this cold, damp weather inspires dark thoughts...

The days slowly bled into months, months growing into years, years that should have at least softened the emotions, but instead worked to sharpen the feelings of dissatisfaction and sadness. The bitter pang of regret remained. A sharp underlying prickle which never quite left her. She had hoped it would go away at some point, and in some sense it did. Days filled with purposeful toil and mindless concerns blunted the edges somehow, quieting the voice inside her head. But sometimes, on cold, dreary days, when even the soul shivered as the body huddled, wrapped tightly in blankets, when her defenses succumbed to the torpor of the season, that sharp prickle would emerge, as though to say, remember me? I am every dream you ever gave up, I am every opportunity you did not seize, I am every potential you wasted, I am the life you should have been living. Was it worth it? Throwing your dreams and every one’s expectations away to live a life half-lived; marked by the flickering shadows of a computer screen; of endlessly stringing and sharpening words for others chasing the same dream or a semblance thereof, that you harbored all those years? Was it worth it? Worth breaking your promise to your mother and father, worth breaking both their hearts, worth desperately trying to make everyone understand that the dream had died far too soon and far too quickly for you to even begin contemplating to attempt to continue? And she thinks, it has to be, it has to be, otherwise the life she’s been living, the fragile house of cards she’s built, could topple down. Then the things she’s told herself, to convince herself everything was fine, would be exposed as a lie. This is the way she’s lived her life. And on cold, dark days, when she is confronted by her regrets, she prays for the sun to chase away the clouds, to shine on the dark corners of her mind and force these sharp honest thoughts back to where she thinks they belong, stuffed into forgotten corners and drowned once more in purposeful toil and mindless concerns.

if I knew then what I know now...

I saw this topic at twitter a few weeks ago, asking people what they would tell themselves if they were given the chance to talk to their teenage self. There were plenty tweets, some light, some serious. I did post my own tweet, but I felt that it was too short, that I had a lot to tell my younger self, of the things I have learned and not learned over the course of 18 years (the original tweet assumed that the age of the recipient would be around 15). Then I broached the topic to W and we got to talking about it. It was funny and poignant what we wanted to tell our young selves. A few days later, I attended a seminar (which as with most seminars, was boring in places so you tend to try and find a distraction so that you don't fall asleep) and decided to kill time by writing 15-year-old M a letter. This was the result.

Dear 15-year-old me,

If I could tell you one thing, that would be to never give up on your dreams. Oh, make that two things: never give up on your dreams, and whatever you aim for, follow through with it always. ALWAYS. We tend to procrastinate too much, you are aware of that I'm sure, and 18 years on, we still haven't changed on that aspect much.

And since I'm giving you advice, here's another one. Try not to be too insecure. Sure we're fat (and we still are, but so what? I know that right now, that's just another thing you don't like about yourself, but trust me, only until you learn to be comfortable in your own skin will you be confident. Ignore the sundry relatives who thrive on making snide comments about our weight and focus instead on nanay's lovely compliments). Always remember, you are pretty, and you have a good head on your shoulders, and our brains are nothing to sneeze at if I do say so myself. Remember that in the real world, smart trumps pretty and skinny most of the time (unless you are competing for the attention of vapid men of course, but that's another story).

Also, smile more often. Trust me on this. Scowling is not good, not only because of the frown lines (and yes, mommy was right about those) but because we actually have a beautiful smile.

In matters of the heart and infatuations, try not to be too enamored of H, you remember that time after the last summer vacation when you saw him and you thought he looked iffy? hold on to that thought, because if you don't, you will realize too late that as W says, he really is not THAT good-looking and he has the voice of a strangled cockroach. And you would have wasted too many years mooning over him (yes, I said years).

Try not to unconsciously ape our aunts and give daddy more slack, be nicer to him and take care of him better. We are going to lose quite a few people we love far too soon. It will break our heart, and I think our heart will remain a little broken always. So be nice, and hug them more often.

