than hurt. i couldn't cry. when we used to talk and i would cry, he'd say something that would always be to the effect of, "do you cry because they're things you can't do anything about? or because it hurts to think about what you can still do?" we were 15, i didn't understand what that meant. a year later, i found myself unwrapping my 4th snickers bar for the day, thinking why the hell i couldn't cry. and i thought, well because he'd always been right about the latter, this is the first time he was actually right about the former, and i never thought that *that* felt as astonishing as this. like being caught off guard with a fucking punch in the gut, like swallowing and swallowing wihout taking in air.

i didn't tell anyone... that would make it true. i relished being in a place where no one knew about it. and then, someone mean said something completely random about my 6th snickers bar of the day and i broke. i locked myself in the downstairs toilet, refusing food and drinking water from the tap. after a while, i stopped being able to remember what happened, but according to them, i kept repeating things that made them unhinge the door from its bolt at the end of 2 days.

when i was in there, all i remember was talking to him and saying, "i'm not even going to see you anymore before they take you away. it's not fair". the distance was choking me, and all he kept saying was, "kailangan mo nang kumain." , "kailangan mong uminom.", ""kailangan mong magpunas ng ilong". at the end of 2 days, they unhinged the door, probably expecting to find me in the same state as the door, but apparently, the first thing i said was, "anong ulam?"

i guess i ate my food, and i slept and i came home soon after. i became... fine. and other dirty words like that. i never talked to anyone about it again; not his friends, not my friends, not my family. this--- is just a remembering of what it was like to want to BE again after that. because right now, i'm at a place where-- no, no one died-- but it sure feels like the death of something that matters, in any case.

and i see him again. especially today. "kailangan kong kumain. kailangan kong uminom. kailangan kong magpunas ng ilong." it's your 8th 17th birthday today, and nothing much has changed. i still cry more over things that i can still do something about than otherwise. but today, remembering you, remembering what it was like to feel what *otherwise* felt like, and remembering that i got through that okay, it feels a little like the first bite at the end of 2 days inside a toilet.

thank you for you. everyday, i still miss you and your contrariness and your long face so, so much.

and so it is

what do you want me to say?

just.. anything? just so you can figure, "yeah she's okay."?

well, i am. i'm okay. --well, busy. but isn't that the same banana? you're busy, i'm busy.
i'm getting over you, i'm avoiding you.
Potaytoh-Tomaytoh.


sometimes, i stop to cry-- but only out of the tiredness i feel from all the effort i'm putting in just so i won't have to STOP. i need to keep moving, so i do. and lemme tell you, i am ti.red. physically. i am physically in pain most days, with a migraine to boot because i never realized how the entire EARTH is made up of things that remind me of you,and migraines result from fighting that cognition.
and the annoying thing is? ..at the end of the day-- less so now, but still-- at the end of the day, i still lay my head on my pillow, and think, "i wonder how his day went?"

when i look back, i think that at the oddest points in our lives, we did see or at least hear a lot of each other, but then i shake my head a little and realize that even given real events, the feeling of what so-and-so day or night was was probabaly only in my head. you could tell me otherwise, but would you? would you really?

you incredibly busy... son of a mother.

err

huh.

putangina, wala akong masulat.


.

hala

ang sabog ko kagabi... ngayon ko lang talagang nahihinuha na totoo pa rin ang sinabi ko kahit sumikat na yung araw. ngayon ko lang nakukuha yung bigat.

ah, well.



yay-- now i can finally talk about other damn things.
:)

the obvious.

i wish.. i'd never written anything in this damn blog. coz dammit, screw everything i've ever said. minamahal kita.

gaaaaaaahd.

i don't want to. i don't want to. i don't want to.
i don't want to. i don't want to. i don't want to.
i don't want to. i don't want to. i don't want to.
i don't want to. i don't want to. i don't want to.
but i do.

most ardently.

and there nothing to be said about it.
there's only the unwillingness. and the truth of it in spite of that.
there's the heaviness of knowing na hindi mo ako mahal.
there's the hurt.
...which makes me think, maybe i should let you know.

but i've loved you for so very long, i've already learned how to live through that.
no waiting, no hope. just love.
and just like i've done in the past, alam ko na magmamahal din ako ng iba. save the obvious finally being stated, life continues much the same. as friends.
....i just think you'll always just be *that boy* for me-- the one who can say to me at any point in my life, "Love me. Be with me.", and i will.

ugh.

UGH.
.

A Movement on Movement.

i've never been a pessimist, but what i felt when Barack Obama stepped out onto the podium to address the millions of people who journeyed with him all the way to that stage even far exceeded what HOPE i always had: it was solid, like the waking sensation of a sudden slap of knowing: "Yes We Can"

it was TRUST.

now that the election is over, it's official: i'm leaving. i'm off to the country which has just elected it's first african-american president in over 230 years. this election had resulted in a retrogression for immigrants like me and my family. but in deciding to migrate, we had with us the goal of building a new life with our family who are all already there, waiting. and as i watched President Obama speak of a different future, it dawned on me how it truly is God's hand that set us back almost half a decade and now summons us to that place at a time that will actually allow us to achieve that goal.

i only regret not having had cast a vote myself.

change is a-comin', i know it. and like mister president himself said,

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time – to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth – that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people:

Yes We Can.

and it's not an America-thing. it's a WORLD-thing. so i don't know about you, but i'm awake. i'm ready. i'm shit-scared-in-my-pants.

but, yes. now that we have this, Yes We Can.

it doesn't end here. this is where it finally begins.
YES WE WILL.

resurfacing

if you kiss me....

the touch of your lips to mine will feel like a hushed whisper.
eyes closed, the first brush will be skin against skin, and the heated distance separating us will so slowly be bridged as your supple pink lips search--long--for mine.
the first touch will be so gentle, that you'll brush your bottom lip against mine again, just to make sure.
you won't even realize that your deliciously warm palms have already traveled the distance between my arms and my cheeks; and as they find my face, they will first linger at my neck as your fingers trace the curve of my neckline. you'll want to kiss me there.
my arms will snake around your waist and the electricity will be more than enough to curl our toes.

this was always meant to happen.

your thumb will caress my cheek, and we finally have our first second-moment kiss.
urgent, tender, warm and wet.
hungry.
brimming full with things unsaid.
because if it finally happens, it would so be about time.


...but it won't now. it stops here.

diving in.

if you kiss me....

the touch of your lips to mine will feel like a hushed whisper.
eyes closed, the first brush will be skin against skin, and the heated distance separating us will so slowly be bridged as your supple pink lips search--long--for mine.
the first touch will be so gentle, that you'll brush your bottom lip against mine again, just to make sure.
you won't even realize that your deliciously warm palms have already traveled the distance between my arms and my cheeks; and as they find my face, they will first linger at my neck as your fingers trace the curve of my neckline. you'll want to kiss me there.
my arms will snake around your waist and the electricity will be more than enough to curl our toes.

this was always meant to happen.

your thumb will caress my cheek, and we finally have our first second-moment kiss.
urgent, tender, warm and wet.
hungry.
brimming full with things unsaid.
because if it finally happens, it would so be about time.


gah, i'm in for such a huge heartbreak.

the dork who lives next door.

i have a little sister, do you guys know that?
i have a sister, who's 3 years younger than me, and i swear if i had any wrinkles, it would be because of her.

because she seriously IS tear-your-hair-out infuriating and she's ask-a-question-repeatedly-until-you-answer-even-if-you're-on the phone annoying. because she takes the cordless phone out of the cradle until it runs out of battery and no one can use it anymore. she's messy and cranky in the morning and she doesn't help in the kitchen AT ALL.
because she is the epitome of the barge-into-your-bedroom-when-you're-still-sleeping kind of little sister.

i worry about her.

because.. because she's 20, and i still think she's 7.
because she's way spoiled, as in she gets the last piece of chicken, and everyone still smiles at her like light shines out of her ass.
because too many boys have crushes on her, and they don't even know that she sings Mamma Mia! and High School Musical in the shower, or that she aced her thesis proposal paper, or that she spends all day on her laptop making Gaspard Ulliel icons with her photoshop.
because she still knocks on my door at 3 in the morning, crying, coz a blockmate sent her that scary email where some scary the-ring-lady pops out on your screen.
she's absurdly cute, it makes my teeth hurt.

because: she's my little pearl. and i don't know how anything can change that.

she's fun, and she's funny. she's the only person i know who can get my dad, or my kuya or my mom, or me to smile like we do only when she's around. and so she eats your food when you're not looking, and she gets away with it.

because *sigh* i love her to pieces and i don't really know why.
maybe because she buys dvd's with me like there's no tomorrow.
maybe i just have to, coz she has the coolest shades, and i wanna be able to borrow them.
maybe just because i get a scholarship and she writes "congrats, biyatch" on a piece of paper and sticks it to my closet door with scotch tape.
maybe just because.

:)


do you have a little sister dork who lives next door? :)

i am the bravest coward i know

...
have you ever felt this way?

i've always thought that it was such an insultingly easy way out: a cop-out for cowards to make that rude decision on behalf of the person they're leaving to just up and decide that it would be easier to not be in each other's lives at all. it seems so convenient, running away. but really, it's an escapist move that, along with constricting your travels, also ultimately leads you right smack into what you try so hard to avoid. it's never pretty.
believe me, i know.
so many years have passed us by, so much time spent sparing too little effort for each other, that it all seems so irrelevant already, but i find myself now-- finally devoid of feeling in love with you-- finally wanting to exercise my right to get livid.

i'm angry with you.
because fuck, you're a jerk sometimes.
and oh, funny thing? you said that. to me. once. a loooong time ago. and i didn't want to believe you. because i always had more faith in you than even you did.

i've been "friends" with you for 9 exhausting years, i saw you through 3 girlfriends, i always made excuses to myself for you when you didn't pull through and through it all, i always believed that we were okay.

i'm SICK of this choking faith in you that had me jaded for this long.

...i'm angry at you for making it so hard for me just to get youto show up at my 18th bday party when you were all i wanted to see. i'm angry at you for telling me you missed me when i was in the States and that you'd take me to breakfast the very morning i landed, which you forgot. i'm angry at you for giving me that recycled-gift you gave me 3 christmases ago when i gave you a painting of your name in cubist abstract.
i'm angry... because i'm hurt. you probably don't even remember any of these, and I DO. ganoon kita minahal dati: na sa gitna ng patuloy na pagsasa-isang tabi mo sa damdamin ko, nagpatuloy parin ako. ginawa kong tanga ang sarili ko para sa iyo, at hindi mo man lang hiningi yun.

and i start to think like the cowards think: siguro mas mainam nalang na wala ka na sa buhay ko; baka may pag-asa pang maglaho ka na rin sa isipan ko, at lahat ng sakit ng pagsasa-isang tabi mo.
and i think,but i don't want to hate you. i can't.
i just... want to forget you. i never truly knew what i even meant to you, so as a last favor.. as a first favor for me please-- just to make it easy to get you out of my life-- let it stand that i am, as i always suspected i was to you, no-one. no-thing.

-----------------------------------

believe me, i've tried.

and i think i've succeeded. a little, at least. enough to rid myself of jaded feelings of unrequitedness, which, if i was dumb enough, would ridiculously translate into you--still-- being it.

and you're NOT.

kaya bakit ganoon?
para paring pinipiga ang puso ko kapag nakikita kita. kinikirot-kirot ako ng kung anumang natirang paghanga kapag nakikita ko ang mukha mo, naririnig kita, nahahawakan.

alam kong mahal kita, i have long since given up that impossible struggle of denying myself that. i care for you, no matter if you care for me or not. is that so strange? you ARE a friend to me after all, i've known you far longer than i have half of the people who call ME friend. and i loved you indefatigably once in my life. is it so strange that i should care for you?
pero hindi na ikaw ang minamahal ko. i won that fight. i've overcome the blowing heaviness of accepting that you're just never going to see me that way. give me that, at least. i won that fight.

Kaya bakit ganoon parin?

...maybe because somewhere along the hazy way, you crossed that line of superficially being in my life and you somehow made my lies true. you became my friend, and i, yours.
and no matter your ingloriously pedestrian treatment of me, you did see me through some pretty tough times. do you know that? have i told you yet how much that meant to me? you've made my life good in ways you can't even know. and i'm thankful.
i'm thankful...

so.
i give up. the ranting stops here. i give up even trying to get mad at you. but knowthat i also get tired of trying to reach out to you. even as a friend, i can't do this one-sided.

---------------------------------

i know you were the one who sang it, but i was the one who held true-- maybe not anymore in the way the words were written, but true in a ringing, deep and inexhaustible way, in any case:

mahal, mahal na mahal kita.
hindi ako magbabago, asahan mo ito
mahal, mahal na mahal kita. ang puso ko'y iyong iyo
asahan mong mahihintay sa'yo.

for what it's worth,
for all the inconstant happy and sad days of our lifetimes,
especially during times like these:

.... i'll always be right here.
if you just let me in, you'll know
at teh very least, you have ME.

the dull ache.

