Dear  Self,

            You are beautiful, strong, intelligent and talented. Many people told you that, though they may have sounded too overwhelming and flustering and sometimes incredible for you to believe, but they are right. You are those things and more but you have forgotten.

            You have loved that you have chosen to suffer all the pain instead for others. All this time, you have kept everything to yourself, all of your pains, insecurities and weariness because you are afraid to be seen and perceived as weak. These things have eaten up the good things in you, they have worn you down. You have loved so much that you have forgotten to love yourself.

            It is not wrong to search for love, for acceptance, for security from others. You’ve searched hard enough that you have lost all your strength and you have missed out on the things that were there, sources of genuine, unconditional love. You have ignored things that truly matter like family, friends and God. You have been absorbed to the worldly belief and selfish intuition that the love you’re looking for is from someone else. You’ve had more than what you needed, but you’re so stubborn and discontented that you kept looking for more.

            Look at you now, you have lost the love you thought was your happiness, and you have distanced yourself from those who truly love you. You are all alone, by yourself, no one to turn to. You are embarrassed, for you have become ungrateful and disobedient that’s why you cannot turn to people you have hurt. You’ve hurt them so bad. You are now afraid that the little love they have for you will dissipate because of one more mistake you are about to commit. You cannot disappoint them anymore.

            Don’t worry, you still have yourself, though left in jagged pieces, fragile and afraid. It will take time before you heal, before you regain you gift to trust, to love. Do not haste. Take your time in healing. It will be hard, it will be painful, and it will leave you scars, but you have no choice. Do not forget to hold yourself up, pull yourself together. You were once strong; there is still that strength inside you. 

            You still have your dreams, hold on to them, they will guide you and help you in your process of healing. They will motivate you to do better and correct your mistakes. They will be your light, to guide you to the right path.

            In time, when you remember the good things that once put your life in golden moments, and the bad things that have lead into this, do not regret. Those memories are your treasures; someday they will make a good story.

            Though you have forgotten, He has not. He has always loved you. He was there all the time reaching out to you, stretching out his arms, but you were off to some place then, chasing after things that have fled you now. It’s time you reach out to Him.

Someday, when everything is done, you must not forget this: forgive. Books and wise men said that forgiveness only happens when you begin with yourself. Forgive your self. You were not that bad. You made mistakes, that’s universal. Nobody has been exempted from this human ordeal. Forgive yourself. When you have forgiven yourself, forgive them. It will be hard. Nobody said forgiving is easy.

            There are a lot that you have to do. But in time everything will be done.

Home. Many stories came from this word, stories that inspires, encourages and touches hearts.

What is home for you? Can you tell great stories from the very moment you hear this word? Do you feel that spark of love that ignites in your heart or does it make your heart sulk and envy those who have stories to tell and make you wish you have something different?

I wish I have something different.

The End in the First of February

Coincidence is playing on you when it starts to play the background music of your emotions, dissing you with the exactness of how the song describes your state. Touche.

The writer's block that is brought about by the chaos of emotions is happening again. Days, weeks and months of separation from writing could make you suck at it when you get back on it. It has always been the emotional instability, the surging and rocketing, that makes me go back to writing. I've always believed that this process is cathartic. And yes, this figures, I am in an emotional distress.

To see an end to everything, to expect an end as a consistent possibility to a lot of things doesn't help you when you've reached the corner. Preparations or looking forward to it will never ever make you prepared, it's like expecting that you're about to give birth, you know it's gonna happen soon, you know it's gonna hurt, you know it's gonna be really bad, you know it's gonna be painful, so you practice to numb your feelings, toughen your self, but when the clock hits the time of the unexpected, all of your preparations will be all discredited. It's still gonna be painful. But the opposite thing about that comparison is, giving birth is giving a new life to something, and breaking up, an end and death to what was once was beautiful.

The bad thing about being attached to someone is when the connection snaps out. Growing dependence, building memories, looking forward to the future with someone are the things that should be avoided if you see relationship as a passing thing, or something that has an ending, but that's too impossible once you are there, telling yourself to be careful, to safeguard your emotions, to protect yourself from the worse that could come, these things will all be neglected and too hard to fulfill, because being in a relationship is the most vulnerable state a person could be at. To be with another person means sharing everything together, it means thinking of yourself less and thinking of the other as a part of something that is considered as a common or mutual understanding that each of you should care for each other and love each other, it's like opening yourself up to someone without inhibitions because there is trust, there is the acceptance that will be kindly granted to you, there is this love that will see pass through all the murky part of you that you yourself could not accept nor fathom to look into. 

Falling apart. That is the direction that should be avoided. There is this thin line that separates falling apart from being apart. Falling apart is when two people have slowly given up on each other, blew off the fire that keeps the relationship alive and letting go of what hold them together, love. Being apart is when two persons decide to give each other time and space to grow and think, to ponder, to realize and to learn. Being apart should not be a form of punishment, it should be a break that two people agree upon to spend time with their selves and to examine how things have been, to look into the past and maybe see through the future, if they still want to, it's being away from each other but not letting go, because you both know there is still love. I'd like to think of this phase now as being apart, because I know we still love each other, I know that, he knows that.

