piangaea

[piangaea]

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

— Haruki Murakami

[piangaea]

“Suddenly she realized that what she was regretting was not the lost past but the lost future, not what had not been but what would never be.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, A Nice Quiet Place

[piangaea]

tomorrow hope

i have been doing my internship for two weeks now.

i am truly happy to have been included in this team of competent shenanigans. if anything, the developers and quality analysts are just like my close friends, or i could even consider them as my siblings. although we only virtually meet, they were able to make us feel welcome already. i have shared lunch and played with them, and they were able to share their knowledge with me and relieve the pressure i get from such a fast-paced industry.

i am still learning. i do love web developing. maybe aside from making prototypes, that's what i love doing next no matter how difficult it gets and slow i am being. i don't usually study things i am not really interested in, but web developing ignites this spark in me that i cannot just ignore. i keep on wanting to learn even if it completely makes me insane for a while. that brain racking moment you have to go through just to position an element on its right spot. it really gives me the chills every time i succeed.

i hope that i wouldn't get too harsh on myself for not being able to pick up the lessons right away. i hope i can be okay with committing mistakes and making it up later, if not sooner. i hope i can be okay with being who i am - a slow passionate learner. i can be someone who is good at this. someday. someday. someday.

[piangaea]

to be honest, this is not the life i wanted. i am living this kind of life just so i could live comfortably after all these hardships. i am merely taking it step by step without confidence and hope that i'd be able to get to the bright place. like before, i still want to become a writer. i don't know of which kind of genre or what even will be my content... i just want to bleed my emotions onto my work and wish that those who get to read it will not feel as lonely anymore. although i write about things that hinder me from happiness, i hope that in that way, they'll feel less scared, that someone also goes through these patches in life and still continues to live. perhaps i want to encourage (and may be inspire others as well, if i ever get through all these hurdles) people to live through my writing.

oftentimes, i find myself looking up the internet for tips on how to deal with my emotions or what to do when i want something out of my reach, and find nothing. unlike others, i cannot easily open up to people no matter how hard i try. i can say that i am a coward, too. yes, on top of being introverted. it's the worst combination, to be honest. i just can't be assertive to get everything over and done with. i tend to ponder most of the time and next thing i knew, i'm already too late. that's why i try to be transparent and relatable on my works. i want it to be of value to others no matter how stupid my thoughts sound like.

i hope i can continue to console people through my writings. despite having lesser time to write due to this unwanted path i am taking, i hope i could still write more. i just want to let people feel they're not alone in this path.

[piangaea]

i'm not okay. i'm not okay. i'm not okay. i'm not okay. i'm not okay. i'm not okay. i'm not okay. i'm not okay. i'm not okay. i'm not okay. i'm not okay. i'm not okay. i'm not okay. i'm not okay.

i wonder how many times do i have to tell myself this very line just so i could process it and actually cry because i'm! not! okay! and i want to release this feeling already. i am so tired of everything. i just want to get this over and done with. i want to finally be okay.

[piangaea]

i miss being loved by you.

that, in itself, is a crime. i can't feel this way now. it's been two years. i've already went through two non-breakup breakups after you. how could i possibly still love you?

right, i just miss the feeling.

i wanted to feel loved. you were there. i let you in. i wasn't ready. i broke your heart. i left.

and it seems now that i want you back.

i don't know. i'm still as messed up as i have been when i left you. i didn't get any better.

perhaps you will always have a place in my heart. thank you for loving me as much as you did.

[piangaea]

keeps me alive. makes me feel whole. lets me be myself unapologetically.

i hope everyone finds someone who can do these things to you.

even better if that will be yourself.

[piangaea]

this is how it’s like

When you’re poor, the only thing that is in your mind is the present: how do I get to survive today? That’s the thing many people do not get. We cannot think past today because we are already struggling to live in the present. All we can do is worry about our next meal and if we still have enough for the meal after that. 

Things get worse when we feel pain. We cannot even afford that much to feed ourselves, how much more can we dish out from our pockets to avail of healthcare? And so, with that, our health just gets worse over time. We cannot help but worry how pricier our treatment and medicines would be once we get checked up after holding it out for so long.

It's a pain to hear privileged people to tell us to just work harder, exert more effort in earning money, and live a healthier life. It’s not that easy. With the competition in the industry and inaccessible education now more than ever, those who have not attained higher education cannot simply apply to jobs. Sometimes they would even tell us to have a healthier lifestyle - eat more greeny leaves and less of fried ones - but the thing is, healthier food choice is expensive. We cannot afford those green leaves in the market. Salad? That’s a rich man’s food. We cannot make ourselves full for half a day with a bowl of salad. Take out a loan? News flash, our credentials do not meet the requirements to get one. It’s not as easy as they say. 

