i had a vision of growing old with my best friends;

we’d visit each other’s houses, travel the world, talk about our partner’s weird sleeping habits, compare schools for our children, and ponder about the meaning of life as we stare at our empty homes when we finally let our hairs turn grey.

i thought our friendship would last forever.

it’s outlasted toxic ex-boyfriends, high school drama, college abroad, and the grueling reality of corporate life. it seems as if we were destined for forever, our life paths intertwined in the stars.

but as life would ironically have it, the path that brought us together have slowly pulled us apart. the meet ups gets less frequent, the silence in the group chat seems to echo louder and our night outs together are becoming a distant memory of the past.

no one told me the immense sadness you’d feel when you see your friends branch into stories of their own, ones that you can’t be a part of yet.

i thought we’d go through life together, but i’m here navigating my own while you’re out there giving one to another.

i keep telling the universe how much i miss us, how i wish we could all just get dinner together and laugh until our stomach hurts. i keep reliving the sleepovers, the stupid games, the inside jokes we had. i thought we had all the time in the world.

people come and go, that’s what they all say. but i just never thought it would happen to us too.

it’s an aching sadness i’ve yet to figure out because there is no closure. no big fight, no time machine that can bring us all back to high school.

and of course i love you and support you,

i just wish we had more time left

I tell people that it’s lack of inspiration but truthfully I think it was mostly fear.

I tried hard to inspire, to educate, to be relatable—all the while I forgot to be honest.

I think I was afraid of what I’ll discover whenever I sit down and write, that I came to avoid it altogether. Publishing these essays on the internet made me think about the outcome more than the content itself.

I kept thinking “will people like this?” even before writing anything down, and that has gotten me stuck in a limbo of unfinished thoughts and a grave of unwritten essays.

But here I am, ready to give it another go and this time I'll try to be more truthful.

Lately I feel as if I'm a rock floating around in space, unsure of the direction I'm headed towards. Too much uncertainty lies beyond me, and I have no vision of whats to come.

I’ve been thinking of this point in my life as a transit, as something short-term. I thought to myself, “This is just gonna be temporary. I'll only move back home for a little bit until things settle down.”

Now almost 4 years has passed since that “little bit”, and I'm faced with the reality of each passing birthday since then. The feeling is somewhat surreal, it’s like being partially sedated in an endless slumber and now something has jolted me back down to Earth.

All of the sudden I'm acutely aware of all the time that has gone by and I'm being confronted with what I should be doing from here on out.

So where shall this rock float to next?

A million answers to a simple question really. I'm in this age in life where you can literally do anything. Hence the question remains, do I make an impulsive detour and do a 180 radical change? Or do I be patient and focus my efforts on the things I'm cultivating right now, though progress might seem slower?

A million alternatives, a dozen backup plan.

Who tells me whether or not I'm making the right decisions? Would the universe grant me some sort of signal if I'm taking the wrong turn? Can I even afford to make those wrong choices in the first place?

But now that I think about it, I don’t think there’s anyone in this world that can be absolutely certain of what their future holds, and isn't that exactly the silver lining here?

If things don’t go as planned—then the universe grants you the chance to plan again, albeit it’s not always going to be easy nor immediate. I know we worry about the time we might end up wasting if we make the wrong decisions, but personally, I think there’s no such thing as “too late”.

The way I’ve experience it, in the end timing works wondrously for everyone—you just have to open yourself up to what it’s trying to teach you. I don’t mean to sound so idealist, but I always believe that every experience or person you encounter has something valuable to teach you, you just need to be willing to learn.

The world today feels a bit more graspable than it was 4 years ago when the pandemic first hit. My ambitions and dreams crawled its way back to my peripheral vision and they seem a little more within reach.

I’m not usually one to be so naively hopeful, but something tells me that I can (and should) try again now.

It’s a newfound feeling, a bit of an odd one. A cocktail of uncertainty paired with a dash of hope and determination.

I think I can see the future, and it isn’t quite so bleak. I'm still unsure of where I'm headed but all the while I'll try my best at it.

I don’t know where I'm going but, I guess I'm definitely going~

Will I see you there perhaps? :)

All my Love,

Bella

Most of us spend our entire lives in search of love.

Call it, one’s pursuit of the ultimate feeling. To feel the true depth of your raw emotions, to understand how vast and apologetic a human’s heart can stretch. To finally let passion take charge and let logic fly out the window.

Sometimes, if not most times, to love is to be human.

I often equate love as something grandeur. I mean, how could I not? Every writer, poet, and musician in history has dedicated their craft to this otherworldly feeling. Millions of artworks have been created because of love or lack there of, and millions more have found solace in them. A love poem written decades ago can still find relevance in the hearts of people today.

In a way, love transcends time and space. As if the feeling lingers onto the next life, or the next person. Moving beyond the human body, existing even after you’re long gone.

With all these monumental descriptions I cant help but think, is love present beyond these grandiose feelings? Does it always have to be over the top?

Can it exist in our mundane everyday life?

