Red Flag
I used to hate it when I was younger. I remember wishing every time I'd get it that it would just stop forever. And then I got my wish and was so much of a fool I was delirious. No more stains and bathroom breaks to change napkins. This went on for over a year. Then I started worrying. And there had been times when it'd come back and I'd be relieved then be gone again for 3-6 months and I'd worry again. Went to a doctor and I was told it was because of my weight. Wow.  But I was really stupid to not care when I was younger until such time the issue of a possible marriage and the natural kicks that went along with it, the longing to see my own offspring. I panicked...I can't not have any children. I must!  I hated it when my Mom would nag me about my weight so every time she'd ask me about my periods, I'd lie and say I haven't had any problems. But I could never fool myself into believing that I didn't have problems. If not to myself and my Mom, at least I owe it to my future partner. That's when I finally decided I'm done fooling myself. I got the red flag today and I've never been happier about it since i-don't-know-when! Wheee!!!!

Letters
I am a sucker for mails, be it emails or snail mails. Got one today and it wasn't the usual ones I get from companies sending me bills to pay and bank statements telling me how much money I don't have. Har har. There is something gloriously magical and enchanting about hand written letters. It's like someone mailed you a piece of her/himself to you. *giggles*

Maturity
It's finally so nice to grow up and know that the weighing scale is NOT an enemy. That I don't have to cower or ignore and pretend I didn't see or worse, know what one is. Now, I actually get excited when I see one, too eager to see how much I've lost over the past few days or so.

My Love
there  are immortal moments of us
and daily I strive to outlive them

to render everything bleak
to swim in whispers of prayer
and sighs so tangible
as the dancing blades of the field
to soar in the arms of hope
and have dreams touch your face
tangling the wild abandon of your hair

let us find beauty
bask in the candid glory of everything bare
seek moments defined by faith
and know
everything is possible
and reason is blind
the truth lies here
in the small cluttered gap
between you and me
where breaths mingle with sighs
and shadows paint crimson hues
and whispers blow gilded secrets

you break me
and amaze me
letting me fall
and catching me
breathless
and swooning
perfect
and adored

and you
you are the melody that fiddles
the dance that sends embers
flaming
and consuming
burning me
and you
you love me
like blessed light gracing my darkness
finding beauty in my ashes

your story is
entwined with mine
shadow and the light
the saving grace
and the fallen

It is a known fact that almost all women love pearls. Especially women who collects jewelries or dresses to the nines and flutters about day in and day out with jewelries as part of their lifestyles.

They are considered elegant and classic and can be seen nearly on every wedding. It is said that a pearl can enhance a woman's beauty, somehow by just wearing it. It's even praised for being so easy to keep and maintain. The best way to to keep them lustrous and shiny? Simply wear them always. Nice, huh? Not only that, they have the reputation to go well with just about any outfit - and yes, even with casual! They also add class and elegance to the simplest formal attire. As the way the saying goes, "Every one looks good in pearls!"

But not me. I don't like pearls. If I can help it, I'm not going to wear them. Yes, I admire their elegance but I don't want that sort of "beauty" around me.

If we approach it scientifically, we'd be using snazzy names that makes us common folks double take and go, "Say what?!" But I am a self confessed romantic (and I like it that way, haha) and so I'll stick with the romanticized version of how pearls are made.

It is said that when a grain of sand enters or gets caught inside an oyster, it irritates it and thus, as a defense mechanism, the oyster secretes a mucus-like substance to coat the intruding substance. This substance builds up around the object and forms into a hardened coat and thus a pearl is made. Okay..so to look at it in a romanticized point of view, the sand hurt the oyster and the oyster cries and it's tears coated the culprit and whaddayakno, a lustrous beautiful pearl is born. Such beauty being the price of pain.

So, no. I'd rather wear my plastic/glass beads in their rainbow array of childish colors, I don't mind. Or let me have them door-knocker hoops that makes me look juvenile, I can strut it.  I am happy to be branded as a gypsy with my arms covered by layers of beads and hoops and my hair wild and seemingly un-kept to frame around my kohl-lined eyes, to each his own. But in my own world where I prefer to see things through rose-stained glasses, where dreams are as vital as the air I breathe and where I am called overly sensitive and dramatic because I still give a damn, I would rather not be a part or give support to something that was made into whatever it is now from the pain of others.