....usually signifies the permanence of a certain kind of pain.
when the mourning has been done with and it doesn't shatter you anymore, all that's left is a dull aching, like a thud to the gut, and it'll always just remind you that, "Pain was here"

i feel in such need of love.
and i know it because the dull ache leaves an unsettling feeling, like a hole inside my mouth where a fallen tooth should've been. it feels wrong.

i can't look for it-- i don't think i'd like to receive that kind of love again just yet.
i have all this love that surrounds me and yet, i'm so starkly aware that i AM in such need of love.
because i feel.. rough and uneven, like i was abysmally ugly. i've been wearing a lot of black, which is an annoying cliché. but it feels right, because the tedium that this pain is feels like a cliché. ...although, like all truisms, they became clichés for a reason, right?

so... iiii think i'm doing fine. i'm smiling, laughing.. all right, maybe going about my days a little too perfectly, but really, broken hearts have no cause to wish for idle time. SO: in true form, efficient day-planning-me frequently finds a lot quiet time, actually.

you know me. i'm not the prozac-nation kind of girl. i have a very simple philosophy of just not living through life with one-word grunts, and i do fine. when something threatens that, i just sort of... ignore it. i like being happy. because-- at the risk of sounding simple-- it keeps me from being, well, sad.
which, i have every right to be.

oh, let's just say it: as in the great mistaken way alanis morisette used it, isn't it ironic. don't you think?

......
in any case, all of that matters very little. not quite as much as knowing that that IS why, for the first time in seven years, there was no memoriam for my boy-love on his 8th 17th birthday.
i don't know how to be sad. i need to keep happy if i can't fucking stop remembering.

i blame you, you know. you, who showed me that love could never be a settlement.. you broke me out of ever being able to believe that love can be less than a miracle.

but i forgive you. for my pain when you loved me. for my pain when you left me. for all the pain i chose when i left all of them that came after you.

forgive and forget, they say.
forgiveness, i've learned slowly. it's the forgetness that's proving to be a bitch.

downpour.

i have a love/hate relationship with rain, mostly because it's the only thing that catches me when i'm running away-- looking to be found, really.

the rustling and rumbling of rain sounds exactly like the silence of pensiveness, it looks exactly like the kind of washing that makes the world look clean, when it's really not.
it's grey, and breathless and it falls like... like tears.

my heart hurts.

because the rain makes me think sometimesmof why i wasn't her for him, not the one whom he would have tried enough for.
or why he isn't him for me, really, when i truly wanted him to be. i think.
maybe.

don't worry: this passes, these kinds of thoughts.. it's just this stupid mocking pattering of rain and the loud thundering that gets me going. it's the sudden strike of lightning that makes it feel like the world's just taken an uncannily candid picture of you and you suddenly become vastly aware that you wouldn't have liked that shot.

you weren't smiling.

l'exhiliration avec vous est...

"Du bonheur à l'état pur,
brut, natif, volcanique, quel pied ! C'était mieux que tout.
Mieux que la drogue, mieux que l'héro, mieux que la dob, coke, craque, vis, joints, shit, shout, pète, gandja, mariane, cannabis, bayonne, buvard, acide, LSD, extasy ...
Mieux que le sexe, mieux que la fellation, 69, partouze, masturbation, kamasutra, tantrisme, evade thaïlandaise.
Mieux que le nutela, beurre de cacahuète, milk shake, mayonnaise. Mieux que les trilogies de Georges lucas, l'intégrale des bebettes show, la femme de Nino, mieux que le déhanché des moupins, Marilyn, la stroumphette, Lara Croft, Naomi Campbell, le grain de beauté de Cindy Crawford.
Mieux que la face caché de la baie d'Along, et celui d'Hendrix.Mieux que le premier pas d'Amstrong sur la lune, le space mountain, la ote du père noël, la fortune de Bill Gates, les NDE, la résurrection de Lazare, les transes du Dalai Lama, toutes les picouses de testostérone de Shwarzi, que le collagène dans les lèvres de Pamela Anderson, mieux que WoodStock et les rave party les plus orgasmiques, mieux que la défonce de SAM de Rambo, Morrison & Mandela, Castaméren.


Mieux que la liberté, Mieux que la VIE ... "





Pure, raw, explosive pleasure!
Better than drugs, better than smack!
Better than a dope-coke-crack-fix-shit-s

hoot-sniff-ganja-marijuana-blotter-acid-ecstasy!
Better than sex, head, 69, orgies, masturbation, tantrism, Kama Sutra or Thai doggy-style!
Better than banana milkshakes! Better than George Lucas's trilogy, the muppets and 2001! Better than Emma Peel, Marilyn, Lara Croft and Cindy Crawford's beauty mark!
Better than the B-side to Abbey Road, Jimmy Hendrix and the first man on the moon! Space Mountain, Santa Claus, Bill Gates' fortune, the Dalai Lama, Lazarus raised from the dead! Schwarzenegger's testosterone shots, Pam Anderson's lips!

Woodstock, raves... Better than Sade, Rimbaud, Morrison and Castaneda!

Better than freedom, BETTER THEN LIFE!

...a Thank You to you, my friends, who are larger than life. more than all the food we've ever eaten these 19 years... :)

on smiling.

we would have celebrated our second year 2 days ago.

2 days ago last year, we were feeding ducks by the river and cockatoos at our rented cabin loft 2 minutes from the beach. around this time 2 days ago last year, we were curled up in bed eating our anniversary cheesecake. we were happy.
2 days ago this year, i painted my toenails a horrid shade of happy barbie pink and i got wrecked with my friends. around this time 2 days ago, i had my 1st big cry since we broke up.


and it felt so real.
to not have you.
it feels so real now, and GODDAMN, I HURT.

i see you on street walls and i hear you in songs.
in all the songs.
i smell you in my first waking breath
and before the first lucid moments of my mornings,
i still reach to my left and hug my pillow,
thinking it's you.

..kailan lilipas ang "tayo" sa puso't isip ko?

"if you're lucky, it never will"

i just have to keep remembering that you're right, razi. i know you are. but the thing is... 2 days ago, we would've celebrated our second year.
and i shared LIFE with him.
so i'm just feeling a little deflated.
barren.
KULANG.


but i still smile. throughout all days.
so i get to get credit even for feeling like shit.

Thank you, Mark; Thank You, God for this broken heart.

where do i start? ..how does anyone start again when they reach the end of anything?

--------------------------------------


sometimes-- just sometimes-- i wish i were the swoony, weeping kind of girl, and not the kind who breaks up with someone and wishes that he finds a good girl to love him... because then, this wouldn't feel so goddamn anticlimactic.... because i don't think anyone really understand just how broken my heart is, not even him.

my telling of the story of how i loved a boy and how a boy loved me falls so short of exactly how incredibly, how inexpressibly, how unbelievably we did love one another. my storytelling doesn't do that justice and because of that, i have no one, really, who can tell me, "this pain will go away. this pain that you need to feel now is part of the love you share, because it's the kind that won't die-- the kind that shouldn't die, so now you both must embrace it better as friends. but this pain will pass, and you'll both be okay, okay?"

and i yearn for that.
this breaking heaviness in my heart yearns to be told something kind, something that tells me that we loved each other, and people knew.

i hope people saw us and wished that they had that same kind of love in their lives, because really truly, it was that kind of love: it was ember from which the best friendships are forged.

-------------------------------------

even though i broke up with him, i will never let anyone say one bad word about my Mark.

any of you would be supremely lucky to find a person as good as him to love, and I WISH THAT FOR YOU, FOR ALL OF YOU.

and if God ever wills for you to have your heart broken too, i wish for you a man like the boy i loved and who loved me: someone who will love you incandescently and break your heart simply because it's the best gift of love he can offer you.
then, you'll have gained a good friend, just like i did. he's going to be a very good friend, i just know it. we're going to be friends now.

and i... well, somehow i'll have to scrimp up what energy i have and start de-mark-ifying my space, room... my life.

but like i told him last night, it's going to feel a little bare for a while.
"a little teddi bear?", he joked.
"yeah", i said. "...a little teddi-bare."

.

confession

confession?

i love Memoirs of a Geisha.
i love that Sayuri and the Chairman end up together even after war and separation; even after Nobu-san.

She only needed to stay true. Time always takes care of things.




hah.
figure that one out, punk.

l'incendie

-- and after the incredible long week of nothing, i finally won't be able to remember anymore why the hell we're being this hardhearted, and with all the fire of anger, doubt, confusion, grief and love, i'll call you and ask,

"bakit hindi ka tumatawag?"

"bakit hindi ka tumatawag?"

and i'll say, "kasi... kasi natatakot ako. na pag nakausap na kita, maghihiwalay na tayo. buong linggo, sinusubukan kong isipin ano kaya kung hindi ka na akin, hindi na ako iyo? "

"at?"

"at wala pa akong maisagot. pakiramdam ko kapag ako'y nanghihina, na mas madali nang bumaklas sa isa't-isa. mas masakit pa, pag nagtatapang-tapangan ako, na pakiramdam kong kaya pa nating lumaban... masakit kasi hindi ko alam iniisip mo. para akong sinusunog ng mga tanong na walang sagot.
kaya wala. wala akong maisagot sayo. wala akong lakas na pakawalan ka, lalong wala para ipaglaban 'to nang mag-isa.
wala akong alam kung hindi yung pagkukunwaring saya sa umaga, at ang bigat ng mga gabing hinahanap-hanap kita. hinahanap-hanap mo pa rin ba ako?"


...hinahanap-hanap mo pa rin ba ako?

where do we go from here?

because, like lesh said, "i guess that's what happens in the end, you start thinking about the beginning."

is it the end? i still believe you to be the funniest person i know, and you don't even have to try. i still know how your palm feels when you take my hand and you stick them in your pocket to keep them warm.
i still remember how happy we were are.
and one of the worst things about this are the people who'll say. "yeah, i saw that coming". because I didn't.

i love you... in such a fantastic way that it doesn't feel real at times; the happiness makes me feel out of my body, like some strange giggling shit out of my own self.

i love you... but every day that you don't talk kills that. slowly. ridiculously.

and i find that i can't... just be convenient for you. i can't be the effort you won't give, the package you won't send, the call you won't make, the brush aside-able, the hermitic sacrifice.. i can't just be your good night girl....
------------------

i LOVE you.
but i want-- i deserve-- to feel loved too....

left wanting

-------------------


derek: i met a girl last night. i met a girl at Joe's

meredith: (challenging) should i be scared?

derek: should you be scared that i met a girl last night? No. should you be scared that that was the highlight of my week? Yes.

Keep faith, Hold on.

09.10.07
Keep faith. Hold on.
i trust enough to keep strong
----

be still. remember.
the time's too late for waking
and sanity and cautiousness
be none; in love be taken
the whispers, the shaking
perspective serves to hush
i won't let moonrise tell me
no sunrise dreams for us
time's already told you
our beaten hearts are strong
let go, let go of doubt and fear
Keep faith, my love, hold on.
.

little women.

i have been asked before, "how are you still friends with the same people for almost 19 years?", and it's no secret, really: proximity.

i've lived next door to one of my best friends for those 19 years, and then 20 yards further on opposite sides live another two. the others live never more than 5 streets away. we were toddlers, pubescents, awkward adolescents and feisty young adults together. and now we are blossoming in an awkward sort of maturity that takes us so much farther away from each other than merely 5 streets.

i am proud. we are on our way to becoming doctors and entrepreneurs, and i can't be any more proud as i am now, knowing that i was part of all those years of dreaming and scheming about reaching this stage in our lives. i have pictures of years of boot cut pants, elephant pants, super super flares and skinny jeans. Time and really ugly pictures are mere testaments to how we've evolved, and evolved together.

my sisters---
my sisters who climbed aratilis trees with me, learned how to play the piano with me, built forts, cooked rice in Nido cans and discovered boys with me; --- they've become women. and i have too, along with them.

and women.. well, women go places.
women travel and become wives and mothers and thingies-in-law. women find a place to settle in and have little people who will climb trees and play instruments and discover boys/girls themselves. and in that process, sometimes, women leave their sisters behind.

i know, i know, i'm getting ahead of myself; but can you really help that feeling? how do you fight an overactive imagination that makes phrases like, "we'll keep in touch" be things that make you shit your pants?

