I wake up, it's a bad dream, no one on my side, I was fighting, but I just feel too tired to be fighting, guess I'm not the fighting kind

This is slowly becoming a drag more each day.

Office job really kills the energy, whatever of it I have left. I just sit here, and wait for the series to be up so I can hoard the office internet to download them. I refresh the multitude tabs of the social networks I'm a member of, in dire hope of something to really, truly inspire me. It has been a fruitless quest.

Writing for a Magazine has its perks I surely wouldn't have gotten anywhere else. Firstly, it's not much of a stress. Since Nachi arrived, it has been less boring, I now get someone to infinitely talk of hollywood memes and judge people with someone who really gets it. It's always nice to have more than just a familiar face. So no matter how laughable it gets inside the office, I'm not too much unnerved because we usually just smirk it off and de-stress by discussing feel-good tales, mostly memories of college, and The Jeep anecdotes. Not that it's really heavy -- well for now, at least it's not -- but from where we are at the moment, it's essentially an easy job.

Easy because we've been doing it for the longest time. Hunting for Human Interest stories, going down some place to interview, and bleed off in front of the computer to make an article out of it. It's life as far as we know it. Only now we get to do it without ridiculous side-homeworks from subjects we don't give a rat's ass for: we actually have all day, 5 days a week, to do our stuff. That's like liberty in a bottle, you just open the cap, and drink it all in. Plus, we get paid. How awesome, right?

And truthfully, I'm thankful for this job more than I'm thankful for anything in my life right now. I went through some pretty dark shit months ago, and this job has been more than like the end of the tunnel. It's actually a bit disarming sometimes to wake up every morning and realize that, no, Nami, you are not miserable anymore. Well, really, to not be depressed, because misery is just so much more complicated than being in the state of casual non-sadness.

Best of all, there is a very clear promise of a national byline soon. How soon, that depends on how hard Nachi and I are willing to work (haha) and ofcourse on the company's gamble choices. My cousin once joked me that this would all amount to nothing, because it's a new Magazine, and its genre is not so much mainstream, that maybe after one issue, we'd be laid off. And I just said that I didn't care. At the time, what's important for me was to have something to do, and not be depressed while doing it. So far, so good.

Maybe I'm just built this way. To want what I don't have. To be consistently in desire of something more, or something different. And that's pathetic, but I just can't find comfort in anything that's mine-- because anything I'm involved in is bound to end in the mediocrity bin. So I always beat myself up for things I couldn't do. Oftentimes, it's stories I cannot write. I've definitely grown more secure with my talent over the years-- that's saying I believe that I am a readable writer. That my pieces don't invite a lot of mocking judgments, and pity snickers for being too crappy. Or do they? My point is, I think I'm kinda decent. But this is my blog, I can commit grammatical error and dump shit all over this and it wouldn't be such a big deal because it's my life. And my life is basically just as drab.

But my stories, for publication later this year, or early next-- that is gonna carry my University, my Professors, my company, and most importantly, my career. Everything I will write, people will see, and If I don't do well, I'm committing a suicide. Not saying that we'd incur that immense readership, but this is something very personal, "If I can't be great at it, then I don't wanna do it." But do I have much choice? This is the only job that took me in, and frankly, it's the only one I wanna do now. So all this is up to me, and it's too much pressure. I usually find myself wrapping up stories out of hopelessness because if I linger around it, the more the suckyness shows, and the more depression creeps in. So I just send it out.

And while I wish it won't be torn apart into something totally unrecognizable, I also think that it could use some retouching. But there's this issue shared by the other writers here about the editorial leadership, and it's making me uneasy towards whether humbling down or standing my ground, even if it's just an internal battle. Many of you won't understand this, and might even think we're some sort of egoistic, lowless beginners to be challenging power this way, but when you see me, remind me to tell you the stories in which all of this were based on in the first place. If you're my batch mate, I'm confident you'd understand.

So my struggle? I need help with my writing. Any kind of indirect, implied, applied, mentored, suggested-- basically anything-- help just to hold me down because I'm fluctuating out of sanity. But I'm not getting it professionally, and by my severe insecurity, you probably already know I'm also not getting it personally. I guess what I'm saying is I desperately want to be better at this, and I feel like I'm so far from any of my dreams.

