I don’t know how to hold beautiful things

I don’t know how to hold beautiful places—
mountains and rivers resembling a dream,
a picture unfolding in a child’s mind,
reading fairytales, painting scenes.

I don’t know how to hold a home,
keep it safe from the claws of time,
from natural disasters, from termites
from the urgency of For Sale signs.

I don’t know how to hold a neighborhood:
trees shedding leaves like falling stars,
landing softly on my hair, on the pavement
on lemons at the back of someone’s car.

I cannot hold my people close—
family, friends, and strangers—
without wanting to sink into their flesh
or be carried inside their pockets.

I don’t know how to savor food,
the most momentary of things,
briefly lingering on the tongue,
before the body orders release.

I don’t know how to hold beautiful things
that make their way to me:
objects I find in sidewalk cracks,
under a bus seat, or by the sea.

I don’t know how to hold beautiful things:
a song on my mind, a line from a book,
exchanges of affection overheard in a park,
a poem you can read by their looks.

I don’t know how to hold beautiful things
if it meant gripping something by the throat,
keeping it captive, leaving claw marks,
putting it in a bottle, letting it float.

Why should I hold onto beautiful things
when they’ll eventually erode,
get stolen, split open, or dissolve
take on a life of their own?

I know little about holding beautiful things:
It’s like running your fingers through light.
So I’ll just let you sleep on my open palm
until you’re ready to take flight.

I don’t know how to hold you.
These arms will prove no use.
So I’ll lace you into a verse,
make you my everlasting muse.

I wrote this poem while listening to ‘I’ve Seen It’ by Olivia Dean.

I’ve only ever loved within my means.

When shopping, it helps to have everything listed down. To know what you need before you walk in, so you only take what is essential and leave everything else on the shelf.

As a frugal person, I find satisfaction in entering my monthly salary into a Google Sheet. I like setting up tables and formulas that automatically calculate what’s left after allocating X to savings, Y to the internet bill, and Z to my siblings’ school allowances.

Then I stare at the blinking cursor in the cell where what remains of my salary goes, and suddenly what was supposed to feel like a day of splurging makes me feel depressed.

That’s it? Half a month of my life, converted to Peso, contained in a spreadsheet?

Even with a degree and a stable job, I still fear going back to scouring for pennies. To lighting candles when the electric company cuts power after three months of overdue bills.

I feel as if I’m always one impulsive purchase away from nights of blackouts where we take turns fanning each other; adding more water and vegetables to instant noodles so we could all have enough to eat; signing high-interest loans; and lying awake wondering if I can take my exams when tuition still isn’t paid.

Oh wait… I finished university in 2019.

In moments when I feel a strong desire for something, I recite the mantra my grandma drilled into me during my formative years. She had a habit of saying it every time we found ourselves in the toy section of the mall:

To be fair, she took over my education and personal expenses when my parents couldn’t.

Do I really need a new toy when I can spend it on a week’s worth of snacks?
Is it necessary to eat outside when we can just cook at home?
What do iPhones have that mid-range Android phones don’t?
What’s the use of a partner if they have no money?

Unfortunately, my desires learned to stay on their lane.

I tend to gravitate towards men from the same background and with the same wounds as mine. I turned away those with well-provisioned, complete loving families, afraid they could sniff out the child who had none to model love after—who grew up without both parents present, and therefore isn’t worthy of the emotionally regulated, mentally stable, simply amazing son they raised.

Out of spite and out of guilt.

They weren’t as interesting anyway as the creative, spunky bad boys I dated in my thinnest era. Rough around the edges but with character. Later, I realized it didn’t matter. A man can grow up surrounded by women his whole life and still not know how to be faithful to one.

For a long time, I remained rightfully in my place.

Social media made it easier to look into the lives of rich people. Painful to be constantly reminded what you can’t have, but even more so when you try to enter those spaces and find “do not touch” signs plastered at every surface.

I strived to access rooms I wasn’t supposed to be in. Those that smell of hotel humidifiers and expensive perfume, where people purposely or unintentionally mix up words from native tongue and their second language to form sentences spoken in a cadence assumed by the affluent.

I studied hard. I used my brain. Then I built a career in a field where people eat, breathe, and dream in profit margins.

I speak and write in English at work and try to make it sound effortless, like it has always been my first language, like I’ve been jet-setting to the West and back my whole life. In the rare times I make them believe I understand golf, or that I care about the oat milk in my Starbucks order, or that I count calories and steps.

For some time, I even believed I could finally charm a man of a higher tax bracket into saving me from poverty.

My friends didn’t have to try. Their boyfriends arrived already kind, already stable, already from good families, like it was the most natural thing in the world. I had to manufacture it. There came a point where I dated men and quietly made everyone believe he came from a reputable family like Friend 1’s boyfriend, was as emotionally mature as Friend 2’s, had pockets as deep as Friend 3’s.

It was the one act I couldn’t keep up.

That ex-boyfriend and I were two very different people, but I couldn’t help feeling like he was an extension of me. That when I succeeded, it was ours. That when he treated me poorly, I had brought it on myself. When he acted out, I was the one who repented.

And I held on like my life depended on a thick rope with stiff fibers. Because I believed that having a man meant achievement, that it meant you were deserving and worthy of good things. That choosing to be alone was cowardice. That it meant you were lacking something, lonely, incomplete.

It was only when I finally let go that I looked down and saw my palms, bruised, bleeding, and marked by something that was never meant to be held that tightly.

How I desired men when I was younger mirrored the way I collected things. A trophy. Something to display, to prove a point, to link to my arm like a Birkin. I never wanted to own anyone. But to have, to show, to say: look, I am also someone who gets chosen.