..mac, one of my bestest friends, is leaving in 2 weeks for a job far far away. i can't help but KNOW that when we have our inumans, when we starbucks, when we go out to movies, wala na siya. she will start the trend. after her, flor, then mica and me; we'll all go places soon enough.

i mean, these are my sisters we're talking about. you don't just know people for 19 years and leave it at a couple of tears and "we'll keep in touch". really, how does anyone keep goodbye in stride? how do you keep from being a casualty of growing up?
....how do you make it as the one who says goodbye?

i don't know. i'm sorry, i don't know...

all i know is, yeah, i'm scared: for the ones who are leaving and for the ones who are left behind.
because it's-- bittersweet, i think they call it-- letting your sisters grow up... and growing up yourself.

All I know is: my sisters and i, we've been friends for 19 years and somewhere between our braces and our boys, it was said, if only because it was true: "the most beautiful thing is, it doesn't even have to be said anymore; but just for the record, friends-- sisters-- forever."



Mac, especially for you, my beautiful friend, who is going to start us on our woman-ness, i want you to always remember that that'll never change. it'll never NOT be true.
with a giant hug and tears and a laugh, "we'll keep in touch. i love you."

-teddi.

The Shining

hi, old friend.

i have taken to writing again, and i don't know what it means.
all i know is that i am awake, and i very disturbingly realize that it's a midnight again.
lately, it's becoming clearer to me how pointlessly roundabout most thoughts are instead of simple and succint, like they should be.

i wish... i wish life didn't work like a roundabout.

i wish people could stop coming home feeling like too little butter spread on too much bread. haha, i'm sorry, i don't know what the point is.
i have such random thoughts and all of them point to so many other thoughts: pointFULL, although they lead me everywhere and they eventually get me so lost that they point to nothing, really. roundabout pointfulness becomes so point.....LESS.

*nervous laugh*
i'm sorry.. i may be wasting 2 minutes of your life here, but i just don't know how to reconcile myself with not thinking.. and yet, keeping all of life in stride.

how do we just feel how we feel when... when--

-------------

---when there's nothing to understand, because it's in EVERYTHING..? you come home exhausted, after a day not unlike any other. But just the coming home-- to him, to her-- becomes the event that makes it one of the most gloriously lived days you've ever had.

...and the coming through the garage becomes the point.
the very ordinary dinner is the point.
tuesday $2 movies are the point.
and we... we become the WHY.


after dinner, we go back to the bedroom and i lie tired on the blue quilt that covers your bed. i'm thinking of nothing, and staring at you so simply saturates me until i have no more of my usual roundabout questions.
you look at me with such playful eyes, and you smile as if you knew that right there was all i wanted to be. you are cocky and sheepish and i'd never felt so full.
you fiddle around with your computer while i breathe deep and let mysef surrender to the tiredness i feel. then you smile and soft guitar starts playing...

"Faith pours from your walls, drowning your calls
Ive tried to hear, you're not near.
Remembering when I saw your face
Shining my way, pure timing"

Now, I smile. it's a quiet moment and i am caught off guard. i bury my head in your pillow and i stop feeling afraid. i only feel happy.

"Now Ive fallen in deep, slow silent sleep
Its killing me, Im dying"

Ah, my favorite line. actually, the only line i memorized.
i lift my face from your pillow and i try not to show you the tears welling up in my eyes.
you've touched me.

"To put a lil bit of sunshine in your life"

"Soliel all over you, warm sun pours over me
Soliel all over you... Warm sun"

...you're just looking at me, and you look at me like you really see me.
My smile fades now as i hold my hand out for you to accept.
'come to bed', i whisper.

"But now I'm dry of thoughts, wait for the rain
Then it's replaced, sun setting"

"....And suddenly we're in love with everything...."

Your hands are strong and warm over mine and your eyes are happy.
I want to thank you, but my face is buried in your chest.
It's a quiet moment. And we-- i think-- were both caught off guard.

"Soliel all over you, warm sun pours over me
Soliel all over you, Warm sun..."

------------

This is for you. the 'thank you' i never got to say, for -- i don't know-- the song?
for the embrace,
and the quiet,
and the fullness.

for us, who love amidst roundabout thoughts.

for YOU-- when all that's right is to feel the way you feel when you're in the arms of the one you should be with.
you are the point.

here's to hoping :)

i was the great run away-er. when it came to saying goodbye and never looking back, i wrote the book. literally.
because when God showered patience, i was in bed under a heavy-duty umbrella under a roof covered in three sealants. i never had enough patience to stand the anxiousness before the hurt, to stand the pain before the lesson, and learn the lesson before the happiness.... until now.

you know how you wait for that one person to waltz into your life and literally take your breath away? that guy who, when he walks into a room, makes breathing a little harder? well, for me he waltzed back into my life around 10 months ago and though i'd had a crush on him since i was 6 years old, he just sort of found a way to make breathing a little harder again.
..i'm happy to say that i've had recurring asthma since. ;p

but because i was a great run away-er, during times like these when waiting patiently becomes essential, my piety is put to the test. i get so scared that here i am investing my all in the extraordinary feeling of sharing a life with the good man i'd hoped and waited and prayed for, and just because of distance and time, he might lose his love for me and i might lose him. so i become protective and defensive and some days, a million voices float through my head, asking if i'm actually SURE about this. without reassurance, it does get hard to fight sometimes.

i'm not, in any case, a perfect girlfriend. most of time, my boyfriend doesn't know what to do with me and my mood swings. a lot times, i don't know what to do with him.
there are days-- days when there's no time, no energy, no laughter, and no right mood-- that the apprehensions get so bad that all the thoughts you're trying to fight come crashing back. the wave of defensiveness hits you, and while those millions of voices ask over and over if it's all still worth fighting for, suddenly the running shoes are looking at me again, my IMpatience telling me that this was the very hurt i'd never stayed around for.

but "pride", paolo said-- "if you let it rule you, pride hurts the one thing it has sworn to protect."

there are days-- days when there is just no time, no energy and none of the old laughter-- that the apprehensions get so bad.
but just because it's YOU, i catch myself realizing that somewhere in the mumble jumble of the he said/ she said, in some way or another, you've already said something that in your heart meant that you're already trying to understand me; na nagpaparaya ka na. and then nasasaakin nalang yun to mellow out the moodiness and remember that just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to, doesn't mean they don't love you with all they've got.

...which is ironic.
because "all you've got" is all anyone can hope for, really. and even when i was running away, "with all you've got" IS exactly how i always wanted to be loved.

if only because maybe you help me to fight harder during the days that i need to fight harder, there are times when i wish that you reassured me more, that you were more vocal about telling me that our us-plans are what you want for us too, or more showy in reminding me that i am in your thoughts even during the day.
... but when we talk, i hear how tired you are. i hear the desperation to just not say a word and just sleep. i hear the effort you put in making weird noises that make me laugh, i hear how much energy it takes out of you to keep me on the phone even though all your energy's been drained already.
i hear the effort you put in, and it's enough for me. it's all i ever wanted.

so i feel guilty sometimes, when i need to reassure myself that you do actually welcome our us-plans too, that you look forward to having a future close to each other... i never know when to ask you about them. i know thay seem like very big plans, scary plans... but somewhere in it being intimidating, here's to hoping that you find the good in them too, their potential to make us the happiest we can be. together.

see what i did there? see what i did? i made the scary plans seem purdy. hehe. ;p
filled with our silly notions of dodgy brick mailboxes and starting with an apartment and working our way up to a mansion with central airconditioning just. for. our. dog.
...here's to hoping-- that through the fatigue and the backbreaking effort, the waiting and the complicated paperwork, through the distance and the lack of time-- that we never lose sight of that.
if you close your eyes and concentrate enough, you can almost see us laughing while you plaster the brick wallpaper to the tin mailbox, and then the sacrifices just seem like chickenshit.

i want you to always know that even though you're not very vocal in reassuring me that we'll never lose sight of this, the effort you put in keeping us a part of your everyday is all the assurance i ask God for.
and i truly am sorry.. for all the nights when the apprehensions get ugly, when the need to be reassured gets to be too much. for the days of impatience and kung nakukulitan ka na sa lahat ng good morning messages ko and nappressure ka mag-reply. hehe.

everyday, i'm scared that i might scare you away.

so, thank you.. sa hindi pagsabay sa pms ko, for telling me that we're bigger than all our pissy days put together, for sharing your day with me kahit pagod ka na, and for saying that we have all the time in the world, in any case.
i guess we'll make up for all the days apart then. maybe i even deserve some spanking. ;p

i remember, one time, thanking you for destroying the walls that i had built to keep myself in.
"those walls are shattered now.. you've gotten me out and you make me want to take care of you.. you make me want to know if you've had a proper dinner yet, or what time you're driving home from uni, just so i know you're safe... you make me look forward to telling you, 'Hwoy gisiiiiing. pahinging kumot!' hehehehe. "

one time, you said to me, "don't be sorry babe. all that matters is that we're doing this together, so you'll never be alone."
"i know", i said. "i'm just scared that i might scare you away is all."
and you said to me, "aw babe, you've had your chance to scare me away and i'm still here, aren't i? and i hope i don't scare you away either coz i'd like to think i've got the whole non-threatening, non-scary vibe going."
i told you, "never."
and you said, "besides, i can't really keep myself away from you. you're pretty sticky that way."
"well you're pretty sticky that way too.", i told you. "...i hope you dont feel blah anymore"
"no... i don't feel blah anymore."
but this time, imagine it bombarded with my smiley-addiction. oh, and with one perfectly placed smiley that you put right at the end.

so yeah. while i may not be "sure" about how the plans are gonna go, or how the future's going to be, i AM sure about the person. and the magic.

you.
me.
this.
US.

...i am sure.


so here's to hoping... that faith in love will always be enough for you and me.

the word and the feeling

SMITTEN.

it's not a word usually employed alongide my name, but if you're talking about blushing reflexes, excessive and unnecessary smiling, sighing and that tingly feeling in the pit of your stomach that just won't go, then hell yeah, employ away.
because i actually think i am. ;p
the last time i felt it was.. i think still with Joshua Jackson, and he was still the captain of the Mighty Ducks. faaar too long ago. i had forgotten the feeling.

we were talking about the nothings and everythings of our day, and he suddenly said, "there's a word for this, you know... :Smitten.'"
and yes, i did know. i do feel. and though it never was present in my immediate vocabulary, it really is the most apt word to describe it.

So, Thank You....
for giving me the word, and the feeling... for captivating me so much that i can't even puke when i think of exactly how smitten i am.

...for kissing me first thing in the morning, for saying that my sister is witty and funny and for meaning it when you tell me i'm beautiful. for introducing me to sticky date pudding and buying us Smith's thai sweet chilli chips even though it makes our breath smell like fart.

...for never telling me that we would swim oceans for each other, for accepting my history and assuring me that past is past and for understanding that we are still two people, one continent apart, with lives away from each other that we have yet to meet and get to know, merge, embrace and adjust.

...for saying, in any case, that we have all the time in the world, so it's okay to take it slow and that you "just have a feeling that we'll be alright."

For raising me that dollar. ;p

So, for the patience, the unfailing and most un-patronizing sarcasm and for making this incredible leap of faith.
for being with me through the processes of guardedness and denial, uncertainty, hesitation, politeness and second thoughts, discernment and resolve and the inevitability-- necessity-- of openly falling in love. if only because we already are.
for "smitten": both the word and the feeling.

...Thank you...

for taking my sad words away.

the good goodbye.

“enough”, the guy from love actually said. “enough now.”

This… is a goodbye letter.

i find that i can't... not want to look at you forever.
i want to say what burke said to cristina when he was giving her an out. "i won't hold a grudge. i have to take care of me. i don't expect you to take care of me, but i have to take care of me. and if you can't stay for this... i won't hold a grudge."

i see you, and i feel like.. i don't want to be you.

i don't want to hold a grudge. and as hurtful as it is, accepting how much i cared for you because i allowed you to break me, i can't-- won't-- let you take responsibility for piecing me back together. Because i won't have anything left.
because i had plans.
finn said, "see, you do this thing where you stop making plans. because you had plans, and then [something happens] and your plans disappear.”

i had plans. and they were good plans. but you came and i made plans but i left and they disappeared. then you came back and you sort of broke me, and you broke the plan, man. and i just didn't know how to make wanting the plans to come true disappear...... i was undone.
but i didn't want to hold a grudge, because i still HAVE plans, and so i tried to move along as far as my pieces would carry me.

OH SCREW THE PLANS!!!!!!!!

…..have i ever told you, though.... that you being in my life was the first time i ever made any sort of claim into the future? You were going to be my future-person. i was going to list you down under that little space in my planner for emergency contact person. Yeah.. you were my person. Isn’t that a hoot?!

But/And despite that fact and the not-having-made-too-many-plans-past-that-point, I feel like I have so much to thank you for. If anything, you forced me to learn how good it felt to stay, to not be the one who got tired of fighting. You made me a fighter, you know. I’ve never fought for anyone before the way I fought for you, or at least, felt like fighting the way I wanted to.
And now, ironically enough, I have absolutely no regrets. Having used to love and forever hate you, I battled with closure, found the difficulty in cutting my losses and moving on, learned the fine line between acceptance and resentment in the face of rejection and discovered the possibility of promises that can be kept.