You are going to get into the school of your dreams, but it will not be without some hitches. You'll weather through them though, you are far stronger than you believe you are. When you get to your second year at the Uni, opt to stay at the dorm no matter how much you dislike the idea of having roommates. You'll enjoy college and being young better that way. Join organizations, stop being such a hermit.

Stop being such a prude, go out and enjoy life, you'll be a better person for it.

Be happy, always. Always remember that although our life will not turn out the way we want it to, or how we planned it, we are still fortunate and we do have a good life.

Finally, always remember, life IS a journey; so you should just relax, hang on, and enjoy the ride.

Love,

Me

hello sunshine...

I have such wonderful memories of sitting beside the mango tree and carefully peeling each green mango to yield its sweet-sour yellow-green flesh, slicing it and dipping each slice in a dip made of fermented anchovies and vinegar. To me, outside of the inevitable heat cooking you instantly as you step out into the sun, nothing evokes summer more than the sight of fruit-laden mango trees begging to be picked. Until I was 21, we lived in a house nestled among various fruit trees. I remember two mango trees, one on the side of the house and another at the back, plus various other trees including a weird guyabano tree that did not bear any fruits the whole time we lived in that house and which the help thought was haunted. Its trunk was directly outside my bedroom window at the first floor, while the bough could be seen from my sisters’ bedroom window upstairs. The low-hanging mango tree at the side of the house was fair game, and we would often pick its fruits and wallow an afternoon away feasting on our bounty.

It is summer once again, and every day as I come in to work I am greeted  by the sight of the office’s three mango trees bursting with fruits. The sight makes me smile, and reminds me of a time when all I had to decide was what to do for the day and whether that would include climbing that friendly mango tree to the inevitable scolding from our grandparents. They’re all gone now, my grandparents, that house, that tree. But I still have the brilliant memories of those lazy summer days, of sneaking out from the afternoon naps my grandfather required us to take to climb trees we were expressly forbidden from climbing, of childhood really.   

i thought i saw your face today

Is it possible to miss someone who isn't really gone from you? At odd times, I find myself talking to you and missing the old you, the one whom I could spend hours upon hours talking to, I miss sitting with you quietly and talking of heartbreaks and new loves. As selfish as it sounds, I miss the you who patently needed me, the you who was insecure and slightly immature, just like me. It is not that I am not happy for you, I am truly, except for that small, childish, immature part of me who misses the you that belonged with me, was just like me. As much as I like the grown-up you, I loved the old you, and maybe just maybe, this is one of the reasons why I am not too enthused with you anymore. That perhaps you have grown away from me, and I have allowed myself to grow away from you. So that I find myself missing us, the wide-eyed innocent dreamers that we were, weaving plans and schemes for when we reached this age with an enthusiasm and belief that we had the world laid out at our feet, that all we had to do was work at it and everything will fall into place. I still wish for those things, stronger now than you because you have found a quiet joy in the life you are living, and in what you have achieved. And rightly so. And so I find myself searching for the old you when we are together, as unfair as that may sound. I still catch glimpses of the old you in the same way I catch glimpses of the old me sometimes.

of friendships and growing apart

today I met with L and her hubby. I also met her little boy, who is my godchild, for the first time. Funnily enough, I wasn't really that excited about it; so much that I was actively contemplating not disturbing my routine sunday nap and was actually typing my message asking for a raincheck when her sms telling me they were already at our meeting place arrived. It was good to see her again, that I would admit, but also, it wasn't something that I really looked forward to anymore. I find that as I grow older, I have began to move away from my friends. My world has began to revolve around work and more work. I wonder if this is what my parents did, was it an active moving away from friends or had they merely lost touch? Maybe as we grow older, our priorities shift, because I find myself no longer adjusting my time to be able to see her. Whereas the old me would have shifted my schedule around to provide me with optimal time with her, the me now would contemplate canceling on her without any reason really, at the drop of a hat. Will I become like my spinster aunt, with no friends and no partner, just her pets, grumpily grumbling her way through old age? I hope not, I want to be able to form relationships, nourish them, the way a mature, well-adjusted person does. I want so much, and I hope for so much, but sometimes I feel as though I have fortified myself against the world, that I tend to lose myself in a world of my own making, content to sit inside the house, in front of the computer, working or reading, or bingeing on books and staying in bed reading the day away. I feel like I am frittering my time away, that this solitude I cultivate and nourish, has allowed me to lose touch with relationships and its demands.

this is how it works...

