Perspectives

Entering my twenty-first year on planet Earth with an honorary degree in being single isn’t so easy. Even the first month of it was already filled with news of engagements, new relationships among friends and a guy I had a teeny tiny crush on having a girlfriend. Jokes on me. It is, even more, overwhelming in social media like Instagram when I see all these lovey-dovey pictures and captions about couples’ undying love for each other. Some days, I win the battles with my overthinking mind and give no space for comparison with other people that ultimately leads to feelings of despair. Some days, I don’t and it feels like all hope I have for love is forever lost. Upward social comparison is what we usually do. It basically means that we compare ourselves with someone who is doing better than us in a certain something that leads us to feel bad about ourselves and have our self-esteem threatened. However, it is not like comparison is only specified to our love lives like the example...

Imagine you’re out for dinner. While you’re waiting for your dinner, a notification pops up on your phone screen. Fearing it might be something important from the office, you immediately check it. Somehow after a few minutes, you find yourself looking at cat videos reacting to their owners with cat face filters on. So you think to yourself ‘that was enough internet for today’. But, how did that happen? The idea most people have towards self-awareness is that they have pretty much mastered it and know exactly what they’re doing. Really? Do you? The human mind is on autopilot most of the time. However, the problem is we’re not aware that our mind is on autopilot. Taking in every information and carefully processing them requires so much of mental energy that can wear us off so easily and to be alive in a time like this where information is coming at you from every other direction, it’s not plausible to do so. Thus, when information that exists exceed your mental capacity, your mind...

Road to recovery is never a straight line. There are days you feel liberated and like it is the end of your sufferings and dark days. You will come to believe that finally your prayers have been answered by God and the space in your chest does not hurt anymore. But the next day you're crying your lungs out like it is the most pain you’ve felt in a lifetime. You begin to question if any attempts to be better, any effort put in to be better, all energy invested to be better was ever worth it or even real to begin with. But that same night you’d be laughing out loud again with you best friends cause of the sarcasm filled conversations and jokes. You will have a “life is good” moment. This is life. This isn’t a movie. It doesn’t feel all happy and perfect the moment you start healing and getting better. You’ll relapse. You’ll question your self-worth. You’ll give up. You’ll get back. You’ll laugh until you snort. You’ll cut yourself again. You’ll feel grateful to be alive. Y...

               Love is said to be the most beautiful feeling of all. One that upholds life itself and gives it meaning and purpose. One that gives strength to the weak, peace to the unpeaceful, constant to the constant changes. But sometimes, people tend to oversell love. Overestimate its power. Overestimate its capability. Overestimate the value it could add to your life. Because, it is viewed as flawless. Because you have never been taught how the kind of love that makes life better looks like. So, you settle in for the love that feels right in the moment, without knowing what it holds for you in the future. See, that is what I call the unhealthy love. Unhealthy love comes in different forms. It has many faces. But, all of it comes down to this one single thing. It leaves you feeling inadequate. It leaves you feeling like you are not enough. It makes you want to do things that changes you as a person but no...

     We've all been there. At one point, it was all misery. You barely go through your days and your only goal will be to successfully drag yourself through the next day. Without failing, without losing it, without falling apart. You convince yourself to have enough faith that you'll make it. You sometimes lie to yourself too, knowing making out alive of this can be nearly impossible.       And one fine day, you come to realize that you don't feel that way anymore. You don't feel that invisible pain in your chest anymore like your heart is literally broken. You feel the most peaceful you have been in an eternity. Your heart is filled with love and happiness. You'll realize that your path to this point was definitely a mess, more of a blur too. But you made it, like finally. Time heals they say. Don't ask me how. Don't ask me how long. Just pure faith that it does.      You're in your absolute 'A' game. Everything you ever ...

                How many times have you questioned why is something so brutal and bad is happening to you? How many times have you told yourself that whatever you’re going through is unfair and you don’t deserve it? Or simply why do such bad things happening to good people like me? I get it, you’re tired. You feel like your struggles are endless like how the water waves crash onto the rocks endlessly, with such force. And you desperately wish for once that God will notice your cries and misery and put an end to them. Cause you can’t go on anymore. Cause you can’t keep fighting anymore.                I don’t blame you, you see. But I can’t blame life either. Because all that you go through is no one’s fault. It is just life happening. Before you get all defensive saying, “Well, I wouldn’t have to go through this if it wasn’t for a chea...