Living alone for quite some time has taught me many things about myself, and I welcome this knowledge without hesitation. It’s something I’ve been wanting to arrive at for years now, that stage of self-discovery where I’m surprised to find that I am not who I thought I was, or at least, who I’ve pegged myself to be while I was growing up.

So far, my biggest revelation has been that I’m okay. That’s it. I’m okay! It took me twenty two years to get this.

It’s a mixture of fear and disappointment, to know that I’m actually doing fine, despite the depression, despite the shitty things in my life, despite plans not happening, and people leaving me, and not knowing exactly what happens now. I’m okay. I’m actually surviving my one hell of a life!

I still feel new and uncertain whenever I think about it. Sometimes I get really scared. I’m okay. What the hell do I do with my life now? Will all the drama be less significant? Will I turn into an optimist, a cheerful bastard that I love to hate? Will I be less of myself?

I’ve always thought of myself as a whole body with compartments. My heart, for example, has four. Before A, the compartments were designated for three things only: my inner child, my inner ‘artist’, and my melancholy. That other one is just empty, and has been that way for eighteen years. When I met A, the empty compartment was filled with – dare I say it? – happiness. When he left, that compartment wasn’t emptied out. It was only filled with more loneliness. And that’s how I’ve been living for the past few years. I wasn’t unbalanced. Just miserable. And it was acceptable.

Until I realized lately that that small boudoir must’ve been redesigned and repainted with an overall finish of okay. And I’m actually functioning. Living. Not just going through the motions. Not breathing, just a little, and calling it a life – as Mary Oliver put it. I know I’m bad at metaphors, but that’s how I am now. I am actually okay. There are tinges, here and there. But I’m fine.

So what now? I don’t know. But I’m smiling. I think, for the first time in a long time, my heart is finally trying to heal itself.

I don’t know what to say anymore, really. This topic has been exhausted to its core already: my family is dysfunctional, my parents think I’m a joke, and everything after that leads to my writing at six in the morning of the 18th of September that yes, I might be getting kicked out in the next few days if things don’t settle down.

I don’t know what my crime is. I just wanted to write, just wanted to pursue my dreams. I never knew it would be this shattering.

But I need to survive first. There’ll be time for crying later. So, a list:

1. Pack bags. Take only the stuff that you bought with your own money. Leave everything behind that was provided for since birth, because your parents demand it. It’s a good thing that you have the presence of mind to buy your own clothes over the years, else you’ll be leaving your house naked.

2. Take all your books. Put in boxes. Contact friends who can keep these for you until you find a decent place to stay. If worse comes to worst, you will have to sell them if you need to get by and stay alive. Divide those that you can’t give away against those that you can let go. And among those that you swear you’ll keep forever, pick one book. It must be That One Book that will provide some measure of spirit to keep you going, just in case it comes to that point.

3. Save a copy of all your contacts. You will have to let go of your mobile phone.

4. Save a copy of all your files onto your external hard disk. This is very important. You knew there was a reason why you insisted that you buy that external hard disk out of your own money. If ever you can’t bring your laptop with you, at least you have a copy of everything that you need.

5. Steal your laptop. Yes it’s your parents’ graduation gift to you, but the fact still remains that they bought it. So most likely they will demand that you leave it behind. Put up a big fight over this (since you’re leaving anyway), and if that doesn’t work out, steal it.

6. Pack your cameras. They’re all yours. If you work harder, you can make a living out of it, too.

7. Look for a place to stay. There are transient houses, rooms for rent, bedspacers, dormitories, and all that. Start calling.

8. Look for a job (if you can’t steal your laptop). Your freelance thing (and your dreams) might have to be postponed again. Indefinitely. Try looking for a job that does not require corporate clothing, because you don’t own that many clothes.

9. Stack up on ulcer medicines. Be prepared to go hungry.

10. Be strong. You have spent the last twenty-two years surviving. You can do this.

Thank you, Heath. Thank you for giving me the Batman character and the Batman film I’ve always dreamed of. It was all because of you, and you weren’t even the caped crusader himself. And because I’ve no one to talk about it at this hour, I’m writing you a letter in my journal, secretly hoping that the cosmic forces are at work to give this to you on the other side.