And a lot of people nowadays can be such pearls. Proud and happy, strutting around all beautiful and glowing that people just couldn't help but be lured by and around them. Come to think of it, we're all practically pears. But there's always somebody behind the curtains. Someone who's life has been pledged to pain and toil, sweat, blood and tears just to get you [to get US] to where we are now. And oftentimes, these people don't want much but our time and sincere affection, a whispered thank you and well-earned warm hugs.

I am constantly in awe of how God reveals to me how blessed I am, how much I have been cradled in love. Everyday, I find reasons to be humble, to know that I am nothing apart from love.

---------------------------
Mom and I
Thanksgiving celebration at Church
November 2008

Really, nothing.

Talked/chatted with Ate Therese yesterday and she said something about a picture of my lighter self (haha..I had to pause for a couple of seconds regurgitating the word "lighter" over and over again). So with noting good on show tonight and being bored, I remembered and thought, "Why not?"

So yeah, why ever not?

Being the only maniniyot in this family (really, I am starting to think that they call me uber vain behind my back...I shouldn't laugh haha but c'mon!), I can't even ask my sister to take a pic of me..she'd yawn and get bored while holding the cam and I always end up looking like a blurry fat ghost.

But really, this is also something I want to do so I'll be able to tell the difference myself once I reach my target weight.  Oh - la - lahh... I'm almost there!!!

*does a happy dance*

I have written you letters, countless of them. If only you had persevered to look, you would have found them quite easily. They are now creased and stained with time, these muted lovelies whose souls are reverberated by the deafening magnitude of their faith.

Then perhaps, there will never be the need for these endless questions. And just as well, we wouldn't have the need to dodge answers like bullets.

What do you call that stage, where honesty in black and white is fiction and white lies are brutal as deceit is kind?

I have written you lines to songs I had hoped you'd write the music to. But I guess your chords are as broken as the messy smudge of ink that refuses to come off from my skin.

And you used to write me, I know. You used to tell me of your dreams and hopes and I would know where your sighs were by just tracing my fingertips along the imprints of your pen. You used to know my dreams, too.

But now we're here, tragically trying to forge a friendship that deserves a spit in the eyes and yet, ironically, we persevere. And I don't know why.

I am tired. Physically and emotionally. I can feel my awareness to things around me go numb and I don't like being indifferent and unavailable to people who really need me during times when I am undoubtedly needed.

I cannot remember how we got to where we are but as hard as I try to recall, I can never recollect the time where we became such chums...and I still don't think we are.

Indulge me in my selfishness.

I don't really care about your petty whines about how you messed up your college life by wasting your parents' hard-earned money. I don't care how many parties you've crashed nor how many times you used to bar-hop every Fridays. I just don't. So please keep your distance. You are breathing my air.

Indulge me in my selfishness.

I am tired of pretending like I feel sorry for you because in my own rotten and selfish world, I am cruel and vile enough to harbor a smile every time you tell me he broke your heart. Yes, I am not your friend. I cannot stress that enough for you. You never deserved him, in the first place. A couple of weeks in bed together doesn't come close to the number of years I have to bleed for him because of stupid girls like you. Can't you tell the detachment in my voice or trace the nonchalance in my words? We just happened to love the same boy. But I am not your friend.

Indulge me in my selfishness.

Why must you think that everything's about you? Perhaps, I should have been heartless in the crudest way I know. If I tell you that you were never part of the grand design, that you just happened to be there and was hitched due to the convenience you provide, would you then leave me alone? If I tell you and let you read everything he's said about you, how ironically little you mean to him, just a frill or a snag in a rather smooth silk of his life (that you have now completely ruined single-handedly), would you then wake up and see that I was never your friend?

Indulge me in my selfishness.

I can never be the same person for you both. If I am an ethereal being, bursting with iridescent charms for him, just as so, I am the extreme monster for you.  So why am I not telling these to your face?

Indulge me in my selfishness.

I am dead-tired of people like you. If I believed in reincarnation, I doubt I'd still want to have anything to do with you in my next life. I don't even hate you. Read my lips: I - JUST - DON'T - CARE.

So please, please. Indulge me in my selfishness.