Having a Professor tell you you're not fit for Journalism is another blow to what is already a broken psyche. Maybe I just need some rush, some adrenaline, some energy to bring back what it used to feel to be doing what I'm doing. It's the best natural high because I've felt it at one point, but all of those are foreign to me now. Not even narcotics could take the place.

And there isn't even something to recompense. Books have done that to me quite a few times, but because the novel I'm reading now is boring the wits out of me, I am, again, left alone. But I don't know how to be social, I'm not a stickler to those rules -- befriending, dating, mingling -- I'm usually often confused, and don't know what I'm doing, so most of the time, I'd rather have my face stuffed on paperbacks. Not that I don't like to, trust me, I fuckin love it. But when I get to the page of so much passion, so much love, so much energy, and I just want to dog-ear the hell out of the paper, run around the house and grab somebody I could kiss, and hug, and probably make out with if I'm too damn carried away, but whenever it happens, there is no one there. And I just settle for a tumblr post, or twit, or facebook status, and one time, a creepy Group Message, just so I could have an outlet for firing emotions because if I don't let it out, I wouldn't be able to sleep.

My life is a ball of too many emotions, and there is not much to do about it but curl it up for the future when I can share it with somebody who'd understand. Maybe it's just hormones. Maybe it's because I've had my period for two and a half weeks now, and as my friend once observed, I usually go crazy during my awfully long menstrual phase. Maybe watching John Mayer with my best friends who are so much more of a fan than me will help, maybe I just need those kind of energy be pumped back to me. Music is always a pleasant salvation.

But I kinda need something long term here. I'm thinking of sponsoring a child in World Vision. Never a pet. Maybe getting a boyfriend? Definitely getting a boyfriend, but it's not exactly something you could just get. The universe would have to conspire first and the cosmos would still have to decide first before weaving our fates together and all that, and that just takes too long. I'm getting impatient.

This has been a ridiculously long vent-out, and I still have not started my story, which would be our maiden issue's cover. Imagine the pressure. Thus, this post.

God please help, but in the meantime, Tom Chaplin, thanks heaps.

Not a love letter

And so again, I write about you. I wouldn't have, if only I haven't been reading books that reminded me so much about you and so much about myself when I fell in love with you.

But I did promise never to write you a letter again, let alone a love letter. And I barely have 5 minutes to do this; else, I'd wake up tomorrow being reminded of all those moments I've poured through the pages of my books, weeping silently for I have known what it must've felt to love hopelessly, and be aware that I knew simply because I once knew you. And for that reason alone, tomorrow, I'm gonna wanna worship you, and build you a statue made out of whatever words I will write here. That's not gonna happen.

Because if people were rain, yes, I was drizzle, but you were never a hurricane.

Although I did send you a message tonight. I'd been meaning to since last night. I ended up sending it to a couple of friends, but it was originally meant for you, wherein I quoted John Green's Miles Halter in one of his internal monologues on death, wherein he had said that he had been irretrievably changed, and wherein I added, "Do anything, but please never die." You didn't reply - why would you? Such a random, creepy text of a former admirer asking you not to die.

But for what it's worth: Please don't. Because I'd made a promise with myself to someday, when I can write better, when I'm wiser, write a novel about you. And I don't ever want to end that non-love story with you dying, and with me moping, more than your loss, over the fact that you had gone too soon and left me not knowing you. We are young, and even though I've said a million times about how I'm no longer in love with you, I would still wanna know you. Because among all the things I do not know, I knew love. May it be considered Young Love - but who are people to say? Because when I read these things: of how many times they question themselves worthy of loving someone else, but never having to question the worthiness of the someone else, it seemed to me I had loved. Whichever of the kind it was, I had, and for that, at least, please don't die.

Besides, all my material comes from you. And that's why even if you were never a hurricane, you were still, and forever will be the event that had "irretrievably changed" me.

And all the poignant sadness, or suffering, or self-destruction that came after found shelter in the fact that there was once you; and that I once had found my "Great Perhaps."

I am 22 minutes past my stopwatch and I must stop writing now. Not because you also left me Perhapsless, but because you didn't even have to die. You just had to be you, and I just had to be me, and if love was rain, we make a very good Alabama Summer.

And for that, you don't deserve 22 minutes, not any more, at least.

* The books mentioned and sporadically quoted and cited were Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep and The Man of my Dreams, and the most recent, John Green's Looking for Alaska.

Book Review: Pacific Rims by Rafe Bartholomew

Well, kind of.