You were as good as they said you were. Seeing you again onscreen – I thought I was looking at the face of an old friend. I don’t know if I should say this – I don’t even know if I have a right to say it, or think about it – but I think I understand now why you died. Why you had to pass away at the most inopportune time, why you had to go quietly – where else but in your sleep, something that you needed badly if you have to keep yourself sane. Sleep was your way of keeping the demons at bay, your own ghosts, leftovers from one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen. To be able to do that kind of performance, you must’ve have lived The Joker’s life for a time, studied him, scrutinized him. Christopher Nolan said he chose you because you were fearless. And he was right. You were magnificent.

The only regret I now have is that you won’t see all of this, all of us cheering you on. In fact, I’m still waiting for you to make a big comeback, laughing, clapping your hands, being so full of life – and tell all that the joke’s on us.

Thank you for giving strength to Batman’s character. I loved him most among all the others. I loved him because he was human, and he couldn’t have come face-to-face with the limits of his own humanity if it wasn’t for you, Heath. You made it happen, because you made the film real. And it wasn’t just Batman; you did it to me, to all of us. At every chaos you instigated, you made us look at the people faced with choices and we see ourselves.

And unlike what others have been saying, about how you upstaged everyone else, I’ll have this to say: the film was clearly NOT about your character. Through and through, it was about Batman. It should have been all about you, and had the character been handed to any other person, that might have just happened. But the method in your acting was so precise, that although your brilliance was so stark and poignant, your character was able to round the story up and bring it back to Batman. The Joker enabled Batman to own this film, which is why, at the very heart of it, the film was about you, the actor, and the heart that you put into all of this.

I’ve always believed that a superhero is only as good as his adversity, as in real life — you won’t know how strong and resilient you are until you’re faced with your worst fears. And Batman’s enemy is not The Joker, but his own humanity, his conscience, his choices. His fights are as old as the history of our world: the survival of order amongst chaos, the perseverance of the light against the darkness. And to win the battle, he must be ironic. He needs to dive into chaos to restore order, he needs to fight in the dark to keep the people safe during the day. And this tongue-in-cheek philosophy is what makes me love him.

And yeah, because he’s also an obsessed, miserable bastard. At the end of the day, when he’s done risking his life for the city, the real phantoms, the dark clouds of his past, will be what Bruce Wayne, stripped of the costume, will have to face on his own. Here, he toes the line; here I can say, he is as human as the rest of us.

And your portrayal of The Joker toed that line, too. You made him a person that we can understand, and not just a character that we can dismiss once the story is finished. You made me frightened of him, you also made me struggle as I deliberated on suspending my belief in The Joker as a human being so I can hate him, versus understanding his mind, his own psyche so I can empathize with the person that he has become.

The whole film was an exhilarating journey. Of course, you didn’t make it easy. And of course I love you for it.

There’s a wave of nostalgia now. And there will always be. Thank you for giving the performance of your life. You were gone too soon. I hope you’re in a place now where you can begin again. I’m sure you’ll still be as dedicated, and as fantastic.

Rest easy, Heath Ledger.

My Bad Karma in Exchange for Good Karma

1. The two job offers went down the drain. The scenario changed so suddenly I was really flabbergasted. Verklempt. What else do you want me to say? One turned me down because I was overqualified. I didn’t know what I did to be too deserving of the position. What does one do to be an editorial assistant? How do I dumb myself down so I can get the job? Apparently, with less than a year of experience, I am still too much for the job.

The other one didn’t want me to work full-time, which baffled me a lot. They said they didn’t want to let go of me because of what I can do, but they just can’t absorb me right now. What the hell does that mean? (And when I did ask what it meant, I didn’t get an answer.)

2. My grandfather and my father were confined at the hospital. Those were two of the most exhausting weeks of my life.

3. I’m still jobless.

4. After three years of really, really fighting hard for it, I’m at this point again. Back in college, the diagnosis was I needed to see a psychologist and take antidepressant and antianxiety pills. The same diagnosis given to me when I was in senior year of high school, dammit. But I said no, and I helped myself along the way. Persisted to keep my head above the water. Now I’m just feeling that all too familiar pull and I’m just really scared.

More Good Karma That Might Result to Another Exchange of Bad Karma

1. My online portfolio is temporarily here. With nothing much in my hands because the freelance thing is a bit slow, I had more time to make another portfolio. I don’t know why, I just feel like it will come in handy.