When you impulse buy, you end up with a room full of things that were never truly loved.

Thankfully, I’ve been wanting less as I grow older. The dream of owning a large house became the dream of owning only what fits in three luggages for easier mobility.

It started with a private list of things that would matter to me even when no one was looking. I wrote: Not following a linear career. Traveling slowly, preferring alleys over picture-perfect spots. Hand-me-down clothes. Taking the public transportation even when I could afford not to.

Then I began listing what I would not do, if I were granted permanent immunity from perception. I would not have children. I would not chase achievement for its own sake. I would not have a boyfriend, if having one means performing a version of myself that has never existed.

Even if it means never knowing what it’s like to fully turn off my brain, to be soft, to have a provider, to belong to someone. I have worked too hard and save too much to fit into a mold never meant for me.

Despite all of this, I still consider myself a lover. It just so happens that I am drawn to men, and I cannot will myself otherwise. That’s not a choice one simply makes.

I still want a partner. I crave intimacy. A soulmate. A best friend. Someone to hold when it rains from June to August. Someone who… sees me. When one of us dies, the other keeps the memory of the other’s existence alive. We don’t have to belong to each other. We never really do. We’ll both just end up putting flowers on each other’s grave. But while we’re here, we’ll share silences in public transit, touch toes as we lay in a queen-sized bed, and touch elbows when eating from street stalls.

Then again, I need to clock in tomorrow at 7AM. My bank just sent an SMS about an upcoming loan repayment. I have one egg left in the fridge, and my toothpaste tube has become anorexic.

Take one out and everything flies off the orbit of perfection.

Act I: To pretty

The belief that I’m pretty is the easiest thing to rip off of my personal wardrobe of desirability. And I couldn’t say rich, because you cannot take away what you don’t have yet.

Just put me beside someone immaculately clean, and the comparison does all the work from there.

From the moment I was told my mother was prettier when she was my age, I was primed to split open with this single crack. It didn’t take much after that.

The fracture went all the way through when my mother began comparing me to Mitchelle, the girl next door, my age, maybe six or seven, who already looked and behaved like a fine young maiden.

She was neat, composed and feminine. I was still tying my hair into pigtails with neon elastic bands. Next to her, I feel like a colorful doll worn thin from play, dropped into a rice field and forgotten there, left to soak in a sludge of mud and cow shit.

Like many of us, I was told to eat more so I don’t look like a stick. Then, later, told that chubby only looks cute when you’re a child.

I learned the rite of passage every girl with a developing body goes through: watching it become public property, having it subjected to the vileness of language.

I learned that, more than a crossing, the passage is an endless canal with no light at the end, unless you force yourself out through effort and damage. Otherwise, you live inside it permanently.

No comments hurt me more than those about hygiene.

During puberty, I learned that I sweat excessively. That I had body odor. Since you grow accustomed to your own smell, the worst part was learning this from other people. Even now, I avoid colors that expose armpit sweat too easily.

The way they described a natural body reaction was as if I had committed genocide. As if I had blown up an entire nation.

By “They” I meant family.

My father would scold me about my scent the way adults reprimand a child who has talked back to a grandparent.

But I’d pick being crucified like the son of god any day than become material for my mother’s stand-up comedy, performed in front of my aunties. They often sat in a circle, insatiable, waiting for the next her-armpit-is-a-deadly-weapon joke while playing tong-its, even as I cried, begged, and asked them to stop.

I would rather have an emotionally absent parent silently hand me a deodorant stick and say nothing after.

I was told to bathe more often and properly so I wouldn’t look dugyot. It’s a Tagalog word that reduces a person to neglect. It doesn’t just describe appearance, but attaches smell, class, and worth to the body.

Like homelessness, poverty, and corruption plaguing the country then and now, it wasn’t something you could fix in five minutes.

Now it has evolved into mukhang maasim, looking like you smell sour, one of the most popular insults online. Even when no one is close enough to smell you.

I’m glad my family noticed first. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no winning here. The alternative is being whispered about in classrooms, avoided in hallways, carrying maasim as a shadow of your identity for years. I’ve seen it. I may have hopped into the conversations to avoid pivoting the topic towards me. I didn’t know any better. I hold space for those who’ve endured the same.

As a young girl, I learned to read dirt as a warning sign, equated to looking poor. I found this ironic. We lived just a few minimum-wage paychecks away from disconnection notices and school promissory notes. I didn’t want to be associated with being poor, even though we weren’t comfortable to begin with.

My mother’s brothers-in-law were farmers, brown calves sunk into wet earth as they ploughed fields under the sun. Perhaps the implicit message that hid deep behind her insults meant well. Perhaps she wanted a better future for me. Perhaps her way of saying don’t end up like them was teaching me how not to look like them. I’m not sure. These are the thoughts I reach for when I need to believe the cruelty of her words have validity.

Ugly became dirty, dirty became ugly. The link took hold without me realizing it.

The grey mud on my tito’s calves,
The soil lodged under my cousins’ bitten nails.
Burning my skin in the sun, darkening like a carabao’s, as the lolas would say.
Smelling like summer heat.

Most days, I feel like the dirt never truly comes off my skin, infused there like a flesh-eating worm, something that can only be removed if I am willing to tear it out along with the flesh.

I see it in my candid, unedited photos. In reflections on car windows when I pass by them quickly. In mall entrances made of glass. In the mirrors propped up on beauty aisles. In the discoloration under my arms and along my bikini line that makes me recoil from the light when I’m intimate with a partner.

I carry a piece of that ancient, heirloom dirt with me.

It rises like sourdough, expanding, covering my entire body whenever I stand next to a real Clean Girl. I wish hygiene came to me naturally, the way it seemed to come to them, instead of having to translate the playbook by myself.

