Nostalgia’s a bitch

Tina 1 Comment

It happened again on a Tuesday. I was at mass, and as I knelt down to pray after receiving communion, some sort of movie reel started playing in my head. Or maybe the more accurate term is movie clips, because they were different scenes from a certain time in my life, one that I really didn’t want to remember that time. (Or anytime, really.)

As I walked back to the office after the mass, I tried to think of other things to stop the movie reel of memories from playing. But when that proved to be a bit futile, I sighed and muttered, “Nostalgia’s such a bitch.”

I have a sharp long-term memory. I remember small moments – as in really small moments – so randomly, sometimes, that I think it freaks others out because they cannot remember the things I was talking about. But I remember them, and if it was a happy moment, I keep it. I used to write about it (and a friend told me that’s why I remember most of it), but later as I grew up, I didn’t have to write about it. I just remember it. I keep it, and it seeps into me, and I remember it, remember it, over and over again.

So much that sometimes, those memories feel a lot like reality.

And when your memories are happy, it’s fun to relive them, and maybe even hope that those memories happen again.

But things happen, and life changes. No matter how happy those memories are, they turn bitter when you know that they can never happen again.

Nostalgia can be such a bitch.

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Twenty Eight

Tina 3 Comments

Hello, I’m 28 today.

In the previous years, I usually start the countdown to my birthday a month before, and I make birthday plans as early as that. This year, I didn’t have a count down (a public one, anyway, because in my head, I was counting down) and I didn’t really make too many plans that early. When I made plans, they weren’t super grand ones. They were smaller, quiet ones that I looked forward to, and am looking forward to quietly.

Perhaps this is the effect of one of my wishes from last year: to be more settled, to be grounded. Granted, my 27th year was a year full of tremors and shocks, so God knows how much I need to be settled this time around. But it feels like there’s more to that. Maybe this is me learning to not just enter the silence, but to truly enjoy and embrace it, every now and then. To let the silence and stillness seep into the crevices of my heart, the parts that ached for it so much over the last few months. Maybe I’m learning that silence is golden. Maybe, I’m finally realizing that God is truly present in the silence, and finding myself in Him is the only way for me to see my life unfold. :)

28

Earlier today, I went to mass, and while I was praying after communion, I felt something light up inside me. The last time I felt this was after the SFC International Conference in Cagayan de Oro, a month ago. I sat there, and smiled, and I knew for a fact that God was taking delight in me. He was happy, He is happy because of me. Not because I was in church, or because I was doing something good (although I know He is happy because of those things, too)…but because God was just simply delighted in me.

What an amazing thing, to be loved and delighted in by the King. :)

It took me a long while to really understand this and feel this and claim it, and now I am trying my best to truly live it: I am worthy, I am loved, because God called me by name, and I am His. :)

Thank you to everyone who made my 27th year an amazing journey, and thank you to everyone who remembered this day. :) You are a blessing, and I am truly, truly grateful for you. ♥ I wish you joy and love, always. :)

Alone is okay

Tina 2 Comments

I’ve always been surrounded by people. I’ve been trying to remember a time when I wasn’t, when I was utterly and completely alone, but I can’t. I guess there were some times back in freshman year in high school, when I had a bit of trouble fitting in with my group of friends in my section, but even then I had friends to eat with during lunch break, and friends to hang out with after school.

I remember back in college, the first time I took a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, and I was an ISTJ. I didn’t understand it back then, but I find it funny now that I was ever labeled an introvert (I’m an ESFJ now, FYI). Now when I tell people that I’m an introvert, no one believes me, because like I said, I’ve always been surrounded by people. I’m not exactly the friendliest person around because I haven’t really mastered the art of asking questions, but I could hold my own well with a group of new people. I like being with people. Not in the party-in-the-club or in the shopping-crowd way, but you know, spending time with people I love. It’s one of the easiest ways to keep my love tank full.

But.

A few weeks ago, I shut down. No, no, perhaps shut down isn’t the right term for it. I shut up. It started with something, an exhaustion of some sort that just hit me one day that got me gnashing my teeth, sort of, because I was so tired about that one thing that just. won’t. quit. So I shut up, and sat back, perhaps even staring stonily at the distance. But after that particular feeling has passed, I kept at it — the keeping quiet, not the stony staring into the distance. I felt like being quiet for a change, not be really “around”, fade into the background and sit and watch as opposed to always having something to say. Okay, this “fading” was really meant for my online life, where I had this sort of “omnipresence” that my friends teased me about. (I mean, really. I just happen to be online all the time when things happen or show up on my feed. How can I not react?) When I shut up, I stopped looking at the things on my feed. I mean, sure, I browse and react sometimes, but other than that, I just didn’t say anything.

It was nice, not saying anything. It was nice to be an observer for a while.

I bought a present for myself last Christmas, something that I finished reading within five minutes but I didn’t regret getting: How to be Alone by Tanya Davis. I spotted the book while looking for a gift for some friends, and I knew that I wanted it as soon as I recognized the poem inside. I know, I know, I could read it online and even watch the video over and over again, but the book had illustrations, and I wanted to own something that had it. Something I could keep going back to whenever I needed to read it, to soak in the words and to dig for nuggets of wisdom in each page of that short poem with each reread. My favorite parts:

If you are at first lonely, be patient.

If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.

howtobealone

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