Poor people have shackles that holds them down - poverty. I wonder when will people look at the bigger picture and realize that it’s not solely our fault to be this poor. While rich people get their riches passed down from one generation to another, there’s a higher chance that poor people can only inherit our parents’ loans and drown deeper into poverty. I hope we can get more privileged people to hear us and demand to abolish the very system that benefits from our poverty despite working within it and being exploited by it. I hope we can get them to join us to ask for accountability and demand for a change. The world does not have to be this damned and the people in it, no matter their differences in identities and status, must be able to exercise their right to life.

[piangaea]

seabed

every day, i sink deeper. no matter how far i’ve come away from the bottom, i always find myself being dragged down. i just want to have a quiet and peaceful life. how tragic it is to find it on someone else and not in your family.

[piangaea]

well, i guess i am.

[piangaea]

I DEFINITELY LOVE HEALING.

[piangaea]

touched

i don’t know what’s with me. ever since i was young, every thing that i touch suddenly malfunctions. see that television set? don’t let me operate it or else it won’t turn on the next time you operate it yourself. want me to turn on the computer for you? i doubt i’d be able to. the plug out of nowhere sparked as soon as i tried plugging it onto the sockets. you need a pair of fresh socks from the cabinet? oopsie. the door fell off...

that’s just how miserable things get as soon as i touch them. you can say that it’s Midas’ touch, only reversed... how unfortunate, right?

when such incidents happened frequently, my parents no longer want me to touch things. they did everything themselves, afraid to have another appliance or furniture rumble from my touch. 

until i grew older and realized i still have that disastrous touch. a touch making me wish i can be more careful, or worse (but safer), not even having the ability to touch at all. 

sometimes i wonder how disastrous i am after making a huge impact on people’s lives and leaving them when it’s time to go. right now, i don’t even want to enter people’s lives. i don’t think i can just leave them at the time i need to. i don’t think i can handle the thought of them being left just when i’ve already touched them. they’re delicate. they’re not just doors that we can repair with a few screws here and there. they’re people. humans. they have feelings. they can think. i don’t want them to think that they are the puzzle piece that wouldn’t fit onto anything. it’s me. i break things easily no matter how careful i try to become. i don’t want to break anybody. not anymore.

[piangaea]

knock knock

at times when i feel very much under the weather, i take time to write a letter to send to my friends. i ask myself every time it happens, “why am i writing this letter i so badly want to hear from others?” it’s kind of sad not to hear the same thing from them as straightforward as i do in the letters, but i remind myself of all the times they are with me while i was going through hard times, making me laugh with more effort exerted to make sure it’s going to make my stomach hurt and my eyes tear up, then i remember, this is their way of making me feel loved and accompanied. i love my friends a lot. it’s true when they say that your friends are your family that you choose. certainly, the best decision i ever made.

[piangaea]

schlurped

recently, my life has been taken over by online classes and all the requirements i needed to submit, one on top of another. i haven’t been writing as much as i used to. honestly, i wish there’d be a time i can pause for a while and process my emotions without having to feel guilty for taking the time that may be used to accomplish my tasks. 

online classes have been draining the life out of me and i wish we can find an end to this pandemic (with no one’s greed taking advantage of us). every emotion now has a little more intensity to it when felt. happy? thank goodness there’s still something nice to be happy about. sad? how do i cope with this feeling when there’s nothing much i can do to cope? it’s like i’m caged; everyone’s caged. or maybe except those little shits in the government who enjoy prolonging this pandemic, alleviating their hunger with more power and riches. meanwhile, us, helpless citizens, barely make ends meet. fuck those little shits.

i hate being robbed of material things. what more when they are robbing me of my youth? my life? time that cannot be taken back or be bought by money? all i can do to make up for what i’ve lost is to make more memories - live life, but even that seems bleak now. instead, we have to work day and night to keep our families afloat. all-time high prices of goods, rise of unemployment, wages kept to minimum, land-grabbers turning every lot into commercial area. what is left of us now, then?

[piangaea]

rue

Sometimes walking away from a situation or from someone meant self-care. After all, we don’t want to waste our energies onto something we can’t see ourselves being with in the future. Maybe we aren’t treated the way we deserve or maybe we can’t offer what they need. We have a lot of reasons for leaving and other times, no matter how we call it self-care, we regret it.