You know her.

She always smells like flowers. Looks like she just stepped out of the shower. Skin plump and white. Hair that never tangles. Clothes that always smell freshly laundered. I’ve seen her in friends. In sales ladies at beauty counters. In every female boss I’ve ever had. In every girl my age I once prayed to be like.

Sometimes I feel far from the girl I used to be. First on my mother’s side to earn a bachelor’s degree. First in the family to work in a corporate office. Some days, I genuinely love my skin and the way I naturally present myself, no overthinking my wardrobe choices.

Some days, I feel like I’ve come to love my skin color, how I share a similarity with hardworking farmers in my family, the women representing the country in beauty pageants, and the free-spirited female surfers I meet in the prettiest coasts of Luzon.

At last, I feel like a rosebud ready to open.

Then a true, put-together Clean Girl—Oh here you are again, Mitchelle—enters the room.

And suddenly I am slowly transfiguring into the unkempt little girl again, walking the rough road home, powdery dust clinging to her cheeks like grey blush. Grimy and putrid beside girls who smell like shampoo and sweet perfume.

I wash my body. Again. And again. A temporary, (obsessive) compulsive relief.

In the second and third acts, we’ll strip open/apart/away smart and rich.

Subscribe if you’re curious what happens when a girl’s wardrobe of perfection unravels before she can fully build it.

At night, when I shut my eyes to sleep, a ruthless spell takes effect.

My body begins to shift ceaselessly, but no side nor sleeping position offers comfort. Even if I settle in place, my neck grows sensitive to the touch of a shirt collar or a strand of hair. My underwear crumples and folds, settling into my ass crack.

A low-frequency buzzing of a mosquito becomes audible, whose sound alone already makes you itch all over. Sweat drips suddenly from my forehead. Only an arm or a leg ever falls asleep (and by sleep, I mean the prequel of a cramp.)

On nights when I haven’t checked if the kitchen gas tank is properly shut, whether accidental or deliberate, the curse makes sure to remind me, and it manifests as a physical interference or worse, a replay of an embarrassing moment. A fault.

You haven’t learned your lesson, the voice says.

I worry about wasting time being thorough. About checking locks, switches, and lights. About losing sleep even though sleep won’t come unless I complete this nightly ritual.

Miss one check and the gods may render me complacent. They might set the kitchen on fire. Send a burglar. Initiate a short circuit. Or worse, rack up the electricity bill because I forgot to shut the fridge door properly.

Cruel as the sleep gods are, I was given an out. As with any curse, there must be an exception.

I had to find it myself.

And a loophole, I did find.

Where the spell of sleeplessness couldn’t reach me

I sleep better in a bed that isn’t my own.

If I were to recall the few golden slumbers of my life, the clearest memory would be the one on the couch at Ruby and Justine’s apartment, sometime in 2018.

I met Ruby through Justine, my classmate back in university, whom I teamed up with for a translation assignment. I felt drowsy, shut my laptop, and fell asleep on their round, orange couch.

When I woke up, I felt an unfamiliar yet consoling kind of lightness. I remember the rain pattering against the pavement outside. The air was the crispest I’d ever breathed, sharp and bright, like fresh, tangy fruit.

I also slept at Pauline’s, the editor-in-chief of our university paper, one summer in 2017 when we had to work overtime to finish a magazine issue. I can still remember the feel of her soft white sheets and cloud-like pillows.

The university hostel, where we’d occasionally hold our presswork, was lovely too, despite the malfunctioning air conditioners.

I love waking up in hotel rooms with no clutter in sight. Only the aroma from the air diffuser fills the space, settling into the white linen sheets and pillowcases until the entire room carries that familiar, soothing scent of tropical bay.

I sleep better in my Mama’s room, even when my youngest brother, my mother, and I squeeze ourselves into her king-sized bed. I miss the tepid wind drifting through the open windows of her house in the middle of the rice fields.

I slept better in the lodges of Kalinga and Sagada, where the mountain air was cool enough that we needed no electric fan. I shared a long mattress on wooden floors with seven other female hikers. I slept better at the aviation-themed hostel in La Union and in the one-person hut I rented for two nights in Liwliwa.

These beds of all shapes and sizes, sometimes makeshift, lull me into deep sleep but don’t hold me for long.

Back in my own room, I wake with heaviness. The atmosphere is more damp. I wake up sweaty. My head aches. Some mornings, even when I feel well-rested, I cannot bring myself to get up, as if the bed were its own planet, holding me down with a gravity I can’t escape.

The logic behind borrowed safety

• Your psyche has learned to associate your own bed with frustration. When sleeplessness happens often enough in the same place, the bed itself becomes a trigger. Relaxation never fully arrives because the body already expects failure.
  (Source: a Reddit user who sounds like they’ve lived this.)

• Bedrooms at home are rarely just for sleep. We work from our beds. Fold laundry on it. Watch shows half-awake. The brain quietly learns that this space is multifunctional. In hotels or other people’s homes, your only task is to sleep. No one will be calling your name from the kitchen.
  (Source: sleep science, dressed politely.)

• Sleeping somewhere unfamiliar often removes next-day obligation, and that freedom alone alleviates tension from the night before.
  (Source: an app that knows more about my sleep than I do.)

It’s not always about how nice the place is or how soft the mattress feels.

I once slept well on a long table during a research convention.

What I know is that I sleep better when I am a guest.

When I’m not the one responsible for keeping the house safe. Not the one who pays for the electricity if an appliance is left on overnight. Not the one to blame if the wires fail while I’m asleep.

