When Hypothermia Strikes

You left your heart in SF, I'm leaving mine there, too. Hopefully, our hearts will meet again and decide that they are meant to be together. One day. Someday.

Left Behind in San Franciso

Once upon a time, we dreamt of leaving our hearts in SF. Then you left me.

SF should be a good experience. Now I'm here, it just leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth no matter how beautiful and charming it is.

Dahil Burday ni Baby Boy

Para sayo tong post na to! Happy birthday JF! Iloveyoudoobidoobidoo! :-)Of all the shitty, depressing things that happened to me this year, your friendship is one of the best things I got as a trade off.

Another Day, Another City

My cousin wasn't joking. It is really cold up here in San Diego. They live up in the hill, in a very fancy subdivision.

My nose will bleed not because of speaking English but because of the unforgiving cold.

I'm so excited to see what's up in this city.

You Know This is For You

I told you you would look so much prettier with your hair color in a more natural hue. And your teeth baring smile made you ten times more likable. To be honest, I like you already. Merry Christmas and a great new year to both of you. May this 2012 be the best for all of us.

Banana takes On CALI!

Finally, I'm having my long overdue vacation. As I've frequently told my office friends, I am the original curacha, linggo lang ang pahinga.Yep, I went straight from college and into the work field. I graduated Saturday and started working Monday... and I havent had a leave lasting more than two working days.

So, how's my trip so far?

Let me start by telling you my first day. I had to attend the wedding of my boss, but only up to the church wedding as my flight leaves 10pm. Knowing traffic could be such a bitch on a Saturday, I was fretting because I had to be at the airport before 8pm, and my parents were still stuck at traffic at 6pm. I was saying all my prayers and thinking of all possible worst case scenarios if I come late to the airport.

Thankfully, I arrived a few minutes before 8pm (no dinner! just my baong hopia). I was still in my wedding attire (electric blue, body hugging dress and 4 inches heels) so everybody was looking at me thinking, "what is she all dressed up for? It's just the airport."

Anyway, I was able to check in without a hitch and survived a long flight watching Lake House ( a beautiful movie) and Before Sunrise (aaaw). I was also able to sleep for 7 hours, longer than what I usually have at the comfort of my own home. In a matter of hours, I was in beautiful California.

My cousin's husband and my two nieces took me to LA and Hollywood on my first day. Being huge Lakers fans, they had to take me first to downtown LA to let me see Staples Center and Nokia Theater. After that, we went to Hollywood and saw Grauman's Chinese Theater and the shops on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills (as if I could afford these shops!). It was so sweet of them to buy me a Hardrock and UCLA shirt, and a Katy Perry perfume which smells soooooo good! It comes with a purse and locket with solid perfume in it. So cool. But the greatest thing would probably be having my picture taken with a smokin' hot Abercrombie and Fitch model and walking down the gay district of LA and seeing guys dancing in their undies (like a girlie bar). My two underage nieces were so scandalized, its funny.

It was a good day strolling and shopping at Nordstrom. But since I am a self-confessed workaholic, I just had to check my mails when I got back to work. 78 emails for barely 4 hours off from work(working hours I mean). And I had a report to submit! so much for relaxing.

Day 2 was more laid back. We went to a mall near my cousin's place but it was huge. I didn't get to go around much because my cousin's husband had to go to work. I also had to fix my shopping list before I go to malls to have my purchases (and budget) in order. I got some stuff from H & M and Roxy. We also had time to go to the beach to stroll. It was so beautiful, I love it. Even though my hands were freezing, I still had time to appreciate how "OC" the scene was.

Since we got home pretty early and there wasnt much to do, I spent most of my free time answering emails and eating. Yes, people here do not stop eating! Even though I'm stuffed to the brim, I couldn't put down the caramel popcorns or the raspberries.

Tomorrow, time to walk off the calories because I'm going to Universal Studios! Time to bring out the child in me.

2 More Days To Go

I can't believe I'm leaving in a few days. I'm still so stressed from work, I barely have time to do all my errands.

Too bad I wont get to see PS and GH and Legolas before I leave. I just want to give them a really, really tight Holiday hug.

This will be a different Christmas for me-- spending it in a faraway place, miles away from my family and lacking a significant person in my life.

But I think change will do me good. I deserve this. I need this.

To breathe. To grieve. To let go of a bad year. To move forward. To start anew.

When you're stuck in a rut, sometimes, all you really need is a taste of the unfamiliar.

So, Unfamiliar, I'm excited to meet you too.

Feelings We Need Words For

I just had to share this. Even though I'm almost completely healed, this post brought me back to a really dark and sad place. And it's not only me. I let my other friends read this too... The result: our office almost became a venue for mass suicide (just kidding). It was that intense. Undeniably, one of the best articles I've read so far in TC.


NOV. 21, 2011 By P. LUNA
www.thoughtcatalog.com


English is so bad at describing what it means to grieve. We use words like bereft or bitter or sad, or we say we have a broken heart. But none of these really get at the nuances. The words don’t seem to capture each exquisitely painful feeling.

For example, there should be a word, maybe borrowed from German, a language so good at expressing complicated mental states in a single lengthy word with many chewy consonants, for when you miss someone so incredibly, achingly much, when that person pervades every thought, every interaction, every waking moment, but you also loathe them. Because they treated you badly, or because they were too weak to be honest with you. Because you were betrayed. And because you loathe them, you hate yourself for missing that person so intensely. For missing the laughter they inspired; for wishing for the easy intimacy that you built. You hate yourself for knowing that they aren’t worth so much sadness, that such an outlay of mental energy is entirely wasted and useless. But you feel it anyway, and you cry in the shower or into your pillow or anytime something reminds you of that person. Which is all the time. There should definitely be a word for that.

