Hopes, dreams, and plans for the next 365 days.

My life's just begun and there's a ton  of things out in the world I've never laid eyes on. Things I could never imagine. That's what I discovered on this present lifetime. I'm not sure what I want just yet. But one thing I want to make sure of is that: 

I will be better.  I’m going to appreciate things more and actually do things because I want them and not because someone expects me to. I'm kinda tired of people that keeps on pressuring me to do this and that actually. Maybe it's a time to stand up for myself even for just a little? 
I will become useful and I will do productive things without frustrating myself too much.  I like to call it thinking without distraction.
I will become dependent with myself and not with someone else. Hopefully, I will become more independent and that's more there's to it.
I will entrust myself with myself, if that makes sense... A lot of disappointments and bad things happened to me and honestly I feel like I've failed myself. A lot. I've probably lost myself with just a span of one year and I'm afraid it will continue for the next years. 
I will become a happy person because to be honest I am not a happy person. I may make you happy for a while but I will not make you happy forever, because there are days where I will be so fragile and your patience would have to be upped to a thousand notches. 
I will become stronger. Even though I was so utterly fucking scared that I would break the people around me the same way I probably broke myself. 
I will lessen my insecurities and fears in life and I hope to God I can do it because my  insecurity would always be fed until it grew into this gigantic monster that dragged me into the pits of hell with it. 
I will brace myself with reality and be more open with the notion that the world doesn't revolve around me. Tbh, I do not handle rejection well. I really, really don’t. You have no idea how much curling up in bed I did after every single one, and it doesn’t help that they don’t outright reject you (well some of them). It feels a lot like a relationship that leaves you hanging. I’m always left trying to cope with the emptiness and slowly becoming too scared to try again, with fear of having to cope with more of the emptiness. I can't take any criticisms without getting defensive. 
I will become more mature. If there's one thing I learned is to accept things as they are, try to feel okay about them, go through the cycles of grief, pick myself up and decide where to from there: keep trying, or give up? 
And lastly, I’m done being some stagnant water that’s not making progress. For all I know, that’s all I am nowadays, and I’m not feeling any better typing this out. I’m tired of keeping still. I don’t want to stay in a pond full of fishes. I want to explore. I want to be those among the rivers and the falls. I want rapid movement even though it means I would have to drive my life through rocky roads and shaky curves. I want to know my life’s moving closer to success each time the sun sets in and takes its rest on this side of the world. I’m going to dream more, believe some more and hope for the best. And I’m going to be happy. Productive. Full on enlightenment and contentment and lastly stronger than ever. Period.

Dear Santa,

Christmas is coming. I’ve been a bad girl and I’m pretty sure I’m not included in the nice kids list nor am I assuming that I am. But in case you change your mind, I’m waiting. And here’s what I want:

A dose of inspiration and happiness.
A drop of a magic bottle that will make me write and take pictures better.
A nicer and healthy 2015.
Motivation for me to actually do something productive next year.
Contentment.

I hear his heart-felt laugh and how it echoes worries. A variety of people have passed by and heard this yet surely, they only notice the flushed colors of the cotton candies he sell and not the great irony that sets before them in ragged clothes. He wears a smile upon his wrinkled face, like it somehow irons the whole. Ah, yes, the great irony: “the worst experiences carry the brightest smiles.”

I can’t help but wonder; has he earned enough money to bring home to his family? Would they light up when he knocks down the table with all pride and glory because he has earned their dinner, the way I do when watching my favorite show? Or are they the kind of flickering lights that though it opened, closes again? Speaking about his family, I wonder how many daughters he has. Do they fantasize about unicorns or make their own storybooks — as I do? And do they kill the heroes in the end, just because they think it would be tragic? I wonder if they have dreams as big as mine. Or would their lifestyle call for bigger stars? Would they notice the actuality that the sun sets early and the night is longer at this time of the year like how kids excited for Christmas notice this? Would their Christmas carry the same spirits me and my family has? And I wonder what they would eat tonight, or would they save it for Christmas, now that Manong Eddie has earned enough money? And his wife and their mother, would she cook or would they use the money to buy outside? Would the food she cooks taste like home? And would their home have enough space, not for the people inhabiting it, but for the love that creeps within every wall?

I see tens and hundreds of people before me who have stood in the same place I am in yet they see Manong Eddie as just a cart-seller. I think he is much more. Of the tens and hundreds of frowns, of guilty pasts, he is another smile, another clean slate. He is much more. He has daughters who are excited for Christmas, a wife who cooks food that can be distinguished, a cart of colorful toys and a home where love takes more space than the very inhabitants.

He is much more. He is a father, a husband and an owner of a story to read, to tell, and to boast. He is much more..