I want to go to bed at the same time as everyone else, without vigilance disguised as responsibility. The kind of rest that comes when nothing is expected of you but to lie still.

At home, the bed feels formal. It demands to be used correctly. At the right hour. In the right position. As if sleep were another task to complete, layered on top of an already excessive routine of checking locks and switches.

Chasing rest in my own bed

I can’t afford to go on vacation every weekend, or constantly crash at a friend’s place. I also can’t justify investing in a Tempur bed in the hope that it will solve everything.

So I try, instead, to negotiate with sleep where I am:

1. Reduce screen time. I try to put my phone and laptop away at least thirty minutes before bed, though it doesn’t always work.

2. Get sunlight. A short walk, or anything that signals morning to my body.

3. Read or write until my mind grows tired of stimulation.

4. Exercise. Even a few minutes of movement reminds the body it’s been used.

5. Recall a memory, or replay a movie from start to finish in my mind.

6. Take a bath. The cooling afterward seems to help.

7. Not try to force sleep. There is no “right” way to do it. The same goes for other things in life.

Some nights, I still don’t sleep well. But I know now that rest is possible.

I have felt it elsewhere, in borrowed rooms and borrowed beds, where nothing is mine to keep safe.

Where I’m not meant to linger forever.

Anyone who has ever held onto something, only to lose it to some unexpected force, understands The Vulnerability of Things.

One day, it sits on your desk, rests in your pocket, hangs in your closet, holds your hand, sits with you in lonely hours, or waits for you at home.

The next day, you lose it to rainwater, to a sleight of hand, to a bunch of termites, to a malignant disease, to an accident, to indifference… to time.

This, to me, is why the past gleams ever so blindingly.

The idea that you’ve dodged every curveball life hurled at you, surviving 100% of the time (despite a few bruises), offers a reassuring sense of comfort.

These thoughts drift through my mind whenever I flip through old family photo albums. Sometimes, I get caught on a single page, the world around me blurring as time slips by unnoticed.

How were they able to survive multiple economic downturns? Why do they seem so happy after losing all their belongings to house fires, or when Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, exactly 10 days before my grandma’s birthday?

How did my mother manage to have me at 24, when I, at that age last year, could hardly show up for myself?

Living with obsessive thoughts is getting increasingly difficult. The older I get, the more creative the ideas become about how “it” would strike without warning.

Will it grab me by the neck, stab me in the back, explode in the kitchen, crash like a speeding vehicle, break into our house, poison me, or talk me into ending it myself?

For a long time, I’ve been living only to defy the inevitable, hoping to get away unscathed, until such a time that the hypervigilance caused internal bleeding, eating me from the inside.

This time last year, I began writing again—about and for myself, the past, or hopes for the future—any record of my existence before my time runs out.

In the same way I think a memory vanishes if I don’t write it down, I obsess over collecting souvenirs. A note I was given, a photo I printed, handwritten letters, receipts, bus tickets, stickers, and sketches of myself.

These are evidences that I made it through, and that I was loved and happy in the process.

I also recognise that sometimes, I partake in activities only to have something to capture in photos and videos, instead of simply living and collecting memories afterward.

I’m still breaking these patterns of performative habits… and I think I’m making good progress.

I no longer delete pictures that violate the rule of thirds.

Perhaps this is what those before me intended: people who knew how to preserve happy memories by leaving them as they are. It contributes to their realness. When you’re in the moment, you hardly ever think of taking many great photos, or any at all.

If anything has changed, I feel more present than ever, like I’m finally in the right timeline after years of jumping between the past and future.

Through writing, I no longer need to hold memories in my head to keep them alive, wearing them out with constant replay until they blur and distort.

Most importantly, they have a place now. The cool thing is that they’re not just mine, but yours, too, ever since you arrived here.

You’re welcome to stay as long as you want, whether you view me as someone who gets it or has it worse.

And if you’re waiting for a sign to start writing, whether it’s your first love or a reunion after many years, let this be the long-awaited sign.

It’s always been waiting for you.

If given the choice between being loved by many or deeply, I’d choose the latter. Even if it’s only 23 followers, the fact that you’re still here after a year reminds me I’m on the right path. For this, I know I’d die happy.

That’s nearly the same number of classmates I had in preschool, anyway.

Here’s to one year! Thank you for being a reliable catch basin for everything I’ve ever spilled, from my OCD, family affairs, our bottomless house clutter, and everything else from this randomness reservoir called my mind.

As a gift, I’ll be more attuned and aware, less focused on myself, and more on what interests you.

The beginning of every journal holds thoughts I’ve kept silent for a long time. Now that they’re all out, I have more room for…

I’m not quite sure what to fill it with yet.

One thing’s for sure: I’ll greet it happily when it arrives.

For example, an abstract concept such as time is given a shape or a color.

A week, to me looks, like:

…a horizontal line that runs steadily from Monday to Friday. Come weekends, the line slopes up, creating a hill with two bumps, like a camel's, and falls back down to start a new weekday.

Excerpt from Something is eating my brain

When I think of a year, I picture a tall calendar, with the months stacked from top to bottom. Moving into a new year means needing to pole vault (mentally) every time, since the twelfth month is so far down.

Many say their mental image of a year is like an oval race track, while others imagine it as a number line. Some even can't visualize anything at all, like ~4% of the general population with aphantasia, the inverse of synesthesia.

When I look back on the years of my life, they show up like notebooks.

2020 is an untouched journal. While many viewed this year as their opportune moment to pause, reflect, and pick up new hobbies, I worked non-stop and went to the office every day, business as usual, since the bills couldn’t go on lockdown.

2017 is lived in and filled to the last page, dog-eared with a broken spine, and has extra girth from pressed flowers, leaves, and seashells I taped to its pages.

