3 to 4 in the morning

Image from Photoshop Art @ Flickr

The clock on the right side of my laptop changed from 3:42 to 3:43am. From a distance the roosters echoed out their orchestrated shouts while I heard the door of my bathroom creaking, its hinges rusty from water sprayed during bath time.

My brain began to fall slowly to slumber. To the place where people had wings and each scene changed from happy to bad to weird in less than a minute. Inception? Or perhaps just wide awake and dreaming. I looked around and the only light I see is my screen and a mobile charger with an eerie blue glow.

Yes, I am still wide awake.

But my fingers moved on their own, a pit pat on the keyboard while my fan whirred incessantly. I managed to blink my lids, my eyes fighting my brain against going back towards the covers where pillows and sheep jumping over fences waited.

There's too much going on inside my brain. I browsed through facebook, then to a finance forum, then through blogger. My thoughts a jumble of status updates, bus explosions at Manila, to stock prices snapping back up after a five day low.

Everybody seemed to have their own say on everything.

People calling for attention or perhaps just voicing out the random nerve impulses their brains send to their hands. Happy, sad, excited, proud, or just selling a few colored shoes at bargain prices. Either way, the status updates showed a group of people I am connected with. Either by blood or friendship, they echo my ramblings, like a gong vibrating loud.

Loud. Politicians and every civic group are all crying out for justice over a bomb placed below a bus seat leaving 2 dead. Despite intel, people focused on the latest entertainment news and who got married with whom, nobody got cautious of 2 people riding a bus with a bag and leaving without it. Fear is present and alive.

Alive and resurrected from after 5 days of watching red, I grinned like a Cheshire cat upon seeing green on the ticker screen this morning. Celebration and cash flowing in, the Philippines' stock market thrived on good news. As of yesterday morning, the good news was people are much more optimistic about the government. The foreign investors thought so too.

I am happy that they did.
I am hoping they still think so until today.

Today, my eyes fight to stay awake battling my brain. A hardheaded pair trying to control the center of my thoughts. But as the winner stood proud over the defeated, my eyelids begin to slowly close. White flag waving up and down.

The sound of a motorcycle woke me up again. I muttered a prayer to please make tomorrow much better than today as the clock on the right side of my laptop now showed 4:06.

From a distance the roosters could still be heard, my bathroom door creaked, a dog barked...

and I know my prayer had been heard.

Being Twenty Something (from an email)

They call it the "Quarter-life Crisis." It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing
that there are many things about yourself that you didn't know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now. You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren't exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don't recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren't really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as
you.

You look at your job...and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe
you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you.

Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn't.

One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lay in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to
know better.

Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing this because you know that you aren't a bad person. One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic.

You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself...and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender!


What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.

looking back

You looked back. Realized that time is but fleeting and there are memories much better left unattended than thought about. But still the memories came. Like ghosts haunting you each time, you manage to remember, and you can't help but look back.

The leaves drifted lazily with the breeze. Your hair was a mess and there he was, standing still as if he owned the world and you were but a mirage. You knew you'd regret looking back the moment you did. He looked at your eyes and you knew somehow, there'd be this third chance waiting to happen. Forget about the last time he broke your heart, you'd erase it as if it were chalk on blackboard. You and he would start all over again. Somehow you'd manage to patch the pieces he broke. You keep telling yourself that and somehow you're believing to believe it's possible.

You started taking that step back. He smiled. You smiled. Then you both held hands and knew that everything was forgotten at that instant when your hands connected with his. He'd not do that again right?

Somehow, you convince yourself he learned his lesson.

You never learned yours.

You're wiping your tears, but still they kept falling. You looked for him and he was not around anymore. Dumb. You keep telling yourself you're like that. You should have never taken that step back. You were his perfect girl and whatever he could not manage to do with you, there'd always be another who would be more than willing. His other hand would be holding yours and the other a phone number he got from some club he went to the night before.

He called you again. You heard his voice. You wiped your tears, gathered what is left of your pride and kept walking. You wanted to look back. You wanted to see him stand there and see what he has lost.

But a hand clasped yours.

Not his.

It was about time you take that step forward. And as you took the hand that clasped yours, you knew there were no more fourth chances...it was hard not to look back...but somehow you've found someone who would get you through...