 We have all been there: making a decision so cruel and then, regretting it. There’s no way we can’t go back to the past and change our decisions. And there’s also no way that they will let us in again after breaking their hearts for walking away and supposedly, choosing ourselves.

Contrary to popular belief, walking away is actually a sign of bravery. It is a decision that will not only affect the other person, but it will affect you greatly as well. You left someone; people aren’t going to understand you that much because you’re the one who left, so technically, you’re the one who broke the other person’s heart. You’re the one who “got tired of trying to work things out.” You’re the bad guy. What they do not know is the process you have to go through to come up with your decision. They don’t know how hard it is to ask for a break-up when you just do not want to further damage the other person. They couldn’t see that. All they see is you walking away from a relationship that could’ve been saved if you weren’t so unwilling to try.

We have lots of reasons to leave. Some may be due to irreconcilable differences, unmet standards, and others may say they left someone for receiving so much and they couldn’t return the same amount of effort. Sometimes it’s the small things that amount to something so big that you can no longer take it anymore. Other times, you were just unready for that magical thing to happen. You were scared. Overwhelmed, even. They say it doesn’t hurt to try—to test the waters—but you can’t deal with the guilt you feel for not giving the other person the treatment that they deserve. Perhaps it was just you, being selfless through dealing with your own demons and not wanting to hurt the other person while you’re at it.

But whatever reason you have for leaving, it doesn’t erase the fact that it has already been done. You have broken your relationship already.

You may have just realized it months after breaking up with them or maybe it has reached years in your case—well, it doesn’t really matter because at the end of the day, it all goes down to you wanting them back. Maybe you have come to realize that their love was so wonderful, and no one has ever come close to giving you that yet. Maybe now you’re ready to try again and have conditioned yourself to this madness of an emotion, so foreign and quite territorial and demanding. Perhaps you have already fought your demons and you want to go back to the way things were before.

Know what you should do?

You have to wake up from that slumber. Stop dreaming of what could have been if you weren’t such a coward to try. You already did damage to that person. After all that pain you caused them, after all the sleepless nights you put them into, you do not have the right to waltz back into their life and ask for another chance—especially when they have already coped with the emotions you made them feel. You left for quite selfish reasons and you cannot be selfish once again. They’ve given so much of themselves to you and you could only barely give them back something of yours. Don’t make them relive the past and feel the pain that comes with it. Although they have moved on, we all know, for sure, that the feeling still lingers at the back of their minds. It cannot be felt by the heart, but the mind knows just how hard it was for them to forget you. It was as if the pain occurred just the other day. It was that painful. All breakups are painful. No matter how we say the decision was mutual, a breakup is still a breakup and it will hurt you in ways you never know it has the capability to. Every breakup might be different, its reasons and the people involved, but all of these breakups have one common denominator which is pain. We cannot put them in that same situation again. We cannot put them back in pain.

You are a thing of the past. That’s where you belong. Accept it.

It is now your turn to move on from a love that was. It might have been beautiful, it may have been something great that you think it only happens once in a lifetime, or you now miss this person or the feeling they made you feel or maybe even both, but…you cannot move on if you keep on dwelling on the memories of the past. There may be lots of what-ifs and what-could-have-been that you seek for right now, but that’s all it is. What happened, happened because it should be that way. It was meant to happen no matter how cruel or light it felt as you drifted away from each other. It will end because it wasn’t meant to be.

You just have to accept that.

Don’t bother the peace of the other person anymore. Let them continue being happy carrying on with their life without you. Let them do the things you used to do together alone. Let them enjoy the peace, freedom, and confidence you have taken away the moment you left. Let them live without you.

And do the same for yourself. Find happiness in places where you cannot find them. They suffered so much just so you could bask in your inner peace, your newfound peace. Don’t put their suffering in vain. You have become the person you are today partly because of their doing. Honor them by living your life to the fullest…without them. You will miss them every now and then, but that is fine. We tend to miss people who are no longer in our lives that made us happy at one point and that’s okay. We just have to live on holding dear those beautiful memories we shared with them. Maybe that was what they meant by having someone forever—not physically, but within the very depths of our souls.

One day, someone will come into your life again. Love once more. Pour your heart out to this person. Maybe then, they will be the person meant to be with you forever—physically, mentally, romantically, and spiritually.

