Running in place.

“Your search for contentment is your gift to the world”

Dealing with the poisonous dregs of failed relationships is the trickiest part of moving on. Especially when there was a time wherein you were most convinced that things will see themselves through.

The easy part is when your cup is filled to the brim. Right when all your friends are hands on in helping you get back up. These are the moments when their words encourage and validate you. They will fill up the empty spaces that were incurred during combat, and will do everything in their power to get you back in check with reality.

But the days will egg on, your friends’ lives will move on, and you will eventually be left to deal with yourself. THESE dregs are what I’m talking about. This is the moment when you’ve finally grown sick of talking, the moment you realize your friends have lives of their own that you can’t just simply keep hitch-hiking your worries to theirs. Right where your inner self will make you choose between ‘YOU’ and a bunch of worn out memories. The choice is obvious. The actual execution of that choice is what’s stubborn and bothersome at times.

So my dear girl (this is the schizo in me manifesting, by the way), every time you feel like regressing, remember your friends who poured out ALL their joy into you when you needed it most. Give their generosity some justice. Every time you feel like the quicksand is pulling you back further in, just remember these words:

“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)

Be brave, girl. Be brave.

Rolling credits.

“No,” you say to yourself, “I can’t survive this, I don’t want to.” You say all this with matching shaking of head and welling up of eyes. By now you have discovered that your whole system has been hurting, and you just know that your soul, however invisible it may be, has been battered.

These are what I call the aftershocks. The moment after of awakening from deep sleep, from the already worn out euphoria on what used to be good. The part where you start feeling the aches from that fall you so mindlessly took from ten miles above the ground. You look at yourself as you lay there flat on the ground, and in a split-second, you are convinced that there’s no way you can get back up in this state.

Yeah, it sometimes gets THIS ugly. Hah!

My dad always says this line, “hope can be found in the most hopeless of situations.” Looking back, I now know that he was right. There I was slumped on the floor of my best friend’s apartment, tearing up and at a loss for words. Then this woman relentlessly reminded me that I am one of the strongest girls she knows — right at the smack of my unconvinced self. Before I could ever enter into more self wallowing and loathing, there she was preparing instant noodles (hah!) for us two. And from the floor I was on, I found myself on a chair seated in front of her, eating noodles and singing along John Mayer’s ‘Slow Dancing in a Burning Room.’ 

Actually, it was more of shouting: “We’re going doo-oo-oown, AND YOU KNOW THAT WE’RE DOOMED!” (Our apologies to the neighbors)

Then there was this cubicle moment. Ah, the cubicle moment. One time, I was walking to the college when all of a sudden my gut felt sore, and alarm bells started ringing in my tear ducts. I made a run for it and ended up in the washroom cubicle, bawling. Bawling! Oh my shame. Believe it or not, I spent almost an hour in there. Until I received a text message from a very old friend, and again it said, “Be strong, Aix. Everything will be okay.” That was the only time I almost slapped myself for being so pathetic. I picked up my bag, rubbed my eyes off, and walked out of that washroom like nothing happened. (I will never look at that cubicle the same way ever again Lol)

Not too consoling a sight, trust me.

I had so many beacons of light, as it turned out. There’s my ever so supportive sister, my thoughtful swimming buddies, my second family in the university who gave me a sense of home when I needed it the most, and the rest of my friends who constantly provide me the slapping I need when I tell myself “I can’t.” Then finally there was Gilbert, who with her book that I have just recently finished, gave me the final assurance that indeed, everything is going to turn out just fine.

To tell you the truth, I still have a long way to go. But I feel that the worst is finally behind me. Let this be my testimony that in the moments you run out of ammo, God brings out the big guns in the form of the people he sends you.

It doesn’t matter how many floors you decide to rest your cheek on, how many washroom cubicles you decide to hide in, or how much self-loathing you get yourself addicted to. They will get you off those floors, out those cubicles, and over your self addiction. They will each take in a part of your aftershock, and they will each carry a part of you when gravity has gotten the best of you.

Show’s over, baby.