Sometimes, we have to lose the people we love most in order for us to realize how much they mean to us.

this life
these stolen breaths
they are hardly mine

these thoughts
for though I hold them
they will forever elude me
they look up to different masters
they owe their allegiance
to every fractured beat
of this trivial heart
and it's not even mine

these dreams
I nurse and woo them
coveted from somebody else's skies
i have nothing
but hopes and longings
and half sighs
to show to them

them
them who will never understand
how it is to be
constantly seeing life
through rose-stained glasses
and to touch walls that bleed
to be envious of one's own reflection
and to understand why
true love is jealous
and see exhilarating beauty
through every staggering blow
of pain
but they will never understand

and sometimes
I don't as well
times like today
when things seem so futile
and hope is impossibly so
so so fragile
and you fear
that a mere breath
or a soft whisper of the heart
will blow everything away
and you lose again
and you fall again

where will you find another foothold
where will you find another dream to nurse

these tears
they have etched a path of their own
dried and broken on my cheeks
do you sometimes wonder
if tears have tears as well
do they also cry
with reasons, perhaps
more valid than our own
for they are birthed in pain
(rarely for joy)
tell me
think about it
forgotten tears
everybody else didn't see
so wrapped up in their own demise
selfish and lost

I have but scars to show you
come closely and look here
this is where my wings were clipped
and these from the fall I took
these here,
oh, you should know
i've lost count of the number and times
I have willingly given my heart away
but isn't is amazing
how love cannot be depleted
So yes,
I have but scars to show for my pain
and some wounds
that are healing yet
they still bleed
every now and then
but I wish I could show you
the dying soul within


---------

So I was complaining to my Mom last Saturday morning about this odd pain on the lower abdominal  section on the left side of my tummy...a bit near my hip bone. I was hiccuping before that so I thought that maybe it was just gas. My mom gave me several cups of hot tea and I started feeling better. We were convinced that it was just gas.

I went on with my day feeling okay. I re-potted several of my bonsai plants and transferred some of the carnation seedlings I've sown  two weeks ago. Hadn't had the slightest discomfort all throughout the day.

Sunday morning, around 1:55, I woke up to a massive attack of excruciating pain. I was doubling over and my toes curled into tight balls as I was trying to find ways to wait till the pain subsides. But it didn't. I  felt like they came in waves. It got so bad after 10 minutes that I started gasping for breaths because the pain was making it hard for me to breathe.

I was rushed to the ER. (Let's skip the other disgusting stuffs)

I was injected with something and I recall the kind nurse telling me that it's to stop me from nauseating.  Then after some procedures, urine sample and blood samples later, I was given a pain reliever and an antibiotic and was told to rest, go back to sleep if I can. Since the pain subsided gradually, I started relaxing and drifting off to sleep.

I was semi-conscious...I was looking out for anybody to go near my bedside so I could ask what was wrong with me. I feared that I had an appendicitis but I was assured that it wasn't so that was out of my worry then.

I think it was around 5am when I felt a commotion and everybody else seemed anxious. There's that tight and thick electrical current in the air and you get the feeling that a bit of added stress and everyone would just snap.  All the doctors there were interns and you can tell they were anxious, too.

I saw a white baby boy on the bed and he was in a way, next to me. If I reached hard enough, I would have been able to touch his curled fingers.  He was a handsome boy. He's got foreign blood in him, I could tell. But I didn't see someone  with him looking like his mother or any white guy indicating to be his father around. There was only an old lady - the Lola.

 Then a couple of minutes later, everything went quiet and everyone else started walking away from the bed.  Then the Lola crumbled down beside the bed, her face buried in her wrinkly hands and her small shoulders trembled like an inner earthquake was shaking her being. Something's not right.

I realized, then. The baby passed away. It was the first time I saw someone die in front of me...and it had to be a baby. A stranger, but a baby nonetheless. It was so heartbreaking. He didn't seem dead. He looked like he was sleeping. But I knew that he's passed on.

I couldn't bear to be so close to him. I had to leave. I called on to the nurse and asked her to call my mom. I wanted to go home.  I don't want to see them cover his tiny body. I overheard that his mom was in Kuwait and that his father was a Briton.

I wonder why both his parents were away. I wondered if things could have been different had one or both of his parents were with him that day. I didn't want to think about the anguish the mother would feel once she finds out about the shattering truth.  I wonder how the Lola would explain to the parents why and what went wrong.

What went wrong?

I am all over
scattered like dead leaves
anchored to the dance of the wind
   emotions                
                              here
strewn about like the lazy whispers of the breeze
 thoughts   cluttered    all    about
like mists on a chilly montain face
my days and years
all etched in fragments of words
hours by characters
   perhaps
even weeks by entries
            ...unfinished

djf (08/11/06)
01:15pm