I’m with a good man now, partly thanks to you, because you taught me the importance of and the contentment in cherishing those things that I do and do not have with him. We have big and tiny lily pods of commitment, passion, selfishness and unselfishness and willingness to discover what we will and will not have or be together. I fight for him everyday.
He proved to me what we should’ve learned back then: that there is nothing to think about.
LOVE should have always been enough.

And at the end of the day, I thank you for having taught me that grudges only served to keep you stuck.
You-- perennially unforgiving and keeping with your pride-- you taught me, at the very least, the beauty of a good goodbye.

Just enough tears to want to go on. ……I hold no grudge.

unspeakably so

he came out all red and crying thunderbolts, and his name became romain danyl villamayor-roxas. he weighed 6lbs 9oz and he measured 50.5 cms long. he's our little hercules and he grips ninang teddi's fingers like there's no tomorrow.

my friends said, "grabe, nanganak NA si des, i can't believe it", and it gives such a sense of the finally in the whole birthing that it makes you think like nanganak na was the end goal and this is it. but it's not. it's just the beginning and we're all in it for the long haul.

i tried to not cry, but inside the little freezing-cold chapel inside st. lukes hospital, i couldn't hold it back anymore. all the problems and all the heaviness was just so... unsaid. but still, we push dying to the back because especially during times like this, living comes first.
and i look around at my best friends, praying scattered around the chapel, thinking how at such a momentous occassion like this, we still couldn't get our group to be complete.

i remember a time when the most of our problems was how to get a treehouse like they had in the movie now&then, or how to get out of a scolding because we were caught climbing the neighbor's fence for some aratilis fruits. now, there's going away and broken hearts and having babies and dealing with boyfriends who cheat on you blatantly and staying with them anyway.
problems get so much bigger as we age, that i can't see what the fuss is about growing old. it's just so saddening to think that it was the smaller problems we had time for, that living is robbing us of the luxury of getting to be there every time one of us needs everyone else. it's nothing that you can blame on anything, really, but the heaviness of the realization is still ungraciously there.
you have more best friends than you can count with two hands, but the reality is you're still gonna have to learn somehow to rely on yourself and deal with crying alone more than a couple of times.
we all have our own problems, but in the grand scheme of things, i don't know yet why life isn't designed in such a way that we can take everything one at a time. i would like God to know that that would be great. because then, i wouldn't feel so humongously pathetic when i text my 8 best friends if anyone is free for even a 2-hr isaw session... nor feel so bad when none of them are.
i'm not very fond of begging and it takes a lot out of me to have to ask for time like this. but God knows i have more than just a little weight that i've been keeping in, and i'm not in a position to put pride first.

maybe... maybe i'd like to be able to tell you that i'm thinking of not joining the UN anymore, because it took italy away from me. maybe i don't want to go to australia but i just need to get away. maybe i'd like to tell you that i've been giving my sister a hard time lately because all my frustrations are being poured out on her. maybe i'm scared that no one will have time anymore. maybe i can't let go of our little ateneo rituals, like the pseudo-celebratory popsicle for thesis or the tupi-tupi games during social psych. maybe i have to please tell someone--anyone-- just how badly broken my heart is, and how italy was going to be the start of healing and how that's all gone now and now i feel stuck and unmovable from this quicksand i've fallen into. maybe i'd like to tell you that i actually feel bad too for not being as cheerful about things as before but that i can't help it. maybe i miss laughing like i really meant it. maybe i'd just like to speak, uninterrupted, about how much resentment i feel for not being able to openly love the person i love, and how for the most part, it hurts because i've lost the person i liked and my best friend in a way that never actually started, nor stopped. maybe i'd like to tell you how much i want to start again, how much i want to go away, just so i'm not here, where i feel full-force evrything i lost, and everything i'm losing. maybe i'd like to scream at you how much i've always hated change. maybe i want to tell you guys that i feel like we're losing each other. slowly but steadily, this no-time-for-you thing is eating away at a friendship that had always been founded on closeness and time. maybe i want to be heard for once, and not be shy about sharing and seeming like a doofus, and feel guilty about the world have bigger problems than me. maybe i don't want to be a little slot on your fancypants starbucks planner.
exhale...

but hey, i've gotten used to listening, you know. it may seem like i talk all the time, but i listen a lot too, and i listen sincerely. many people who call me friend are people whose stories i know, but who don't know mine, and i'm fine with it. but just maybe, sometimes, tanungin nyo lang ako, "kamusta ka?" and mean it. have time for my answer.

i need you guys. my barkada, my best friend, my speed friends, my high school friends, my college friends and benchmates, mio pane and my best guy friend in the whole world... you guys are my family. and time, distance, boyfriends, girlfriends, fights, squabbles, and generally just other things to do.....
i don't want to lose you to them.

and selfish as it may sound... i don't want you either to lose me.

known

it's that glance, the one you throw so shyly and discreetly, not wanting to be seen. never wanting to be felt, because it would feel too.... needy.

isolde, princess of ireland, whispered to tristan of aragon, "if things were different, if we lived in a[different] world, would you be with me?"
and he said to her, "that world does not exist."
"...i'll pretend it's you", she said. and with tears held back, she went with another man. a good man; but another.

and he glanced at her, his head half-turned; his eyes, prideful and hurt, needing to not completely betray the direction of his stare, the yearning he felt and the resentment he bottled up inside for having to live with a broken heart.
it's a glance that looks, a glance that fights itself in saying, "turn around one last time and look at me. you should be with me."

" what good is a life, with no one to share
the light of the moon or the honor of a swear?/
we belong together, like the open seas and shore.
wedded by the planet's force, we've both been spoken for./
All this indecision, all this independent strength,
still we've got our hearts on safe, we've got our hearts on safe.//"

i feel... broken without you. but i'm getting along well, nonetheless because the world was right. we'd be okay in any case.
but sometimes, just because you're my best friend, i still think of you. not that often anymore, but i still do.
...you're my best friend. ...isn't that stupid? we've bitten, broken and gotten profusely angry at each other, but things are what they are, and i live in this world everyday, where for everything that reminds me of you, i just give that glance. my days are filled with glances.

i.. i wish we could stop long enough to explain to each other everything that wasn't. i wish i could look at you and say, "don't worry. we just have no scars to show for happiness, but we're doing okay. right?" ...and you'll nod. and, contented, i'll walk away and take the chances i keep passing up to be with another. a good man, but another.

just one glance more. if we ever see each other again, you'll see it. if you ever look at me again, you'll know it, and i hope you'll still know all it ever wished to say.
please tell me we haven't lost that too. because that, of all things, meant much... to me, at least. you meant a whole lot to me.


and all we have now are glances.

choice

i've been watching grey's anatomy non-stop for around 5 days now. my eyes are so filled with white floating dots, it's not even funny anymore.
you'd think that 77++ hours on laptop and limewire would numb my mind (not to mention my ass) so much that i wouldn't be able to recognize a rock when it hit me.
sorry. i did, this rock.

doctor derek shepherd was standing by himself in the middle of the bridge walkway that connected the two wings of seattle grace hospital. quiet, it almost looks like an airport hangar where the vastness just serves to make the alone-ness feel comfortable. he stared at the dusk that was setting over seattle; no sun, just.... dimness.
he stared out of the glass-paned wall that looked out onto the wide-stretched gardens, looking at nothing, thinking about nothing, really, except maybe everything.
he dropped his gaze, and at that moment, you felt the emptiness that he was feeling.
because you knew it.
one drop of his eyes gave you all the hint you needed to back off, because this was alone-time. at that moment, he was running away, turning his back, breathing away from-- and amidst-- all the issues that stared him in the face.

choices. you want to be able to have them, of course, but not like this, not like now, where there shouldn't be any. people should never be part of the multiple choice, because no one ever deserves to be considered the wrong answer. there, no one should have to be made to choose.

sometimes, you just have to have some alone-time as well, and it's the same for everyone: heavy eyes, gazes dropping, heavy breathes, sighs, frustration, a couple of teardrops, and sometimes -- all the time-- guilt.

and there you are, on the outside of the glass-paned wall, looking shyly at the person who's staring out into the dimness and, for the seconds that he runs away, you understand why he's running.
but you are one of the choices, so what do you do?
you fight. and you take any bone he throws your way, not because you're desperate, but just because he's the one who's throwing it. it's a... harsh reality, and it's something you wish you could sort out. so when moving along as if everything were okay doesn't seem to work anymore, go.
stop moving.
soon, you'll take your turn standing alone on the bridge walkway, and you'll sigh, yourself. you'll want to run away, yourself, thinking that while you thank god that you're not the one who has to choose, you also pray to please be chosen, or at least, to have the strength to never think of yourself as the wrong answer.

and then you step out of that bridge, and it's the world again. you can't stay in-between forever, because people do not deserve to just wait for you while you drop your gaze.
CHOOSE.
if only because we used to really love each other, or love each other now.

"i had an aunt who, when she poured anything for you, would say, 'say when'. /and i never do./ because sometimes, the glass is bottomless; and all you want, really, is the possibility of just a little MORE."

for you whom i know i have wronged, the one whose answer is always just to run away:
"you really are satan. if satan were to take physical form, he'd be you."
"stop being so petty."
"stop being an adulterous bitch."
"you will forgive me one day, right? remember, there was a time when you thought i was your best friend?"
"there was a time when i thought you were the love of my life."
...." derek... haven't you ever thought that maybe, even though i am satan and an adulterous bitch, that i still am the love of your life?"

i give you this

"the most tragic thing is how beautiful tragedy seems in retrospect."

WHAT AM I TO YOU?

the beautiful tragedy
the blast from the past
your one true love
your first
your last
your boon companion when you're raging horny
friend
lover
enemy
best friend
nothing
or everything.
SOMEONE. just someone.

tell me, explain it to me in mistakes and stolen kisses and i'll take it, whatever IT is.
but to what point, i don't know.
because i lied, okay? i know that i am leaving and it is sinking in. and so every kiss that you think was a mistake actually was not.
i love kissing you... because words have always failed us, and it just leaves the lies to pile on even more. so we kiss, and i hate to tell you this, but i mean it. every goddamned minute of it.

every moment we touch, every moment i close my eyes and every single time i feel your hands on mine, i am telling you,

"I LOVE YOU. I don't want to leave you but i know i'll have to, and as everyday bring us closer to being apart, i want to spend as much time as i can right here, in your arms. give me this. let me be selfish another couple of months more, and in no time at all, it'll be over. i'm not asking you to give your life to me, i'm not asking you for the love that could have been ours, mine. but i am saying, 'let us get hurt. if you want us to be, then let us be. stop thinking about tomorrow'. because in all nakedness and honesty, even you know that ALL WE HAVE IS TODAY. this, right here. and all i'm asking is that you hold my hand in yours and know, at the very least, that you hold my hand, my heart, and my life. you hold me and all i want, really, is to hold you too."

i won't say it out loud, because it'll scare you away. don' tell me it won't, because i know. i won't delude myself into thinking that when you give us a night, you give us forever.
i know. and i'm trying to understand.
all because i..... well, you know why, right?


i don't know what's going to happen. i don't know what life will be like with you, without you, you and i with someone else. i don't have answers, sorry.

all i want to say, i can't say. because-- using words that only serve to cover what i'm truly feeling-- if you really want it, i give you this:
freedom. from me.

no. yes.

life is chaotic right now. good chaos, bad chaos and everything else in between.
these days, i find myself spending a lot of time at the church reflectory and for a few quiet getting-away-from-life minutes, i sit and talk and i listen., "WAIT.", He keeps saying to me. so i do.