2. My parents have pretty much accepted that I will never again settle for a fucktard job like I did the first time around, because I will really kick my own ass if I did. This doesn’t stop them though from pulling a Michael Kors during deliberation time at Project Runway, ie insult your soul while making a very accurate observation of your self-worth. So I guess I’ll just have to swallow their side comments for the rest of my life, in exchange of their artificial understanding of my stubbornness.

In line with this, since they also can’t stand seeing me apply at independent companies, whose names they can’t brag about to their friends by the virtue of the companies being unknown to many, I’ve been told that if I wanted to start my own business, I have their go signal. All I have to do is create a very sound business plan and present it to them formally.

I don’t know what to do, really. And this is exactly what I feel, what I’m scared of, 100% these days:

“[I never wanted to be my own boss.]…I don’t think i’ve ever wanted that, in fact i’ve often shied away from it, during the dot-com heydey, and consciously chosen the boring default. I’m not sure why exactly, whether it’s sharing a name with the unbelieving apostle, cowardice, conveniene or just high resilience to bs. It doesn’t really matter after all, the point I wanted to make was that I never dreamed of being my own boss, i would have been contented working for other people all my life. in fact I think I would mostly prefer to be part of a team, with limited responsibility for having to make it all make sense (and money).

Yet here I am, running a small non-profit with Sebastian. Responsible for my own destiny, our success, and a lot of other high-brow things. It just happened this way. I found the ideal business in ict’s for the developing world, in which i had more fun, more fullfillment, and more interesting challenges in 3 month than i would have in a year of web agency, dot-not mayhem. I knew that that was what i wanted to work with, and i took the only path that presented itself to me. being my own boss.

It’s haunting me now. I can’t help but feel misplaced in so many ways. I can’t help but dream of having a regular job, with colleagues, limited responsibility, and the ability to run away screaming if it all becomes too much. Perhaps that’s really what it is, a fear of being trapped. trapped in a construct i invented, trapped in a job that i don’t really want, but can’t run away from, because that would be running away from myself and my dream.

i think that’s probably a large part of it. it’s a responsibility i never wanted, but having taken it upon myself, despite this fat, i need to deal with it or find a way out that leaves at least a few bridges standing.”

I don’t know if I’m just lacking in self-belief. I’m pretty sure if this was presented to me a year ago I’d be balls out with this thing. My elder sister firmly believes I can do it. I wish I have her enthusiasm. I just don’t know if this is what I should be doing.

3. I got my final paycheck from my old job. And there’s nothing else to say. I mean, of course I miss some of the people there, the beautiful people who have become my friends. Meeting a wonderful person like Gingey was one of the best things that happened to me. I firmly believe that a strong bond existed between us in our past lives.

But no matter what they say, I’m still glad I left. And I’m happy that two of my friends left. Because it’s just not the best place to work. Ever. It sucks the life out of you. I’m sorry, I just have to say it. With people leaving, a lot of them have been pretty sentimental in their blogs the past few weeks, and I just can’t bring myself to say anything else but give them all a virtual hug. If you can be the person who can stand an adversity with a little help from your friends, then by all means, embrace that kind of life.

It’s just not for me. I knew I had to fix my life, and relying on the power of friendship to get me through the day is not the answer. I might be seen as the loser, the stupid girl who quit before she had another job — but I’m not joking when I say that it was one of the smartest things I did in my life.

———-
*sigh* I’m blabbering again, am I? No, I’m not drunk. It’s just three in the morning and I’ve been sitting here thinking all day. Just sitting and thinking, would you believe it? All day. I know there are a lot of grammatical errors here but I’m too tired to edit myself. You are witnessing my brain on run-on function. Bye.

2.
In my music player I have eight versions of Bach’s Air. When I’m feeling sadder than usual I play all of them, all day long. Once, he asked me, Why do you love it so much, this piece? It’s so simple. Not even a notion of grandeur, what overtures are made for.

I said, Because it is all of the poems in the world put together. Because it is a long walk in the park beneath a sky without stars. Because it is dreamless. And most of all, because of its name: I lie on my back and I feel that I’m listening to air, to the sound of other people breathing, to the sound of your lungs exhaling, the sound of my lungs inhaling. I love this piece because this is the closest I can get to being under your skin. And this kept him silent.

