I want a glass of water on my bedside because I cough at night

And in the morning, someone who knows what makes my coffee “just right”

I want someone who’d enjoy going with me on my aimless walks

And in the dark, we’d have nonsensical late night talks

I need someone to understand all the grief I hold inside of me

And yearn to meet someone I’d want to take home to meet my family

Someone who never does anything I can’t tell my friends freely

Someone who adores me and won’t trample on my dignity

The older I get, the simpler my needs

But it seems that what I ask for are astronomical deeds

I would rather give up and never find romance

Than let my heart find itself again

In the palms of the wrong hands

I just … genuinely need a break. From everything.

I’ve still been working but my mind is blank. It honestly feels like I’m on autopilot right now. It feels silly to even make the conscious decision to be unemployed for a bit and be without a paycheck until who knows when. I’ve always been anxious about not having money. And yet, here I am, about to fly out to another country so I can cry in a different timezone.

I just need to feel something. Anything.

I barely have an appetite. When I eat, I feel like throwing up and everything I’ve managed to consume seems to give me diarrhea. I spend my days and nights just sleeping the hours away (unless I really have to move to work). The last time I went out of the house was for the cremation. I have not stepped foot outside since.

Life is dreary and I can’t find the will or motivation to do anything. I used to literally work through my grief – I used to say that I’m most productive when I’m going through shit. But back then, when I used to have these thoughts, I would pull myself from that void and think about how I can’t go anywhere because I had Rox. And now I don’t. I don’t even know what to look forward to anymore.

If I’m being perfectly honest, life feels like every single time I take a step towards feeling okay, life pushes me back 5 steps behind.

I’ve been trying my very best not to rot in bed, but most days just feel pointless. I feel like I’m in this void of trying to feel something. Anything. To pull me back from this blackhole of numbing pain and sadness.

My mom died a slow death, one we had to watch happen. And when she finally passed, there was guilt in the relief that it’s finally over. I felt the same way then, and had went to different places just to feel alive.

But no matter where I go, there I am. This feeling is the same regardless of how beautiful the views may be, or how luxurious the hotels I stay in are. My reaction to loss has always been to leave everything familiar and overstimulate my senses with new things. My mom. My ex. Rox.

My chest hurts from time to time, and it’s the same feeling back in 2019 – that I had to go to a cardiologist to have it checked out. Nothing’s wrong. But everything’s wrong.

I’ve always had a weird zest for life. Always told people I want to live to a hundred. But what for? I’ve had 31 years. And the past decade has been filled with losses and I don’t know how to deal with more of them. I just feel so done.

# 1 I never thought I’d have some tears over resigning until I had to say it out loud to my manager today.

This job was one I got after being laid off back in 2020. I genuinely did enjoy working for this firm, even if at one point last year, it felt like a golden cage. I was getting bored and with that boredom came demotivation. However, I had amazing benefits (yet to work for a company that can rival the benefits from this one – it’s even my global HMO that paid for my hospital trip in Bali) and I can work wherever in the world, as long as I showed up and did whatever work I’m supposed to do. I’ve “worked from home” in different cities and countries, which is honestly a huge plus for me. And I’m not required to go to the office unless the client needs to see me. Such a huge plus.

I’ve expressed my intention to resign but it still isn’t official until my actual last day. I’ve signed a contract with the next company I’m working for though, so there’s that. I also liked most of the people I work with (except for a handful that I would rather never encounter again, but that’s a given), and a few of them have even become outside-of-work friends.

But now I’m once again second-guessing this decision to leave. Sigh. I’m gonna miss working from home all the time.

#2 Someone expressed interest in collaborating in a coffee book sort of thing. It was one of those things that happened randomly. She told me she loved the concept of sad girl scents, and that the stories behind them were “written beautifully”. She has experience with publishing and wondered if I wanted to make a merch out of them … and honestly, I’m terrified of putting out my work out there. So I might not do it anytime soon.

#3 It’s weird how for the longest time, regardless of who the dude in my life was, I’ve always had the fantasy of having a beach wedding. I guess it may be the age, but a lot of the things that I want for myself for the future veers away from that. Even the song I’ve sworn will be the only song I want to walk down the aisle to has now changed. I never even realized how far I’ve pivoted from my initial dreams, plans, and goals.

Just a weird reminder for me that I can veer off path, and still figure shit out (eventually). So it’s gonna be okay. I’m gonna be okay. Scratch that. I’m gonna be amazing.

I know, I know. I only have a parasocial relationship with Taylor Swift since 2007. I don’t have “Taylor Swift apologist” on all my social media bios if I wasn’t in the trenches of twitter back in 2016.