I always say to my friends, you have to trust that whoever's out there will take away your pain if there's no reason for it anymore. there's no such thing as pointless pain. but pointless melancholy? all too much.

and so, goodbyes are in order. God help me, in less than 3 weeks, i'm saying goodbye to the Ateneo, hand in hand with a thousand-plus others who have no clue either what's going to happen next. along with that, is goodbye to some friends whom we'll share lots and lots of parting tears with, but will never make an effort to ever track down again.
then, there are the friends whom we will want to see again, but can't anymore. but in a few months or so, we'll finally get and chuck down our throats the fact that none of us will have as much time for going out and having fun as before. we'll all be part of the workforce or the MBA-force or the MA-ers force; and pinstripes will introduce itself as our new best friend. "before" will be word we'll use often, mostly accompanied by fond smiles and sighs that say, oh-those-were-the-days-when-[insert own memory lane anecdotes here].
sigh. oh-those-were-the-days-when-bleep-bleep-KPR-was-still-katawang-pangromansa.

and then, it's goodbye, philippines for me.
i recently wrote in a letter i will forever cherish, regret and be proud of, "one day, i'll already be the next oprah/ i'll go to italy, migrate to the states/ find myself a cute brunette and fall in love/ and the world will be okay, nevertheless//"
it's a plan. a heartbreaking one, but it's something to go with. like i added at the end, "one day/ we'll see the point in all of this. and it'll make sense why the hell [we met] in the first place//"
when i go, i'll leave behind a whole lifetime's worth of friends, people i've known all of 20 years, college friends, holy friends, boy friends, ex-boyfriends, girl friends, semi-friends, "friends", hi-ing buddies and my bestest bestest friend in the whole wide universe.
saying goodbye to her, and my barkada, i think, will be one of the hardest things i'll ever have to do.

but you said Yes to this, teddi. you knew at the very beginning, it was going to be year of changes, and your waiting is finally paying off. LIFE, as you wished it, is happening now and there's no more saying no. Italy came calling just a couple of Fridays ago... are you really going to let that pass you by for a guy who doesn't want to be with you??? the love of your life, sure, but a guy who doesn't want to be with you, nonetheless. e hindi nga nya kayang tanggapin na possible talagang after 4 years.... whatever. point is, would you really???
......YES......
..NO.

goodbye, you. you know what? maybe i have been a little too selfish, a little too insistent in pushing for the things i want, but you are too; in an all too ironic, almost funny way, you are selfish in pushing away the things you don't want. the thing is... those "things" are US. the people who love you most are the people who scare you most of all. you're so afraid to be left, that you'd rather have that YOU do all the leaving behind. believe me, in know.
...all these years, you weren't the only one who's had to pick himself up. again.

but i'm still here, lyf. soon to be 3000 miles away and probably one cute italian guy richer, but here... now and forever.

you'll always have me.

one day, someone will tell you also, "stop trying to fight. no one wants to hurt you."
and one day, "...i'll already be the next oprah, and you'll be the hot german attache and i'll go to italy and migrate to the states and find myself a cute brunnete. and you... will find someone, and you'll love her like i always knew you could love. and the world will be fine, nevertheless."


I hope, at least, that you'll let me say goodbye to you, let yourself say goodbye to me. because i don't think that honest to goodness shouting at each other was a pretty way to end things... as friends. but, at least, like the last thing i said to you weeks ago.... i'm glad we're okay.

sharpshooter.

sometimes, lyf, what we are is spiteful. especially when we feel like we need to be.
we were always good at that, remember? hurting each other??
and you, like a true artiste, always knew how to shoot exactly where it hurts.

i used to think that this infallible ability to tick each other off just showed how in sync we are. now, a part of me can't help but ask why even time wasn't enough to tell us that love-- true love-- was never meant to be used for cruel words and hurting.

it should have been funny, because after all this time, all we ever learned from the waiting is merely to desensitize ourselves from all the pain, any pain. our pain, pain like only you and i could cause you and i.
but it's not funny, it's not. it's ironic.
because... funnily enough, through all the perfect stabbing and back and forth vengeful button-pushing, all i did was hurt myself even more.

my love for you as it was when this whole craziness started out never actually thought of ever making you feel guilty, or telling you that all the hurt was your fault. it never meant to take sides before and it didn't start out with the purpose of telling you, "all you mean to me is only what you show i mean to you."
it didn't ask for anything in return.
it wasn't selfish, lyf, believe me. it wasn't defensive, and cruel and self-righteous.
it wasn't this.

and now... well, what are we now, anyway? we're not even friends.
.....too late?

yes. four years too late, i realize that it wasn't the stories and the satire or the the lack of happy endings that made the agony unbearable.... it was you. it was ME.

i had forgotten, lyf, that all i ever wanted to do... was simply to love you.
and now it's too late. i don't feel like loving you anymore.

silly rabbit, Trix are for kids.
i hoped too much. i romanticized you and i a bit too much.
...i guess i just thought i'd make amends after finally realizing how good i was at hurting you.

but you? do you even know how good you are at hurting me?

ooh wooley booley.

oh, wooleybooley... mister-hot-barista-man, WHY in the hell did you have to go and ask me out???
things were going great, weren't they? you had your world, i had mine, and we shared a few cutesy oops-you-caught-me-staring looks sometimes. you weren't meant to do this...

PANGGAGAMIT.
mac's right. if i do let you in, the whole worlds-apart gap is going to be the least of our problem-o's. i could go and use you, not in the harsh sense where i keep you on the side to pass time for when the one i like doesn't have time for me, but in the sense that.... now that i've sworn to getting my heart back, you could be the one to help me rediscover how it feels to love someone NOT-him.
and that's scary.

see, i'm not the kind of girl who does things on the side, you kow what i mean? i love. completely. and if i'm gonna let you in, i'm letting you in BIG TIME.
and i just... i don't know yet if i want that. and then there's that whole worlds-apart gap thing.
people talk. it's in their nature, and i won't shut them up by suddenly bringing you into our circle.
do i want that?? i'm gonna have to speak for you, and i don't know if i'm already in a place where i can push myself to do that for you, you know? because conviction comes from someplace deep, not from cutesy oops-you-caught-me-staring moments.

i don't know, i don't know...
mark says i think too much.


...truth?
i just had my heart badly broken (by myself, mostly. so that doesn't help.) and i couldn't go out with you yesterday because broken hearts apparently make you feel a bajillion pounds heavier and a whole hell of a lot uglier than ever. and i didn't want to see you feeling like shit. i can't be cutesy when i feel like shit.
ooh, wooley booley, and you know what the thing is? ...i think i'm gonna be feeling like shit for quite a while.

but thank you, mister-hot-barista-man. you made me feel better for a little while back there. let's just... let's see. =)

yes? no? ...ooh wooley booley. what do you think?

love

it went something like, "i thought you were just too screwed up to love anyone. maybe you really just can't love ME."
it was the highlight-- the lowlight-- of my day, and it hasn't left my mind since.

rach and i were talking at starbucks today (where i seem to find myself everyday. sitting, talking, running away.) and we were wondering about choice and the irrationality of loving.
we make sense of the irrationality of how we can't help how our hearts just up and choose the person it'll give itself to, by choosing to make the chaos work. it's a choice to make love grow every single day, my mom says.
and we've never chosen that, lyf. we never wanted to.
at least, never at the same time.

loss, lost and losing/
is the price to pay/
when hearts like ours/
never find each other and the same place at the same time//
you, lost. i, losing./ you, losing. i, lost./
and loss is all the tears we do or do not cry/
loss, lost and losing/
here and there forever/
you and i//

the word for us is tiring. we love but never try to make love work.
"love isn't enough", wise men say. there has to be a choice involved for you and i to walk together, instead of just meeting sporadically along the way.
we never made that choice. we're not making it right now.

mahal kita. pero hindi ko mo gustong magmahalan tayo.

and we-- you and i-- will lose more people this way. yours and mine included, we will break more than another couple of hearts.
because, lyf, this isn't the way love grows.

"loss, lost and losing..."
this... is the perfect way it dies.

2005 and moving.

january 1, 2005: "...i have too many ghosts to speak of but, god help me, this year, i am determined to make things better for myself. =p no more lost loves, no painful regrets, no moments-overload, no bad men, no taken men, no too-many-issues men, and no men who won't love me enough. you know what, i'm this close to actually going NO MEN, period. haha! (haha, yeah right) ..."

january 1, 2006:
KAPIT O BITAW, sabi ni lesh.
bitaw, lesh... bitaw na. alam mo kung ano? ..hindi ko na gustong kayanin.

it's my last year here and i just can't leave this place to go off and pursue my dreams with a heavy heart. "it's not letting go of the dream... it's going with a different one. ", i think someone said before. he was right.
don't get me wrong-- it hurts and it will hurt. SO MUCH. but julia roberts and brad pitt were wrong when they said NEVER. because sometimes, when what's at stake is already the very desire to laugh and love and live again, live differently, live better-- you just have to break away. and go. LIVE.

it was a good 2005, don't you think? i always wished for happy new years before and i always thought that a good year would be one without tears, without drama, and now i'm thinking, actually 2005 was good because of all the tears that fell.
not too few and not too plenty... just enough to have learned what it is to WANT to live more.
so hello, 2006. this year, i look forward to graduating, first and foremost. i look forward to italy and going to america for good.
it's going to be a year of epitomous and heartbreaking goodbyes, i know. there will be goodbyes to be said that will shatter my heart completely, but i'm looking forward to piecing it together again. it's going to be a year of change, but i say yes to it.

YES, world. i am yours. i am ripe and i am ready. take me where you will.

this year, i've become more appreciative and respectful of what it means to have good friends, best friends, and family.
i am nothing if not a couple of pounds lighter, a whole load of issues heavier and a bigger believer than i have ever been before. "teddi believes in love, most of all", lesh said.
BROKEN. pieced. rebuilt and destroyed. i am hope and survival and a couple of truth-hill sessions in between.

I AM HAPPY. and that's that.
said one of the greatest people i've ever known, "Thanks for making me want to live for another year. Here's to new loves, past loves and soon-to-come loves"

...Here's to new loves.


the fireworks have stopped, the champagne's been uncorked and we're toasting to the end of pointless melancholy. let's go 2006!!!! bagong taon na!

windows

"like cliches converging at this navel of the world, you almost want to laugh."

whenever a friend of mine breaks up with someone, i tend to employ cliches like, "there's a reason for everything", or "well, when God closes a door, He opens a window..." and i always stuck to them, because i do-- i believe that they're cliches precisely because they're very very true, thus, very much applicable.

this is what happens when you look through the windows God opens for you.

...you're sitting at starbucks, sipping your short, skinny, decaf, no-whip peppermint mocha, having a "chillax" day with one of your best friends and in walks this barista guy you've been seeing around for some time now. cute brunette, thick wavy hair, glassy brown eyes and lips that look good enough to ki-- umm-- to look at.
nice eyes, you think to yourself. AND he makes great coffee.
so you get your ass out of your chillax seat, make a beeline for the water station, which just happens to be sitiuated directly in front of him. "can i get some water?" you smile.
he pours you some water, and you pretend to just be having perfectly normal barista-costumer eye contact. "thanks."

after a while, you come for your next fill of the day (of coffee, of course) and he smiles as if saying, "hey, you're back." you stare daggers at your friend who's threatening to say something, so you make an item of her and that other barista, the tall, dark and... tall one; and it suffices to shut her up... somehow.
"a short, skinny, decaf, no-whip peppermint mocha please. thank you, i love you.", you say, as usual.
"umm.. decaf... no whip?", he asks. and normally, you'd already have thought, slooow, except that he looked cute fumbling about.
so, "yeah.", is all you say.
...
"what's your name again...?" he asks.
and all that's on your mind is, again, he said?? yesss!!!
"Teddi."
"'scuse me?"
"Teddi. it's Teddi."
"...Teddi." he smiles back.
and you're thinking, well that's that. but suddenly...
"so... you wanna play santa?", he asks, and he points to the board above you: Play Santa This Christmas. Spark a Hope Foundation.
Huh. Sure!
"do i donate toys only?? kasi i don't have toys anymore..." smooth, Teddi. Great conversational skills.
" no, you can donate books, or old clothes..."
"..okay.", you smile, but you're thinking, yay!!! he's not barooook!!!!... stop it teddi. focus. CHA-RI-TY.

he gives you your drink and you just happen to notice how nice and man-ish his hands look like.
"thanks", you smile again.
"...so you'll come back to give your old stuff...?" mr. hot-barista says.
"yeah", you smile. "siyempre." and you can't help it anymore, you say, "sorry, what's your name...?"
"clark." yay! mr. hot-barista has a hot-barista name!
"alright, i'll look for you." so you flirt a little.

"it's okay.", you imagine God saying. "you're depressed. heartbroken. Go, flirt a little, my child."

then you go home and you thank God for open windows and you go dig for old clothes to give away.

the end.


...strictly fiction. kind of. ;p

buon natale!

"l'amore e' cieco". love is blind, signore martini said.
i'm full-on buzzed from all the christmas ch/beer and i'm teeming full with happiness, sadness and the overpowering urge to just while my day away. i'm full and i'm empty and i love the feel of the christmas air blowing at my cheeks.

yesterday at pugadlawin, i felt it: christmas. christmas like i used to be able to feel it.
and it wasn't in the lights, or the lack of a christmas tree... it was in the people. us and them and the sincerity that passed in between. "how petty i am, i've been so selfish", i thought to myself and i actually felt ashamed.
christmas has always been all around me, but i wouldn't feel it unless i had things done in my own selfish way. i needed to love you so badly that i wouldn't accept love form anyone else.. it's 2 days to christmas and i realize that just now. better late than never?
so i thought a few good thoughts, and i hugged a few good friends and there it was. pasko.
this year has taught me that if you laugh a little at how grumpy you're being, LOVE will give you the reason you need to HOPE.

HOPE.