All along I had called him "Reyf", it seemed more sophisticated, more fitting to a tall, white, blonde man: more American. It turned out he hates being called that, (it's pronounced as Rahf). The players and coaching staff from the Alaska Aces, the club who took him in as some sort of an Insider, had injected an offensive pun. They called him Reyfist. How Filipino.

This is more a testimony of the author than the book. Because frankly, nothing in there surprised me. Well, nothing except the talk-off that ensued between Roe Ellis and Tim Cone during the halftime huddle of an all-important PBA Finals game 6 - - in some level, I guess I knew that the players and coaches are bound to clash at one point, I just didn't expect it to go down as dramatically. I would've loved to see it, but when I think about Tim Cone yelling "Fuck you" and kicking off a board, I scare off and change my mind. Everything about the flip-flops, the weird, albeit mesmerizing, rims, the traces of Basketball in all walks of Filipino life, and most importantly, the phenomenon that is the Ginebra Fandom (and how it really takes you on a cloud nine to be chanting GINEBRA! GINEBRA! even if you were losing), are somewhat old news to every Filipino hoops fan. Rafe's historical account of Philippine Basketball was more an offering to non-Filipinos; we, however, could only nod in recognition.

But still, I found myself squinting in either laugher, amazement, and disgust in the tales, as if I was only encountering these stories for the first time. There's something about an American writing about the most colloquialy Pinoy trademarks that is truly endearing. I can't believe Rafe had stopped at random sari-sari stores and taken part in corner-of-the-street leagues playing three-on-three with sweaty men who probably made fun of him in local dialects every time they get the chance. But Rafe loved all of it - every single bit of it, and because of that, Pacific rims becomes more than just a Basketball Book, it becomes a commentary on the beautiful country that Philippines is, and a reminder that some of us aren't loving it enough.

Halfway through the page, the pessimist in me was leaning into the thought that maybe Rafe was being phony. Countless people have helped him to achieve what would come to be the breakthrough in his career, ofcourse he owed the Philippines hearty praises. But when I got to the chapter when he started defending the Fil-Ams and their westernized swag, he proved to me his sincerity. I, too, find this Fil-Ams a little too airy for comfort, and to have an American defend them sets the point of the book's truth and the author's commendable candor. I also got the sense that when he described the Filipino players' strange fodness for carressing each other's butts, he was creeped out a bit, and that all the more warmed my heart because it meant the Philippine Culture was still very much our own, despite being reviewed as the melting pot of all foreign norms and thus, lacked identity. A dedicated gay heckler whom the players treat as if they didn't know the "ladyboy" lusted them incessantly - that's pure Pinoy for you, and I was kind of proud.

Let me share to you my favorite line from the book. Now this line came in many forms all throughout the pages, Rafe sees to it that this point was clear consistently, but this line, I think, painted the best picture of the immense love for Basketball Rafe said Pinoy had: "The devotion it must have taken to build an entire court from scratch touched me. It was one of the most sincere expressions of love I've ever laid my eyes on."

For a PBA fan, Pacific Rims was the locker-room pass I've always wanted. Granted, I would've much appreciated if it took me that deep into the Ginebra team rather than Alaska, but the Willie Miller anecdotes made up for it. I've always known the Thriller was a clown, I just didn't know it was that much, and for that, and for all the locker room exlusives, I'll forever be thankful for. You, Rafe, had just made a fangirl's dream come true.

It was during the last chapter, when the book got into a play-by-play narrative of Alaska's championship rally, that I found myself really manifesting the love of the game. When I read Fred Uytengsu's pre-game pep talk -- "I take a lot of pride in this organization because we play by the rules; we do it by the book. We're decent human beings. Guys, you are great men. Tonight, you are going to beat the little men." - - I felt a hot sudden surge of air in my nasal area, the one which is usually a pre-emptive when I'm about to cry. Well, I didn't. But I was almost there, and that's exactly what Basketball does to you, even if it was some other team, it was still Basketball, and it could very well move you to tears. I don't exactly remember watching that game, but as a die-hard Ginebra fan who took the Gary Granada lyrics of the 90's Alaska reign over the Gin Kings seriously, as a Tim Cone non-believer and a loyal, often-harassed, follower of Mac Cardona, I was probably on my couch enthusiastically waiting for Alaska to lose. But to be taken back to that moment, in the behind-the-scenes of Alaska's debacle, I almost wished I could've rewind back to that game and cheered for the Aces instead. I felt for them at that moment.

