Life, Lately

Hey, play this song while you read. :)

Hello. It's been a while. I just wanted to let you know that things have been well since the last time I was here. Things have changed. Things have been better. Things have grown, ungrown, tangled and untangled — but for the most part, and perhaps most importantly, I am still here. Still striving to show up.

I know not a lot of people visit this little quiet corner of mine in this vast world of the interwebs, but for those who do, thank you. You are the reason I am back here.

It's weird in a fascinating kind of way because when I stopped writing a couple of years ago (a decline that happened slowly), I took out my blog link from my Instagram account — where I am most active. But one day, recently, I decided to put it back up again. Just like that I started receiving messages from people saying they found their way to my blog, and thanking me for my writing. Because my words resonated. My words helped. My words inspired. It didn't matter that my last entries were years old — it only mattered that they saw themselves in my stories. And I know discovering stories you resonate with always provides a little strength. I feel the same way. So those words mean a lot to me. 

When I receive messages like that from people, I always cry a little. I am reminded of the reason why I write — to share my truth. In a world where life can appear to be so curated, I stand with the people who strive for honesty and authenticity. Who remind us that tenderness is a strength.

And so, here I am again. 

I guess life is just like that — when you exhaust yourself you retreat for a while, but then, eventually, you find yourself coming alive again. Like trees that slowly bloom again in the spring. You know the saying. 

That awakening has been happening to me. I know it because I have been feeling restless. Uncentered. A little bit melancholy, even, on some days. And I know that when this happens it is the soul telling me to pay attention. To reconnect, reground, and re-center. To find my wild again.

And as always, I feel these things the most when I am writing. Writing, as well as traveling, have always been so meditative for me. And today, I spare some time for meditation. 

Dive, Dive, Dive.

I will always search for poetry in things. In everything.

Some days ago I had a short intro into diving. It wasn't much. Just two hours of lessons. Two hours of basic skills. In a safe environment, a pool, in a hotel, in the city.

But it triggered something in me. Something dark, something ugly, an old friend I haven't seen in a while.
 

I Was Not Magnificent

Holocene - Bon Iver

Quite recently I was asked: Do you still write? Do you still take photographs? How come I haven't seen you post anything in a while? And with a lump in my throat, I had to answer with the truth: "No, not really."

~

I have always had this odd relationship with social media and blogging, and becoming somewhat of a public persona (eek, the mere term makes my skin crawl). I've always had a difficulty treading the lines of what I can, should, or should not share.

I do not seek to be some famous person on the internet. I honestly do not like the attention. Haven't I said again and again that I'd rather be like Sumire? Disappearing like smoke under the city lights? I don't have that much followers, but there is still a good number of people who read what I write (sometimes the numbers overwhelm me; over a thousand hits, really? 1,000 views?). Close friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances, strangers. I get responses from people all over the world. Sometimes the thought makes me tremble. To be so vulnerable. To be so exposed. The thought is so horrifyingly fearsome to me. And I've vowed never to write what is not honest, so what about in times I have no courage yet to say what is true? I'd rather say nothing at all.

Why I'm Not Where You Are

Hit play.

All the places. All the people. All the roads winding, the trees singing, the songs humming. It’s been a long time, you. It’s been too long. The stories have been waiting to come alive. I, have been waiting to come alive.

How do I begin to tell you?

How do I begin to tell you about the euphoric freedom of that first time I ever jumped off a cliff—in a cave laden with bats somewhere where everything was emerald? Or that time I couldn’t hold my tears back as I stared upon the stunning view of old thatch-roofed houses quietly sitting between pine tree covered mountains in a Japan in autumn? Or that cold December night in Pattaya, where I had been feeling so terribly lonely, yet I found myself in the embrace of a complete stranger reminding me I was wonderful? Or perhaps the bliss of arriving in your favorite island again and again, always to be welcomed by the family you’ve made there and the wonderful echo in your ear as they tell you with an embrace—“welcome home”? And you melt a little inside each time because you know they are right. You are. You are home.

How do I simply begin to tell you all that was? All that continue to be? 

I have missed you. I have been missing. Whether literally or figuratively, I have been missing. That is the truth. Which is why I couldn’t return to you. I couldn’t face you half-assed. It was all or nothing. And I was nothing. 

I won’t sugarcoat it and tell you the past year and a half has been all rainbows and gardens. It hasn’t been. There were many grey days, clouded by fear, doubt, insecurities, loneliness, and longing. Longing, above all. There were many heartaches and heartbreaks. How do I even begin to tell you that rainy afternoon in Palawan and I was alone. So terribly alone. In bed, in my room, where it was raining just as much. 

I look everywhere, I whisper. I goddamn look everywhere.