"in the alps, there is a very steep section called the Semmering, which crosses between the borders of switzerland and italy. they built a train track even before they built the train that would be able to make the trip.
they built is because... one day they knew, the train would come.

i am nothing, if not hope. yesterday i said to rach, "kasi when you're all emptied out and walang-wala ka na, every little thing becomes a something, and it feels good."

one day i know, my train will come. until then, i am love and happiness and a few bottles of beer.

sei il mio sogno, la mia speranza e l'isola unica dei miei pensieri. ti amo, cuore bellissimo, ti amo.

buon natale a tutti. =)

longing.

lat night, i watched a friend of mine light up a cigarette for the first time in forever, and i sat there, shlumped and forgone, and i couldn't help thinking, "why are you running away? what are you running away from?"
it's 5 days to christmas, and, for me at least, the air is heavy laden with loneliness and longing. when i watch my friends inhale their slim cigarettes, i feel so much the pain that they carry when they try to run away from the things they long for: warmth, affection, love, discernment, patience, pride, acceptance and goodbye, because-- since it's christmas and on christmas, you have to tell the truth-- ...because... I long for them too.

looking back

nakakatawa.

today i proved exactly how unceremonious endings could be. after a four-year stint as the caroling head of SpeEd (my faaavorite choir. and i've taught LOTS.) we sang the last words, "...and a happy new yeeear!!" and it was done. no tears, no laughter. just the final words to a song sang over and over the past few months. years.

just like us, i guess. i want to accept that it really is the end for us, that every emotion i feel right now and every minute in between is just a looking back at what was great once. a post-lude for the goodbye we never got around to saying.
and i want to say, "thanks, lyf. i loveD you too... at least."
at least.

the past four years have numbed you and i from feeling pain at the beauty of what was. but i've thought about it, lyf.. i think about it.
even through remembering every mean word said to each other, every ounce of spite felt because of jealousy and short-temperedness, every harsh word i lashed at you, i still smile.
because i remember.. cuddling with you in front of the prep building at holy spirit ("halika nga dito", you always said), i remember you playing antigravity over and over inside your car, i remember you getting your licence, you staying in 1st gear forever because you wanted to hold my hand while you drove, me searching for you all over school to get you to rehearsal, i remember sneaking kisses backstage and i remember happy dinners over at my place. i miss them, i do. all the goddamn time.
but they're all just memories now, right? and since we refuse to make new ones, they're all we-- i-- have left you what was you and me.

..i can't think of anything else to write except I'M SORRY. for nothing. for everything.

for this: i love you.

i don't know... maybe it's because it's christmas, and christmastime is our time. remember, lyf? we were so happy that christmas, because i was in love and you...
well, i loved you; that much i know.
i don't know... maybe it's just because, you know what i mean? i don't understand how i can even stand how you're always so scattered and how formally you talk to everyone--to ME-- and how we can't seem to make things fit, but i don't know... maybe it really is just because.

....well, i miss you, in any case.
looking back, i remember what it was like to have you in my arms, fully and completely-- without holding back and without fear. without pride and without hesitations, i held you, and you held me. so especially this time of year, i hope you understand why it's so hard for me to just up and forget.
four-year things are hard to let go of, you know.

so if only for the sake of being ceremonious about the whole thing...
thanks. i loveD you too.

paalam

kahit ngayon lang. hayaan mo lang akong magpakahina.

bakit iyon pa ang kinailangan mong hingin sa akin?

i can't think straight, because my heart is battling so fiercely with my pride. and it's losing, i have to tell you, because it's tired of fighting alone. "ganti lang" like you said..?

my heart is bursting with so much sadness and the feeling seems so foreign. HEARTBREAK, i think they call it. and i've never felt it, because i've always been the one who ran away. so thank you for teaching me to stay, at the very least.

can you deny me my anger? tell me what to do, because right now, all i can think of is how selfish you've become, and how selfishly selfless you want to be. don't make my decisions for me, don't patronize me!!!!! i'm trying so hard to hold back the tears that i can feel my insides breaking. why, God? you said wait, and i did. when was it in the course of my complete surrender did you stop and try to tell me, NO, don't wait anymore...? it would have been so much easier, God, if you had just not willed us to be in each other's lives agin.

i have no words, Lord. none. if i love you isn't acceptable, then there's nothing left to say but goodbye.

iyon na ba talag ang gusto mo? hindi na ba talaga tayo magtataya?

HINDI NA BA TALAGA TAYO MAGATATAYA?

...kahit ngayon lang, hayaan mo lang akong umiiyak. i've never actually just sat back and let myself cry because i never wanted to feel needy. i know. ironic, right? i'm trying so hard to be strong but without you, all i am is weakness.
"i can live without you. i've done it once. i think i can do it again.", i want to say, but i can't. i'll say it tomorrow, bey... tomorrow, you'll get your wish, and everything will turn back into the empty, dramaless and simple mush that it was before, after and in between you and me. but tonight, just let me cry.

ngayong gabi lang. hayaan mo lang ako magpakahina ngayong gabi, dahil yun at yun lang ang nararamdaman ko. bukas, balik tawa nanaman. bukas, paalam na. kaya ngayong gabi, iiiyak ko nalang lahat ng pagmamahal.


kung nababasa mo to, mag-ingat ka lagi, mahal. wala nang tanungan kung kamusta ka, kung anong oras kang makakauwi. inalisan mo na ako ng karapatan. at okay lang. kasi okay naman tayo, hindi ba? okay ka, okay ako. ...kung okay ka, okay ako. okay narin na wala nang tayo.
basta tandaan mo lang na kahit saan pa tayo pumadpad, kahit minsang maisip mo lang ako, kahit kailan, nandito ako para sayo.

kahit tapos na. tanggapin mo lang na mahal kita, kahit walang kapalit, okay na.

early resolution

so i was driving home yesterday from the-great-barkada-gimmick-i-like-to-call-"distraction" and i saw a whole truckload of chickens. white chickens, you know? not brown and red cockpit chickens. pretty ones. hehe.

so, true to my inner teddi-ness, i began to take pictures. (of course) "ang cute cute!! ang ccute nila!!"

and then someone suddenly pipes in, "you do know they're all gonna be in fun shots boxes tomorrow, right?"

*gasp*
NNNNOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

i'm never eating chicken again.
i'm not gonna eat chicken for a week!
i'll say a little prayer everytime i eat chicken.

god bless you, little chickies. you're in a better place now.

prayer.

"it's beginning to look a lot like christmas..."

it even feels like it. the wind is starting to bite. (and i miss lesh because i remember that lesh loves the biting wind) i sit alone, just me and the yellow glow of the christmas tree and i cry sometimes. nimbly i play on the piano, songs that i play only when i'm sad and i think, "Lord, please make this christmas a good one."

i won't ask for much, santa. this year, instead of barbie dolls, can you give me kisses? nice warm ones, because nice warm ones are the ones you're supposed to get when it's christmas. instead of that trip to australia, i ask for openness. i've gone so long not having anyone ELSE in my life. help me to not be fearful of taking love as i give it.
give me patience. because i DO want to wait this time around and i don't know how long i'll be waiting for.
give me strength to never give up.
give me piety so that i may not fear losing him if you will me to.

i surrender to you, Lord and to the immense power by which You've willed us to meet, love and lose each other. by your will, we wait-- I wait.

i'll wait. and, sitting at my piano alone under the yellow glow of the christmas tree, i feel it so much, the waiting. so i play my sad songs, and i'll try to help it, but sometimes, i will cry.
because lyf, this year, like the very first year we met... i'd really love nothing more than just have you with me this christmas. no thoughts, no other stuff, no other people.. just US.

just on christmas eve. let's forget how hard it is to stop and start again.
together.

lesh calls you bedlam

i hate that you never pull through, bedlam. i hate it so much.

for the most part of our looong and funky friendship, there have been countless times where you never made the promises you were supposed to have made; and i never asked for anything because i didn't think i could. and then sometimes, such few times, you did-- you promised me things-- but you never ever actually pulled through. i never said anything, but it hurt a hundred fold when you did that because i didn't understand how you could let me down when i never actually asked for much.
I NEVER ASKED FOR MUCH, bugnot kang lalake ka, and maybe because of that or maybe because you really are just a fat ass jerk, you never gave me much either. never any thoughtful gestures, never any friendly comforts.. NEVER ANYTHING TO HOPE FOR.

so here i am, in front of my computer, wasting away at the sudden realizations that are hitting me just now as i type.
why the fuck am i waiting for you? what the effing hell am i even waiting for when i have no reason to do so?

YOU, that's what. i'm waiting for You.
you, who never give me reason to hope... i wait for you because soemtimes you smile at me in ways that tell me i mean something to you, at least; i wait for you and for the day when finally, you will smile at me in ways that tell me i mean something to you, period.

i miss you even when i am near you because near you, i realize how much far apart we really are. all we have of each other are stories of each other with someone else. always.
for the most part, i know that i do it also; i tell you stories of superfluous crushes that mean close to nothing when i compare them to how i feel about you.
but you should've known that was always just a front, dumb ass!!!!!! you should've known!!! and if you really don't...... well then, i'll know that EVEN at the very very least, the friendship that i think we have really does exist only in my mind after all.

this hurts so bad.

you hurt me so much, more so because you never really "mean" to, and it becomes a hundred times harder evrytime. but what do i do? you never made me any promises and it makes me feel like i still can't ask for much, so i don't.
you don't understand that, and i don't know if you ever will. i don't know if you'll ever understand that after so many goddamn years, i NEED you to make me at least SOME promises and pull through once in a while; if only to keep me believing in the "at least".

it hurts so much, just saying all of these out loud, finally.
i feel stupid-- incredibly stupid-- naive, hurt and so profoundly helpless.

but... "the heart wants what it wants", my jie jie says, and i can't help but still want You. i'm stupid that way, but we already knew that.

Bedlam. craziness.
my god, what a fitting word for you, and me, and the lack of you&me.

back to bedlam

back home. back to bedlam. back to you. or back to needing to be back with you.
pathetic. pssshaw.

you'd think that after three weeks away from you, a thousand dollars worth of loot, 2 dates with cute brunettes, i'd be rid of you. no.... your stupid non-brunette hair kept popping into my mind, and all i could think about for three whole weeks was how hard it is to be near and away from you.

why is it so hard to love you? i'm tired and tried, i'm beaten and i'm scorned. i refuse, and deny you, but you never leave... you never leave.

so back home, back to being taken sooo for granted, back to being your "friend", back to needing you, wanting you and hating you every single goddamn day.
back to bedlam.
pathetic. pssshaw.

passing time 'til i get to go hoooome

10 years ago I...
- was 10.
- had more sets of friends than a fifth grader should ever have.
- was just as cute as i am now ;p

5 years ago I...
- 15. hehe
- was faced with the toughest life situations anyone could ever be faced with
- asked the wrong guy to prom =( hehe. but asked the right guy to grad ball.

1 year ago I...
- ..kala mo sasabihin ko "was 19" no??? ;p
- thought i was in love with some guy (turns out i was in love with the guy i thought up)
- got more than $300 aguinaldo. hwehwehwe.. (beat the record this year!!!)

Yesterday I...
- shopped at target and papaya. heehee
- almost barfed at the vast amount of vegetables at the rehearsal dinner for today's wedding. (hunny bunny, carrots are for rabbits)
- was hoping to run into ashton kutcher again. heehee

5 snacks I enjoy...
- dreyers mint chocolate chip ice cream. YUM!!!
- shrimp and garlic pizza from yellow cab
- 99 cent cookies from mcdonalds US and 10 peso sundae cones from mcdonalds Phils. hehe
- reese's pieces!!! hershey's special dark chocolate!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! york!!!
- peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. or anything turkey and cheese.

5 songs I know all the words to...
- work (jimmy eat world)
- bakit part 2 (mayonnaise)
- golden years (david bowie)
- bonjour song (disney's beauty and the beast)
- ironic (alanis morissette)

5 things I would do with 100 million dollars...
- libre ko barkada ko all-expense paid trip around europe (hehe, rach!!!) tapos direcho hongkong na for shopping!!!
- buy a Birkin bag from hermes
- buy a villa in forte dei marmi or/AND (;p) siena in toscana, italia!
- found my own language school
- buy my mom the house she wants in burbank

5 places I would run away to...
- (tama si rach) Bramasole in Tuscany talaga e! or Positano
- tuktok nung hill sa village namin
- lake como in the italian lake district
- kahit saan nandun mommy ko or si butt. ;p
- my room. filinvest 2, qc, philippines.

