Dear reader,
It’s been such a long time and I don’t know anymore how to go about this again. I’ve forgotten how to step in into this intimate space between us. I guess, as I keep regurgitating back to myself, I have no choice but to be sincere. Let the metaphors work for itself for I have no recourse but to think in them. Let the unutterable be attempted into utterance.
For the past few weeks, unbeknownst to me, my fort has been going through a thorough dismantlement. With the choices I’ve mulled, the decisions I’ve made, and the ensuing aftermath with which these decisions have come to fare out. You can say that I am, myself, the harbinger of its destruction. But what is life without a little excitement? And where can growth emerge where there is only stasis?
The truth is, I’ve made a series of unalterable decisions these past few months. Whether they’re good or bad eludes me. For now I just want to bask in the delusion of its neutrality. These are just decisions and the playing field is life in itself, a life that cannot be approximated nor quantified into something that constitutes a life well-lived.
Earlier this year, after some coaxing from new-found friends from a conference in Zamboanga, I became intent on pursuing a Masters degree this year and applying as a part-time lecturer in UPLB. Unfortunately, due to financial constraints that I’ve foreseen to affect my overall physiological well-being in Los Banos, I backed out from the opportunity and focused instead on saving up as I work as a ghostwriter for some US-based client.
The thought of having to live in stasis for a few more months terrifies me. I know that I’ve outgrown this city, I know that I’ve outgrown this shell, but here I am, left with no choice but to settle for this regimen for some kind of money-making scheme.
I went through another breakup, one that deems less fitting in writing this story. I’ve pushed myself to my limits to make it work but it has come to a point that I have nothing left to give. We’ve settled to becoming friends, but I am uncertain that I can be friends with someone who pushes on my sexual boundaries so much. I feel uncertain about this friendship, but we’ll see how it fares out.
All of this to say, among a myriad of things that I’ve decided to put off the record, that I have been emotionally unwell these past few weeks. I have been clinically diagnosed with dissociation. Everything has been overwhelming for me and my body and it caused a rupture, a split— I started disconnecting from myself and my surroundings, a literal disembodiment; me, becoming the unreliable narrator of a story of a shell pretending to be me.
Dear reader, my fort has been thoroughly shattered. My family scrambled towards solutions to my day to day breakdowns, even going to the the extent of consulting a mananambal for remedies. (There’s nothing good about it, believe me.) As per usual, my mother clung to her rosary beads. In a particularly stressful day when everyone was trying to “fix” me, I finally voiced out my dissent to their ways. “When I tell you that I’m depressed,” I told them, “I don’t mean that you should try to solve my problems. I just need you as a crutch in the mean while.”
So far, I’ve been taking these days at a slow stride. One day at a time, I’m building back my healthy habits, or, as my friend and I would call it, M.E.D.S.— meditation, exercise, diet, and sleep. I try to stop obsessing so much about the future. Let the future unfurl as it is. (A tidbit of wisdom that I gleaned from a friend I recently reconnected with, “stop trying to idealize things that you haven’t experienced yet.”) And maybe, when I’m feeling better and more equipped to take on life, I can add sprinkles of things that can give this life a little more color.
As cliche as this sounds, life is a journey after all. We are all on each of our rafts on turbulent waters, and whether we like it or not, we cannot make ourselves control the currents with which life rocks us. We just have to take care of ourselves in our own little rafts as we sail through the seas. We just need to entrust our worries into some higher cosmos that we are being led somewhere good.
Dear reader, I cannot get to the poem of this. But maybe, what I need for now is not poetry but a dose of reality. I am here. This is your adjusted starting point. Get your shit together before you put yourself back in the marathon. And as crude as this sounds, I am unwell. But it’s okay, there’s nothing wrong about that. We are all unwell in our own ways. I hope this letter somehow brings you reprieve.
P.S.: It’s my birthday on July 2! I’m turning 26 (an event I desperately dread) but I would appreciate receiving thoughtful emails from you too, regardless of the closeness of our relationship. Thank you for staying with my little quips about life throughout my writing journey here on Substack. <3