You love, you lose, you cry, you pick yourself up and try one more time. And this time maybe, you'll be a little braver, a little tougher, a little more grounded yet idealistic still...

chocolate makes me happy...

I turned 32 today, and for once I will not whine about how direction-less I feel my life is but instead be thankful for everything that I have. I am grateful that I belong to the family I belong to, that I have a wonderful relationship with my parents ( only my mom now since daddy's gone) and my sisters. That I have an interesting enough job, two in fact that challenge my mind in different ways, I whine and complain about both a lot of times, but I am luckier than most, one job allows me to travel and learn while the other allows me to flex my writing muscles so I can not complain really. I have great friends who tolerate my moods and my lectures and my rantings. And I have my books that keep me occupied along with the fact that my favorite show of all time, The X-Files, is currently running on television five days a week. Life is good really.

on friendships and moving on

A., my lovely sprite of a friend once told me that life is all about moving on, moving from one thing to another with books to inspire us and friends to keep us sane. I've moved on from a number of events in my life and left behind people in one way or another. Like I said before, I am good at holding grudges, at squirreling information away, so I can use something against you if you leave or move on. This is what I spread over all the good memories I have of you.

About a week ago, my erstwhile best friend, L., sent me an SMS and told me she was at UP and passed by our old college hangout ( more hers really) and that it reminded her of me, which is why she sent me the SMS. The message made me smile. Because I have those places tied with my memories of her as well. After all, we have more than fifteen years of history, half my life, that's how long we've been friends. We've been there for each other all those years, navigating through the excitement and confusion that was university life, through infatuations and broken hearts, anxieties over our future and our life choices. Even when life dictated we take separate paths, we made time, we made a point of seeing each other, touching base if only to know how each other was until inevitably, I guess we began to out grow each other. We were best friends for most of those fifteen years, which is probably why despite all my drama, all her shortcomings (imagined or otherwise), despite the combination of hurt and pique that has tinged my perception of our friendship these past few years, I am still reluctant to move on.


I have scribbled so many letters to L. so many times, but I can never bring myself to send it to her. The closest I came was when things started to fall apart and I sent her an email but she must have misread what I wrote and things somehow managed to resolve themselves so we never spoke of it anymore. Maybe this is why I still am reluctant to move on, that plus the fact that I don't make friends that easily.

I know I come across as selfish and self-centered and basically a brat. And some days, I am that exactly, and a drama queen to boot. But given the history of our friendship, I think I'm more than entitled to be in this case. I suppose I should grow up and start acting like an adult, given that I turn 32 in a few short days. I should talk to her, tell her how I feel, maybe then I can move on.

wishful thinking and writerly pursuits

I wish I could write, really write. The kind of writing that touches people, that makes a connection. Not this, this whiny, self-indulgent exercise . W says that the fact that I blog means I'm a writer, but I don't agree. I suppose it all comes down to perception and labels. Because heck, I suppose anyone can be a writer or claim to be, I should know, given where I work. But that's saying too much already.

My question is what is it that makes a writer? Is it the way that one skillfully strings words together to form a coherent thought or is it the way one is able to connect, to tell a tale, to impart knowledge and feeling? Is writing less than the stringing of words and more than being able to convey something? My thoughts on this is that it comes down to labels. Because in some capacity or another, we are all writers, whether we are blogging, or creating letters or even reports, for school, for work, as dry as can be, we are conveying something.