I also knew how the series was going to turn out. But I poured into those chapters feeling like it was all just happening now, gasping over late-game scrambles as if I didn't know Alaska was eventually going to be champions anyway. I guess that explains why Basketball Fans still watch replays with the same mood they watched the real thing with - there's just something about the tipping of the ball, the flight towards the basket, the monumental pauses the ref takes before making the call, and the joy that moves through your entire body if the call favored your team - - that even if you watch it a thousand times over, the magic remains the same.

And that's what made reading Pacific Rims an unforgettable experience; the passion Rafe had for writing the book I share - - definitely not as much, not even close, but still - - the language he'd written this love story in, I understand. And that made me feel the same unexplainable flutter in your heart that Basketball gives you: like you were part of the team, like you belonged. And that to me seemed quite marvelous.

*The last sentence was borrowed from Paulo Coelho's Zahir

My long-running, open-ended plight

I woke up today particularly hopeful to write just a bit better. Yesterday, I stunk the whole place up with a story I did. I can't even get myself to think about it - - it just reminds me how much I've fooled myself, why I ever thought I could be a writer one day, why I ever considered this kind of life in the first place. Because plainly and simply, I suck.

But yesterday, there was hope. I figured that it might just have been the lack of material, the lack of inspiration (which is, most of the time, the case) or the fact that I haven't been eating good foods lately. Or that I haven't been getting my customary 10 pages a day (I can barely get through 5). So for hopes of some spark to fly by, I pulled out copies of Time Magazine from my office's stack. I've been meaning to get this particular issue for myself, (the first time ever that I'd purchase Time), it was the one with the cover story on Aisha, the Afghan teen who had her nose and ears cut off by the Taliban when she attempted to leave Afghanistan because her in-laws were abusing and maltreating her.

I read Aryn Baker's piece, and not once was I stuck on a complicatedly-stitched sentence. Her words were clear, they were outright, they were simple, but damn, they were intense. And here I am, always trying to puff my words with a whiff of wit - sometimes with the called-for puns - or even drama, because without it, my story screamed of mediocrity. No not even mediocre, it was useless, it was a grueling, catastrophic waste.

Now I know I shouldn't be going off comparing myself to Time (or Newsweek, which I often do) because it would have been such a hilarious, depressing attempt at an otherwise super uneven contest. But this is what I like to do, I like to think in big bubbles, it's the only way I can insert some sense of...well, bigness to my dwarfing career. It's like when some actress think of Julia Roberts when she does scenes, surely, she wouldn't par with one of the most decorated Actress of all-time, but putting herself up to such an immense test would, at best, heighten the lowest she can fall.

I saw at the issue's backpage something of an Asia's Prize Essay writing contest. When I saw that the deadline was August 31, I felt a tinge of sayang!. (For God's sakes, I don't even know how to put this sayang emotion to an english equivalent.) But while I was reading the directions, I felt as though a thousand mocking eyes were at me, whispering to themselves how a lowly, talentless pseudo writer could possibly fathom joining a Time-collaborated Essay contest. I mean, fuck, what was I thinking? I can't even write a decent write-up on a coffee from an animal's shit - - how do I even write "a fresh idea on the key challenges facing Asia that will have an impact on public policy and business in the continent"? Pretty delusional, right?

And in that split-second, warped into the realization of my petty, hopeless dreams, all that I've been about, all that I've worked for - and practically lived and breathed for - came crashing down and pulverized to tiny, sharp, broken pieces. That if I try to put it back together, I will cut, and further injure my already wounded spirit.

And that's exactly what happened today. I woke up this morning absorbing, for the first time in my life, the idea of a 'new beginning.' Out from my bed to the bus going to my office, I've already been writing inkless word on my head, on the faces of passengers next to me, on the bus window that reeks of Manila's congested traffic. And for a while, I felt motivated. I couldn't wait to get my ass in front of the computer and type these words. I had a whole lead on my head. I put it on the screen, and there, greeting my day, staring me bluntly in my bewildered face, was yet, another set of catastrophic mess.

But I wasn't about to let my spirits fall - it was only 9 in the morning! If I can fall down the bell jar at 9, how miserable could I be at 3 in the afternoon? I was determined.