5 places I would love to go to..
- the Aztec ruins in Peru
- la Louvre (personal sneak-at-night tour)
- Lake Como, Italia
- China. medeival china. heehee
- Zaragosa, Spain during the Tomatina festival

5 things I would never wear...
- a full-on monochromatic ensemble
- tie-dye
- a VPL thong
- prints and stripes together
- anything haute couture

5 favorite TV shows...
- Gilmore Girls
- Friends
- The O.C.
- The Nanny
- Alias
- (sorry) Mr.Belvedere/Charles in Charge

5 bad habits...
- procrastination ( 5 minutes nalang...)
- reading full volume books while taking a crap.
- sleeping. too much. in any place. in any position.
- stress binging.
- couch potato-ing

5 biggest joys...
- talking with, talking about, being with Friends!!! barkada ko and si bott and benchmates and speed!!!
- traveling
- "eating time" [out of soemone else's fridge] (sabi nga ni des) with my barkada
- MUSIC!!!!!!!!
- learning foreign languages and about different cultures

5 fictional characters I would date...
-Chandler Bing (friends)
- Seth Cohen (the OC)
-prince Henry (ever after)
-Logan Huntzberger or Jess Mariano (Gilmore Girls)
- Teddy Lawrence (Little Women)

='(

i want to go home.. but not to you. i've had enough of you. you and your melancholy. my melancholy. OUR melancholy.
i want to go home to my friends, to my life, to someone else. to a new sem, to a new start, to an end. finally.

ciao, america!

6:51 pm, L.A. time.

so i'm back "home". and though my visa says "tourist", i do not "tour". i just sit and watch dvd's all day. and i shop. i hate purposeless walking. (ooh, look! clam chowder on fisherman's wharf!.... then let's eat godangingbutressses!!!) so yeah. i shop. and i've spent more money during the past four days than i have over the last four months.
well, one doesn't really have time to convert money into local dividends when one is on shopping-fire.
my lord, do i have a lot of friends!!! somoeone once told me, "before you go on a trip abroad, make sure you quarrel first with your friends that are the hardest to shop for."
...extremes, and advise unheeded. but effective otherwise. no reccommendations though.

so i've been to frisco, (God bless Vacaville and the "premium outlets" of the world! you are a blessing to a destitute college girl with lots of people to shop pasalubong for) and i just came back to L.A. today. today, i ate a double-double from in-n-out, a krispy kreme original and a couple of pop tarts. methinks i should stop trying to convince myself that thou art in america for real for real via stuffing thyself with all-american foodstuff or thou won'st fitteth into thyeth babay pink garb for the wedding shindig on saturday.-eth.

but now-eth, i go-eth forth into glendale galleria mall to stake out the red tag sale at bebe.

God bless the land of the free samples!!!!

three

in my whooole life, and of aaaaall my crushes in the whole wide world, there are probabaly only THREE people that i could purposely and lovingly wait for.
three. that seems like a lot for some people, but if you knew me.. you'd know three was already actually kind of small. relatively speaking, i mean.

so anyway. three.

there's this one guy whom i've probabaly had a crush on since i stopped drinking milk from my baby bottle. i think i liked him ever since i became friends with one of my best friends in the whole wide world, who just happened to be his sister. so one day, i was over at their house, and she's making french toast for me (we were 6, go figure.) and he comes down the stairs in his ugly boxer shorts and his ripped shirt, and without acknowledging me or my flour stained-self at all, he said. "french toast. make some for me, thanks."..... and that was it. i was hooked.
you, my longest-time crush ever. i like you in all your dorky ways and pseudo-stoic farawayness.

oh, and the stereotype friend. 7 years, has it been? you went from scrawny 2nd-yearer to this. good lord, how do i describe you without giving away who you are? i don't know anything if not specifics about you.
the color of your bathroom paraphernalia, the mcdonalds meal you like most, and the extremely boy-way you handle academic reading. you, i love in all sincerity, and although we're at the point where something happening would completely make or break everything we've ever had--if we ever had any-- sometimes, i still think, "maybe.. may be."

then you. ah, how do i describe you? you, the perennial rebel, the endless voice in my head-- on my goddamn cel. give me a few more years and i'll really really believe that we really are meant for each other. we're the two souls who are so one that we can't seem to settle within each other anymore. you, i love like you love me, and life would be perfect if i didn't think too much. or if you thought things through a little more. or if i really just didn't think too much.
i don't know... will you wait for me forever? will i always just want you from afar? wait for me a little more, maybe i need just a little more time... or we'll just live with broken hearts forever.

three.
three unexplicably weighty desires. wishes. hopes. fears. ...what-if's.
what-if's that i don't if i want to come true anymore.
what-if's that i'm okay with remaining what-if's because then i would never know.
and i'll live with a broken heart forever. but at least, i'd never hear a NO. never a YES.. but never NO either.

yeah.......

bittersweet part2

i'm on the verge of breaking down, and exams are weighing down on me like never ever before. our professors say that this sem, the last first semester of our whole college life, will really be the longest and that the second one will pass in no time at all. pass you by, they mean.
then suddenly, oral exams with Miguel happen to go well, that upon walking out of that dingy little cubicle he calls his office, i felt that same feeling i always get when i leave miguel with uncertainty of getting him again for next semester: uncertainty. so much so that the weight of it bears upon me even until now.. my mind is light but my heart is heavy. i've conditioned myself to be guided by the stupid ramblings of miguel de jesus, and i feel more than a little inadequate knowing that i may not be able to get him for next semester, the last and shortest sem of my life. and it makes it only too real. all my insecurities about leaving the ateneo begin to weigh upon me even more that, for all the anxiety and trouble miguel's thesis statements were to me.. i actually wish that i could have a chance to re-learn all of them all over again.

you think that after three semesters, i'd have already gotten used to being intimidated by miguel. but noooo.... such is his charms and his "i'm teaching you not to objectify but here i am objectifying you"-look that you don't actually ever get used to it. miguel's is the wrath i am seeking to commune with. (pun intended) hehehe.

bitterseet, that's what it is. "parting is such sweet sorrow", they say.

i'm guessing they probably got miguel for philo too.

things that fit

let me try to get this out.

one of my best friends is pregnant, and she's keeping it. because she should; she should.
right now, i'm crying because no words can express how enormously HEAVY the love that i feel for her is.
she's been my friend for 16 years. we've lived next to each other for 16 years. we stole aratilis from the neighbor's fence together and we learned our do-re-mis together and now... in a matter of months, she's going to change her name and become a mommy. i'm sorry for sounding weak, but that is just such a heavy thought for me right now.
i've learned to worry about housing, and milk expenses and maternity dresses and education and worrying about whether she's worried about these things enough.
there's an OVERWHELMING mixture of disappointment, and confusion, and happiness, lots of happiness, tainted by doubt and hope and empty wishes because i know that no matter how much i get involved, it's still not my life to live.
my thoughts are racing and my heart is thumping at 200 decibels a beat. it's the sound of worry, and hope and of a person needing to know that in the end, everything will be okay.
please tell me it'll be okay.

i wan to look inside the operating room and see the baby breathing the outside air for the first time. i want to hear him/her cry for the first time and i want to see how heavy it'll be, beacause god only knows, we were all heavy babies.
oh, and i want it to be a HER, i really do. i want to teach her to read Doystoyevsky and Sweet Valley, i want to tell her how to get away with bright red lipstick and i want to brainwash her about all those kid-things our own parents made us believe when we were young... you know: the boogeyman, and god playing bowling when there's thunder.... stupid sorts of things.
i want to be the cool ninang. yeah... i think i could fancy being the cool godmother, yeah.


so here's to things, and here's to god. and here's to hope and faith in destiny. faith in friends and faith in family. here's to the love only true friends can bring and the support only sisters can provide. here's to friendship and to welcoming new life. here's to things that fit, and to how the world will always find ways to always complete us just a little bit more.


dare alla luce, piccola bambina villamayor-roxas.
we welcome you to the light.

one chance for the two-year what if

what if...
what if we were meant to love each other like this?
at two separate times.
me when you don't love me, then you when i don't love you.


what if...
what if we just give it a little more time...?
...we could be dead, by then. alive, but not too much.
until we see each other again.
until we love each other again.


what if...
what if we were never meant to be with each other at all?
and the journey we're taking leads away from you&me.
and i will love him, and you'll worship her,
and we'll still be happy...?


but what if...
you just kiss me the next time you see me?
and we'll fight fate.
because i'll say yes to you. i will.
at this point in my life, and after this long, i still will.
but not for long.

so how about you just kiss me the next time, instead of your lame way of saying hi?

one chance. One LAST chance.

and then we'll let the what if's remain what if's forever

fight-remorse

i am someone who knows which buttons to push.
let's face it, i've always known what best way there is to trigger an expected reaction; that's why they call me a people-person: coz i know how to deal with people. add that to the past 4 years i've spent trying to understand and predict human behavior and you've got unstoppable teddi-arguments 24/7.

spiderman said, "with great power comes great responsibility", and i'm not saying i have great power, i'm saying... i don't use my gift responsibly; at least.. not today.

i just hurt someone. as i type, he is in his room, i think, crying because i said things only a monster would say, which-- today-- i was.
i am typing out of remorse and guilt-- and pride, if i'm not too ashamed to admit it. i'm typing furiously into a keyboard which did absolutely nothing to me, sans the fact that it was the only thing there when i needed to find something that'll let me vent off some of the steam inside. sorry, keyboard.

damn me, and my push-button-y ways!!! i hate it!! now i have to say sorry, but i won't be able to say sorry and he won't let me say sorry to him for at least another 3 days so i'm gonna have to spend 3 or so days feeling heavy with guilt, remorse and hurt pride at the impending i'm-sorry-about-tuesday episode. do you also have those kind of days?
..man , i feel like i'm back in kindergarten again and i just took reena soliman's banana...

3 or 4 days from now, i'll probably write some happy happy entry about forgiveness or whatever (unless i'm already dead-by-way-of-thesis by then) but right now, i just feel really sucky, that i can't even think of a decent way to end this stupid entry.

pressure

they keep asking me, "teddi, don't you want to sleep yet?", "teddi, isn't that finished yet? don't you feel tired already?"

*breathe in*
YYYYYYYYEEEEESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!
a million times, YYYEEEESSS!!!!! stop asking me, i swear, i WILL cry!!!!!!

*breathe in again*
i know you're all just looking out for me....
but this is what it is, and you won't help me by convincing me of how dead tired i will be if i don't rest soon. seriously. you think i don't already know???


='(

hug?

prize broken heart. come back to me, love.

prize.
it means you're number one at something.
well, i say i have a prize-broken heart. what does that say?

it's so embarassing to admit, and i can't believe that it took a deither-kristine movie to make me realize it, but i just really really really want want want to love someone right now.
I'M SORRY.
forget all the bull i fed everyone before about not needing anyone and being happy single and all that red-bottomed blah blah blahs. i've had it. i've had enough of being strong all by myself.

i love love. and i love loving. i give hugs warmer than most, i kiss in ways that make your undies melt and when we feel like it, i talk sweet in ways i'd never admit.
i..... i overestimated being alone. i liked not having to take care of anybody, not having anyone to give a blow by blow account to. i liked tv nights and barkada nights where i get to do any goddamn brainless thing i wanted, BUT...
like all mediocre things, the high wore out the night i finished all the kitkats.
and then there was nothing.

god, i feel like such a loser. everyone wants someone to love, and it came so easily for me; it came without compunction and without my having to ask for it. and there i was, feeling like it was too boring and uninvited to be enough of a challenge; nothing and no one was enough to keep me.
so i learned to be lonely. i learned to push away easy happiness, mistaking uninvited for unwelcomed. i learned not to trust fate, thinking that i always had to deserve what i got, so i worked for it.. all of it. i got tough, i got strong, i became so dependently independent that it hurt.
and now here i am, years later..... alone. just like i always wanted to be.
LONELY.

was it worth it, teddi?

now you have all the challenge you need: letting people in, letting them know you're in the vulnerable position of needing happiness....
dylan mcdermott said, "the hardest thing is to love someone.. and having the courage to let them love you back."
don't i know.

but i'll find my way. i'll find my way back to you, i promise.
give me time, i just need some time. some time, and a hell of a whole lot of patience.
i know i have no right to ask, because i didn't give it any thought at all when i decided that i didn't need you anymore but i'm asking anyway, and i hope that that says something about where i am right now.
i have nothing but hope, and a pocket full of lint. i'm emptied out, and i need you in ways that makes my pride hurt much more than just a lot.


love, can you hear me?


wait for me. i'll find my way back to you.

poverty

eva longoria said on desperate housewives the other day, "carlos, i've been BROKE a lot of time, but i've never been POOR."
wow. smart woman, sexy, petite and catches the eye of people like george clooney..... let's kill her now.

