wee!

I'm happy.

Okay, well not entirely "happy" happy, but I guess that's probably the best way to put it.

Let me rephrase that.

I'm fine.

I never thought I'd be able to gather up all the courage to talk about something that I've been keeping to myself for a while. I mean, the last three weeks have been awfully strange for me. I've already reached the point when I don't seem to understand myself anymore. It's like I don't know why things just don't seem to fall into place lately. I am so lost.

But, really. I think I'm okay now. Maybe all I really needed was to just talk to someone -- or maybe to anyone for that matter -- just so I could understand myself better.

::: just shut up florence! shut up :::

Refresh me, form the memories i had in mind. refresh every inch of my nerves. Do me a favor, reassure me about it. Teach me how to talk, teach me how to fight, teach me how to be brave in showing myself. It helps me a lot when stones used to criticized me. But it hurts me a lot when those stones see me as someone who do not have a backbone, someone who's so lost in despair. That down... 6 feet under, beneath those black graves and evil shadows from the past. I know myself, i have my own identity but i just don't have the courage to love myself my shell or my scale, the color of my fur or the color of my feathers. I know what i like, i know my hobbies just please don't judge me!. There's a big difference when you tell me to find my identity and try to love myself, from try to love what i like and try to accept my imperfections. I'm not an iguana that rolls its eyes in a different angle nor a chameleon whose imitating anyone. I just don't like the idea of labeling me as someone who do not think but feel. Yes, i do give the idea of making anyone think I'm too available. That is why i always do fall into somewhere i don't wanna be. The point of getting hurt. The point of crying over someone who doesn't deserve my every drop. I am aware of that, that is why my outlet is to talk about it and not just to keep it inside in order for my air to rotate inside. Breathe, I'm just taking a break for something, and thats it. I don't usually talk about how i feel but this is my only way. Every time i get messy or sad that doesn't mean they occupied every inch of my sanity. I am still with my senses and i also do analyze things. But i just choose to feel it, just a time or a moment, a time to forget and delete it. Yes i do talk a lot about it just to calm me and make me at ease. One favor! please do not misjudge me!

finally!

Something extraordinary has happened.

Honestly.

I can hardly believe it.

A week ago something huge shifted into our world. It was literally overnight. I can pinpoint when it happened. I've been holding my breath since, but it has maintained for a week now. It's real. It's transforming my days and making them what I've been dreaming of. Arguments, stress, pain, exhaustion aside...I can almost dare to believe that it's real.

I'm going to tell you now, but let's not speak of it lest we jinx it. I'm going to tell you, and then we'll walk away from the secret for a while, until we're sure that it's real. Because if I'm dreaming and this new change disappears then I will very definitely need to be heavily medicated for the forseeable future, because I can't go back again. So we can't jinx it. Pretend we didn't even discuss it. Nothing to see here, move along.

So here's the secret to what's giving me hope beyond all hope, to what is beginning to make me feel like my whole entire journey has been worth it...

...After long and hellish weeks, I'm okay. I've forgiven myself.

coping up..

I fumbled through the dark and found a match.

The match led me to a candle.

The candle burned as I found a flashlight.

And then I kept walking and finally saw the end of the road, and at the end of the road, there was light.

I'm almost there.

and i'm glad to say this.. finally something has to end, and something should start all over again. =D

this is me once again, taking all the odds. You and me against the world imagery that is ! mwah!

bad day!

Sometimes, the world goes dark and all you can think is Oh my God. How am I going to get through this?

The light goes out with the flash of an exploding bulb. You look for hope, but there's no one with hope with you. You dread these days, for when they come they remind you of how hard everything can be, and these days are the type that you can't see the end to see if there will be light again.

This is one of those days.

It might even become one of those months.

get well soon shim, i miss you already.. =( tsk.tsk.tsk..

mothering.. =)

The completely fabulous Tita Arlene gave me this book called Mothering Without a Map, and it's one book that I constantly cheat on as I simply can't read it from cover to cover in one go. Not because it's tedious or boring or anything like that, but because the book produces extremely strong emotions and reactions in me. I worry I'll short-fuse if I read it all in one go, so I take it a bit at a time.