I miss my papa. 

The afternoon has just set and now on its early hours. The sun striking with a blinding light, illuminating my room. It's not hot, just the kind of warm that puts you into lazy, quiet mood, perfectly whisked to make you think.

Steady. This afternoon is just steady, reading from others' public update of their lives in all social networking sites, frantic, hopeful, excited and anticipating of the next year in a few hours. It's the last day of 2011 today, and I am here reminiscing how the year was. 

But that's another story.

What would be a better way to spend the last day of the year? Thinking. Yes, I think a lot and it has done me good and caused me trouble, emotional surges, confrontations and unnecessary woes. 

Sitting quietly in my bed, I thought to myself, there's one thing that I've been trying to avoid for years in my life, and that is steadiness. The steadiness that would last and drag for a long time, it scares me, it worries me. For steadiness could fall into routine and complacency, the lack of passion and life in the things that we do, for the people we love. 

It makes me wonder what transpires in the minds of the people when they've grown too comfortable with each other, does the peace on their face reflect what's inside their thoughts? What secrets do they keep? I'm sure we all have secrets we keep. How they feel about a certain thing? These things that could just run around in a steady situation without being discussed. It's lonely. It's frustrating to think that we could not do anything about the things that people keep from us especially if we are directly affected by it. 

Shouldn't we accept that there is no such thing as permanent? That everything we thought would last would eventually wash away through the years, that the things we keep intact would soon weather and that only one thing's bound to happen, change. 

2012 I know you will be a very big change in my life.

Table for Two

Friendship is not defined by proximity or the length of time two people have spent together, its not about the number of memories shared, it is about bridging the distance and feeling like you've never been apart, it's about making every time spent together last like eternity and making every single moment a memory worth remembering.

Charisse and I have known each other since we were elementary, as she remembers it vividly we first made a proof of how good as a team or a duo we are during our quiz bee when we were in grade 1. I had all the answers that got us to the final round and she had the correct answer for the final question which I could've gotten wrong had I not listened to her. We won the contest. In one of the contests in our fourth grade, we paired up and practiced together, we were a perfect match as we were the key pair of the group, chosen to be the final pair when the game got tougher, and with an unquestionable coordination and unity, we won. Things began to get better for us when got into high school. Our second year highlighted and jumpstarted our friendship which was soon forged into a deeper and higher status of sisterhood. We complement each other, we learn from each other, and as what we have always believed we are twins by soul, separated by birth.

College was a test in our friendship, having to spend four crucial years of emotional instability and identity crisis, a friend is someone who would constantly reassure you of your strengths, and would keep you sane. Having missed milestones in each other's lives as well as those times when our morale is at rock-bottom, it was tough getting by without a friend. Apart, we have met other people to fill in the roles we are supposed to fill in, we have created our dreams, when we used to always dream together and build some of our dreams around each other, this time we were on our own, reaching realizations when we were by ourselves. We have found our passion separately, we have lived lives apart from each other's shadows, and most of all we have learned to grow.

Breaks became the only times we can make up for the time we've lost, it's hard to congest all the things that have happened in a year in a span of two to three hours. Some things that were kept in the shelves of our thoughts and archived are often left undiscussed. Our friendship may have gaps, but that doesn't make our friendship any less.

The things we've talked about, the way we talk, the topics we pick to discuss about, the people we've spent time with in the absence of another, the places we frequent, these things have changed, but looking at her talk animatedly, listening to her high-pitched voice, the old rants and whines, apprehensions and the security of uncertainty, I know we've never changed. There will always be that high school Charisse and Nadine somewhere tuck in ourselves, sooner or later we have to shed it off, but one thing will remain in our high school selves, the friendship we've built and kept strong.

Stars and Boulevards

When the stars shone the brightest, when the night skies were the clearest... that's when I felt the darkest. Coincidentally, the darkness of the sky and the eclipse of the moon were signs of an impending doom and the end.

When love is not enough to hold things together, to promise you that everything's gonna be okay as long as there's love, when it no longer works its magic, that's when you need something to fall back on to save whatever there is left of. But, what if there's nothing else you could fall back on? What if love's the only thing that can save it, but now it's gone.

The first one who gives up is not the weaker one, maybe he or she is just the wiser one to acknowledge the fact that no matter how hard both of them have tried it's not gonna work and keeping things together is not a sign of strength but a sign of cowardice to admit that they've reached the end of the road.

Pain lingers for a while, reminiscing will be the unwanted company, and memories will be the best reminder of how good it was and what went wrong, and maybe in one of those memories you will come across with eventually you will find consolation and the answer to why things didn't last as hoped for.

Maybe, just maybe, forgiveness will save it all.