However, it did kind of make me sad to hear the seemingly real news of her breakup with Joe Alwyn. But I am not going to speculate on her relationship as she’s mentioned over and over how damaging it has been to her mental health to have her private life be dissected, her love life be treated a spectator sport.

So I’ve just been on a binge listen of her discography after logging out of my stan account as I want to play zero part of something that contributes to someone’s pain.

A lot of the takes I’ve been reading has been “you canNOT date someone for that long and write all these songs for someone you’re not going to end up with”. Which honestly, kind of made her breakup news more real to me.

Because you totally can. Been there. Done that. I’m sure that if I dig deep enough in this blog, I’d find beautiful, magical, fleeting moments that I’ve immortalized through words so I can keep them as happy memories with someone I felt so strongly about. And yet, now that’s all it’s ever going to be. A moment of time that’s long passed.

And if someone who read that at the time has the ability to see in the future, I’m sure whoever they are would be surprised how drastically different life has turned out.

One of the things I never told anyone was that I wrote my ex letters for 2 whole years post breakup. I wrote down everything I wanted to say, everything I’ve actually said that I wish were communicated better, everything I dreamed the life we never ended up living could be. Because it’s weird to have that and suddenly be so uncertain.

I don’t know why I feel so much attachment to Taylor, aside from her discography being the soundtrack of my life. But whatever she’s doing, and wherever she is in life, I truly hope she’s okay. My breakup was kept under wraps and no one outside of my handful of friends really knew until it was well and truly over. The truth behind that breakup didn’t even make it out of my mouth until about half a year later. It took me almost 2 years of therapy to even share it with my family (believe me when I say that my sister wanted to drive over there to run him over lol).

Even at the moment, my relationship with social media (and honestly, including this blog – because I have so many posts published privately that I only ever switch to public once I’m sure someone has to dig deep in the archives to find it) and giving people access to my life has been limited. A really big portion of my life is lived offline or in group chats with my friends (literally have a Telegram channel that acts as my personal Close Friends list where I share life updates).

I can’t imagine having my life be as unmanageably sized as Taylor’s and have to go through all of this in the public eye. Hope she’s okay.

I’m back to documenting the mundane and it was weird watching this back, when I’ve always felt like my life is uneventful.

For my own memory bank, here are some things that were not on video:

• Rox’s kidney is showing some early stages of a medical problem. She’s not listless at all and the vet says she’s not in pain. So at least we have that. Her lab results show that kidney-issue aside, she’s pretty healthy. The vet nga was even saying it’s weird for a fat old dog to have normal cholesterol etc. even if she’s eating human food. But I’ve been careful what Rox eats and mix vitamins with her food so that’s nice that it works.
• Got my list of food allergies. As it turns out, food allergies are one of those things that does not always trigger your histamines which is how they can go undetected (even if for a lifetime). I got prescribed with an epi-pen and she told me to make sure I bring my prescription with me wherever I go (especially in airports) because I need to have that epi-pen in my bag at all times.
• Still working on some of my hormone issues. Got another set of prescription for that. I’m back to doing low impact workouts because I need to be so much more careful with how I take care of my body.
• I was featured for women’s month! Well, the brand was featured as a female-owned business.
• I got a job offer. Which I gave an informal acceptance for but have not signed anything yet. I’m thinking of retracting my acceptance because I keep getting this weird feeling in my gut that says I should not go through this. I’ve never had it with any of my previous moves so there’s that. I’m usually the type that thinks long and hard before making a decision, but once I do, I feel settled and would stick to it. However, there’s just this weird feeling I can’t shake off. Or maybe it’s the fact that it’s one of those jobs that would require me to leave the house 3x a week and I already know it might mess with my health. Oh well.
• As a brand owner, I am now more proactive with reaching out to content creators to ask if I can send them gifts with no strings attached. I always feel like I’m the market of my own products, so I wanted to send them to creators with content I consume.
• I believe one of the dudes who I had deep feelings for got married. I seem to have seen an ig story of it from a mutual friend. I don’t keep up with the lives of the dudes where the only relationship we had was either romantic/potentially romantic and don’t bother staying connected even through social media unless we ended up being genuinely friendly. Anyway, it reminded me of Emily Weisband’s Indie Movie Zoomout Moment – I remember wishing I could take him home, and
  I got really close, too
  But I just had an indie movie zoom-out moment
  And I wasn’t supposed to
  ‘Cause all the boys I’ve loved before have smiles on their faces
  Kissing girls that aren’t me and my heart isn’t breaking
  ‘Cause I’m sitting here across from you
  And there’s nothing I’d change
  Maybe everything is in its right place

April should be fairly busy as well. I’m releasing something new for the brand which was one of those ideas where I just went “what if I let my intrusive thoughts win and I become as unhinged as them” lol. And I may or may not be resigning from my current job. I guess we’ll know by the end of the month.