Personal Heaven - Fully Booked Store. 

Dear Boyfriend for five years and counting,

Forgive me but I can't help but think of dirty thoughts whenever I see Channing Tatum's shirtless pictures. But you're still my favorite shirtless guy though. =)

Matabungkay Beach

At Kwebang Lampas, Pagbilao, Quezon

My girlfriends, aren't we lovely?

Sand Bathing

Say PEACE!

KF Girlfriends

From left to right, that's Teza, Me, and Rean.

A Birthday Note

Dear 14-year-old-Elayne,

It’s your birthday tomorrow. Ask me how I knew, I am you, only prettier and oh, yes,” older”. I know all about you. I am your 24-year-old self. I am working now, believe it or not, you finished college despite your family’s financial troubles. You will know how, just read along this letter. Right now, you are a regular teenager, you know, the “hater” type. If I’m your sister, I would hate and be ashamed of you. What an awful way of venting out your anger, look at you, singing along with Simple Plan’s songs. I couldn’t believe how difficult and cheesy my 14-year-old self was.

Anyway, let me tell you about this year, about who you are, and what you’ll be this year.

You are a ball of angst inside a skinny girl with tangled, dry hair that’s always tie in a ponytail. Yes, you look like a real Class A nerd that you are. You are a worrier. You worry about the future too much. You can’t even keep your hands steady for a minute that your classmates will start to think that you have a serious muscle problem. You are always frantic, always the Little Miss Uptight. You obey rules, driving in a steady, slow, boring pace. You’re predictable. People can easily guess your reactions in a certain situation, the way they know that the sun sets in the west.

Two months ago, your (our parents, I stand corrected) parents broke up. It’s a messy break-up, I may say. It’s the sort of break-up that the whole town will talk about for years. Whenever town folks see you, you’ll be the sorry reminder of that scandal. You hated it so much. You will vow to yourself that you cannot let those people label you as the girl whose parents broke up after 13 years of marriage. So, you will try to achieve and be more than what they expected of you.

You will keep hiding your waterloo, which is Mathematics and all subjects that include numbers. In doing so, you excel very much in words. Damn, you will be a pretty good ‘wordplayer’. You will even join your highschool campus publication. You will write as if you’re flying in the vast open sky. You will get few compliments and medals to prove it. You will tell yourself, “If ever I’d have my own children, I’d show them these medals and told them that I’ve lived through ink.”

Despite of your glory days, you will still become a growing ball of angst. Sometimes, it’s pulsing like it’s alive. You will be a closed-minded teenager. You will always think that the world is always against you. But not when you are with your friends (Yes, from a 24 year old’s point of view, I still couldn’t believe that you have found friends.) You are not a picky-eater, but you sure are meticulous in choosing your friends. They will share your passion- books, Japanese anime, movies, thoughts, poems, imagination, special place that you will name as “animazing place.” They will know your secrets, you will know theirs. You will cry, laugh, and celebrate birthdays with them. You will treasure their letters and their understanding of your situation. They won’t say a word to you about your family, but they’ll know all of your pains and uncried tears. You will love them this year, you will always love them forever. Please, stick with them though you’ll be parting ways with them soon. Never ever lose them.

At the age of 14, you will meet your bestfriend. You are well aware that the world is a lonely place to live in without a bestfriend. This letter isn’t enough to tell the world how much you love her. Someday, you will promise yourself that you will make her an ode. She will be your renaissance in a strange kind of way. Come to think of it, she’s a bit of a goth to other people. Well, she’s your own personal “reading lamp.” Your own gravity. Guess, what teener Elayne, you’ll be celebrating your 10th anniversary as bestfriends come April 2012. It seems like a hundred years away from 2003 but that’s how far you’ll go as bestfriends. Your friendship with her will defy time, distance, and reasons.

You will spend your fourteenhood trying hard to please everybody, achieving stuff that will soon lose meaning to you, hating the world, hating your parents, writing letters and journals, feeling sorry for yourself, and finding friends. Of all these things, finding friends will be the highlight of your year, the single, most important thing that you will ever do in your teenage years. Your angst will shrink into a marble-sized ball with the help of your friends who will stay all throughout.

If in another dimension, time, space warp, and all those crap, you are there, Elayne at fourteen, please enjoy being so. You will be too busy hating the world and what it has done to you, you will not be able to understand that at 14, that being a kid is exactly what it’s all about. Enjoy the victories, enjoy the failures, let go of the things that are beyond your control because what and who you are right now has great impact on what 24 year-old Elayne will be.

And please, don’t stop writing. You don’t understand it now, but in the future, you will. It will help you through college. Your words will finance your college fees. After college, you will stop “inking” words. I’ll save that for another story. For now, I just have one thing to ask you, how would you feel if you have big strong wings but you can’t fly. It’s not that you don’t know how, but you taught yourself to unlearn how to do it. If you’re worried about the future and all the unlearning stuff that I’m talking about, don’t be. At 14, writing is your oasis. So please, enjoy “inking” your teenage world. Don’t worry about the future too much, remember that everything that you can unlearn, can also be re-learn.

Right now, your 24 year-old self is picking her pen again and starting to re-learn. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll see her flying one of these days.

I hope you find this letter when you wake up tomorrow, together with the sloppily-made birthday card that your sisters and brother made for you. It’s pinned inside the wall of your cabinet. Later this day, you will meet your friends at you bestfriend’s house. Then you and your friends will have a picnic beside that santol tree in the “animazing place.”

Happy 14th birthday, Elayne!