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

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.

the impulse to change

There are days when I get the urge to break free from the box I have set myself in. To be different, to be someone other than the M that people know. And why not right? One would assume it would be easy, but it's not. That does not mean however, that the urge ever leaves you, it just recedes then rears its head at an inopportune time.

how we didn't die, we just never had a chance to bloom

Whatever it was that I wanted us to be, what I wanted me to be for him, whatever it was that I deluded myself into thinking we were meant to be, never was. I knew that when I met him two years ago, but I kept on fooling myself by clinging to the tiniest bit of hope, despite appearances, despite actions that negated that hope.

Love, romantic love has always been difficult for me. W says we have, the two of us what she calls, the Sisyphus complex, falling for people we can't have, unattainable due to circumstances beyond our control. Maybe that's the reason why I clung so much to that hope, because despite everything, I really believed that I had a chance this time around. I guess I was wrong.

biding time til things get better

I hate this half-lived life that I've been living. Most days, I can cope with it, I can fool myself into thinking, hey its not so bad what I have. And then there are these dark days, when I feel decidedly self destructive, bent on trampling over what I have built, on blowing away this precariously balanced house of cards with a huff. These are the days when I hate everything about my life, when I question the choices I have made. And yet, and yet I still wonder, if I had chosen another path would I be happier? Would it be more than this half-lived life that I have built and gotten comfortable in and have now grown to resent? I wonder if there are other people out there like me, pretending to bide their time till things get better yet not doing anything about it? People like me who pretend and fool themselves into thinking that their half-lived lives are better than nothing at all, that settling for what you have, what you can have, is better than chasing after the next shiny thing in the horizon. Is it? Is this really better than the not knowing the reason for this gnawing discontent, this rumbling anger threatening to overwhelm my sanity? I don't know who said it, but I agree with whoever they are when they said that we all live lives of quiet desperation. Because god knows, I do.

its official...

I am a big sap. What else would you call someone tearing up over reading this:

Sonnet XVII
Pablo Neruda

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
`
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.


The last four lines just, ah, just kills me. Were that someone would read that to me; read to me and mean it, really, really mean it. Well, one can dream right?

Think about it

I love this paragraph and what it says and I figured I should share:

open your eyes and see
that always we are taught ongoingness:
the same and turning leaf;
earth's rhythmic tilt and tow;
the soul candling into shadow,
before it flickers back to life - J. Neil C. Garcia