My friends (perhaps because they are my friends) have told me at one time or another I have some capacity for this, this writing thing, this nebulous chased after label. I remain unconvinced.

on taking chances

Life is like that I suppose. You gamble, you let go of your anchor, to take risks and sometimes it pays off, but most times it blows up in your face big time. And so you go back to your corner to lick your wounds and regroup, vowing never to take chances again. But you know that one day, you're going to find yourself standing on that particular ledge again, staring ahead, and deciding to jump at whatever chances that fate throws at you. It's a cycle, funny but vicious, and you always, always get thrown.

define normal, I do not understand

Most days I feel like I have been left behind, that the whole world is moving, everyone moving in a frenzy, in a hurry to catch one more brass ring. Everyone but me. I feel like everyone around me has kept at their pace, pushing on, but somehow I'm stuck, inevitably stuck. Their worlds keep moving while mine has come to a screeching standstill.

I used to be like everyone else, eyes on the goal, never faltering and in that frenzy, I somehow stumbled without knowing it, lost focus, and I let the rings drop. Now it seems I no longer know the dance, that I have forgotten the steps somehow. And so I got left behind. Everyone is moving around me, moving on with their lives, and why shouldn't they after all? Meanwhile, in me-land, I feel stuck, frozen, like all the pieces of my dreams have gone tumbling down and I can't seem to get them back in order anymore. Neither do I feel motivated to do so. Because I have come to the realization that catching a particular brass ring will never be enough, that there will always be another one on the horizon, just beyond my reach. Yes, I so want to be like everyone else with their normal adult existence, with their lives planned and plotted out. But is that all that life is ever going to be? And the scariest part of it all is here I am, two months short of having been in existence for thirty two years now and I still don't know what I want. Why can't I be like everyone else?

we are such terrible creatures, selfish and insecure

I have no illusions about my character, I know that I can be selfish, and petty, and mean, and secretive. I have too little patience and are too prone to bursts of temper. And you know, I don't know if I can change, some days, I even don't know if I want to.

Maybe that's why I don't have too many friends or why I never try to keep in touch really, except for the perfunctory hi or hello once in a while. I'm going to tell you one more thing about me. You know why I never open up to my friends, why I manage to convince every one that everything is peachy keen in planet Me? Because I view information as ammunition. This is why I am a good listener. Because I like to feel needed, and I store up that information so I can use it later. Because what I need is to hold something against you, because then if you go away, I wouldn't be crushed. This is also why I don't open up too much to others, why I don't readily share this blog with people who know me in real life, because I am afraid that I will be judged, that as I said in an earlier post, they'll find out who I really am, and they won't like what they see because god knows some day even I don't like me.

*the title of the post comes a drawing of Kurt Halsey's

here comes the rain again (or welcome to the tropics)

Have I ever mentioned that I love the rain? I find something rather soothing about it that catches my whimsy. Watching the rain fall and listening to its steady cadence seems calming somehow. And walking in the haze of a soft drizzle ( without an umbrella most of the time) evokes something oddly romantic to me. I also love the fury of a storm, all flash and thunder, the roiling winds, and the tap tap tapping of water pelting down from the heavens. It is in these times that I feel as though all the dark and fierce emotions inside my head are mirrored by the elements outside, as though everything I feel but cannot express are out there, hashed out by nature's display. I love it especially on days when I find myself in a weird mood, then the fury outside calms the tempest inside. But as much as I love nature's tempestuous show, I also love the calm after the furor passes, of looking out of windows washed clean by the torrents, of the sun breaking through the clouds, as though the world has been wiped clean, literally and figuratively, and starting again, on a clean slate, is somehow possible.

( I got caught in heavy rains this morning, and aside from getting totally and utterly drenched, I also had to wade through the flooded streets of the Metro. Still, I love the rain, hence this post)

I look in the mirror and who do I see?