ANYWAAAAAY.

no. there IS no anyway. she's right.

so many things have been happening, like the typhoon katrina and all the families she has separated, the 1st anniversary of the thailand tsunami, the wars in iraq and the political wars here in the philippines...
i hope everyone gets studio 23.
because it's always going to be disheartening, and when you become disheartened, you stop believing.. and the moment people stop believing that things can change, the moment things stop changing.
and when you think about how poor we've become, how exhausted everythign and everyone seems to be, it's good to go back to thinking that's it's all just a state of mind.
yes, we're broken. god knows a lot of us are broke (raise your hands) but we'll never be poor if we don't want to be.
like lesh's favorite magic bracelet says: HOPE.

so here's to hope; and to the people who can never seem to lose it.
"God gives big problems to the strong", they say.

pronto

YES, my heart races. every goddamnn time.

now, it gets scary.. knowing that it isn't me doing the racy-heart thing on purpose.
i hate it. i hate knowing my happiness will now lie in someone's hands.
i love it. i love knowing my happiness can now lie in someone's hands.

that's not confused-teddi. that's teddi stepping up to the plate.

watch out, world, i'm ready to love again.

so whos's happy for me? are you happy for me?? let's be happy for me pleeease?

sheepishness

okay.
i, teddi dizon, being of sane mind and body, hereby attest to the truth of the following statements:

1) that maybe i did kiss someone.

2) a little.

3) and that it was perfectly innocent.

4) and that it wasn't the person i originally wanted to kiss.

5) that i didn't mean for it to happen (blame my stupid friends) ;p

6) and it'll never happen again......

5) i think.

6) oh plus, i'm still exclusively in like with mister sweet-sweat, who was sweet-sweating again just a while ago, may i just say.

nothing more follows.

...AS OF NOW.

for the love of god...

okay. to set the record stright:
I, Teddi Dizon, being of sane mind and body, hereby attest to the truth of the following statements:

1) that i have not kissed anyone

2) YET.


wow. have i really been out of action that much that i post ONE entry about liking someone, and i get a million why's??? (fine, mga BENTE palang naman) ;p i love you, friends!
hey, at least i like someone already... and i like this someone kind of for semi-real this time. in teddi-world, that means a lot. ;p
oh and i sort of like this guy exclusively.... i think. in teddi-world, that was almost impossible. until now.
i think.


haaay... kung alam mo lang. kung alam mo lang talaga.

sad day

MY SELF-ESTEEM IS AT AN ALL-TIME LOOOWWWW... =(

and it's not one of those weird-sad-no-reason days. it's been a man-that-hurts-don't-tease-me-coz-i-will-cry WEEK.


*sigh*
i've never actually used "*sigh*" before. that's how down i am.


someone say something nice please :(

a kiss is a kiss is a kiss is a kiss...

they're called 2nd-moment kisses. well, okay: I call them 2nd-moment kisses.
they're the ones that happen when two people who have never kissed each other before kiss for the first time---slow, short and sweet-- part for a heartbeat and, before you can even say, "what the fuck are you doing breaking the kiss??!!", they kiss again-- long, still sweet, but not-so-soft this time around..

i swear to God, that's how kisses should always be.

i... feel like 2nd-moment kiss-ing you; when our arms graze each other, when you lightly, playfully touch by back, when i dare touch yours, when you look at me like you don't know, when you don't look at me at all..... it's not anything if not primarily electric, magnetic, dizzying, overwhelming and all other ic's and ing's you can think of when you think of how close a distance i always pull myself back from when i almost always feel like going for the second moment kiss that just never had a first.

you're not a mystery, but you're fascinating. you're an open book, yet forever closed. you're paced, but exhilerating.
as jodi sawyer in center stage would say, "you're sweaty, but you smell sweet. you have sweet-sweat"

well, you have sweet-sweat, mister. just so you know.



...guess who.

hey, love

happy birthday, kalon.
you would have been 21 today, but here we are, and things are just as they're supposed to be.
i've just turned 20 and you will forever remain 17, tall, handsome and gangly, like the aldo i love-- loveD...-- love.

LOVE.

so hey, love. i just dropped by to wish you, for the third time in a row, a happy happy happy 17th.

MiG ayesa said it best

i'm growing old.

nowadays, everytime something comes up and i think maybe i'd lke to get in on it, i flake out because i spend more time weighing the costs than NASA did building the first space shuttle; when before, i would have just said, "yeah,that'sinteresting.all rightythen,countmein". like that. without even pausing for a breathe.
NO, i'm not saying let's throw out all sense of abandon and swim naked in the Danube; i'm saying i want to go back to my old i'm-not-hurting-anyone-so-yeeha-let's-go philosophies and quit entertaining thoughts that quite obviously root back to this high-maintenance domnatrix i'm threatening to become.
come to think of it: yes, actually, once upon a time, i DID want to swim god-loving naked in the Danube River.

nowadays, instead of just thinking about whether my decisions would hurt the people who matter to me, i seem to just be thinking: 'hey, how will this affect ME in the long run in the long run in the long run?" i keep thinking, i don't want to have any reason to regret in the future the things i do right now. and it never ends.
man, i swear to you, the tomorrow will only be great if you live great today.
haha, listen to me, saying that! how dare i, right? when i seem to have forgotten it as well..?

a while ago i was browsing over the Rockstar INXS video archives and i got to watching MiG ayesa's up-close video. MiG ayesa. huh. now there's a man who knows.
anyway, at pondering on how big a risk dropping his theatre stint in London and joining the competition was, he said, "i wish i could be happy being a lawyer or an accountant, but i know i won't be. i need to be doing this to be happy. i's rather have a life of mistakes than a heart full of regret.
HUH.

that doesn't say much about this man to some of you, but it says something to me. when i heard that, i feel back on my seat, stopped munching on frozen grapes and said out loud. "YEAH. ME TOO."
i need to know that at the end of the day, i put myself out there, that i gave the world a go, teddi-style. mistakes will tell me that. (partly because sometimes, teddi style proves that it really all that foolproof just yet). it'll tell me, "hey teddi, don't sulk too much, you're wiser for it when you try again."
WHY FIGHT IT, right? admittedly, there really ARE times when it feels a hell of a whole lot better to just say, "ok, i won't worry about it. i'll accept the hits that'll come my way." and it makes me feel gloriously inadequate, but ready. do you know what i mean?

wow wow wow, marry me, MiG ayesa.

fairy dust

i have so many words running through my head that i can't think of any single one to write about. well, let's try................ freeze, brain.
huh. neverland. okaaay... (this is you and me, YM-ing, leslie)

so, neverland.
MY neverland consists of cream praline puddings and chocolate rivers like in willy wonka. i'd be there and my friends would be there and there's be tiger lillies everywhere and no one would die.. you wouldn't die.
they're different never neverlands, mine and yours. but whatever and whoever's it is, it takes happy thoughts to get there. i think you've lost some of your marbles on this one.

haven't we learned yet that a lot of times the universe doesn't exactly go the way we want it to?

haven't we learned yet that that's okay?

I can't just WANT for praline puddings and tiger lillies and have it, in one *poof*.
all we can do is WISH for it and hope for the best. i know waiting is a goddamn pain but that's where fishball trips come in. to pass time.

i know we know i've been running away. i've ran so far that the pain has become such a big part of me that it hurt even more trying to change the person the pain changed me into. now, more than dreading the past, i dread the future even more.
but it's time for changes, you and me. if i'm ever going to get to my land of praline puddings and chocolate rivers, i best stop looking for my prize-marbles and realize that i CAN HAVE OTHER HAPPY THOUGHTS. my thimble-kiss will come.

i kow acceptance isn't something we know too much of, so maybe it's about time we started getting to know what the hoola is all about.

rain clouds

it feels so.... appropriate; when the fine rain-- that falls almost everyday, might i add-- nags at every inch of you, just when you don't need it to.
but it does, it FALLS, all of the goddamn time.
and it feels appropriate. because it wouldn't match the emotions nipping at you any other way.

nina always says, "his power is perfected i my weakness"

i hope so.

divi, i love ;p

"happy teddi, went to divi
3 shoes and more, and now no money"

me? self-proclaimed obssessive shoe-shopper.
hehehe.

and so it went: i am now obssessed with retail "genuine-tiangge" shoes (which, intermittently, channels bjork and gwyneth paltrow simultaneously) bought from the hallowed burrows of DI-VI-SO-RI-UH.

bambie told me today, for her niece's 1st birthday party, they had to buy baggies, toys, giveaways, prizes and such for A HUNDRED toddlers. you know how much they spent? 3000 pesos. cconut pinoys, that's like.... nothing. $60.
and among those toySSSSS, they bought a hundred matchbox cars for 250 pesos. that's... (pause whilst i do complicated basic arithmetic) ....2.50 for one matchbox car. do you how how much that is? ....a god-loved nickel. that's 5 cents, coconut pinoy.

so why do i want to migrate again? ...(ah yeah, because the skills i seem to have developed over the years ay hindi papatok dito sa pinas. not to put down my tres amusant divi experience but i want to rise to buying vero cuoio italiano Tod's when i'm old and...still brunette)

what was my point again? (god, so pleased i am channelling my inner "miguel-lapses" like when he's lecturing [with his bright shining eyes] and he segues faaar too far from his philo-point that he has to shake his thoughts off to go back to mother earth) ....obviously, my point right now is miguel is cute.

oh oh yeah, DIVI.

well, its too late now, i've completely lost my train of thought so let's just leave it at: divi shoes?? I LOVE. tres chic. tres amusant experience avec cherries on top.
(reading this was a total waste of time, wasn't it? but you gotta admit, i'm tres tres amusant, non?) ;p


[i can see you shaking your head, leslie]
[and maybe you too, nikko]

happy birthday to me!!!

so here it is: the last minutes of birthday day.
i feel..... exhilerated, light, proud, a little down, a little antsy, of course happy though not completely; and a little bit more than just a little sad.
today on this day, i officially stopped being nineteen and twenty has been feeling like too big a word lately. and then today, i thought a couple of good thoughts, hugged a couple of good friends and i finally felt good about it.
i'm not looking to twenty-one yet, but i'm looking forward to living twenty now.

so happy birthday to me.. and a happy twenty-life as well...

thanks to everyone who made me smile today! ;p

if batman can do it...

batman said, "it's not who i am underneath; it's what i do that defines me"

all throughout the movie, they talked about fear and everything in this world that we are and could be afraid of. it was a smart movie because in the very center of it all, it talked about fearing fear itself, and being one with that which you cannot overcome.

"why do we fall?", thomas wayne asked his son. "so that we can learn to pick ourselves up"
sometimes, when something so bad happens, the biggest step to take having enough faith in faith to believe that there is a point to getting back up.
if i do not get back up and all i do for the rest of my life is die, then i am nothing but fear.
i don't want to be fear.

these past few months, i've been agonizing over thinking too much and knwoing too much and too little at the same time. i felt overloaded and heavy and a lot of days, i just felt like giving up.
man, who the hell would've thought that batman could shed me some light? haha.
i know it's fiction (hell, comics even) but it so true the way they depicted this MAN struggling to fight his fears (albeit far-fetchedly, BATS), facing everything he never asked to have so that at the point of absolute fear, where he could LOSE everything he ever knew, he chose to pick himself up and LIVE.

so what if there are questions? the answers are defined in what i do about them. rainer maria rilke said, "live the questions now/ and someday you will find, you have lived into the answers."

i never asked for anything, but they came; ALL OF THEM: happiness, people, sadness, heartache, heartbreak, death...
and now, at this very moment, I AM EVERYTHING I WAS SUPPOSED TO BECOME, and now, i have everything to LOSE.

it makes the "now" more poetic, don't you think? i have everything to lose, but right now, at this moment, i have them; and all i want to become is someone who fights to keep everything she IS.
"LIVE," tennesee williams said.


have you watched batman begins? you should.

catharsis

let me just get this out:

AAAHBDKFOOIPOOKOY$#$*)#PUUUTAAAASAKLJHFDIYR*(R)(&*^@#(_)!!!!!!!!!!!!!
freshmen!!!! get.... CHAIRS or soemthing!!! just... don't mill around making the ateneo seem like a perennial back-to-school national bookstore rush!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! UUUPPPOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!
breathe. there.

one week into the semester and i'm already beat. sort of.
i feel as if i'm finding my place in the ateneo alllll oovvver agaaaaiiin.. it doesn't make sense. i'm a goddamn college senior and i'm the one milling around, feeling like i know practically no one. anymore.

thoughts at a million miles a heartbeat

i'm sorry.

but when you're having an asthma attack and inside the car, you have your own mother telling you from the passenger seat what a difficult person you are to love, and then you get stuck for four days staring up at a semi-chipped white ceiling with nothing to do..... it somehow creeps in that maybe, it's just kind of a little bit true.
because it is kind of true...
and it felt like shit having "proof" of it.

but i'm sorry. you know i'm sometimes singleminded and i know i'm singleminded so.... let's just all whack my head and say, "teddi, you're so goddamn singleminded!" together.
truce?

i mean my birthday's coming up and i can't eat all that barbeque chickeeeeennn........