oo, handa na ako.

matagal ko nang iniisip kung paano ko ba dapat sabihin ‘to nang hindi siya tunog dramatic, nang hindi siya tunog parang may gusto akong patunayan, nang hindi siya tunog parang may tinatapos akong kwento.

pero wala akong mahanap na mas tamang salita kundi ito:

handa na akong mamatay.

siguro sa iba, nakakatakot siyang marinig. maybe even disturbing. pero sakin, there is something strangely quiet about the thought of it. not because i want it to happen now. not because i have a date, a plan, or some grand goodbye prepared somewhere.

i just mean that i’m no longer terrified of the idea.

the thought of not waking up anymore sometimes feels less frightening than the thought of having to wake up every single day and convince myself to keep going.

ang weird no?

kasi ang daming bagay na hindi ko pa alam tungkol sa kamatayan, pero somehow, yun pa yung bagay na hindi ko na kailangang intindihin nang buo.

hindi ko alam kung ano talaga ang mangyayari sa katawan ko pagkatapos. siguro eventually, it will decompose. ilang linggo, ilang buwan, ilang taon, hindi ko rin alam. siguro may mga organismong kakain sa katawan kong minsang sobrang pinahalagahan ko. siguro babalik lang din ako sa lupa, piece by piece, hanggang sa wala nang makapagsabi kung saan nagsimula at nagtapos ang katawan ko.

ang random isipin.

pero minsan naiisip ko rin kung ganon lang talaga kasimple ang ending natin.

we spend years trying to become someone. we collect memories, favorite songs, little habits, inside jokes, people we love. we become so attached to this body, to this name, to this existence.

then one day, none of it belongs to us anymore.

and maybe that's why death doesn't scare me as much as it probably should.

what scares me more is the possibility that i will spend my entire life feeling like i am only surviving it.

pero hindi ako nagsusulat nito para sabihin na gusto ko nang mawala.

i'm writing this because there is a difference between being ready for death and actively reaching for it.

and right now, i think i'm somewhere in between exhaustion and acceptance.

handa na akong mamatay someday.

pero hindi ngayon.

hindi bukas.

at sana, hindi sa mga panahong hindi ko pa nakikita.

because despite everything, there are still things i haven't experienced yet.

there are still songs i haven't heard for the first time.

places i haven't been to.

people i haven't met.

versions of myself i haven't become.

and maybe that's enough reason to stay.

not because life suddenly became beautiful.

not because everything finally makes sense.

but because maybe i don't need to be completely in love with being alive to choose another morning.

maybe i just need to give myself enough time to find out what happens next.

so yes, i'm no longer afraid of death.

but for now,

i think i'll keep choosing to wake up.

i genuinely don’t know if i just feel things too deeply, but handwritten pieces are so, so damn romantic to me. like, unbearably romantic. the kind of romantic that makes me stare at a piece of paper for way too long, rereading the same sentence simply because i can’t get over the fact that someone actually sat down and wrote it with their own hands.

wdym there’s someone out there who would willingly allot an hour, maybe two, just to write me an essay, a love letter, or a poem about how much they love me? wdym they thought about what they wanted to say, crossed out the words that didn’t feel right, started again, paused for a while because they couldn’t find the proper word, then continued writing anyway? there’s something insane about that kind of devotion to me.

because it isn’t only the content of the letter that makes it romantic. it’s the existence of the letter itself.

it’s knowing that every word had to pass through their mind, down their arm, through their fingers, and finally onto the paper. there’s a whole physical process behind it. their thoughts becoming movements. their feelings becoming ink. their affection becoming something i can actually hold.

and god, the handwriting.

i love handwriting in a way that i don't think i can properly explain. i love seeing the little inconsistencies in someone's writing. how one letter might look different from the next. how some words are pressed harder into the paper than others. how their handwriting gets smaller when they’re trying to fit everything into the remaining space. how it gets messier when they’re writing too quickly because they suddenly have so much to say.

even the ugly handwriting would be beautiful to me if it came from someone i loved.

because eventually, i would learn it.

i would know that particular way they write their a's and g's. i’d recognize their handwriting before i even read their name. i’d know when they were probably tired, when they were rushing, when they were being careful. i’d start recognizing the little habits they probably never noticed about themselves.

and i think that’s what makes it so intimate.

a handwritten letter doesn’t just contain someone's words. it accidentally contains pieces of them.

their handwriting is something they carry everywhere without really thinking about it. it’s a tiny, almost unconscious fingerprint of who they are. and when they give it to you, they’re giving you something more personal than a perfectly formatted paragraph on a screen could ever be.

there’s no font.

there’s no autocorrect.

there’s no little blinking cursor waiting for you to reconsider what you want to say.

just them, a pen, a piece of paper, and whatever they were brave enough to leave behind.

and maybe that’s why i find handwritten love letters so devastatingly romantic. because you can feel the time inside them.

you can look at a page and think, someone spent their afternoon making this for me.

someone's hands were here.

someone sat somewhere and thought of me long enough to fill an entire page.

someone had an entire world inside their head and decided that, for a few hours, they wanted to turn that world into something i could hold.

i think there’s something beautiful about keeping a letter long after the person who wrote it has stopped saying those things. because paper remembers. ink remembers. the folds and creases remember how many times you opened it.

maybe years from now, the handwriting would still look exactly the same.

the person might change. the relationship might change. even i might change.

but that little piece of paper would still be there, carrying the version of us that existed when it was written.

and i think i would keep it.

i’d keep the ugly drafts. the little mistakes. the crossed-out sentences. the accidental ink smudges. the pages where they ran out of space and continued writing along the margins. i’d keep everything because those imperfections make it feel alive.

i don't want something that looks like it came out of a printer.

i want something that looks like someone loved me enough to make a mess for me.

i want the evidence of their hands.

i want the evidence of their time.

i want the evidence that, somewhere in the middle of their ordinary day, they stopped everything and thought, i want to write this person something.

and maybe that’s a very sentimental way of looking at paper.

but i think love has always been a little sentimental to me.

sometimes i don't want grand gestures or expensive gifts. sometimes i just want a piece of paper folded in half, my name written somewhere on the front in a handwriting i’ve learned to recognize, and inside, pages and pages of someone's thoughts.

because there is something so incredibly tender about receiving someone's feelings in their own handwriting.

it feels like they're not just telling me they love me.

they're leaving a little piece of themselves in my hands.

I used to dream of growing up, having a place of my own, and filling it with pets. The Secret Life of Pets was such a peak movie during my childhood that it made adulthood look warm, exciting, and full of life.

But just like the movies I watched eventually came to an end, the world I imagined slowly lost its color. The vibrant hues I once saw became dull and desaturated, fading little by little until I barely recognized them.

What was once vibrant now becomes a palette of widowed wives—drained of celebration, painted in grief, carrying the quiet colors of loss instead of the bright ones I once believed the world was made of.

I wanted to show up. I wanted to celebrate another year of your life. But I think the kindest thing I can give you now is my absence.

Maybe some people leave gifts wrapped in ribbons.

I leave quietly.

Maybe one day you'll understand why not seeing me was the most loving thing I could do.

Or maybe you won't.