Does love exist between the cushions of our sofa’s living room? In between the misplaced phone and the TV’s remote. Under the dim ambient night light that paints the room a nostalgic tenderness.

Can it exist in the kitchen when we make dinner or when we argue over whose turn is it to do the dishes? Is love present in our drives home? When we exchange our favorite songs or complain about the lack of stars in the night sky.

Does it exist in this feeling of contentment and steadiness when all I’ve known was for love to be tumultuous?

All my Love,

Bella

Sometimes I would ponder the significance of my existence.

In a world filled with constant change and rapid expansion, do the space I occupy and the air I breathe carry any meaningful weight?

Thousands, if not millions of years have existed before me, and I am simply one of many others like me. What is my contribution to this already limitless world? What if the legacy I’ll leave behind is merely a life well-lived?

I used to obsess over the search for one’s purpose in life. Innocently thinking that clearly, we were brought into this world in exchange for something right? Maybe we’d discover a new piece of tech that would alter the lives of millions, or we’d even go beyond this planet of ours and discover the many unknown lifeforms out there.

In more ways than one, I held on to the notion that our existence in this lifetime would only be deemed worthy if we were devoting ourselves to some grandiose goal, far greater than ourselves and the people around us. If you weren’t out here to change the world, then what are you even doing?

But over time, this mindset I held made me dismiss the simple pleasures that life continues to offer. I subconsciously devoted the way I lived to this “ultimate life goal”, anxiously spending any free time I had creating or constantly being on the go. I would feel immense guilt if I stayed still and did nothing. To simply exist felt treacherous.

I began to think of myself as a platform more than I was a person. Tied my sense of worthiness to my productivity and slowly, I started to forget the simple fact that I was not a machine.

I’m just merely human.

Unlike machines, our bodies aren’t meant to constantly be productive on demand. Knowing all this, I still couldn’t let it go. If I wasn’t creating or doing anything meaningful then I am just a waste of space on this Earth. I resisted rest because it made me feel powerless.

Until one day, everything I had worked so hard for fell apart right in front of my eyes. I got laid off from a job that I relocated abroad for and spent two months unemployed alone with no source of income. With a sense of defeat, I moved back home—something I never planned to do any time soon.

I was someone who defined myself as the job title I had and all my achievements, but who was I when all of that was stripped away from me? I lost my sense of identity and purpose.

Everything I thought was within my control suddenly plummeted to the ground. I didn't know who I was or who was I doing all of this for?

When I no longer have anything, do I still even deserve to matter?

To tell you the truth, I wish I could say that I’ve found a way out of feeling like this. I wish I could share to you some hopeful message of enlightenment, a magical one size fits all solution that could bring a sense of everlasting contentment—but frankly, sometimes I still feel like I’m not enough.

I often wonder, have I been living up to my highest potential? But then again, what am I getting so worked up for? Its not like anyone is putting a literal gun to my head and telling me all the ways I’ve wasted my life.

I guess, I’m the one who’s been doing that to myself..

I’ve tried to be kinder, I really did.

Tried to appreciate and realize the many ways our lives are already so purposeful instead of punishing myself for simply existing. But these things just don’t change overnight and that’s okay I suppose.

I might not be the first woman to land on the moon but I do hope my existence have somewhat been meaningful to you. Be it in the small way I might’ve come across you on your daily commute, or maybe something I’ve written felt like a much needed hug.

I’ve come to understand that our reward for living this life wont be granted to us at the finish line, but its being presented in the things we get to see and do every day.

Cause in the end, it all comes back to the little things and I’d like to believe that life’s made up by a bunch of it.

All my Love,

Bella

The sun is out, 
Its’ warm and tender ray hug you ever so tightly. 
The gentle breeze of the wind caresses your face, 
and the sound of the waves carry you home. 

You’re at a beach somewhere far and beautiful. The sand, warm at your feet.  
You put your hands in the water, feeling the temperature change as you dip your fingers into the deep blue. 

Nothing has ever made you feel more alive.
You try and grab a fistful of it, but it spills.

You give it another go, a last attempt to carry the ocean in your pockets. But it’s impossible. 

And you watch as water runs through your fingers and back into the deep blue.

I was starved of love and grabbed at every chance I could to try and salvage it.

Begging for crumbs, desperately holding on to the slightest hint of affection. When anyone would offer the slight touch of it, I would leap in and devour it whole—most times not thinking of what it might cost me.

Raised in an absence of love and tenderness, I never once felt I was beautiful. I constantly endured jokes about how I looked or my unfeminine demeanor, and laughed it off pretending as if it didn’t bother me.

Most days, I didn’t mind because I have somewhat accepted that I might never fit into whatever beauty standards people look up to. I tried so hard to not listen to any of it, but its a whole other thing when your own mother is your biggest bully.

I really did believe that I wasn’t attractive or appealing, and the possibility of romantic love was a faraway dream that I couldn’t even hope for. It made me held on to every smallest possibility of romance, however unfulfilling it was, since I fear that it would never come again for me in this lifetime.