The result? Me, sitting blankly in front of the computer, at 11:47, a dozen tabs of articles open in my browser, and not a single word (not even a single idea) written. Not because I can't (although yes, I very much can't) but because I don't want to. I already know I'm bad - - but to see the physical evidence of it blinking at me, ready to leap out of the screen to punch me, just so I could wake out of this senseless, ridiculous dream of wanting to be a writer, would kill me. It would, literally, put me out.

It's not as if I don't have the material for a good story (which in fact, I don't) - I can have the best material in the world right now. But I can't seem to find it, I don't seem to be able to spot it, or the have the right eye to see it, and even the right mind to understand it - I don't have the sense of a writer. And even when, by some miracle, I do, I doubt that I can even make something out of it. I'd probably end up butchering an otherwise majestic tale.

And the worse part is: I don't know how to do anything else! And frankly, I don't want to do anything else. This is my life - my air, my food, my lover, my heated affair, my best friend, my business partner, my nemesis, but also my rock - this is everything. And to see it flail desperately out of form, I was terrified.

I don't expect you to understand. My mom doesn't even get it. Only my closest friends would know. (Monica, you of all would know, after witnessing my 1-hour walk-out slash breakdown over a low-graded paper, how I'm just about feeling right the fuck now.) But in an effort to explain the immensity by which writing affects me, imagine Mariah Carey, waking up one day, realizing she could no longer belt out what has once been the world's perfect note. Hell, let's not even talk about the pros here. Imagine some of the UAAP's worst (in technical skills, in commercial potential, in mass appeal, in raw talent, and sense of the game) players -- imagine them as young boys, holding a ball and baking themselves every day under the sweltering sun, perfecting what they think is a pretty rad touch, imagine them on the day a College called, recruiting them, imagine them realizing that their dream is finally going to come true. And imagine them today, from the Team's second team, and a multitude of bad press, all of them saying he simply sucks. Imagine him dribbling a ball on a deserted court today, and he can't even make an undefended, well-positioned, timely trey - - and finally realizing it all has been a big, cruel, prolonged joke. Imagine him in that heartbreaking moment - then imagine him in me.

That's what it means to me.

That's how much I am torn to pieces right now.

That's how much I'm screwed. So if you're not me today, right in this moment, and on the moments to come, good for you.

My kids will never go to college (Or I shall never become a writer)

either that or I should abandon writing and move to the more lucrative Industry like Out-Sourcing (a fancy peasy term for Call Center) just so that by the time I'm married, I have my kids's college money in a trust fund with some still left to spare.

College is so expensive - that I just realized. (I know, I know, what a self-absorbed little brat I have been for not having considered that earlier.) In UST, on tuition alone, my mom spent P240,000. If you add that to all the allowances, the miscellaneous, the excessive foods, and all those days I never unplugged my television, and my laptop, my mom must've had superpowers that could turn leaves into peso bills.

I'm here, sitting in my office - when I should be reading Pacific Rims at the comfort of my own time, I am instead semi-palpitating on the after-thought, this sickening, revolting, after-thought that I've wasted a lot of good money in the past. Money that my mother earns from overworking. God, what a horrible daughter I must've been.

And what a horrible daughter I will be, if I insist on going to Graduate School next year. Four years of College costs just as much as one year of Post-Graduate studies, which, I wasn't surprised, also costs the same as a 5-day training course in the BBC. Yes, it's the BBC, I know. But how much are brands really worth?

They used to say opportunities. They told me that UST on my resume would translate to my dream job (provided that my talent comes at par). Well guess what, it fucking didn't. I've devoted some significant moping time trying to get my head around on the reality that is my non-existent, short-breathed, writing career. Or screw it, maybe I simply just can't write. Maybe I have been under the illusion that I can - maybe I'll accept that. But I know some of the best writers who (those not only touted by me but touted by people whose opinions matter) are also scraping for the dream job - whatever version of that theirs may be. I even know a friend, good writer, well-cultured, and studied Journalism in Wesfuckingleyan (the one in Ohio, not in Cabanatuan) - but even she was overlooked.

Money matters have been a major hold-up in this whole Master's degree thing. But the more that I ingest this screwed-up philosophy over the many tricks of job-grabbing, the more that I'm discouraged to shell off a major part of my family's already shelled-out fortune for an Education that may only come as good as mere bragging rights.

