Tag: letter

Happy birthday, Mr. C!

Dear Charlie, 

Happy birthday! How does it feel to be a 39-year-old-high-functioning adult? Me? I am barely getting by without shedding a tear every day.

Pagkagising ko, yung nanay ko kino-call out yung laki ng katawan ko. Perhaps out of concern, but I felt like it was out of spite. At her timeline reaching 39, she was pregnant to my youngest brother (to which I became a co-parent of), and papa was punishing her by handwashing a king-sized bedsheet, without any help from her kids. She almost had miscarriage with JB. She was so thin, kind of a trauma response to the survival mode. And I believe she felt alone at that phase of her life. 

At 39, I feel like I was living mama’s alternate reality: Literally living alone, yet thriving in the Corporate career she aspires — just received a good news of huge promotion, forging and / or fortifying communities from her interests and hobbies, saving up for travels and retirement, essentially “winging adulting”. And yet, when I sat down in my home office, I feel the heavy weight of her feisty reminder,

“Magpa-check ka na ng katawan mo at ang laki mo na!”

This afternoon, albeit relatively felt okay, I was suddenly thrusted into a anxious spiral of body dysmorphia and the seething sentiment of:

I am still not enough. 

That daydream goes back as my totem and my solace. If only I was that wife, I will be definitely out of this timeline. Lord, sana maumpog na siya and he would woo me! Susubukan ko magpakipot, kahit alam ng mundo na marupok ako. 

Sorry Charlie, oversharing. Kindly ignore those long sentences. What I really wanted to say was I wish you a moment of peace and a feeling of abundance. 

You are enough.

Thank you for being a friend.

A Love Letter from an Anxious-attached Woman with a Manic Episode

Dearest M,

How is your recent life in Idaho? And why are you not texting me? Do you enjoy your trips on that other side of the world?

So. In the next days of our lives, we shall spend in silence? Like minding ourselves be sucked in our respective worlds, watching our own interests in a nook called a mobile phone? What about the conversations that we used to have? When I tried to engage in sharing my stories, you just dismiss it with a humorless jest, and making it repetitive, a routine unconscientiously performed after days—fuck it, months—of absence?

It feels convoluted, meeting this person.

Does this mean that I learn to settle in this dynamic that bears no joy, not even a high, “for now”?

Intellectualize this: Were you an absent partner on your previous marriage, resulting to a third party you caught in the act? If yes, most likely, your history will repeat itself. You are now on the brink of reprising the role your absent father did to your mother.

And its absence lingered on this timeline.

I miss you.
I am sorry for being this destructive and resentful. It is tough managing an avoidant.

I love you.
But sometimes, I do not love you because of what we have now.
“Out of sight, out of mind.”

And I do not want to hate myself for it. I guess this is how our love works, right?

Sometimes, the kilig comes as a huge tsunami wave whenever you come home and we share the silent space together, and yet, sometimes I am resenting that same silence whenever we independently face our own struggles.

I think this is our kind of love, right? And after all these years, I am still navigating this with sonder and wonder that maybe our storyline is not as unique as the others. Maybe, we have that sentiment that is transcendent, like the novels that we read.

Maybe at the end of the day, loving is about choosing.

And even though moments hurt and memories fade, I choose you.

Break or no break,
E.

Poetics: Actual submission to the JFF25 contest in facebook page. I hope to win free tickets or anything. If I don’t win, meh, then you see my thought process in my current struggle of not seeing my date in the last five months of our lives.