I see me, plain ( well not so plain), not quite old, sometimes boring me. I am aware of who I am, how I look and how the world sees me ( or doesn't). I've said before that I am the kind of person who never wants to attract attention, but I'm not really that shy a person actually. Mostly, it's a reflex, a reminder of how I have perceived myself and how I thought and felt people saw me. You know how they say not to be too worried about how people see you because they're more worried about how you see them? Easy to say, harder to achieve. See, I've been overweight since I was thirteen. The summer before I was to enter high school, I grew taller and gained weight. Thus, when the school year began, I was no longer the gawky, thin 12 year old my friends knew, but someone with more flesh on her bones. Apparently, more than they were used to, as one  friend promptly christened me with a new learned word for her, that of a certain prehistoric woolly animal. A name which stuck through out high school, that every one thought was endearing (because I appeared to tolerate them calling me that name) but cut every time I heard it referring to me ( she's still my friend by the way, I've learned to forge an uneasy peace with what she had done and have long chalked it up to youthful exuberance, she was after all, prone to giving people nicknames, whether they wanted it or not, bully for me that she was popular and that the name she gave me stuck). It gave good practice for me as well, and I learned early on to ignore the snide comments and take the well-meaning phrasings from my relatives in stride. I grew a thicker skin, padded by insecurities and hidden behind the worlds I found in books. But thicker skin or no, words still hurt no matter what they say about stick and stones doing more damage. Invisible though it may be, words hurt and scar and maim. And for someone on the cusp of adolescence, it was really bad for my self image and confidence. Although I can not trace every insecurity I have about myself from that day in my freshman year in high school, I knew that that was when I started perfecting the art of drawing attention away from myself. For most of my life, my weight figuratively weighed me down. I went through high school and college carrying that burden so to speak, it colored my relationships with people and way I saw myself.

But as much as I could not trust how I saw myself, I knew that I had other attributes, that I was smart and that smart was way better than pretty. Although of course, most days, that gave me cold comfort. Being able to get into the choice university among my peers was also a very good boost for my confidence. I did manage to lose some weight in college but that never changed the way I saw myself. Then I entered law school and substituted the sleep I lost juggling work and school work with food and gained back all the weight with some more added. But by then I had started to make peace with my body, I was learning to be comfortable in my own skin, and loving myself. The confidence I gained complemented the thick skin I had retreated into over the years for me not to care too much about what people thought or how I thought they saw me.


I will be the first to admit that there are still days when I hate the way I look but then again everyone has those days. I now know what works for me and recognize myself for who I am, a reasonably attractive, smart, and confident woman. And although there are still days when my decisions are still colored by the hurt, overwhelmed, fat young girl that I was all those years, most days, I think, I'm just me.

glimpses

I was cleaning out my room, which in and of itself is an event given my personality, and I found an old journal. Well it wasn't even a journal actually, more of a date book where I scribbled little observations about my life as well as my schedule. I also found the notebook I used to scribble on in high school, when I was in the throes of my infatuation for H ( which by the way lasted long enough to affect my college love life, such as it was) . I reread every cringe worthy "poem" that I wrote about him and proceeded to tear the notebook apart. Closure in a warped sense I guess, and ten years too late I would say, given that I still can't bring myself to carry a conversation with the man without being a little giddy, I suppose it's always going to be that way. I wish there was some way I could exorcise A as well, but short of forgetting every little detail of my first European trip, I will just have to wait. How is it that the 15 year old me and the 30 year old me pulled the same stunt? Becoming enamoured of someone unattainable and then spending an inordinate amount of time trying to forget them. Is it because I have never learned my lesson from my experience with H that I repeated it with A? Of course, adult me topped adolescent me by becoming enamoured with someone who, although apparently interested and thus not entirely unattainable, happened to live on the opposite side of the world. What did I think I was going to get out of it?