As the summary says:

her focus never waivers from what happens when the mother-daughter tie tears and the daughter is left without a role model.

My mother and I fell out. It's a shame and I wish sometimes we could talk more,laugh and cry more together! but I think that what I say is weighed and measured and shared during times of gossipy aggression. There are moments now that I understand what she meant or how she must have felt. But I don't want to be the same kind of mother she was.

In the distant past I think emotional stability was far from being the priority - kids were sheltered, fed, clothed, and anything beyond that was surplus. Sure, mums loved their babies. But in general it was necessary to be practical about emotions and meter out protection.

Later generations I think started to reckon that more was needed than that. Kids are no longer farm hands and resources. Kids are desperately wanted, yearned for, and something some people will walk through proverbial fire for (it reminds me of my . And as that role of children has changed, so have (I think) the emotional needs of children.

My therapist reiterated again and again the fact that I had a very unstable background. Constant moving was one thing, but of greater impact was the yo-yo relationship my family has, ie, my sister's status in her relationship, constant "paninira" thrown to our family just for the sake of ruining it..blah! blah!. Together, apart, together, apart - they seemed to be unable to decide what they wanted from each other. Combine that with my mother's personal view of family - strict loyalty and no boundaries and feelings that changed with the flip of a coin - and I was a basket case.

Unstable. Unstable. Unstable. It was unstable. I was unstable.

My great fear is that my children will turn out like me.

I think I'm a good one. I will love my kids and make sure they know it. Their every need should be meet. But my needs were met and look how I turned out. There's something above and beyond the basic needs, and I find myself determined to root out what that is, to keep my kids safe and happy and healthy. I've got their basics down and then some. I just want to catch whatever it is that made me fall through the net.

Reading this book is difficult. It's strange when you identify with other women, and you look back on your childhood and say Yes, I was fed and clothed and homed and loved. But that wasn't enough. You feel guilty for feeling that way. You feel selfish. You feel like you are a poshy shit taking the world for granted, that you should storm off in a huff because mommy and daddy bought you the blue Beemer, not the red one. All I ever wanted was a Ballerina Barbie in her pretty pink tutu. My birthday, I was 10 and do you know what they got me? Malibu Barbie. That's not what I wanted, that's not who I was. I was a ballerina. Graceful. Delicate. They had to go.

Maybe the truth is some of us grew up broken. We had some fundamental safety missing from our childhood. We were protected, but our protector could turn on us, too.

And the fight concluded last night.

"I love you" i said

"I love you too," she replied.

Not just mothering without a map, but loving without an atlas.

=| heart-stopping moment!

You know in the movies when the heroine is confronted by something truly horrifying? Like those slasher flicks where she throws open the closet door - because she was curious about the heavy breathing coming from her cashmere, presumably - and you have that heart-stopping second of pure adrenaline fear as you wait for the knife? And then you see it and your body gets dumped with chemicals as your brain tells you to jump and shriek?

I've had one of those yesterday! It was a a rainy afternoon, and the water pump was underneath a silver trash can lid. My tito lifted the lid.

There, curled around the pump, was the single biggest Bull snake that I had ever seen in my life. It raised its head at me.

And I screamed in tones that my throat had never before utilized.

It was one of those heart-stopping moments, where my body was flooded with adrenaline and I lost control of myself. I wasn't the only one. My tito was so shocked by the snake and my response that she wet herself.

Like I said - heart - stopping moment.

... last song syndrome! nosebleed man ko dhai! =p

Question: What's worse than an entire jeepney ride home with Kim Chiu's Crazy Love and Toni Gonzaga's Catch Me I'm Fallin' playing one after another?

Answer: Being seated next to someone who knows every damned word of both songs and singing along right near your ear.

Then getting off the blasted jeepney in relief only to realize a few seconds later that Cath Me I'm Fallin' is now playing inside your head over and over and over again.