It's not as if I'm asking for the impossible. It's not as if every one of my Journ peers are held into the undergrade. Cos they're not. Have you ever come across a published article and thought, "Damn it, I could do that!", or even, "Mother***** I can do better than that." It's not a very often occasion (because half an hour I spend in Inquirer.net is tantamount to half a week of depression over their writing skills that could trump mine mercilessly - you can imagine my misery if I visit the more up-class online pubs) - but on the ones I do, I could almost cry.

But I can't say I wasn't warned. During my sophomore year, Christian Esguerra, Journalism Instructor and Senior Reporter for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, told the class that the odds were mean. I remember him saying, "only 10 people in this class will get to have a serious career in Journ........if you're lucky." I'll never forget that. In our junior year, Eros Atalia, Arts and Letters Filipino Instructor, Writer, and Author, said that the sun had fallen down on us. We were only a year into Graduation, it was then too late to drop out from the course, he said, was actually a curse. "Anong ginagawa niyo dito? Niloloko niyo lang mga sarili niyo," I can vividly remember his comic self saying, widening up his eyes to reveal a more serious look, trying to psych the class out, who were still smirking to what we thought was just a cruel joke. The worst he said was that we will never be able to pay our parents back, that we will forever remain indebted to them 'till the day we die, which meant that they've wasted their time funding us - which is now a fact, as you may have already noticed by the first sentences of this blog, that turned out to be personally true.

Ofcourse, at that moment, I was too high on my horse to listen. I was passionate, I was hungry, I was so fired up - I thought I could defy statistics. I thought I was "lucky" - and that was just months ago. It took five months for all that fuel to dry up because what remains in me right now is a pseudo-writer imprisoned to a London Grad School fantasy, and the warden of life is just outside my rail, ready to bully me. God what a sucky imagery, no wonder I wasn't hired.

I've made a lot of blogs like this in the past. But all of them ended with me saying that I'd never give up on writing, that this was my life. While that remains true, I am no longer sure. At the moment, I can afford to dream, to still think I could be "lucky", but when push comes to shove, I'll be forced to break up with the one thing that have made my heart flutter. Because it's also the one thing that have torn my heart desperately apart.

But until then, my future kids will have to accept they won't be going to college.

I, too, am willing to go the distance

Yes, this is a movie review. Well, sort of. In the risk of ruining the gumball that is Drew Barrymore and Justin Long's newest movie, Going the Distance, I'm shooting for the stars to write something of the sentiments that I could no longer contain. And also, there will be spoilers. So be very wary.

First off, I will start with this declaration: It is better than 500 days of Summer. While the very much riveted Deschanel-Levitt Indie film is more to my usual taste, Going the Distance, however managed to arrest me in an immensity much stronger than Tom and Summer's Ikea date.

Which therefore gets me to say that Tom Hansen is no longer my dream boy. He could suck up all The Smiths that he could get, which, by the way, never really approached my music bubble, (yes I'm no fan, Oh I'm very truly sorry) - because Garrett Grant and me will be busy hoarding the pub game machine. Granted, I don't know the game, but still. I share Erin's incessant need to top even her own score, and for a girl who once played on some random guy's mobile word game in a party instead of talk to him (which, I then found out, was decorum) - I'd like a guy who can make me sweat for a run on a Text Twist High Score. It also goes for other games, except NBA Live, because I suck at that.

They didn't even have to try. Erin and Garrett? Nobody fell into the deep, hopeless, pining over the other. One night, after a couple of beer, and a domineering win at some friday night general knowledge quiz, before a Top Gun poster, were two Shawshank suckers; and in the span of a monologue act-out and a humor to let someone play the soundtrack to their hookup, they were caught.

That's comforting to me, kind of, to know that you could still meet a person who, without an effort, fits you. Who, when he says, "That sucked!" after he had just followed you inside the airport, you understand, and know, immediately, what he's talking about and burst out the ever-elusive, relationship-defining, "I know!". Because when, "you know," you really just know.

And how could you ever turn down a guy who's fantasy of death would be to die eating tortellini? Only the dumbest would dump someone, who, in the first place, was willing to answer Q&A probing of your life-altering album and not say, "None." Oh God I hate that.