A few nights later, with my head on his chest and Bach on the stereo, he thought he was giving me a surprise. Being half-French, he whispered in my ear, Air is just the French word for Aria, darling, and nothing more.

That is the most cruel thing that he did to me.

3.
When sleep eludes me and I’m too tired to chase it, I sit on this chair and write bruised declarations of a past life. I walk barefoot into the kitchen, open the fridge and look inside it for a long time. I turn on the TV and mute the sound. I stand in the middle of my room and look at my hands. I long for a window that isn’t there. I recite some lines from a Philip Dow poem:

Hunchbacked
by his heart
swollen with dreams
of wings, of girls whose breasts are antelope
trembling beneath the lightning
that seeds his spring: he hears the boes
of their unborn children
growing.
In his heart hut he lives,
a mute
chewing crimson flowers
to make speech, to keep
saying
what does this do
to save my life?

His words stall for time,
slave for the mortgage on his bones:
he knows he is a fool
who cannot solve it –
yet, goes at his heart over and over
repairing: with jellyfish, lame horses,
whistles, white cords of his body, white moths
seeking colors, damp alleys,
odors of knives,
trees, stumped, putting out tiny wings
of translucent new leaves anyway.

Okay. I am pessimistic. But I’d rather be that than go through the shock of not getting what I want, each and every time. Saves fucking energy, you know. So anyway:

Things I’m Thinking About But Must Not Think About, Really
1. Two job offers I’m obsessing over. It’s a big dilemma of sorts, and the only way to sum it up is through Glenn Frey: Are you gonna stay with the one who loves you / Or are you goin’ back to the one you love?

Sorry, my taste in music is flawed, and the shitty side of it is showing now, but. You get what I mean. By the one who loves me, I meant the one who actually cares about what I can bring to the table and who actually took the time to look at my portfolio. And by the one I love, I meant, not really love love, but the main thing I was looking forward to being. Which also includes a Miranda Priestly incarnate.

2. My website is pushing through. Yay! In a bit this whole thing is going to move over to a whole new place, where I can keep track of myself. I’m creating some sort of home base, a command center, if you will (command center? WTF? I could hear Bruce Willis’ derisive laughter, circa Die Hard 4, in my head right now).

The one thing I’m thinking about is the big reveal. Should I tell my friends about it? I mean sure, I’ll tell my friends about it. But you know what I mean. The rest of the world. The ones whom I shied away for a long time, while I went on my own to regroup myself and fix my life. I’ve disappeared to a lot of people, you know that. You know what that means if you’re reading this now, because you’re one of the few who knows about this place, and by few, I meant few, really. I’ve been going over it in my head for awhile now, asking myself if it’s now time to come back. And honestly? I don’t know.

3. I have a pro account in Flickr! [Thank you, Carolina, love.] One of the things that kept me sane during all those times I couldn’t write poetry (even if I forced myself) was photography. And exploring Flickr opened worlds to me. I’ve met a lot of great people and gained a lot of perspective on the way I see my world versus how others see their world.

For a long time, I thought poetry was the only thing I have. The only thing I wanted to have. And when I came to the point that it’s not working anymore, when I was so frustrated of the things going on in my life, my disgust at myself was so palpable, you know? Poetry didn’t seem to fit anywhere, like it’s not meant to be a part of who I am. I was so angry at myself then, for being this way. For loving words this much. For spending years and years writing poems. And for finding myself in this situation, where it’s just not acceptable in the family, where my place among things was to not be a poet and be someone else entirely.

So I stashed away my notebooks and turned to something else. That’s how I happened to trace my childhood, walking back to my younger self, trying to sift through memories. There must be something else I could do, I’d think to myself. And voila – photography. When I found myself enjoying taking photos so much, do you know how much alarmed I was? To be not writing. I even dared myself to come as far as thinking, I could do without it. Poetry, I mean.

But I laugh now. Because every time I look at my photos, all I see are poems, words in my head being given a visual. Clearly, I am still me. I just can’t write now, but we’ll see.

—

*sigh*

I’ll stop now. I said I won’t think about it. And look, I went ahead and contradicted myself.

The point of all this rambling is that I felt really good last week. It rarely happens, as far as my history goes. So that’s my cause for alarm. Right now I’m just really nervous of what happens next. I’m rarely ever happy, and when I am, the payback’s always a bitch.