Well. At least Toni Gonzaga can sing.

scribbled the crap..

Oh man.

From the previous post, I seemed to have messed things up from bad to worse.

Oh hell. I really suck at explaining things like these. 0_o

Why on earth did I even bother to, anyway. Everything just seems to go right over people's heads (they all think they're doing me a favor ahaha). No matter what I say, someone's still bound to drag the issue out to where it started and I have to go full circle again.

Just like the fact that not matter how much I eat, someone's still bound to complain that I don't eat enough. No matter how early or late I go to bed, someone's still bound to say that I never get enough sleep or I sleep too much. And no matter how I try to chuck things out of my head, they still manage to find themselves back in.

For heaven's sake, why bother?

Just fall on my head, you worthless dirty-white ceiling, you. You're a sight for sore eyes.

Eh.

Of course I'm rambling. Haha. What else is there to do?

Oh man.

something that is worth posting..

=( one world. one home.

why do we kill people, who kill people..to show people that killing people is wrong? *sigh*

=) - (=

Clumsy thumbs
Collect fragile flowers
Bitten down nails
Bite shallow grooves through countless stems
Hitting your head against a brick wall
Pushing the head through
It resurfaces the other side
Of its - green
Grave
Slip - gasping for air
Grasping for another flower.

He loves me - He loves me not.

Weaving tokens of affection
From the soil around us
You always
Make something of nothing.
Two best friends equally dirty and grass stained
Our friendship pushing up daisies
Dirt in my ears and mud in your eyes
As we - think back
Wish back
Reminisce - backwards
Grasping for a lost innocence.

But he loves her - He loves me not.

try not to weep. =p

Global warming and Somalia's poverty cannot beat this! =) hail mr.bboy alulod! LOL! Mean ra?

..just a thought before hitting the day..

Sometimes, on TV I see tunnels and bridges being inaugurated. Usually, a lot of celebrities and local politicians stand in a line, in the centre of which is the minister or local governor, Then a ribbon is cut, and when the people in charge of the project returns to their desks, they find lots of letters expressing recognition and admiration.

The people who sweated and worked on the project who wielded pickaxes and spades who labored all through the summer heat in order to finish the job are never seen; those who did not work by the sweat of their brow always seem to come off best.

I want to be someone capable of seeing the unseen faces, of seeing those who do not seek fame or glory, who silently fulfill the role life has given them.

I want to be able to do this because the most important things, those that shape our existence are precisely the one that never show their faces. =)

oh well! Love. =)

A story of how things work in my crazy world called Life. :)

We had decided to meet up at the nearest coffee shop, because we thought the TV in both our huses woud only distract us. I caught sight of *Craig* (screen name,favorite name of a guy) from down the block,tapping his pen on the tabletop and sipping his ice coffe latte - his jaw clenching as he did. It's silly I know but I found it to be the most endearing thing. =) Today, we were going on our first study session for the final exams, and I couldnt be more excited.

"What great lessons are yu ready to teach me today" I sad, breathless, but not from walking. His eyes lit up. " The importance of not having someone,wait for you for very long" he teased,looking at his watch. "I can get impatient, and you might just regret it if I upped and left"

"I'll keep that in mind," I said quietly wondering whether he was talking about something else other than my being 15 minutes late today. (Hoping that he was actually)

BUt by the time I settled on my mocha frap and had arranged my books around me, I was thinking otherwise. Since that fateful day he told me he'd chosen our firendship over his feelings, I had heard nothing else from him. From then on, things were back to normal and he had been to me, the way he'd always been: comfortable,sometimes patronizing,sometimes annoying,mostly supportive,always playful,always friendly. I ahve gotten no feelers since that day. His burying his face on his book,completely oblivious to thefact that I've been staring at him for the last two minutes now was the truest testament to that. =)

We had gotten one hour of studying in before he looked up. "Break?" Iasked and he nodded. We finished the rest of my glazed doughnut as we watched the people aorund us and decided to play a game. i'LL call it Couple Analysis and unfounded assumptions based on what the coules look like.

