I took my younger self out for coffee.
It was raining.
She was five minutes late, and I was five minutes early.
It was already her fourth one for the day, and it was my first.
She was carrying her books, her pens, her laptop, and apparently the whole world inside her large bag pack for some reason, while I only brought my wallet and my notebook.
A page fell out, and it was a draft of another existential article she planned on writing for Hive. She humored me a bit about her realizations from reading about Jung, Tolstoy and Nietzsche.
She ordered a latte, as if she ordered something light to contrast all the caffeine-laden drinks she had been ordering throughout the day.
I asked her how she was, and judging from the unevenness of her shoulders, it was evident that she was still trying to hold everything together. She talked about how difficult her life was— LDR, living in the same roof as her family, teaching, having a job, having students, being constantly misunderstood, being somewhere she doesn’t want to be— asking time and time again if the emptiness and misalignment she felt would be forever.
“Will I ever get out of teaching?” she asked me with utmost sincerity.
“You will, and it would be the saddest and most beautiful transitions you will experience in your life”
“How so?”
“Well, because of love”
“Love? You mean I’ll finally get married, and be committed to someone forever?”
“Well, not really.”
“So, we’re not married yet?”
“No”
A look of disappointment rolled over her face, but also a bit of understanding “Let me guess, he and I didn’t work out?”
“No”
“Did someone better come along?”
“I guess you could say that”
“Could you elaborate more on that?”
She looked at me with a face I almost completely forgot— the face I saw in the mirror every time I would feel slightly unloved, slightly inadequate, slightly abandoned, and slightly bullied by the world— a look of utter desperation for answers to my almost never-ending list of questions to the existential void.
“Listen. You are going to experience a love so profound and pure like no other. But not from any male romantic partner. Our current boyfriend right now is great, and honest, and has his own set of quirks, but he's not what I'm talking about.
Someone already loves you so much even before you even existed. They loved you before any man ever laid a hand on you. And they are not interested in you based on what you can offer— not your body, not your face, not your talents, not your performance, not on how much you can put food on the table, and certainly not on your personality, or your ‘vibe’.
You once chased after people relentlessly, and still will chase after people who weren’t even willing to cross a puddle for you, but someone will come, who even already crossed an ocean for you.
I know this doesn’t make sense now, and it probably won’t for a really long time, because you’ve only gotten used to the type of love the people around you could afford for you—
affection and praise that can only be given unless you perform and put on make-up,
validation that is handed out unless you post your nth selfie on the internet,
or hang your nth medal on the family wall,
slivers of security that only present itself when you spread yourself thin,
or hide your hurt in the crevices of your armor,
and that’s why you’re so tired,
and why you haven’t gotten enough sleep,
and how it’s showing underneath your eyes, your spine and your shoulders,
you’re so worn from doing all these things,
and yet you really don’t have to do these,
but what’s so sick about it is that
you don’t know how else to be
and you don’t know how to stop.”
And then the dam breaks down
and the waterworks break lose.
I see my younger self covering her face and her eyes and flooding her end of the table— unpacking all the things she had been trying to hold together all on her own.
“It doesn’t make sense…”
“I know, and it won’t make sense for a really long time. But I promise you, it will.”
I had scars attesting the damage empty promises could do to a person, yet here I am— holding a worn-out, twenty-three year old version of myself in my arms, and promising that things will start to make sense.
“Who is this person? Why isn’t he here yet?”
“He is already here. Sometimes, human hearts are just so jaded and broken by life, that we’ve been conditioned to think that this is all it’s ever going to be, and anything too good to be true feels too much of a scam.”
“I feel like I am beyond broken because I can’t see myself ever believing that.”
“I know. But here I am, basking in this person’s light every single day.”
The rain poured down and the winds blew hard. A storm was taking a place outside the cafe, and inside my younger self’s heart, but I’m glad I was there to comfort her. She almost always seemed to be drowning.
Hi. I’m Roxanne.
A twenty-year old something trying to put as much life in my life as possible, one day at a time.
There is this trend I saw people were doing on social media, “I took my younger self out for coffee”. I thought that this would be a worthy insert to start my reintroduction in this platform.
I’m reintroducing myself in this platform after a long hiatus, because... what else? Life.
I took a long break from writing as I believed that life should be lived, with much presence and vigor as much as possible. Living life is a prerequisite of any attention-worthy write-up. At that time, I didn’t seem to do much of living, and thus the hiatus.
What you will expect from my page, is a tavern of unraveled thoughts and reflections from the mind of a (now) 28-year old Filipina, who seems to take pleasure in making sense of things. As per Plato himself said, the unexamined life isn’t worth living.
My day-to-day life consists of learning, relearning and unlearning. It’s kind of a necessity now, especially that I’m taking my MS in Los Banos, Laguna, far away from the privilege and comfort of being my own hometown, Tagbilaran City. It also includes being away from the comforts of familiarity and faithfully embracing the unknown.
I’m relearning Tagalog.
I’m unlearning unhealthy relational dynamics, and
I’m learning to have the strength to surrender, and give grace including myself, every single day.
From those who knew me in this platform before, stick around for my next write-up where I will talk about:
- Why I left Tagbilaran, Bohol for Laguna
- My thought process and actual process of deciding to take up graduate school and
- My thoughts and pursuit of “what’s worth wanting”
Life is meant to be lived, and not dreaded, and I hope my write-ups can be a source of solace and hope for everyone who is having a rough time in this planet to hold onto.
Remember that you are loved and will always will be,
Roxanne 💛
ABOUT THE PROTEAN CREATOR
Roxanne Marie is a twenty-year-old something who calls herself the Protean Creator.
She has a background in chemical engineering, worked as a public school teacher, and currently, retrying her luck as a blogger with passion and frustration, and lastly, a life enthusiast. She loves open discourse, witty musings, discussions about abstract and tangible ideas, and any opportunity where she can insert memes into the conversation. She is doing her best to walk the way of love.
She is on a mission to rediscover her truth through the messy iterative process of learning, relearning and unlearning, and openly discusses the ideas and thoughts that are born from her experiences here on Hive.
Currently, she is taking her Masters in UP Los Banos, Laguna, all the while documenting her misadventures, misfortunes, pagka-hugotera, reflections and shenanigans as a working-class millennial.
If you like her content, don't forget to upvote and leave a comment to show some love. It would be an honor to have this post reblogged as well. Also, don't forget to follow her to be updated with her latest posts, and catch her next intellectual (and most of the time, untethered) rants.