Years 2021 to 2023 are notebooks filled only with dates. Not the romantic kind. The Gregorian kind.

It’s so easy for me to take hold of the best years of my life and sift through the pages whenever I feel like reliving a certain memory from that time. They stand out and seem to be always within arm’s reach from where I’m currently sitting.

More than I care to admit, for most of my life, the passing years were marked by jobs, paychecks, phone upgrades, and material things acquired, interrupted only by fleeting moments of happiness that I never fully savored because slowing down always felt undeserved.

My first instinct, always, was to run as fast as I could. Not to overtake, but just to stay in the same lane as everyone else, so it looks like we’re all moving as one. I can’t be even an inch or two behind. I slow down for a millisecond, the crowd starts heckling from the stands.

And so I ran like Forrest Gump: running from town to town, not noticing how many people joined and fell away.

I rushed through days, always striving to outdo every version of myself, leaping through time and space until the years grew smaller and smaller the farther they drifted behind me.

There’s something about turning 25. When you’ve only ever planned to live until 50, that’s already half of your life gone1.

This year, I finally gave myself a speeding ticket.
It came with no fine, for it had already been paid by lost time.

In 2025, I will soften my pace whenever I catch myself walking too briskly toward nowhere “important” on a day off.

I only plan to take low-adrenaline trips to places that can be reached by land. No need to fly out of the country yet just because everyone else seems to be doing it. I needed to teach myself how to be still first, to appreciate things fully, and offer undivided attention. Otherwise, I’d just be paying money to stress myself out.

Knowing how much beauty I already find in ordinary days, I wonder what would happen if I ever made it to a dream destination like Jeju or Santorini. I have a feeling I’d be dazed trying to make sense of everything so far removed from my everyday world.

January this year, I went on a two-day vacation in Zambales, a province on the west coast of Luzon, Philippines that’s 4.5 hours away from my home in Tarlac City.

It’s not Bali—not even close—but it's still a beautiful little surf town that gave me the space to be still and be myself.

On the morning before I left, I saw two full double rainbows above the sea, with a pale blue sky as a backdrop, resembling a painting unbound by a frame.

It’s almost the end of March now, and that memory still feels so close, as if it happened yesterday. I might never forget. I don’t want to forget.

That rare phenomenon made me happier than any tangible thing I’ve ever owned or any accolade I’ve ever received.

I’ve come to realize that I take longer to move through life than most people because I’m always trying to capture memories in 4K. Something I can always return to in perfect clarity. Something to tide me over when anxiety makes me feel like the next one isn’t always guaranteed.

I’m not here to tell you how to run.

Your pace is yours to choose. Take that trip. Get that promotion. Book that flight. Like how Jenny cheered for Forrest in the movie, I’ll be right here on the sidelines, rooting for you. Run, reader, run!

But if you get tired, let’s sit by the shore of a gray sand beach, whether real or imagined. No one will ask where you’ve been, how far you’ve come, or what’s next on your journey.

Just know that someone is glad that you made it here.

this segment is called…

proof of life

♡ my month so far:

• hell-bent on lowering my screen time, which led to thoughts of quitting social media altogether.

• succeeding in my low-buy year. i now get dopamine hits from seeing how much i’m saving every payout. all by saying no to things i can’t afford.

• went back to zambales/liwa this month. joined a coastal cleanup activity, bought two secondhand clothing items from a roadside stall for just 70 pesos, visited namatacan river, and watched a pink sunset sky by the beach.

• oh! we adopted a girl doggo. her name’s heaven and she’s two months old.

♬ currently obsessed with:

• ne-yo’s tiny desk concert

🕮 i’m reading:

• naked by david sedaris (for two months now)

⋆｡ photos i took:

time is slipping away.

in one hand, i’m holding cecilia ahern’s ‘if you could see me now’, and in the other, a book by an author and title completely alien to me—i’m chronically online, and i have watched over a thousand book hauls at this point, yet neither the title nor the author rings a bell.

but the alarm’s about to.

bookends sells used books by the pound at an affordable cost. tempting, yet the voices of minimalism influencers inside my head remind me that the best way to save during sales is not to spend at all.

i planned to take just one for evidence.

but which?

it's not my first time deciding with a ticking time bomb nearby.

always the spines first—find a title that clicks. then, the cover. it has to look nice on my home shelf. only then, once i’m satisfied with the surface-level beauty, as everyone else does with people, do i go skin deep. i only read the blurb afterward.

one read:

“It's how she counteracts the chaos of her family—an alcoholic mother who left when she was young, an emotionally distant father, and a free-spirited sister, who seems to be following in their mother's footsteps…”

while the other one:

“Kennedy once again takes ordinary lives and dissects their ironies, injustices and pleasures with her humane eye and wry sense of humor…[her] poignant short stories find the beauty and tragedy in illness and, mortality, life, and love.”

outside my mental debate, the afternoon sun reached its peak. it’s already 1:12 pm, and we should visit bencab before it closes at 5:00 pm. my stomach churned, and so did my two companions, micha and michael, who were still kind enough to say, “no, take your time.”

“no, i’ll only take a pinch of sand from the hourglass, thank you very much,” i replied in my mind.

then a decision was made.

i wonder, years from now, if i’ll also look back and think,

“wow, i was so close to not marrying my soulmate.”

a book with heightened senses

it’s not that i need to be entertained less as i age—it’s that the mundane becomes more fascinating.

