“I used to be afraid to be angry, to be mad, and to harbor bitter feelings. I used to think that if I had any of those in my system, I was a bad person. It turns out that I needed them; I needed to feel them so I’d know when I was crossing the line. I used to stifle these feelings until I created this little hole inside of me and it was gnawing at me every single day, it was threatening to become bigger than what it really was. I was so afraid to let the anger out that it ate me up, and then just one day, I just snapped out of it. I cried. I cried until I was devoid of anything negative. These days, I’m not afraid of feeling these things, what I’m afraid of is the stifling them. That is even more dangerous than feeling anything negative.”
“I thought I wasn’t scared of anything, but it turns out that I was afraid of a lot of things: I was afraid to be rejected, that’s why I ran away before something real came to me. I was afraid to want things but I never settled for the ones I had, there were times that I was scared to step out of this little box that I built for myself because I was afraid to not be perfect.”
“I always did what was right because I felt guilty whenever I did something wrong. But you realize that everything is relative. Right is relative. Wrong is relative. Relative is my new favorite word. The idea of perfection is relative as well. I thought that if I had the success, had a clean record and never kissed a boy that wasn’t my boyfriend, I would be perfect and happy. Society dictated this way of living life and I as write this nonsense, I ask myself, “who created the rules? Who invented them”? I’m at that point where I’m questioning everything I used to put my faith in simply because some of them just disappointed me. Some of them promised happiness and here I am, twenty years old, achieved what my friends could only dream of and the million dollar question is, “Am I happy?”
“Happiness used to be simple: find something you love, find someone you love and who loves you back. There’s a joke lost in there somewhere because, well, it takes a life time to find all those three things in the same place. I hope that wouldn’t be the case for me.”
“I never lost that child in me, that child that believed that every person was good and everyone’s intention was pure. Up to this point, the kid in me refuses to believe that people can be manipulative, scheming and just plain evil.”
“Ever since I was thirteen, I patterned my life after perfection. If it didn’t make me look perfect then it was not worth wasting my effort over. Even in the boys that I chose, I always chose the ones that complimented my crazy obsession with perfection. The first boy I fell in love with was perfect beyond repair and he treated me so bad. He broke my heart, put it back together then trampled on it even before I could tell him how fragile it still was. And there are days when I sit and hope that things worked for the both of us. You’re probably wondering why. Again, it has more to do with this crazy obsession with perfection rather than the person in question. I cannot let go of the perfect guy because I was raised to be with someone like him. There’s no other way.”
“My life is contrived. But I’m not complaining. I’m blessed with numerous things and people might want to bitch slap me for saying otherwise. But this is the life that I have so I don’t know how better or worse off I am. Again, I’m not complaining. But, a little freedom wouldn’t hurt. A little freedom wouldn’t kill me or this life that I’m building.”
“At the age of twenty, I have come to realize that my career has become my life. I have this certain passion for it, there are days that I hate it to the core while there are days when I love it more than anything in the world. It’s crazy to be a workaholic at twenty. At twenty I should be drinking the night away, I should be partying till the break of dawn. But it wasn’t in the perfection handbook, so I didn’t do any of those things. Instead, I spend most Friday and Saturday nights doing my WIPs and Rubrics for my class. On Sundays, I get up extra early to attend Church—which I don’t mind, my faith keeps me sane.”
“I’ve always been prayerful. I’ve been deep into my faith way before I knew its true meaning. I just knew that the Lord could make miracles in one snap of a finger. I’ve always trusted Him, even if the miracles that I’ve been praying for has become smaller than it used to be.”
“I wanted to be an actress when I was younger. That was my main goal in life. I bet you didn’t know that.”
“Writing has become my alter-ego. The writer in me is quite different from the “me” everyone sees on a daily basis. Not that I’m fake, I just never found people who would be understanding enough to get what I say. Sometimes, I talk too much and sometimes I don’t talk at all. That means I’m writing in my head.”
“I want to work for a magazine or a big publicity firm, not in the Philippines obviously. I want to get out of the country. So Scotland, please FALL INTO PLACE.”
“I never got people who bragged. I realized that everyone does it because everyone wants to prove that they’re better than others. Or maybe, it’s not about other people at all. Maybe it’s just a tool to feel good about themselves. So if it makes someone happy why take it away?”
“Everyone I meet is insecure. The greatest people I have encountered is constantly looking behind their shoulder, trying to see if they made any mistakes, if they hurt anyone along the way. Great people, for me, refuse to admit that they don’t care about what other people think and that they’re extremely secured with who they are. But I found out that they’re the most insecure people I know. Maybe, insecurity is what fuels greatness—in some ironic, twisted way.”
“I don’t like being mad. I don’t like shouting at people. I don’t like arguing. I forgive quickly, but lately, I’ve always been mad. I’ve always been irritated. Does that make me a bad, evil person? No, because I still feel guilty afterwards. I strive to be okay with everyone but I also found out that not everyone is okay with that. So, where does that leave me? Still wanting to be okay with everyone, but also resenting them, which is not a good thing, but give me a break, I’m only twenty! I have raging hormones so people must not hate me for it because at one point in their lives, they caved in to their anger as well.”
“The problem with being perfect is people would start expecting it, including yourself. If you commit a single mistake, it ruins the one hundred things that you did right. I used to punish myself for making mistakes, for not doing it right, for hurting other people—hurting other people is something that I could never forgive myself for and yet its inevitable. So what’s one to do? I dislike perfection more than anything in the world. It pushed me to be better, but now its haunting me. It’s that silly perfection that I worked so hard for that’s killing my spirit now. Maybe, if I was the black sheep, people wouldn’t make a fuss out of every single boo-hoo.”
“I speak my mind. At least I try to, but most of the time, I’m too scared of hurting people that I hardly speak up. But that’s changing, I’ve come to realize that if I’m going to get anywhere in life, I’d have to speak up.”
“I’m praying for better days. They’re coming. It’s like I’ve crossed over from one chasm to another, but this one is much better than the last. In this one, I think I’d trying beating myself over something that happened three weeks, three months and three years ago. I don’t know if it’s called growing up. I used to detest growing up. But if growing up means that I’m allowed to make mistakes, that I’m allowed to live a little, that I’m allowed to speak up when something’s hurting me, then I guess it’s okay. I’ll be wiser, I bet. I bet I’ll be making lesser fatal mistakes and maybe, I’ll stop being afraid. I hope against hope, that I’d get over my obsession with perfection.”
“As for the perfect guy, this is what I’ve realized: he’s not perfect if he chooses to constantly hurt you, manipulate you and put you down. If he doesn’t respect your or your family, I don’t care which college he went to or where, I don’t care if he graduated Cum Laude of some great University, I don’t care if he owns the whole country or random parts of it. If he’s an ass, his money won’t change any of that. He wasn’t raised well. PERIOD. I still don’t know who the perfect guy is, but he’s out there. I still believe in destiny—not in the overused sense, but in the childlike sense.”
“I’m learning, but heck, I do believe that I’ve learned a lot in the past two years of my life. It’s time to stop complaining-sometimes, I complain too much. So I’d do the next best thing- write, write until there’s nothing left to write. Write until you know that you’re okay. Writing this helped me. There’s no anger left, just an empty, airy feeling, the feeling that I’ve been looking for. It’s here.”
This is me at twenty. I do hope that next year, some views have changed, some views have improved and that crappy obsession with perfection is over. Till then.