There should also be a word, maybe from the French, who do existentialism so well, for the feeling of disconnection you cultivate when you walk through the streets with your headphones on, sad songs blasting into your ears loudly enough that you can pretend you are alone. You pass by other people almost without seeing them, since you can’t hear them. You walk by shops and offices on the sidewalk, going somewhere or maybe not going anywhere in particular, feeling like the music in your ears is a soundtrack to your sadness. This song makes you think of that person; that song comes close to capturing how lonely you are without them. You isolate yourself physically because you feel so isolated inside; surrounded by people, you are still alone, because you have been abandoned by that one person who made you feel somehow less alone.

English is also missing a word for how it feels when you know that person has moved on so quickly. When you find out you weren’t as important as you thought you were. When you realize that they were acting selfishly instead of caring about you, or when you understand that you didn’t really come into it at all for them, they were just doing what they needed to do. Maybe it should come from Russian, because the Russians know despair. You thought you were finally getting over them. You could almost go an hour, if you were busy with something really important, without thinking about them. Then you see a Facebook post or hear some gossip from mutual friends, and you realize you weren’t over it. Not even close. You realize you were still holding out hope that you would get back together, that there would be some way to repair the damage, to be happy again. When that hope is crushed, the fragile Jenga tower of your life tumbles down. There should be a word for that kind of defeat.

And there should also be a word for when you’re just so tired of being sad, for when you are tired of being lonely but somehow don’t know how to stop. When you’re tired of crying, tired of thinking about that person, tired of missing them. You can’t yet make yourself recognize all the bad things; remembering how you’ve been done wrong doesn’t help. But the hurt over the good things, the things you still miss so much, is a dull twist in your stomach now, instead of a gaping hole in your chest. You don’t know how to turn that off, don’t remember how to be happy. But you sort of remember happiness as it existed before that person, and you want that so desperately. You want to stop this misery that drags at your ankles and eyes and insides. You know it will take time, but sometimes just the fact of being tired of crying makes you cry. Maybe we could co-opt a word from Japanese for that, since melancholy is a specialty of theirs.

There should be an English word for all these feelings of grief. And I desperately wish they existed now, just so I could tell you, next time you ask, how I’m doing in only four words, instead of all these.

You Don't Need To Say Anything

By: Chelsea Fagan
(www.thoughtcatalog.com)

There was a time when receiving even the most insignificant message from you would have been simply incredible-- when it would have told me that, no matter what was happening, I still crossed your mind. Because as we all know, silence is the most brutal statement one can make. Screaming about how much you hated me or telling me I was ugly, well, it would have been tolerable. Hate and love are two sides of the same coin; the true opposite of love is apathy. And if you had screamed, I would have known that regardless of how hard you tried to convey your disdain for me, I still meant enough to you to write a few words, to make your sentiments known. But you remained silent, and so I shut up as well.

I have lost people in my life before; I have a choice soul or two with whom I can no longer speak. Even acknowledging their existence, or confronting them with mine, would be just too ugly and pour salt into too many wounds. There are bridges I have burned out of necessity. Yours was simply abandoned, left untended for years until weeds grew through it and the railing fell apart and it became something you might take a black-and-white picture of, but you could never cross again. It was unsafe, destroyed by neglect. And that hurt more; to see something just erode into oblivion is so much more brutal than to cover it with gasoline and to toss a match on it. I wanted fireworks, to go out with a bang. I guess that's human nature.

And the time that we didn't speak went from a simple act of convenience into a border which could no longer be crossed. There is an invisible moment in time, a line of sorts, that you traverse at a certain point in a mutual silence. It is the time when, from then on, starting a conversation would be awkward and jagged and require an embarrassed explanation of why you haven't spoken in so long. We crossed that point a long time ago, whether I wanted to or not, and I knew that going back would be fruitless. Acknowledging each other was over, and it was time to accept the quiet death of a friendship that had taken place.

Of course, I still hoped that you would reach out. One day you would extend your hand and say that you were sorry, that things were okay, that we don't need to keep this uncomfortable distance. You would tell me that we were being immature, that life is too short, and many other clichés that we could nod in agreement on. I waited for it consciously, then without thinking of it, and eventually I wasn't waiting at all. My life began to continue, and your peripheral existence didn't factor in. I was happy without it, and the fact that you weren't a part of everything was no longer a tangible hole needing to be filled.

Every day became more and more about what was good, enjoyed fully without a nagging sense of "if only I could share it with this person." I made new friends, and strengthened ties with old ones. I no longer thought about our silence, about our depressing ending, about the fact that we'd never again stay up all night watching internet videos and drinking beer. It was simply a chapter in my life that had closed, and the ending seemed appropriate. We can't appreciate or understand the endings of things when they're happening, of course, but with a little distance they usually parse themselves out. We were right to go our separate ways, and I know we're both the better for it-- even if we can't pinpoint exactly why.

So there's no need to apologize, to come and say something, to awkwardly jump-start a conversation that goes nowhere in a matter of minutes. There's no need to acknowledge what happened, or talk about the things we would have done differently. Our lives are filled with things we could have done better, but I know you well enough to know that just because things end on a bad note doesn't mean all the wonderful music before was worthless. I won't let the ugly end color my memories of you. But we are no longer the same people, and there's no reason to force a false friendship because of some misplaced sense of nostalgia.

It's the holidays, and we are remembering the people we left behind. But sometimes remembering is enough. You're surrounded by your loved ones, and I with mine, and there's no need to toast because the season tells us we should. We're all okay, and there are so many exciting things in front of us--let's let that be enough.

Happy Merry Christmas Party