‘like a house on fire’ is an anthology—short stories of unapologetically ordinary people.

as one reviewer mentioned, kennedy has a ‘sniper’s eye.’ one can easily get immersed in the minds and thought processes behind each character, that you need to be exorcised from one person’s body before moving to the next chapter.

micha and i sat together on both the way to baguio and back. we talked about how we often experience only a small fraction of our waking days. she explained that it’s because we’re either dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, which makes us neglect the way our clothes feel against our skin.

this book remembers. it is present and hyper-aware. for example, in ‘like a house on fire’:

“You get good at listening to sounds in a household when you’re prone… you can almost hear a head shaking in pained disbelief, or distant teeth grinding in the silence following the lifting of the washing-machine lid and finding the clothes set on ‘wash’… strangled and spun around the agitator, and a husband who can’t pull things out and can hang things up.”

and in ‘tender’, which is about a woman confronting a possibly cancerous lump:

“The princess with all the mattresses who still couldn’t sleep because of that tiny lump disturbing her all night long; the hard resilient pea rising cruelly and insistently through all those downy layers.”

we got on like a house on fire

my cheat code for writer’s block is to pick up a book and attempt to emulate the author’s style. that’s my tip for anyone who’s run out of things to write about—reach for a book, like reaching for a friend’s hand, and start filling yourself up again.

kennedy’s flair for language is no exception, not to mention her dry sense of humor, which is evident in the following snippets:

1. in ‘ashes’:

   “…his mother has embellished past events to give them a patina of something richer and happier… it seems, they’re embroidered more until the truth as he remembers it is buried under stiff layers of decorative restitching.”

2. in ‘cross-country’:

   “Your partner dies, and everyone comes over with casseroles; they clean your house and hang out your washing. Your partner leaves, though, and you don’t need nurturing, apparently; you need avoiding.”

while we’re on the subject of aesthetics, i’d like to point out a few of kennedy’s beautifully crafted figures of speech scattered throughout the book, like “a babel of voices,” “deoxygenated silence,” and “a breath that hurt like a stitch.”

everything is living, breathing

as we immerse ourselves in the stream of consciousness of kennedy’s characters, a common thread is that, during periods of contemplation, they always identify with things:

1. in ‘like a house on fire’:

   “He’d [the physiologist] clicked his plastic model spine back and forth in his hands. ‘L3, that’s you here.’ Yep, that’s me there. Sometimes I feel like that’s my entire identity focused there in one, single space between two injured segments of a bone puzzle…”

2. in ‘whirlpool’:

   “They will see how stiffly you are sitting in this humiliating dress, cross-legged as a child, how heavy and proprietorial your mother’s hand is on your shoulder. They will imagine the weight of that hand. You understand… that the sundresses are about your mother.”

3. in ‘cross-country’:

   “a face blurry in the back of someone else’s photo, reduced to nothing but pixels.”

and my favorite, albeit compared to a living thing:

1. in ‘little plastic shipwreck’, an oceanworld caretaker grieves for both the dolphin samson’s death and his wife’s brain injury. he alternates between describing the dolphin’s situation and his wife’s condition, drawing parallels.

   looking at his wife’s forehead bruise, he recalls a dolphin show where the emcee explained echolocation, noting how dolphins use their foreheads, called “melons,” to transmit sound waves and gather information. ironically, the bump on his wife’s forehead did the opposite, impairing her quick thought processing and basic human expressions.

no final thoughts, only spacing out

the things we write now are the trails we leave behind; our proof of life. a reminder that we were once here on earth. we lived, imperfectly, but genuinely—especially with our vigor to survive, no matter the stakes.

during our trip home, my good friend mentioned that she imagines herself as the people she sees through bus windows. it’s another one of her tips for suspending time—imagine yourself as different people, and you get to live many lives.

in that brief moment, you are someone else, and you begin to wonder whether they experience grief, happiness, excitement, or contentment as you do.

once your soul departs the body of the person you’re watching from afar, a part of them starts to attach to you, like a fabric swatch—a piece of their clothing you get to wear every day, unaware.

there was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep rolling under the stars: an exhibit by jonathan olazo at bencab museum, july 2024

originally, i just wanted my brain to function like a cog in a machine. over the past years, i've overworked it to the point where the metal of the cog has softened like cloth. 

now, it's being tumble-dried, tossed over and over inside a spinning washing machine.

i always had a system for things, even when i was younger. i memorize numbers by assigning each with a corresponding color—seven is green because it reminds me of a leaf's outline. four is pink, so therefore nine, a number that closely resembles it, is red.

the image of a week is a horizontal line that runs steady from monday to friday. come weekends, the line slopes up, creating a hill with two bumps, like a camel's, and falls back down to start a new weekday.

i've always depended on these systems to remember things throughout my life.

apparently, no such order exists outside my mind

my parents separated when i was three, and i was sent to live with my grandma. her charming house was so full of things that they took up more real estate than my grandma and my late uncle, john vincent, who lived there. 

i could only build lego houses, making sure the blocks of the same color were together, to create a sense of home—an orderly one at that.

when i realized that building makeshift houses was no longer suitable for my age, i started to fixate on the room my grandmother provided for me in her house.

every weekend, i move things around and rearrange them again like playing tetris, deep-cleaning whenever i get the chance as if i didn't just do it last week.

these are all harmless and, to some extent, healthy habits that i have fostered over the years.

when john vincent died in 2013 from kidney failure, his last requests were:

“always be mindful to check the door locks, plugs, switches, and, most importantly, the stove knobs. the last thing you want is to set your grandma's house on fire.”

loopy girl syndrome

the bell house is situated near the entrance of camp john hay. it was constructed using wood to withstand baguio's frigid temperatures.

despite the clutter, our house is the one thing i’ve cherished for a long time. it has endured through the years, even with its history of fire.

i’ve heard countless stories from my grandma (and our neighbors confirming) that the house has been engulfed in flames before. there was even an incident from before my father was born.

i'd like to brush it all off by thinking that most houses from that time were made of wood, which increased the chances of fires.

from prehistoric times when it was first discovered to my freshman year in college, when i learned about my high school—one of the oldest built during the spanish era—burning down, fire has always been present.

i grew up in a devout catholic household, and the images of flames and embers were associated with the pits of hell, where girls who sin in action (even in decisions about their bodies), or even in thought, are believed to go.

in the first night following john vincent's passing in september 2013, i made sure to check the locks, plugs, switches, and stove twice.

the second night thrice. 

the next few weeks, five to seven times a night. 

when i check the locks, plugs, switches, and stove, my mind tells me, 

"you haven’t checked enough. do it again."