I found myself constantly compromising.

Tolerating their lack of effort and communication as something I did not need.

Eventually, I convinced myself that I didn't want anything more.

I begin to develop this thinking that I shouldn’t ask for anything. That my needs should be kept to a minimum or else I’d scare them away. I put up with being an after thought, and I hid my fantasy about a love that would celebrate and cherish me entirely. To even ask for affection, attention, or time seemed too much, too unrealistic.

I didn't think that I deserved any of it.

I thought an occasional nod when they’ve finally looked up from their phones was enough.

I made myself feel small, limited the space I occupied. I did not want my presence to be a burden.

Being “low-maintenance” was what I strived for.

And so, come years of constantly settling and feeling invalidated. People would ask why did you let them treat you that way for so long? How do I tell them that the fear of being lonely was far greater than anything else in this world?

When you were brought up to be doubtful of your own beauty, you come to hold on a little too tightly at these fleeting feelings—at connections way past their due dates. You begin to make excuses for them. Silencing your own judgement, even though deep down you knew all along.

Now how do I break free of this? Am I allowed to tell the universe the kind of love that I long for? That I want to be adored, to be asked about my days and my hobbies, to be taken care of, to be remembered. That I want to matter to someone, but most of all—how do I tell myself that I am deserving of every bit of this?

Even though now I’m learning to cultivate a healthier relationship with myself, sometimes I’d be stricken with regret and grief about how I let all these years go by being treated so poorly.

I wish I was more forgiving of myself, but also I wish I knew better.

Let me tell you first hand, it’s not easy to essentially un-learn and re-learn the way you perceive yourself and the world you walk in. I am still wrestling with the simple task of learning how to say what I mean and to ask for what I want (not to mention to learn to receive it too).

It’s a daunting struggle, undoubtedly a scary new world out there, but its definitely better than feeling like you’re always second-best.

All my Love,

Bella

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be free.

Freedom from who, or to do what, I'm not so sure myself. More times than I’d like to admit, I’ve caught myself thinking that there’s more to this life I'm living.

Does my reason for existence lie somewhere out there?

Do the stars know something I don’t?

When all the noise fades, what does my heart tell me?

I grew up inside a box with the weight of my parent’s hopes and dreams hanging over me, with no room to process the growing pains of being human. I wasn’t able to express myself, wasn't able to fully be, me.

In this household, we shut the doors and swallow our emotions instead.

Every uncomfortable feeling, any doubts I had, fears or dreams or disappointment were sealed off and bottled up. There was no space to express them or even to accept them. Letting out how I felt was an act of rebellion, which I learned would quickly earn a stamp of disapproval from the people around me.

How could I even begin to know who I was when all I felt was constant rejection whenever I tried to be myself?

Soon, I became a master in the art of brushing things off and sweeping them under a rug. I made a nemesis out of my feelings and grew up fearing them instead. Whenever the people I love hurt me, I tried to understand their reasons, to put myself in their shoes without even taking a second to acknowledge the pain I felt.

This became my superpower.

At 10 years old my parents separated and I successfully transformed myself into becoming a superhuman who has no needs or wants.

An independent, self-sufficient being who never gets sad or disappointed even when the only life she ever knew was crumbling right before her eyes. It was always about making sure everyone else gets their way.

Going back and forth, passing messages between my parents. I was a messenger between two adults in conflict, learning to specifically leave out harsh details and to be hyper-aware of how everyone else was feeling.

Saying “yes I’m fine, don’t worry about me” even though my insides were crying for help.

But still, I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

I never wanted to ask for anyone’s help, because it meant admitting that I couldn’t do it myself.

And what kind of superhuman needed someone else in order to survive?

Of course, all that people-pleasing hyper-independence upbringing came at a cost. It made me seek out external validation to the point where I was hooked on the need for someone else to say yes to me. And do you know how alienating it feels to constantly doubt the voice in your head? It felt like I couldn’t function without permission.

Even when I was already away from my parents, my family, and the town I grew up in, even when I was miles away from home in some small town continents away, I was still listening to the voices of what other people might say of me. Even when all this wasn’t true. When it wasn’t even there, to begin with.

When the noise faded, I didn’t know who or what to listen to.

And so here I am now, at 25 years old I am learning to listen.

To the little girl who was always shut down, the teenager who never had the chance to express herself, and the young adult who was never proud of her accomplishments. To my past and future self, I know it took a while to get here, but there’s no denying you anymore.

Maybe we actually are deserving of that dream life we’ve always pictured. Maybe this time we’ll listen to our own needs instead of always thinking about other people first.

I don’t know if this is all too late, but here’s to hoping that it’s not.

All My Love,

Bella

that 2 am frenzy in your phone’s notes app, that one-liner sentence scribbled on some random piece of paper, or that screen-long text message to your best friends.

all of it is as real as you are.

welcome aboard, to the corner of the internet that brings you home.

i’m so glad to be with you here.

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