The best ferris wheel rides are usually centered around the same main idea as the imaginary social ladder we people have: how high you can go up and how fast you can go down. The up, where the excitement and anxiety build up to heaps of nervous giggling, where you try to hold on anything for dear life, and where you take in the view from above. From there, it’s absurd how everything seems so little and how little everything matters. And the part where you go down, when adrenaline smoothly kicks in and you scream at the top of your lungs— of ecstasy or fear, it doesn’t matter, just that you can let go. But in the end, we all fall down to the same ragged road.

Before you can go down, you’re always going to have to fall down from something. And usually, it’s not the smoothest ride. We obviously abhor the times we have to go down. We hate it the same way a kid would hate to go down from a carousel or the way a student would hate to see her grades go down. I don’t think that’s ever going to change.

I've never been good at expressing what I feel. All i know is that there's this emotions bottle up inside of me and every time I try to tell someone about it, it's like talking in another language. They will never understand, and one thing I badly needed right now is someone who understands and I know it's you dad. I don't like opening up to people and they don't want me to open up. I'm much better at expressing myself though chat messages and I appreciated silence more than anything. God, I was so bad at this but you're the anchor that keeps my feet on the ground, I don't need to worry about everything and with that I''ll forever be indebted to you. I don't always understand your ways but I trust you. I trust your words. I trust your existence. I just trust the mere thought of you. Please, guide me. Xx

It's 1:56 am and I finished reading the amazing book I've been wanting to read. I felt productive at the same time enlightened. There're a lots of epiphanies running through my mind and realization chastised me. We were humans who were willing to justify things that weren't supposed to be justified or even dabatable. Everything that happens always has its silver linings and all we have to do is search for it. We just have to find a silver lining. That's what we shall do. Realization dawned on me that this world is full of paradoxes, we keep on searching for answers and yet even if we're not ready some time in our lives, it will throw us a curveball and all we could do is just brace ourselves. We are all a cowards. We are all messed ups. We are all brokens and shattered beyond repair. But that's okay- we are all humans after all. There will never be such a thing as perfect life, and it's okay to not have one. Because perfection is not always happiness. It's okay to be weak because that's where you learn to be courageous, to be a fighter, to keep yourself anchored with yourself. That's how life is, love yourself first before you entrust yourself with others.

"That was how you found me."

It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s the sound I heard when I was 9 and my father slammed the front door so hard behind him I swear to god it shook the whole house. For the next 3 years I watched my mother break her teeth on vodka bottles. I think she stopped breathing when he left. I think part of her died. I think he took her heart with him when he walked out. Her chest is empty, just a shattered mess or cracked ribs and depression pills.

It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s all the blood in the sink. It’s the night that I spent 12 hours in the emergency room waiting to see if my sister was going to be okay, after the boy she loved, told her he didn’t love her anymore. It’s the crying, and the fluorescent lights, and white sneakers and pale faces and shaky breaths and blood. So much blood.

It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s the time that I had to stay up for two days straight with my best friend while she cried and shrieked and threw up on my bedroom floor because her boyfriend fvcked his ex. I swear to god she still has tear streaks stained onto her cheeks. I think when you love someone, it never really goes away.

It’s not that I don’t love you. It’s the six weeks we had a substitute in English because our teacher was getting divorced and couldn’t handle getting out of bed. When she came back she was smiling. But her hands shook so hard when she held her coffee, you could see that something was broken inside. And sometimes when things break, you can’t fix them. Nothing ever goes back to how it was. I got an A in English that year. I think her head was always spinning too hard to read any essays.

It’s not that I don’t love you. Most days I think I don’t, though some days I think I do — I really wouldn’t know, because most of the time I don’t even get myself right. Clearly, all these rejections have taken its toll on what small confidence I have.

It's not that I don't love you. I'm not the same anymore. I'll admit; a lot of shit got to me. I feel like I am losing myself. I'm currently in the long and confusing process of figuring out who I am and what I want to do with my life. There are days when I'll cry and you don't know why so in the end you would be so frustrated and sad because you wouldn’t understand, because you never knew what it feels like to have the sadness running in your blood.

It's not that I don't love you. I just didn’t want to drag you into the mess of me, because unlike the others before you, you had never once experienced what it was like to have even the tiniest inklings of the lonely and broken feelings I get everyday. But that isn’t a bad thing. It isn’t. it’s a beautiful, beautiful good thing. It’s a good thing that I see in you the me that I was before. With you I can temporarily be the me i was before. But it could never happen in the long-run, because this is who I am now, whether I like it or not.
It's not that I don't love you. It's just that I'm a coward who didn’t know what she wanted and didn’t know who she was. But you saw me when no one else did, loved me when no one else would — not even myself.  

It's not that I don't love you. It’s that I do.

She liked the way it casts its light upon her, dancing across her skin in a warm sensation, creating a translucent light all over her body. The more she yields to the moon, the stronger she felt afterward. It gave her a boost of self-confidence and yet more importantly, it made her feel alive.