"i’ve already checked," i say.

"not well enough."

"it’s sufficient."

"complacency is what leads to things burning down."

ten years of magical thinking 

‘the year of magical thinking’ is my favorite book title by joan didion. i initially thought it would be about a time when she lays sleepless, mind filled with magical thoughts.

however, it’s actually a memoir about the year after her husband’s death.

during my research into ocd origins, i came across magical thinking ocd, which involves superstitious intrusive thoughts and compulsive actions meant to ward off negative outcomes.

even though i feel like i’ve let my grandma down by not being as fervent a catholic as she was, i still see myself as a believer.

i don’t believe in putting everything in the lord’s hands and then convincing myself that everything will turn out fine and that i’ll be protected from harm.

to me, that feels like complacency.

i believe that god has granted me autonomy. i feel responsible for both my actions and my inactions. if i forget to do something, fully aware that it could lead to disastrous outcomes, it feels like a reason to be punished—like using a house fire as a cautionary lesson.

choosing to delay or sleep on it feels like complacency. for years, i’ve dealt with exhaustion and mental strain just to ensure the gas range is safe. security always seems like a deceptive comfort to me.

before i go on a trip or leave home for a while, i make sure to remind my siblings multiple times and test their knowledge about handling the locks, switches, plugs, and stove.

plot twist: they often don’t turn everything off. i only have myself to rely on.

on the bright side, if i ever get married, it’s one thing i can guarantee—he'll only have to stress about the bills and my baggage, not about unlocked doors or whether he left the light on.

burning out before catching fire 

my life isn't clear-cut and coherent. 

the more i spend another year caught in the cycle of constant checking, the more i realize how many things are beyond my control

i’ve changed jobs and romantic partners frequently in recent years. hard work means little in the face of layoffs, just as loyalty and devotion seem insignificant when met with indifference and inevitable falling outs.

i'm beginning to realize that i need to focus my hyper-awareness on things that directly affect my life, instead of fixating on unlikely scenarios like an angel of death dropping a lit matchstick in our kitchen on a night when i leave things undone.

i want to stop spinning my wheels. i’m weary of feeling stuck in an endless cycle.

i wish to accept and value the small moments of feeling safe and content without questioning them or dismissing them as false peace.

it took me too long to realize that checking the knobs twice doesn’t make a difference and isn’t any better than checking them just once. there’s no magic number; it’s simply a matter of whether you lock it or you don’t.

if i combined all the time i’ve spent worrying rather than sleeping after checking everything as needed, how many hours or days would that add up to, and how unsettling would that be?

the hours lost in irrational thinking unlock a new level of fear—ocd steals away time that i can never get back.

even so, i remain on guard. the fear of harm or something worse is always in the back of my mind. achieving a life free from worry and stress seems like something i’ll have to fight endlessly for.

maybe my happiness doesn’t hinge on my ability to amount to something one day. 

maybe what i truly need is the quiet assurance of a peaceful night’s sleep.

I wish I was kidding, but I do, in fact, live in a time capsule junkyard. 

Stepping through our front door, you'd instantly know this isn't your average home. Salvaged cabinet doors with mirrors hang proudly on the wall–the first telltale sign that things are a little different here.

Before you can ponder that artistic choice, another unique installation catches your eye—a repurposed school table of mildewed, outdated elementary school books and a display of hair ties, toys, and trinkets sitting inside empty Stick-O jars.

The living area might appear typical at first glance, but then you notice the real estate situation. The oversized Hello Kitty plushies have completely claimed the sofa—each a beloved souvenir from my aunt Anne when she worked in Japan, late 90s. 

We do not have the usual TV setup in our living room. Instead, we have a special piece, a small statuette of Jesus Christ that my grandmother swears has withstood many house fires. She's held onto it for twenty years, ever since her days as a school principal. 

Through a small doorway in the living room, you enter the kitchen. Here is where one realizes that my grandma is the kind of woman who believes that things don't have a predetermined lifespan.

In her eyes, things keep living on despite being empty, faded, or broken. Today's plastic coffee cup becomes tomorrow's ice tray, gin bottles turn into vases or soap dispensers, and peanut butter jars get a second life as drinking glasses.

When ideas run dry, we either (a) throw things away (which is a rare occurrence) or (b) store them, waiting for a future where they might be needed again, perhaps reborn with a whole new use.

Unfortunately, the "special occasion" for many of these items never arrived. This leaves us with a collection of 42 repurposed jars, once home to coffee, cheese, and chocolate hazelnut spread. Plastic containers number over 100, while unused mugs gifted to us or won at parties sit at 16 strong. Cutlery and cookware reserved for grand events like Christmas and feasts of La Purísima Concepción complete the picture.

I finally have the answer to the questions that have been nagging me for so long: Why do I feel like I lived my teenage years in the early 2000s? Why do I have such a strong connection to 80s music, as if I experienced it firsthand? Why does it seem like I have memories from a time when I barely existed? 