"I see couple..." I started,eyeing the one across from us. He was playing with his skateboard under the table and had a chain looped around his pants;she was powdering her nose." She agreed to go out with him because she thought she could change him. Now he's realizing he'll always be a kid. She is now ready to dump him for a college guy."

Craig looked at me,eyes wide " Florence, I think they're mother and son" he whispered.
I let out a big laugh,but was unfazed. So for the better part of 30 minutes. I played Couple Analyzer to whoever cared to walk infront of us. I rebutted all of Craig's analyses for nine couples out of 10 before I finally grew tired.

"Im out It's back to the books for me" I announced, as I took my bookmark away from the page I had sectioned off and started reading.

" i See a couple" Craig said quietly, and I looked up. I didn't see any one in sight..

"He's been keen on her for some time now, He wasnt upfront about it because they were very close, and he didnt want to ruin their friendship."..Unless he was talking about the old couple who was just leaving.
"So he started"..Craig continues.. "dropping major hints. She didnt seem to notice until finally, he spelled it out for her - only to find out she liked someone else, or is not ready for any commitment. So he felt monumentally stupid and stayed away from her for awhile. But he ended up missing her terribly crawling back,saying sorry..." Surely, Craig wasnt talking about the pair beside us who looked like they were brother and sister.

"...insisting he didnt mean to like her and make things out like his feelings for her didnt run that deep anyway." Craug continues.

And I finally looked at him looking at me.

" She took it all, I think" he said, staring into my eyes. " But I have to tell you, Florence" he said, shaking his head as I waited to exhale, " that crazy guy was lying"

=) comments.reactions.. feel free.

=) the greatest guy.

enough about me, what about me!

with the greatest guy that ever lived. at least in his own mind.

They say love is blind.I say love is blurred, espcially after too many shots(too many for me is like 2 shots of extremely strong tequila!) Now more than ever, I think tequila bottles should come with warning labels that say " Excessive drinking may lead to unwanted short-term relationships with characters that make Hitler seem like pleasant company." So it came to pass, that after knocking down more than the acceptable quantity of alcohol before needing a liver transplant,(with my sister and her friend's company) I somehow "hooked" up with the Greatest Guy that ever walked the Earth, atleast in his own mind.

It all seemed to go well at the start,. Here was a handsome specimen, driven and successful in whatever path he has, cool intelligent and funny, a guy who could do mre than one-one-two dance step on the club floor. I thanked my Lucky Strikes for what appeared as the promise of an awesome relationship. Then I started to notice a few things about him, things which i first tried to shake off as paranoia, unitl I could no longer ignore the glaring truth. Man! This guy have an ego so big it had its own zip codE!!

It wasnt just the fact that each time we passed by any reflective surface that could be used as mirror, he'd turn and check himself out. It was our conversations that were classic, for they we're all about HIM! Like, I'd start off by telling him about Mandy Moore's live track I've downloaded from Limewire, and he then would mouth off all the concerts he'd been to -all over the world mind you- Or i'd reminisce about this awwwesome New Year's beach party and he would proceed to tell me thereafter about too-cool exclusive party on a yacht with free-flowing champagne where he ended up playing God as he DJ'd the night away. After noticing a pattern, I tried testing him by throwing him utterly random morsels, like not liking sayote and that somehow reminded him about five goals he scored in football, and his budding modeling career. In short , I was Iraq and he was the full measure of the mighty US-Armed Forces.

Dont get me worng. i'm all for human empowerment, and I do believe that confidence is the sexiest thing a guy can wear, But the overinflated male ego- now that's one thing that would make me consider attending a sleepover with lipstick lesbians(no offense!) over a one-on-one date with a guy whose main preoccupation is worshipping himself. I wonder if all this yabang is actually a subconscious way of the modern man to maintain his gender superiority in a free-thinking,Oprah-worshipping world. True, competitiveness is inevitable in a relationship wherien the girl isnt your typical Maria Clara, but when th competitiveness goes beyond helathy and ventures into the territory of clashing egos, well there's a bound to be one that ends up bruised.(and i'm not just referring to egos.)