[piangaea]

a year ago, i treated someone poorly and, frankly, unfairly. it has taken me months to realize he's one of the best i'll ever have, but i ended things with him early into our relationship and so easily. had i been careful and willing to adjust to a life committed to someone other than myself, i guess i'd still be with him up to this day.

but who knows? maybe it ended the way it did so as not to damage ourselves more. maybe it wasn't really meant to be.

at least, today, i can only remember how good he was to me until the very end.

there may be regrets to my end, but it made me wiser when it comes to romantic relationships. if that's any consolation, haha.

[piangaea]

Untitled 002

Growing up, I have been taught by my parents to be patient. Want that toy from Toy Kingdom? Be patient enough to understand the concept of subtraction to get it. Want to eat your favorite Jollibee meal? Be patient to wait for your hair to grow back if you want it long because we'll cut it off before we dine. Want to go someplace else with your friends? Be patient until you’re at your legal age and be in college. Want to have new shoes? Be patient and debug your programs to pass the semester. My life has always been spent on bargains, exerting effort, and being patient that I have already forgotten how to actually give up.

Most often than not, many have heard me say I’m giving up in the midst of difficulties I face, be it a slow computer, a stubborn error message, a pesky blemish on my skin, or the weight I’ve been trying to lose since high school. Look at me now. Where am I? I am still on my Computer Science degree, debugging error messages on my Eclipse software that just seems to love lagging, not putting anything on my face after I wash it so as to let my blemishes go away on their own, and dancing half an hour a day and another quarter of an hour for a hundred reps of squats and wall push-ups a day in the hopes of shedding a few pounds weekly.

See, I have never really given up and I didn’t think I will soon.

But here comes the day I have never thought would come, that there’s another thing I’ve been waiting for that I already want to give up on. It’s been bugging me for months and all the time that has passed, nothing can even make it progress at some point. Tonight is one of those nights I tell myself it’s time to let it go now, to give it all up once and for all, to get the peace of mind I have been wanting, but I can’t seem to outgrow the lesson my parents have taught me—to be positive that I’m going to get what I want or what I need if only I get to be patient, if only I exert so much effort into it. I have made myself aware, even before this day came, that there are other things I wouldn’t be able to get my hands on no matter what I do. I have to let things go one day. But there’s nothing more conflicting than wanting to get this thing while also wanting to let go of it.

I’ve been so vague, haven’t I? Well, whatever my interest may be, it doesn’t change what I have been meaning to say, does it? Haven’t we all been there, wanting something so much, but we need to let go of it even if it is against what we believe in? You want this thing, but you need not to get your hands on them because it’s not a necessity or someone else needs it more than you do. It’s hard: letting go of what we want when we think we might be able to get it one day; maybe not now, not even later, but someday. But that’s the thing. Some things just aren’t meant for us, so why do we bother so much holding onto it? Why do we spend so much investment of ourselves on something we know we might never get? Chances? Possibilities? The odds working on our favor? Don’t we, at some point, already established that we are fully aware that it is never meant to be ours? Why do we keep pushing, then? What is it that makes us want it more? The feeling of being worthy of it? The validation? The proof that what we have grown accustomed to will always be constant? What do we gain from it? Is it that valuable to waste our time waiting for it? Exert this much effort to get it? Lose ourselves in the process of waiting and working to finally get what we think is ours and will be ours one day? Until when will we fight for our right to this thing when amid all these hardships, we still find ourselves standing on the same place where we started? What’s the breaking point of all these? When do we really stop?

All I’m saying is maybe there are other things we want to prove that’s why we can’t give up on it. Maybe it’s not exactly the thing that we have in our minds that we want; it’s something else. Maybe there are other things we want to gain. Or maybe we can get it from other things aside from what we have been chasing after for so long. We don’t have to be stuck in this loop of waiting and working for nothing. We have to move on from it eventually. We need to get on with our lives. We need to grow, and this place isn’t exactly where we can do just that.

I don’t actually know either when do we exactly stop. I don’t know what I really want. All I know is I’ve been chasing something that just doesn’t want to be chased and that clearly sends a message that perhaps it isn’t meant for me. The hardest part is I’m aware of all these, but I can’t stop waiting for it and chasing it. Funny that I didn’t write this to be a think piece for everyone to realize what it is that they want, but it is rather a conversation I am having with myself in my head that I just type on Microsoft Word simultaneously. It’s this vague because I don’t also have that clarity you want to gain after reading this, but I do hope it makes you think what it is that you really desire. I wish you get your clarity someday…maybe not now, not even later, but someday.