This is because we have a time travel portal that sits quietly in our backyard

Our kitchen might seem chaotic, but that's nothing compared to our storage area, the gateway through time itself.

If I looked hard enough, I'm sure I could find a piece of ancient history to sell to Pinoy Pawnstars for a good amount of money. We call our storage house the "kubo," even though it no longer had the physicalities of the common hut, as we've renovated it as an extension of our main home. It's not directly attached to our house because a Santol tree and overgrown plants stand between it and the main house.

When we decide to bring in visitors, we clear out furniture and oddities—Hello Kitty plushies included—to the backyard. Later, we bring things back in, but sometimes miss the smaller, more peculiar items like wedding and baptismal tokens, leaving them to slowly accumulate into a forgotten pile.

After my uncle John Vincent passed away, his belongings ended up in the kubo. Ironically, it's through the things he left behind that I learned more about him than when he was still alive. Turns out, he collected live concert DVDs, including those pirated 10-in-1 bundles from Bargain Tuesdays in our barangay back in the day. Plus, he had a great collection of cargo shorts and vintage shirts.

I used to think we didn't have much in common as a family, as we rarely sit down on the dinner table to discuss how differently we’ve experienced the same day.

Thankfully, sentimentality is our family crest. I got to know my family more through their belongings rather than through their words.

My papa has the best taste in music. My uncle had the best taste in movies. My now estranged grandpa once tried to convert to Islam, evidenced by the hardcopy of the Quran he left in our backyard library, along with our collection of 80s to 00s Reader’s Digest issues. My aunt, known as the daredevil badass of the family, is surprisingly fond of pink Kawaii keychains. My grandma, a retired school principal, loves to read murder mysteries and action novels in her free time.

We all have different reasons for holding onto things. Maybe it's to have a physical representation of something as abstract as love, or a remnant of something as tangible as loss.

Maybe it's to preserve a version of ourselves that once existed. A relic, like the packaging of an orange juice bottle that might be discontinued in the future.

Maybe it's just to have something useful on a rainy day, whether it’s a rusty umbrella with a broken rib or a basketball jersey your high school ex gave you when you ran out of clean shirts to wear.

I've read that people sometimes collect items this to fill a gaping hole.

We have the extraordinary capacity to hold onto things quite well, even if they block our paths, shelter a thousand bugs, or take up spaces meant to hold a person.

I find it hard to let go of things, too

I tend to keep pieces of everything and everyone I meet in a small box; how it's hard for me to discard things but I find it very easy to acquire them. I want to ensure that every great feeling or experience is well-documented and that everything lives on as if my life depended on it. 

I think this is why I love Reply 1988. Besides the fact that this 25-episode series gave justice to the story of every character in their little Ssangmundong community, the set design feels very familiar and resembles what every Filipino home looks like—the walls with smoke imprints, the kitchen sets, pillows with minimal stains, and appliances they insist on using despite being worn out.

Minimalism isn’t for everybody. You cannot expect anyone to stop being nostalgic when sentimentality is deeply embedded in our culture. At first birthdays, there's almost always a souvenir with an image of the celebrant. When friends travel, they make sure to give you a keychain bearing the name of the place they visited.

When we outgrow old clothes, they're passed down to the youngest sibling before they become rags or potholders. There were no high-quality phone cameras when our parents started becoming parents, hence the abundance of film photos in our homes.

I don’t consider myself a maximalist either. I've already decluttered my room many times, yet there are still a lot of items to unearth. Owning a lot of things also means being responsible for all of them. I dislike feeling responsible for every broken hair tie and ballpoint pen I find under my bed.

A few questions I often ask myself when assessing the value of things:

1. Will it make my life easier, or will I feel burdened by owning it? 

2. Is maintaining it something that will stress me out? 

3. How exactly will it make my life easier? 

4. If it's not for function, what memory is attached to it? 

5. Is it a happy memory, or is it to hold on to the person who gave it? 

6. Will it last a long time? How will I preserve it?

I want to keep reminding myself that the things I want to gain from life are intangible like memories. I will allow myself to collect souvenirs from core life experiences—not putting material things at the center. There are already so many things in the world.

If our backyard is already brimming with memorabilia from across the decades, I can't imagine how much stuff the world’s landfills currently hold. 

Marie Kondo-ing is not the ultimate solution either. Letting go of what no longer sparks joy can sometimes be a form of denial, as it simply moves junk out of the home without consideration for where it ends up once it's out of sight.

Does this mean I'll no longer participate in trends? Not entirely, but only in those I believe will withstand the test of time. Will I still collect trinkets? Definitely, and I'll continue to lovebomb my friends with cute trinkets that I know they'll like and treasure. Will I one day decide to re-evaluate the stuff in our backyard to finally let go of things that have already reached the end of their lives? Yes, but only with caution.

 If my grandmother sees me throwing out “a perfectly fine jar”, she’ll give me a light beating and then teach me how to repurpose it as a flower pot. 

“There’s nothing more annoying and tackier than something that has belonged to me for a long time. However, another way to say ‘tacky’ and ‘sick of’ is ‘accustomed to’ and ‘comfortable’. The feeling of being accustomed only comes with having spent a long time with something. Only the people I’m comfortable with can truly know me, embrace me, and console me.

Sometimes, you’re sick of something and it’s so tacky that you don’t even want to look at it. But, the only people in the world who can protect me are my people. People whom I’m used to and whom I’m comfortable with. The people who have been my people for a long time are people who you cannot help but love them. We cannot help loving them. You can’t help but love them.”

– Kim Jung Hwan, Reply 1988 (Dir. Shin Won-ho, 2015-2016)