I have so much feelings right now. (The Fault in our Stars)

Coca-Cola (The Fault in our Stars).

The only good thing about getting chicken pox is having the time to procrastinate school-work and getting my thoughts reborn.  And so I start with this rather masochistic quote; “Pain demands to be felt”. I mean, I don’t have any bragging rights about reading the book because apparently, I haven’t. But upon hearing this, I knew from that moment on, I was my feelings.

The thing about watching the movie is getting confused between my salty-tears and the acidic sweetness of this bottle of coke. I know I’m not allowed to drink it because of my gastric problems, but for some reason, I still do. And I am well aware that after watching the movie, I’d be caught up in the waterfall of my own emotions. But I am mostly mindful about the needle-pricking pain in my upper abdomen after drinking half of this bottle.

I now understand the irrationality of this pain. It demands to be felt because it doesn’t want to be forgotten. That is why people do it because with every pain comes the memory we have to a person. And that not having to feel this pain again means forgetting him or her. Maybe we’re all connected to it not because we’re masochists but because of our inability to let go. I guess attachment is just another lesson to live by between about what was and what is.

But then again, pain takes time to heal but while on the process, we can always share the story with someone special. Like what’s printed on this little red bottle, “Share a Coke with Jhon”. Whoever that is, Thanks for sharing calories, metaphors, and a little bit of my feelings.

P.S. I will the read the book someday. I’m just saving up money to buy a cart-full of tissue rolls.

It’s the rainy days.

I think that some of the people in my life are a lot like rain. When the weather is good, I selflessly push them away. I never really understand their worth until the unforgiving summer comes. And  the heat of everything had dried me out of nothing. But it’s when the drought finally had me craving for a drop of their presence —that’s when I realize I need them.

Paper poems for my family

This is a poem that I wrote for my relatives who are selflessly working abroad. Still, it served as an e-card sent last Christmas.

Truly, their sacrifices in giving their family a good life will always be treasured. It’s not easy being away but they pull through for the love of their family.

To Gab, who’s going to fly tomorrow.

Just have to let them words go…

What is (not) Young Love?

Young love, I never saw it coming until that random bus ride back from my mother’s hometown.

I thought it only exists in Nicholas Sparks’s novels. And that they become movies instead of my own reality.  I thought it’s only shared between Romeo and Juliet or can only be read between the lines of the Sweet Flicks on Star Movies. I guess now it’s not just a story that I get to hear among my friends or a love song played on the radio. It’s not a poem that I wrote about my past and my exes. It’s not just a breakfast at Mcdonald’s. And it’s most definitely not the same as fantasizing One Direction from t-shirts, posters, and albums.

Young love wakes me up stronger than morning coffee.  It gave me a reason to have a relationship with Wifi and my phone. It uses adorable stickers on Facebook Messenger. It smiles and settles on the crappy, pixelated, and choppy Skype video calls. It puts me to sleep, sometimes it doesn’t. It sends messages and songs between the category of sweet and corny. And it always fails in attempting to wake me up at 3 in the morning.

It’s on the world clock that I get to look at like a manic student waiting for dismissal. It patiently waits for me to get my homework done and gives motivation on Statistics exams.

It’s on the world map posted against the bedroom wall, where I trace the distance from where he’s at to my heart.

It makes plans when the gap finally closes in from computer screens to meeting each other eye to eye.

And it writes our love story in the chapters of 2014 and hopefully to forever. So it may not only stay as young and as in love as we are, but in time, grow as we would have.

I fell in love with… caramel bars

Love is like eating a caramel bar. You walk-away promising yourself that one is enough, that you had enough. But it doesn’t matter, because the next thing you know, you’re halfway towards it. You long for him, you miss him. Until one becomes two, three, to empty. He is empty. And you look around the corners of this brown box, convincing yourself that there’s gotta be more, there’s gotta be something left of him. It’s then you realize that all that you are is just a sugar rush. That love is not here to stay because there were never lows, but only highs. The feeling of being high on his sweetness. But its just temporary, you are temporary.

My box of happiness.