And he would never make you cry...

nor look back.

Scribo ergo sum

Scribo ergo sum. I write therefore I am.
Some people write to gain acceptance.
I write because I believe that there is a power in writing that could influence and change.
That though my writing may diverge on a road different from what others tread, they could make the reader think. Basically about himself, and the life he is leading.
I write not to make you believe, but for people to give themselves a chance into life itself.
I may sound entirely superficial.
I may sound different from others that have come before me. But I believe that only those who dare to be different make all the difference in the world.
I can insignate change.
Therefore I write.

Felicity

I was hooked up on the TV show felicity way back highschool. For one, the song that u are hearing right now is a personal favorite and its from that show. And a Filipina sang it! Proudly Filipina go! But I always loved the show because during that time I could very well relate to it, it pierced deep and probably until now there is still that part of me who could very much understand how felicity felt. Sigh if only love stories always do have happy endings.

Enough of the mush...here are some of my favorite quotes from the show, they're the best if not the most heartwarming...if not the funniest...and they're my top 10

1. The hardest part about moving forward is not looking back.
2. That would have been hard. I mean, how do you tell somebody you're trying to steal their boyfriend?
3. I guess when your heart gets broken, you sort of start to see the cracks in everything. I'm convinced that tragedy wants to harden us, and that our mission is to never let it.
4. I guess I'm learning, little by little, that we decide what our lives are going to be. Things happen to us, but it is our reactions that matter.
5. Domestication is the enemy of romance.
6. Noel: And your hair's not so bad.
Felicity: Liar, you hate it.
7. Ben, everybody has to figure out who they are eventually.
8. I've become a real believer in not defining every single thing. Seems like everytime you think you've figured out what something is, it just becomes something else.
9. Felicity: You know that stuff will kill you.
Noel: Something will. Might as well be cheese spray.
10. Sometimes it's the smallest decisions that can change your life forever.

Frogs on Anniversaries

Dos cervezas" he tells the woman on the counter.

The regular or the special, Senor?

The special...

Your eyes followed his gaze, towards the waitress who just took your orders. You smiled. He did too. He then cupped your face in his hand while brushing a strand of hair on your cheek, tracing the outline of your lips feeling the softness that lay there. You breathed heavily, and he drew you nearer into him, his smell a mixture of musk and soap. You slapped him playfully, but he continued still, until his lips graced your ear in a whisper to say...

Happy Anniversary Love...
Your body shivered as his lips found yours.

Here are your drinks Senor...

Slowly you moved away, smiled and looked down at the glass filled with wine. Had he forced you, it would have been simple for you to run away. But he didn't. It was your choice, and a year had gone since it had been.

Hey, are you all right?

You remained silent as your eyes glanced upon a man dining two tables away. You knew him...from a past you wanted to forget. His gaze met yours and you lowered your head.
If only the heart could be taught of whom to love then I guess you'd be less of a liar at this point. But then most of the time it has a will of its own. Despite any amount of reason, it closes its doors to the obvious and yearns for the impossible.

Yes, the impossible.
There have been countless times when you sat pathetic, hoping that the man who sat two tables away from you would look your way as much as your boyfriend is hoping you'd look into his.

Do you love me?
His words broke into your reverie. Holding your hands in his, his fingers ran along your skin. He thought he sensed fear.

Yes, I...I...love you...
the words were faint, almost a whisper.

But he heard it and relaxed.

Its not that you don't love your boyfriend. he was someone who was always there when the other person wasn't. You were a fragile beauty he marked "special" ever since you met. In a year's time has made you feel less of a child and more of woman, a woman basking in attention and love. He is the epitome of someone who would sweep you off yor feet and into his arms.
The "other person" , on the other hand remains as distant and as mysterious as he always was. His eyes, a deep valley of questions never to be answered. But then he has made you feel special once. You floated high above the clouds. It was as if everything was real. And just when you were feeling so high, he burst your balloon and left you to fall back to earth.

Yes, he sent you to the dumps.
Your boyfriend's a prince.
The other one is a frog.
You lifted the glass to your lips, savored the liquids taste.

Then you stopped...paused...and thought...
if you had kissed the frog...

Would he have been your prince?

Nah!