Someday this will pass.

That was something that I heard since I was a child and something that took root in mind. So I learned to wait. Wait for hours to get home. Wait for pain to pass. Wait for dreams to happen. I waited until there was nothing to wait for, but I'm still waiting..

I'm tired of waiting.

I used to be a pretty child. I don't know what happened since then. Hahaha!

Okay so pretty is very subjective but I'm sure I was cute. (I was chubby to boot 🤷‍♀️) So cute that when I was a child some people would pinch my cheeks so hard that it hurt. We would get on jeepneys and, since I was very young then, my mom would carry me over the steps and I would walk inside ahead of my mom. Some passengers would pinch me as I walked past and and some would do it so hard that I thought they were angry. Well, I was angry right back.

When I got to grade school I had enough and I actually stepped back when another adult tried to pinch my cheeks in the grocery store. He looked embarrassed and I felt bad. So I had the wonderful idea to just let people keep pinching me and hurting me.


It didn't take long before it stopped though. I was getting older, chubbyness turned to weight problems, and I was no longer the cute kid. Life happened I guess.


It's so absurd to look back on these memories. The sense of self that you lost, the pain that you took. Can I take it back?

Would've, Could've, Should've

This song from Taylor Swift dropped about a month ago and got so many people talking about who this song was about considering how jaw-dropping the lyrics were. While many people like myself thought 'girlhood' referenced a particular definition, some people thought that 'girlhood' meant innocence in the general sense.

For context, people think the song Would've Could've Should've is related to the song Dear John, although they're about written ten years apart. I went to read discussions for this song and one comment struck me- how time gives you clarity, how it gives a person a different perspective especially now that Taylor's older and in the same age as that person she was singing about was. 

And I could really relate to that idea. For everything. Now that I've spent time this last couple of years to really look back at my life, I'm amazed at how different the past looks to me now. 

All this time I thought I was navel-gazing, but for the good part of it, I was only filtering the surface and could barely scratch where it actually hurts. I still can't, but it's damning to see.

I put up with a lot of bullshit lol.

When things happened, I thought I could take it, but I couldn't see where it broke me. Did I have rose-colored glasses on? Did I ignore things out of respect? Where do I draw the lines of personal responsibility and finding accountability? Did I gaslight myself? I could see the mess it made out of me, but for a long time I struggled to get out. Maybe it was because I couldn't make sense of the hows and the whys. I still can't, but now I'm beginning to see.

When I tried to start blogging my intentions were simple: Just post.

I wanted to voice my mind too. I wanted to communicate. Post photos.

I attempted to do it on an earlier blog. Posted details of a trip. Posted photos. Then scrapped it all two hours later. 

I didn't ask for permission from my friends, I rationalized. I wondered about privacy, theirs and mine. 

Once I posted a long gripe about something that happened to me involving other people. It was just a way for me to vent and I used initials instead of their names. Then I thought nothing of it. A couple of days later I had one comment: "People need to read this." And it wasn't an ad spam! Lol!  This was way before reddit became the dumping ground of personal stories so I must have written juicy gossip to warrant sharing but sharing wasn't big back then so nothing really happened. 

But not gonna lie, it did scare me a bit. I couldn't understand it myself. But I took it down shortly.

When I moved to this space I thought I could push myself to do better. Be more open. More communicative. But my reality was different- I was becoming more of a hermit, shutting myself in and clammed up. Talked less, wrote less. Stringing words became an issue because I didn't feel comfortable doing it anymore.

Managing the space itself was an issue. I could hardly make any headway on the technical side of things. I got dozens of spam email when I tried to put a contact form. And I don't read comments because it's mostly spam. What are you even doing here? Nobody's gonna click on your spam link because nobody's here!

But once in a while, I get something that isn't spam. And it's kinda weird replying since they would be posted ages ago but thank you. 

One more try. One more year. If I get to actually pay for the domain name, because our local payment systems are shitty, I'll give it another go. Post photos. Communicate. Voice my mind. Go. 

 It's been a very difficult last couple of years. But it was also cathartic. I guess when the decision was made for me not to be out there it was easier for my mind to focus on where I was at instead of berating myself for not being where I should be.

I've looked around and there are some people like me who found some clarity in these tough times. This isn't to say I wasn't the least bit stressed. I thought it was stress made my period highly irregular for so many years but then pandemic gave me so much stress it actually brought my period back. I'm glad it's back but I definitely did not miss how annoying it was to experience it.

There was so much to unpack- so many memories, thoughts and emotions that I would have otherwise been pushed aside.