Why do we choose who we choose anyway? Why do we love who we love? I mean I could have picked anyone else right? Why make life and love more difficult than it already is? Maybe I should have chosen J, gave a relationship with him a try, ignore the misgivings in my head, including the silliest one, that I just couldn't see myself kissing him. I used to wonder, but there just some aspects in my life that I can never bring myself to merely settle for what is there, being a bona fide fence-sitter aside. Why is falling in love so easy for some people and so apparently difficult for me? Or maybe because I have too much romantic notions floating around my head from all the books that I used to escape into in my teens that despite the cynicism I tend to project, the truth is that I have idealized the concept of love so much. So here I am, ten years after hesitating to dip my feet into the water, still unattached, still prone to being smitten with guys I can't have. Obtuse, thy name is M.

of falling in love and unbroken hearts

I don't think I've ever fallen in love, not really. Or does one fall in love even when that love is not returned? My love life can be defined partly in the following words : it never got the chance to bloom. Because you know picky, and convinced that she was not attractive enough, and prickly, and stand-offish, plus equal parts naive and oblivious equals zero forays into the intricacies of relationships .

Why do we choose who we choose anyway? And am I really missing something by letting life pass me by?

coming to terms with grief

I suppose people grieve in different ways, some cry their hearts out and move on, some drown their sorrows in mindless distractions, some choose denial. I have dealt with mine in my own way.

Four months ago, we lost our father to cancer before we even had the chance to fight back against the disease. My sisters and I deal with our loss in our own way, supporting each other and dealing with our grief separately. Mostly, we have tried to move on with our lives and find a semblance of normalcy, and most days, I do just fine. But the tears are always close to the surface, bubbling up at the most odd times, mostly when memory strikes so that I could be sitting at my desk and reading something and would find myself tearing up. As complicated as my relationship was with my father, I have become acutely aware of the rightness of that line I read in a poem somewhere, that  no matter what your relationship was with your parents, you will miss them sorely when they're gone.

I miss my father the most on days when I feel overwhelmed with life, because he always managed to ground me, to make me stop and think, and to gain a better perspective of where my life was going. I miss the fact that I could come home absolutely mad about something from work and he would listen to me rant. I miss the fact that he listened even when I did not. I miss him because he used to let me argue with him till I was blue in the face about whatever topic it was that caught my fancy.

Now that he's gone, I am learning to appreciate all that he has done for me and my sisters. The fact that while he nurtured us and made us believe in ourselves unequivocally, he never allowed us to have an overgrown sense of self-worth, to have airs and feel as though we were better than every one else. Thus, no matter what my insecurities were, about my self, about the way I look, I always, always, knew I had the smarts, that I was good at what I did, and that I could be whatever I wanted to be,  and that he would be proud of me no matter what I do or don't do, no matter how I decide to live my life.

It is not that my relationship with him was ever easy. I was the first born, bequeathed with all the hopes and aspirations and expectations of  first time parents. I suppose I must have disappointed him and mommy with some of the decisions that I have made with my life. But the thing with my father was that he let me decide. I regret that the last years of his life, the ones he spent with me, were tinged with resentment on my part, a fact which still gnaws at my conscience four months after his death. It was not that I neglected him, it was that there were days when I resented the fact that I had to be his sole provider when I was just starting my life.

But despite everything, I miss him and there are still days when the tears are much too near the surface. I guess there will always be days like those because moving on doesn't mean letting go and forgetting, but instead merely a dulling of the pain.

more dispatches from the skewed side of reality

"What if my twenties were the best years of my life and I've nothing to show for it?" I can't remember if it was a friend or a character in a tv show I once heard this from. But what if? My twenties were spent juggling a full time job and law school, and what do I have to show for it? If you look at my life right, nothing, nada, zilch. Sure I did get the law degree eventually, but ran out of enough steam to push me through taking the bar exams. I sometimes feel like I've wasted my twenties, because it passed by more or less uneventfully, that I cannot recall one significant event in my life that was my own doing. Sure, a lot of things happened in my twenties that shaped me into who I am right now. In one of our more circumspect conversations, my friend W told me that our twenties were supposed to be the time for discovery, of learning who we are and what we want to be, that we shouldn't try too hard to see the significance in every time, that life passes in moments ( okay so that was me), that we have to live our lives one day at a time ( I know, there's an abundance of cliches today).