In the universe of my mind, I thought of ways on how to get back at the Boy Yabang without lording over my own achievements (for they seemed really mundane compared to his monumental successes). Should I develop Tourette's Syndrome? Perhaps if those characters in Layer Cake, he'd actually snap out of his self-worship. Or better yet, develop a Pinoy Tourette's syndrome, becasuse as we all can attest to, Pinoy curse words are just o much more effective in offending. So even if im expressing awe at his latest stellar achievemet, I'd still manage to shock him.. secret how i manage to offend him.=)

As it happened, we stopped seing each other for reasons that one need no wild imagination to gues why. I ended it right then.. *whatever we had! ehe. friendship or beyond that* not just because of his ego! but well, a whole lot more!! complexities and stuf. I had heard that he was seeing someone else,in fact. I wouldnt be surprised if that someone stared at him admiringly to no end, from behind a two-way mirror.
=)

..err.. if u happen to read this..sorry! nyahaha.

its over! too much ego! too much complexities. let's just be friends.. and believe me! im not dumping years here.. it's more of self-preservation and prioritizing friendship. =)
oh! it's been a while boy! it's time to flashback moments like this! =)

some super hyskul stuff. =)

..tsk.tsk.tsk. Hopeless romantic. Let me give you the picture... Im sitting 500 meters away.. and my "hyskul" crush was playing soccer,-(this is so mushy! ahhahha, sooo hyskul).. We were having our dramatics Guild meeting *i guess* and I took time to write this. haha.

yOu dont know me.

The look of you across the park You don't know me,But I love you

The way the sun dances in your eyes You don't know me,But I need you

The way your hair flies free in the wind You don't know me,But I want you

The way your fingers strum that old guitar You don't know me,But you are me

The way your voice raises in song, soft and sweet You don't know me,But you complete me

The way everything about you is as if I'm dreaming You don't know me,But we are destiny

The way you move, graceful, gently You don't know me, But I will lay inside your arms

The way you look just sitting there You don't know me, But we'd be perfect

The way you stand and look at her... You don't know me, But we'll be together someday

The way you touch her cheek and kiss her You don't know me, But I swear that will be me oneday...

random thoughts...

am living like I am dying I am laughing like I am crying I am letting go, like I am still trying I am okay like I am not fine I realize its all in the past like a feeling it could have last, I think I have moved on like there is nowhere I belong,

I’ve forgotten the meaning of a kiss, like it meant the taste of your lips I think of sunshine, but I imagine an eclipse. I know life will bring more, like leaving me behind a closed door, I'll survive every pain, like dying every night was not a fun game, I stay awake in sleep, like I have more promises to keep.

I believed every word you said, like beautiful lies didn't exist. Heartache is only imaginary, like I'm begging for a cure, its not like you're never happy again, like I can recall the last time I was, it hurts but its not the end of the world, like there is more to lose? life is not just about 'love', like love is all there is to life.

shattered and forgotten.

Trapped within, and barely breathing.I have lost everything I once believed in.Lost inside, my heart has hidden.I won’t trust again, it is forbidden.Imploring darkness entreats my body for a place to dwell.Numb with grief, I beseech the stain to spread, hollowing me out like a shell.Sequestered with my shattered illusions, my endless memories,

Alone I break as I watch my dreams fragment around me.Newly deranged, you have left me feeling forever disgraced.Isolated figure, you ended my existence, causing me to vanish without a trace.This is what you did to me my beautiful and sadistic lie.You’re the cause, the reason why I no longer wish to stay alive.Trapped within, and barely breathing.I have lost everything I once believed in

.Lost inside, my heart has hidden.I won’t trust again, it is forbidden.Nothingness is slowly overtaking my soul.Unrequited wrongs only adding to this vacant holeMadness offers my mind a powerful escape with its divine presence.Beautiful chaos all around as my spirit at last decides to rest.