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I think this would be the day where it will all officially end. 

More gaslighting. More negativity. 

With everything that's been said and done, now I'm the one who's to blame. This sucks. I already felt bad enough and yet ako pa rin may kasalanan.

When you're mad, you really do end up with a series of impulsive decisions. And these are what I have done so far:
1.  Cutting my hair short - I've been wanting to cut my hair short. I have been planning to cut it when I travel next week but then, this happened. I may regret it because it's 30 quid pricier than my planned haircut. It's much much pricier but I feel so much lighter now. 

2. Bought a blue matte bag which suited my style today because it matches my outfit. Shouldn't be buying one but because of the hassle of having no laptop bag when I carry it around; hence, the purchase. 

3. Bought a lipstick. I haven't bought one in a long time but again, something to soothe me while I'm really down. Another very impulsive move but not really needing it. 


***

It all started when they intentionally left me behind today. Ang hirap pala pag di masabi sayo na ikaw yung iiwan nila. Ang dami talagang paraan pero yun nga, ang hirap maiwan pala. That is the hatest feeling I ever need to feel ever. Being intentionally left behind. 

But anyway after hearing everything and I've said a lot of mean things to Pat. I blamed him for something na hindi naman niya obligasyon. Yun ang pinaka-ayaw niya sa lahat, yung ma-obliga siya. 

Anyway, it just proves lalo na he wouldn't want to be with this person (me). I am just making things worse for him. Hindi nga niya kasalanan pero wala akong laban kahit kanino. Which is totoo, pwede ka talaga ma-etsepuwera anytime. You can be cancelled anytime. 

Then I realized, all I wanted was just to be appreciated. And it seems like I've been looking for the wrong places on this one. 

This book has been in my shelf for sometime now. I never had the urge to read it until now. I finally picked up the book to read when I saw Shannie's IG highlight about the book -- "It's hard to predict isn't it? The things that will make us happy.". 

Then I started reading the book. It took me a while to finish it, but I did. Yet again! Another book finished. 
Why does it seem like the books that I read seem to relate to the present--the way I am feeling, I am experiencing? Like it's too aligned to what I needed at the moment. 


Here are some highlights:

"Every life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations." 

"If you had done just one thing differently, you would have a different life story."

"Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?"

"The art of swimming--she supposed like any art--was about purity. The more focused you were on the activity, the less focused you were on everything else. You kind of stopped being you and became the thing you were doing." 

"The only way to learn is to live." 

"Never underestimate the big importance of small things." 

"Stamina is essential to stay focused in a life filled with distraction. It is the ability to stick to a task when your body and mind are at their limit, the ability to keep your head down, swimming in your lane, without looking around, worrying who might overtake you." 

"Doing one thing differently is very often the same as  doing everything differently. Actions can't be reversed within a lifetime, however much we try..."

"What we consider to be the most successful route for us to taken actually isn't. But the truth is that success is a delusion."

"I never found the companion that was so companiable as solitude."

"When you stay too long in a place, you forget just how big an expanse the world is. You get no sense of the length of those longitudes and latitudes. Just as, she supposed, it is hard to have a sense of the vastness inside any one person"

"She'd had the sense that she wasn't enough. She imagined accepting it all. And in doing so, she imagined what it was like to be free."

"I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't."

"Sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can't have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness forever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you're in."

"Equidistant. That was how she had felt most of her life. Caught in the middle. Struggling, flailing, just trying to survive while not knowing which way to go. Which path to commit to without regret." 

"Every move you make opens a whole new world of possibility."

"You can never run out of possibilities...But you can run out of wanting them"

"You are forgetting who you are. In becoming everyone, you are becoming no one. You are forgetting your root life. You are forgetting what worked for you and what didn't. You are forgetting your regrets."

"Everything we experience is ultimately just our perception of it. It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."

"When you have worries about things you don't know about, like the future, it's a very good idea to remind yourself of things you do know."

"If you really want to live a life hard enough, you don't have to worry... The moment you decide you want that life, really want it, then everything that exists in your head now, including this Midnight Library, will eventually be a memory so vague and intangible it will hardly be there at all."

"What sometimes feels like a trap is actually just a trick of the mind."

"It's the regret that makes us shrivel and whither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy... Those lives that are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on... We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays."

"We don't have to do everything in order to be everything."

"So let's be kind to the people in our own existence."

"How life sometimes simply gave you a whole new perspective by waiting around long enough for you to see it."

"It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from."