And you know, cliches aside, I think there is something to that. I was thinking about it earlier as I was preparing dinner and I realized that although a lot of people seem to be so put together in their twenties, the majority of us are still stumbling along, getting by, learning about ourselves. That it was okay to be lost once in a while. That that is the only way after all, for us to learn, to find our way, and so what if it takes us years and years to do so? So what if my twenties were insignificant compared to some of my friends who have their lives figured out, so what? It is the journey that is important and to use another cliche, life is the journey, and no matter how smooth or bumpy the road is, this is the only one I've got.

dispatches from this side of reality

there is a line that I read somewhere that says " why am I afraid to show you who I am? Because I am afraid you will see the real me and run away" or words to that effect. It just struck me that that is who I am like,  I hide my self from everyone else because I am afraid of being hurt, of not being wanted for who I really am. And the funny thing, the funny thing is that I have more or less convinced myself that the me I show the world is the real me.

I'll tell you another thing about myself, I love compartmentalizing my life, my friendships. So much so that I am certain that one group of friends would probably not really jive well with another group. And I so, so carefully ascertain that they never converge. This is probably why while my sisters have always always been comfortable bringing friends over to our home, I have rarely done so. Because to do so would make two aspects of my life converge. Thus, the me at home will never be reconciled with the me at school or at work. I think that's a sad testament to who I am. Or maybe its a testament to how screwed up my brain really is.

Fence sitting or knowing when to jump ( part 2 of taking chances)

Fence sitters of course should not expect happy endings because happy endings are reserved for people who know how to take risks, to open themselves up to others. For most of my life, I have been wary of taking chances, I was happier to go with what I knew even if it meant that I was painting myself into a narrow and monotonous existence. I wasted my twenties in that way, the years when I should have been trying everything new, I spent sitting on a fence being safe.

I never did like too much change, I'm the kind of person who does not like rippling the surface or worse, making waves. The more unnoticed I was, the better. Typically, I would just close myself off to the things that I could not deal with or to the unfamiliar. Much too often I have found myself shrinking from taking a step towards something new. Thus, I am usually left in the dust, watching as my friends go places because they have embraced the quest to seek the life they want instead of settling for what they can have. It is not that I lack the courage to try new things, it's just that if it were a choice between going after something novel and taking the tried and tested way, inevitably, I choose to go with what is familiar.

I once read a book where the one of the characters said that " everyday, the opportunity to change your life exists". As much as I agree with that statement, the trouble is that most days, the mere idea of having to change the big things in my life, of weaning myself from long entrenched habits and ideas, seems to entail entirely too much work. And although I realize that part of the adventure that is life is not knowing what is waiting for you when you take that turn in that unfamiliar bend in the road, I still insist on sticking to the well-trodden path, sometimes even staying put, thus I miss out on what might be waiting for me around the corner. Sometimes, even when the opportunity has presented itself to me, I still choose to ignore it, refusing to join in the fray, because ultimately, time and again, I would choose to sit in my perch on the fence, feeling safe watching life pass me by. Sure, I have often felt the stirring of envy but never enough to warrant my taking action.

Life has taught me a few lessons however. I've learned that guarding against the hurt is not only boring, it also leaves little room for growth, that allowing yourself to be vulnerable is part of the learning experience. I've learned that perhaps, the key is not to change the big things in your life all at once but instead to take things slowly, step by step, like putting up my writing online instead of letting it languish in my PC, or maybe trying something new and scary once in a while like standing in front of an audience and singing for a friend's wedding without worrying whether that you sound silly or are making a huge fool out of yourself, or even learning and trying out "the moves" (as my friends call it) on some guy you like and just enjoying the heck out of yourself without analyzing your motivations.

Above all, I've learned that the key to living and having the life you want is to let go of your fears, step outside that comfort zone, climb down from your perch in the fence, and face life head on.