I guess I understand now that I am in love with Caramel Bars. Because underneath its rough edges and “peanutty” textured layer is a place for a familiar softness. A place that will always have a home in my heart. And everything else — the warmth, sweetness, and perfection — makes me want to need it, forever. I know now that he is my caramel bar, and I love him.

Rhymes, People, Poetry

(This is what happens during my 3 AM dates with blank pages and MS word)

When I was being trained to write a poem, I was told that the “end” words don’t have to rhyme. And I should use it sparingly or it’s going to look cheeky. So this morning, I realized that maybe rhymes and people have things in common. Like two persons don’t really have to rhyme to complement each other. That maybe, two individuals don’t have to be so alike in sounds and rhythms to support each other. And that the two most indifferent words (people) put together, one after the other, is not so bad at all.

Maybe, sometimes it’s our differences that complete our story. And it’s in the unfamiliarity of things and people that turns half-finished stanzas in to perfect poems.

To the person I fell in love with (the nth time around)

Before feelings become words
Before my thoughts turn into careless verbs
Before I ran out of things to say
Before I finally have the courage to say what I really feel
Before I get too attached
Before we waste another minute 
Before we get tired of missing each other
–
Of online play fighting
Of answering ridiculous riddles
Of sleep talking at 3 AM about Pokemon
–
Before we miss out on people
Before our completely different futures become one
Before the word “before” becomes our present
Before the worst
Before I forget everything you said that night

Before I utter the words “I love you”
Before I end this poem
I say in the most nonchalant way I can
Thank you, I let go.

My best friend hates me

My best friend hates me

Because I’m always sad and lonely

Because I treat him more than what he deserves to be treated

I collect things and mistakes

I hoard things and memories

And I throw it all at him

Like a black garbage bag

Like a public tin can

But instead of wrapping his arms around me

Which is by definition uncomfortable and weird

He carefully opens his heart, and palms to arms, and arms to hands

Just so he can catch whatever drama I might throw in the air

Just so he can pick up the mess I’ve made

Piece by smelly piece

Trash by rotting trash

He helps me clean it up

Just so he can show me that I can and I will move on

 

My best friend hates me

Because he needed me to learn how to take care of myself

Because somehow he knows, we won’t be going to be together, forever

That someday, we’ll eventually call ourselves grown ups

And part ways

 

My best friend hates me

And he badly wants to slap the reality out of me

I know he’d been dying to say “Shut up bitch!”

But I also know that he loves me

 

My best friend hates me

Because he knows he’ll never get tired of it

And he’ll never get tired of being one. 

The love that I loved

“Literature is the expression of man’s best thoughts, feelings and emotions in words of truth and beauty. It is life itself.”

The first time I entered our Philippine Literature class was like an episode of the Walking Dead. I was half-asleep (7 AM classes are to die for) upon sitting on my designated chair. But when our instructor mouthed the words stated above, the dead were resuscitated to life.

Instead of slouching, face down, eyes closed, I sat erect and immediately faced the board eye to eye. Then, our instructor quoted one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning poems. And that was the moment I knew there was something magical happening.

I had never heard anything so beautiful in any of the classes I attended within the first week.

It felt like a part of you which you thought didn’t exist anymore, or which you believed shouldn’t exist anymore, came back to life.

It was like meeting the love you thought you were going to marry your whole life. And it doesn’t matter how much effort you give to hold back because you honestly know that there are still parts of that love engraved within your bones.

It even felt like I was cheating with the love I am with right now (Psychology). I know 110% that I love Psychology to every cell of my body. But I can’t help remembering what it used to feel being with my first love. I can’t help but think how much I had given up concentrating on my chosen field.

I quit the school publication. And I chickened out on being the Features Editor of our school publication.

I guess it’s true when they say that when you grow up you eventually learn how to sacrifice certain things. When you grow, you also mature with the choices you make.

(Wow did I just write that? Now I feel like crying)

An hour and thirty minutes twice a week for four months is enough to liberate myself. Or at least, get to know the love that I used to love for the second of the first times. Plus I still have units on Word Literature on my junior year.  

I guess the truth is that I can I use my love for psychology to understand the depths of the minds behind literature.

I guess there’s beauty in loving both— for the meantime.