Dreaming A Champagne Dream

this thing about you

Maybe we're always going to be the most irritatingly cute couple in the room. Maybe, contrary to our beliefs and wishes, it's not going to be forever--just another heartbreakingly beautiful chapter on the way to finally growing up. It could be stupid for me to just write about him day after day, to always wish that we were together, to think of him even while I'm reading about religious wars or saudade or proper meter.

It can't be helped. I've forever been a creature of impulse. "Heart first, head later", and while it's gotten me into some messy scrapes, it's also given me the courage to pursue the degree I truly want and be with the person I really love.

We're all afraid of the shame and hurt that follows after a failed relationship. Always asking "why me?" and feeling used and idiotic, like the entire affair was a joke. Rarely are there quiet partings. We know this, and we continue in our pursuit anyway, lyrical lovers flitting from one to another in search of that ideal, true love.

Potential futility should not deter you from your desires. Eat that ice cream. Ask for his number. Buy those shoes. Life is too short for guilt or fear.

No hesitation.

I think that's the best thing I've learned from him.

forges

Been thinking.

Can't believe that it's been a year since everything went down. Since Martin turned his back on me when I needed him most, since the need to pick the pieces of my old life set me drifting towards Daryl and away from the self-loathing I had.

I still have problems, I can still get pretty insecure. But this time I don't give in to the darker impulses. I have forged something sharp and hard into the calcium porousness of my bones, steely and certain. Like compass needles. Swords. Shields.

I know where I'm going now, what I want, what I need to do to get it.

I've been given this opportunity and I will not waste it. It feels worth it, somehow, to be broken so badly if it meant coming back so strong and with more opportunities for happiness, with more love and determination.

sea change

 

So now I have a free jelly 35mm camera from Crocs for buying a cute little pair of the McCall Hello Kitty ballet flats in black, and I don't know how to tweak it to get all those Lomography-lovely effects. Time to get a vignetting lens.

There's a storm here in the country. My house has that nice chilly atmostphere that lets me run around in sweaters instead of fanning myself and drinking orange juice, but honestly I'm not too happy that it's raining. One is that it's now Category 5 and I'm afraid for all the people up north who will lose their homes and lives. Two is for the pettier reason that my boyfriend, living fairly close to the sea, won't be allowed by his mother to leave the house to visit me because of the weather.

It feels very Proulx-esque. Like I should be blowing cool air onto a steaming bowl of chowder, the sound of gulls greeting me in the morning, salt in the breeze. But here in the Philippines, you get all the rain, none of the picturesqueness. Unless you're the kind of sick person who thinks people rowing their possessions onto dry land in a tiny raft is "picturesque".

There's something sickening about this post, the way it just juxtaposed something as mundane as shoes to something as great as socioeconomic disaster--a bedfellow arrangement between Cosmo Girl and Time. Then again, that's the curse of an educated teenager. It's hard to fully sift the coalescences and rid them of youthful shallowness.

To hell with this, I'm listening to Keane.

absentees

Oh, Typepad. I am so sorry I've been busy lately. Schoolwork + a bad case of conjunctivitis has kept me from updating you. Ugh. Thank God the semester's over.

Things I'm looking forward to:

1. the Meiday Halloween party. Indie music + crazy costumes + free alcohol = good times.

2. the second semester. I signed up for The Great Chingbee Cruz's poetry class this second sem. I hope I get in. Maybe I'll improve a thing or two.

3. a visit from Daryl. We'll be cooking and fixing gadgets. It feels like the old-couple kind of life already.

 

I'd like to write more, but the world is waiting for me. Also, there is an epic wicked storm hitting my country right now, and hopefully nothing happens. I'll keep my Typepad posted.

jealousy?

I hate how people accuse a girl of being jealous and paranoid when her boyfriend's ex starts getting all mushy again and keeps trying to contact him in the middle of the night in some vague attempt to rekindle the past. It's so easy for everyone else to judge your actions, but when they're in your shoes, some of them can be even more rabid than you. Amusing.

Not pretty, not very smart. A girl who doesn't know the meaning of the term coup d'etat, didn't vote, cheated on her then-boyfriend. I know that I don't have a reason to be jealous now because in spite of all her tugging, my boyfriend will not budge and go back to her. But at the same time I envy her for having had that that connection with him. There's always going to be a part of me which will wish that neither of us had our previous relationships, and that we were each other's first and only love. But that's an impossible wish, and I can only do the best with what I have now. I keep my heart open and filled with hope in spite of the negativity.

And even though she's getting on my nerves, I'm better than that. I'm not going to stoop to her level and play games. What she had, she lost, and I got it all. I'll do my best not to lose it.

new beginnings

I've finally moved to Typepad.

Honestly, the very idea of having to leave my Vox made me a bit sick. It felt like a third home (Livejournal being second), when my thoughts on my other blog were becoming far too public. Hence my lack of activity. Hopefully this post will mark a new chapter in my Vox/Typepad journey.

I briefly thought of just letting the blog die, but I couldn't let go of the memories.

di(sin)tegrate

IIt's wrong to fall apart.
The eyes of the world are on you,
hands full with popcorn,
their mouths huge vacuums of surprise.
They're watching. They're all watching
the spectacle of you,
your caged-animal act
where you lash out at everybody and everything
fingers jagged with the effort
of clawing at the bars.
You tried to be honest and you are castigated,
you are the scarlet letter woman,
the Jew, the gypsy, the lunatic,
mad as the patchwork dolls,
without order or purpose.
And still you persist in your I am, I am
so sure you are doing all that's required and more,
when you should've taken that needle
and sewn your lips shut.
Pretty and quiet and absolutely perfect.

depression

Depression is not you in front of the computer refreshing your Facebook news feed page in the pitiful hope that someone will want to start a conversation with you and end your boredom and loneliness at home.

Depression is when you haven't updated that page for months and months and you don't want to get out of bed anymore no matter how lonely you are.

Know it for what it is.

because apparently, anyone can do what we do

I always flutter around the fringes of amusement and irritation whenever my mother throws a casual remark about how my school load should be pretty easy now that I don't have any math and science in my curriculum. Somewhere around the back of my head, I feel sorry that she's so ignorant about all the work I do, and I'm annoyed because she seems to think that anyone can study literature.

If that was the case, why do so many people fail? Why is it so hard for others to read the canon works, Milton, Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Sexton, Nabokov? If it was so simple, why is it still an uphill battle for students to give a critical analysis of a short story?

Biology is hard. Calculus is hard. But Comparative Literature is no walk in the park either.

insensitivity

I remember when I reopened my blog and the first thing I saw was some jerk's comment about how my whining about my problems is a waste of space and I should just die. This person did not know me personally, lived on the other side of the planet...and was obviously both emotionally crippled and idle.

If he really knew how hard it is to live with a bipolar disorder, and how hard it is to help anybody with it, let alone yourself if you had it, maybe he would hold his tongue. I wonder how he would feel if one day, his wife or girlfriend just shut down on him, refused to get out of bed and started hurting herself whenever she was sad or angry. If she just stopped talking. If she just gave up on everything.

Maybe it wouldn't be so easy then to dismiss somebody's sadness. It's so easy to laugh or mock or prescribe from a distance. When it's right at your doorstep, you're quiet and unprepared.