"She wouldn't run from her pain anymore. She wouldn't poison herself with the pressures of imagined perfection. She would see her own hurt, recognise it, and not imagine there was a life of unquestionable positivity and happiness she was being deprived from. She would accept the darkness of life in a way she never had, not as a failure but as part of a totality, as something that thew other things into relief, into growth, into being. The ash in the soil."

"And where there was uncertainty there was also possibility, whatever the present looked like."

"Well, that's the beauty isn't it? You just never know how it ends."



That was all the highlights in the book I've just read. It was really indeed a good read. I just need to let these all sink in. Appreciate the beauty of life as it is right now. I just told him, I just want to cherish what we have at the moment. Because we honestly don't know how long we got left. I honestly don't know if we'll stay together. I want to, but will choosing one another make up for the large indifferences we have? I honestly don't know. But still, I am here choosing him. 

I've been meaning to finish a reflection on this book. It's something I bought this few months back (Oct 2022) from Waterstones. I started reading it right then and there while I was waiting for Mira to finish her shift. It has been something I have been longing for the longest time but never had the intention of actually sitting down on it. 

Few days ago, after spending almost 24/7 for a few days already with Troll, I started picking up the book and read from the beginning. It was a whole new experience reading it since I have been struggling with it for sometime now. Hindi ko lang talaga maamin sa kanya na siya ang dahilan why I am so uncertain. Why I cannot express myself properly. I have been changed to a really dark person and somehow some people have noticed it already. I know myself I have been growing dark and I am aware of it but I have been doing nothing about it. 

It's just really sad kasi whenever I encounter something that even the slightest bit upsets me, I get teary eyed and it bursts out easily and hard to control. That's how dark it's getting now. I easily get upset with thing that my tears are so shallow. I believe it's getting worse day by day that sometimes I feel like my work has also affected. 

It all peaked with a friend who I really felt has betrayed me but then I also betrayed Troll. It was quite a complicated one. But then it deeply affected me. Never have I felt betrayed and felt so much shit. She immensley made me feel shit whenever I am present. How can I not let that affect me? Even if I try to shrug it off, I am intensely in pain. This is where Wally's famous line, "hindi ka nakakatulong sa mental health ko", holds true. Something that I will never say as I find it offensive to hear, but it's true regardless. 

This book tackles on being alone and how to be comfortable with it. Sometimes, we are scared of spending time alone and facing our own "inner critic". I have always been used to being alone as I have encountered frustrations in the past of planning and yet others have different priorities--I have learned to accept that already. I thought I was comfortable already with my alone time but I guess I am wrong. I can travel alone. I can spend alone in the cinema. I prefer shopping alone. But nowadays, I feel like I am covered with so much fear. It seems like my decisions have been driven by fear. I'm shadowed by so many fears.

What am I afraid of at the moment? 
- I am afraid if I leave Troll, what about the future plans? How about the wedding next year? Going back home in the Philippines? All the future plans? The uncertainty of all the future plans. 
- (Just like everyone else's worry) Will someone be really there out for me?
- The comfort of having someone? Idk, I became comfortable at a certain point. But even though cuddles have been comforting, the intimacy of talk is what I have been yearning and needing which I couldn't get. I felt like I am always afraid of him. Afraid of expressing things of myself, all because, baka nakakarindi na ako or it will just show na hindi nga talaga siya ganun ka-interested sakin. Yung future plans pa lang, sobrang uncertain na ehh. Me being present is very uncertain na nga kasi hindi ko alam if he really wanted me to be in his future. He wanted to do it regardless of what happens, but what does that assure me then? Nothing. What form of security do I hold? Nothing. And nagiging evident na yung connection namin, most especially when he said, "walang chemistry". Sobrang hit me right to the core. Just because there wasn't chemistry in playing sport, you wouldn't work it out anymore? Parang ang unfair. Kaya recently, I felt invalidated na. And nakikita ko naman na kung kanino siya mas may connection and share more common things with. Kaya ako nagiging insecure lalo kasi hindi ako yun. Marami kaming differences talaga and barely share anything common. I've never felt so many differences with someone. Mas lalo siyang nagiging evident na. How can I build a future with someone who is unsure of me and also share a lot of differences? Ang hirap.

So what am I going to do next? 
Yung alam mo ano dapat gawin, instead, you just carry on with everyday. 

Let's explore other things instead. Who used to be me before? 
- The fun girl who enjoys everyone's company. Who connects to everyone. 
- The one who is not afraid to do solo travels. 
- Confident with herself.