In the middle of making this post, (I was googling whether it was an album that Erin had asked Garrett for and not a song), I stumbled upon a review who incidentally contrasted mine on-point. It said that the movie wasn't able to live up to the 500 Days hype. As pretty as Zooey was, an introverted, ghostly-pretty Summer would not be able to compare to Erin Lankfurt, editor-hating, Cruise-loving, LOL-ing Erin, promising intern for the New York Sentinel.

After Garrett's stint of the oblivion, non-committing dating life, he found himself saying I love you to a girl he had just met weeks before, and been in a short, long-distance affair with. But when he said I love you, you believed him. You believe that any guy could just as easily transform from a roll-with-the-punches jerkoff to someone who would cross the coast for you, if the girl was ERL-a slob, albeit endearing, girl who just happened to be your Ms. Right. You believe that any two different people, once they'd met, and they were soulmates, would just know, and would just be nothing short of in love.

Another favorite scene is when they watched The Boxer Rebellion, and Garrett made that speech about real talent going down the waste in place of some commercialized Jonas Brother-lookalikes that could make John Lennon weep. Are there any more of those guys left? I'm sure they are, but I seem to be so far off their spectrum, or maybe I'm really just no Erin Lankfurt - but even Erin Lankfurt didn't know she was an Erin Lankfurt. Until Garrett made her feel like she was the girl.

It was sappy, in some way, but the movie had the kind of dialogue that if not happening in real life, made you wish it was happening in real life, because if it did, what a cool world this must be.

They've always told me not to get hooked to movies too much, because I end up dazing to the idea of a well-tooled Happy Ending. But if the movie was Going the Distance, and your leading man was Garrett Grant, who religiously follow your work online even if you were broken up, why is it so wrong to wish that life, was, indeed, like a movie?

Is a boy with a job he hates, and a ragged apartment that comes with a creepy room mate; a boy who gets a fake tan, and a boy who's best mother reference was a life owed to her vagina, too much to ask? Are we really in such scarcity of men? Have we really gone abundant with Jed Mosleys (refer to How I met your Mother Episode: The Wedding Bride)? If so, then trash all The Boxer Rebellion and other genius music alike, put on Iyaz (no offense), wear too much make up, too few clothes, flirt with a beer-chugging, disco-popping, loser, with his shirt collar up, and quote Vanilla Twilight lyrics (again, no offense) as our next day's status of our newly-found affair.

But then again, if it comes to that, I would gladly live alone, with my ipod on.

Because today, my playlist has grown richer thanks to an awesome soundtrack, which takes us full circle to Going the Distance, and the amazingness of a Justin Long-laden screen.

Hopeless Romantic

I've been contemplating on tearing my old notebook apart, going back and forth the last few days, weighing how much I would probably regret doing so. And then I finally decided to, but convinced myself to take one last peek, confident that whatever I

will read, I will want to throw away. I've been that miserable. But I opened the notebook to this:

Lately, I've been reading too many love letters, and I could almost feel a dagger thrusting through my heart - not because of the lack of someone to write a letter to, but because of the lack of the same beautiful words. I know I could never write the same, because I don't feel the same. That made absolutely zero sense. But hopefully, this doodle can sum up exactly what I'm feeling.

I took the Chic-Lit (Vince's Life: The Wedding) never expecting to put it down. Besides, I had so little to read and so much time to do it. I also didn't want to put it down simply because I wouldn't be able to resist not knowing if Vince - the Edward Cullen of my teeny, boppy Filipino generation - would end up with the love of his life. And so I didn't. I have a huge, pretty detrimental, unhealthy penchant for happy ever afters. The ones where sadness is just a cliche segue to the much coveted perfect ending. I think it's not as bad as most thinks it is. Reading Vince's life, I dazed off to my own literary dream; between the pages and my head were words suddenly materializing as if I had somebody I could write about.

If I had, I think I could laud him that way. I know I could laud him that way. I could, just as this fictional Vince Teves, make the world root for our love, or at least, root myself in the world's behalf just as long as somebody is believing. I have metaphors, I have symbols, I have anecdotes squatting in the better part of my head, rolling in circles, searching for some meaning, because without somebody, the words would've failed. I would've failed. And I don't wanna fail.

The greatest love letters I've ever read was those from people I personally know, those whose love I've witnessed and therefore know that their words truly had meaning. Those whom I know didn't fail.

But I could fail. I could feel the words dying, and what's really sad about it, is that I'm weeping for the loss of my story, when I hadn't even had the person I could share the story with.

I think I'm gonna keep my notebook for a little while longer.