So. Yeah. This is a reminder to myself to not fuck things up in the next few days. Possibly, it is also a silent prayer to deliver bad karma to me in other ways, and not on my two job offers. Let’s steer clear away from that, okay, Fate? I’m in a bind already, as you know. Don’t add anything more to it, other than letting me choose what’s really meant for me. Please.

Well it’s the opposite this time. Nothing has been happening, so why write about how terribly pathetic my life has been?

I haven’t been the same since I quit my last job. Meaning, I was glad I did what I have to do, but I felt like I’m back where I started. See: my entries for June of last year. I’m like that again. I can’t keep on letting my life be ruled by patterns, you know?

The good thing is, I’ve discovered some things about myself when not involved in writing: I can doodle, take photos, and talk to strangers, and feel happy with that. And that’s definitely a big thing. For me, at least.

There’s a certain point in your life where you turn unexpectedly on an unfamiliar road, and you don’t know exactly if you should forge ahead. And if you did go on, like I did, you will find out that sometimes getting lost, or not seeing the ‘right’ path for awhile can be advantageous in ways that will surprise you. Remember that one month when I have declared that I will stop writing altogether? The shit I was wading through because I’m fighting for what I want was getting daunting. Do you remember that?

Well I’m happy to report that I’m past that. There’s nothing I can do, writing is who I am. When I foolishly decided I’ll stop, I cried for days because I really didn’t know what to do if ever I stopped writing. I cried until I slapped myself silly for, well, being silly.

And then began the picking up of the pieces, putting myself back together. What to do when you encounter a roadblock, when you feel that Fate is absolutely giving you no chance to get around this one? You take your time, and you wait. But you don’t give up.

So I took my time. Doodled, when the words won’t come. Took photos, when I needed to say something, but wasn’t allowed to. And I shared them with strangers. When I tried to write poetry, and wasn’t successful, I wrote letters. Notes. Folded origami. Threaded bracelets. I’m just biding my time, waiting until I can say that I’m whole again.

You have no idea how depressed I got, or how much I needed to connect with friends who had an idea of what I was going through. And most of my friends don’t, actually.

So yeah, please be patient. I’m alive, I’ll come back.

\(*-*)/

(looks better with all the notes here)

The contents of my Bob Dylan bag for 28 March 2008:
- Superman pencil case, which includes 23 Stabilo Pen 68s, a silver Parker pen, 10 old Staedtler triplus fineliner pens, 3 Stabilo exam grade pencils, a Stabilo exam grade eraser, a pencil sharpener, 4 Dong-A metallic pens and 2 Sharpies)
- my funky green Buddha for luck
- current book I’m reading: Adverbs by Daniel Handler
- Frank Sinatra bookmark
- birthday postcard from Bangladesh, sent to me by Abby who’s currently on a business trip there
- my favorite black and white photo, taken while riding a cab one afternoon, also serves as a random bookmark
- house keys with a silver key chain with my name engraved on it and a Mr. Bean key chain, too
- Jimi Hendrix (my old Pentax ME) and some spare film
- long wallet, which contains ATM cards, discount cards from my favorite bookstores, movie tickets, discount coupons, bus tickets, receipts, post-its, photos, identification cards
- yellow pad paper because I like making lists; bigger picture here
- Gustav Klimt daily planner
- moleskine! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
- polaroids
- native banig coin purse and coins
- necessities like hairbrush, lip gloss, pocket mirror, oil control film, painkiller pill and hand sanitizer
- menthol candy, gum
- perfumes (dream from GAP and clinique happy)
- Samsung mobile phone
- some fun stuff like a rainbow slinkie and friendship bracelets that I make from time to time
- glue
- my favorite wooden bangle, glow-in-the-dark bracelets, and a Spongebob jelly bracelet
- old generation iPod; I call him Lolo Frank (after Frank Sinatra ^__^)
- menthol cigarettes, matches and two lighters (I keep a spare, I always seem to lose one)

Not included in the photo but also takes residence in my bag — Jacques Cousteau, or the camera I used to take this photo with (Canon S2 IS).

I know it looks like a lot, and it is A LOT; but years of practice enabled me to practically stuff my whole life in a bag, and well, this is it. And yeah, I name a lot of my things. Makes me treat them kinder. I have a relationship with my stuff, what. Nerd love. ♥