I Must Belong Somewhere Read online

  to places.

  She’s never felt so frustrated, telling herself every week that she’d be able to walk by this time, but days kept going, the calendar sheets flipping over.

  She had so much planned, her little getaways. She wanted to wake up one day able to spring from the bed, but it never happened.

  She was worried, but she was more anxious about the task of not letting the people around her worry. She missed going to events and places because she didn’t want to keep telling people the story of how she hurt herself while wiping the cringes off their faces.

  She remembered how she walked from where she fell to her hotel room. She held on to a girl she just met, and she kept telling her sorry. She didn’t know why she was apologizing when it was an accident.

  Women have to stop apologizing for things that are not their fault.

  Past the one-month mark, she decided that she needed the healing to be sped up. She was sick of feeling helpless. She kept googling how long this would take and how severe it was. Her doctor just instructed her to attend seven sessions

  of therapy, but it still didn’t get better, and it was too slow

  for her.

  She understood that injuries could take a couple of months to heal, but she wanted to know how long she should nurse her broken heart.

  When she heard her ankle land on the ground, it broke her heart.

  It had been two years since she last fell from the stairs, and she wasn’t able to walk for a month. They made her swear to never hurt herself again, but these were accidents, weren’t they?

  She sprained her ankle more than five times in this lifetime; she started dreaming about falling and waking up in terror from it. She breaks into a sweat every time she almost trips, has invested in footwear that won’t risk her ability to get to places.

  Her feet don’t feel the same anymore, and she gets tired from standing too long, but in three months she’s found herself walking again. She is still so afraid that she could make the wrong step and truly be unable to get up again.

  She stares at the crutches she bought, knowing that they would have better use if she gave them away, but in the back of her mind there’s a just in case.

  She could barely remember the first time she injured her ankle. She reckoned she went to school and laughed off the incident, but since then she learned how fragile human bodies were.

  She witnessed too many adults during physical therapy learning how to walk again. What a breeze it must have been for people when they were children. There were no voices in their heads telling them, You used to do this. Why can’t you just do it again? Hurry up.

  When she sat and watched, she learned that healing takes time. Learning how to do things again does, too. The struggle doesn’t mean that she won’t get there.

  The misery is real, but so is the hope.

  So is the hope.

  74

  “You should toughen up”

  is why I’m hard on myself.

  I’ve been told I’m soft.

  — like “soft” is a bad word

  75

  I look forward to the day

  I won’t feel bad

  just because somebody decided

  I’m not good enough.

  76

  Early riser,

  the patriarch.

  Roosters crowing

  in the yard.

  Fowls with

  feathers black

  and brown,

  blue hiding just

  underneath, a little peek.

  Mornings smelled like

  black coffee,

  fog and dew,

  a sliver of rust.

  I bowed my head,

  felt the weight of his hand.

  Man of few words.

  I counted the coins

  from his little basin,

  soggy orange bills

  smelling like fish gone rotten.

  I got sick:

  no fever,

  just nausea,

  vomiting, and

  a really bad feeling.

  People started

  smearing saliva

  on my tummy

  in case they were

  the cause of what

  I was feeling.

  They called it balis.

  I’d never felt like this

  or even heard of it.

  I supposed it was

  one of those things,

  like the duwende and

  kapre; they’d already

  warned me about it.

  The next day

  my grandfather drew

  a small wet cross

  on my skin.

  I took another

  nap, and then

  I was all right,

  back on my feet.

  It was just like magic.

  77

  Once you learn the power of “not yet,”

  you will feel a certain kind of ease.

  It is not now,

  but someday,

  somehow,

  through some way,

  you will.

  78

  Some days feel like you’ve grown,

  proud of the journey you took

  and how far you’ve come.

  Some days feel like none of it matters at all,

  not until he’s returned,

  not until a second chance is earned.

  79

  You ask yourself how your very first session went. It went well. After, it was . . . well.

  You feel awful. Like you have allowed someone to peek into your insides but not give you the response that you wanted. You feel angry for looking at a stranger’s face while your eyes leaked. You wiped those tears, but the words echoed: “What are those tears for?” You feel small for being asked questions and for feeling forced to answer—because this was what you wanted, right? An honest conversation when all your life you felt as if you’d been excluded from it, protected by kind lies to garnish your life with confectionary. Isn’t life sweet? But every once in a while your insides feel rotten. You sprinkle your life with sugar once more: you buy a hefty thing you show off as if to say, “Look at me. I’ve got all of this under control.”

  But as you sat there, you knew there was a rebellion going on inside of you. You sought counsel and landed in a room with a stranger who asked you, “What are you afraid of?” You were afraid of saying what they were. You tried to grasp a specific fear by its tail, but it was too fast to clear out, unwilling to be coaxed and spoken into presence, to be dealt with face-to-face to perish. You came up empty, looking like a fool who could not articulate what she needed to eradicate.

  You feel humiliated. A mumbling mess of saltwater and nerves. You feel like you failed, even if this wasn’t a test. You sat there and listened intently to the things you already knew but couldn’t seem to follow. You pushed those words within you, but you’d always been so stubborn. It is your trait; you’ve always been told since you were a little girl. You are your own worst enemy.

  You are cunning and ruthless to yourself; you can allow some kind of hope to bloom in your chest, but you can squash all of that in one blow.

  You feel small, like you’ve been talked down to when you’ve always thought of your thoughts as superior. You are your own master; nobody tells you who you are and who you are not, what you fear, and why it is so.

  And yet you were there, in the chair, knowing you’d submitted yourself to it because you were no longer in control of the havoc you yourself stirred.

  You are hosting a revolution, and you know that, once again, you are in danger of destruction. You are rooting for the good to win, to release from the turmoil that you have
been dreading—while resisting it with the devils you have acquainted yourself with. You are mad, switching back and forth, wanting to be better but loathing the trials you have to endure.

  You have no one to blame. You want to blame everyone, the people who did this to you, the people who hurt you. She told you, “You can only control what you can now.”

  You are a swirl of emotions, your body collateral damage from the battle inside your head. You are bedbound and supine, unable to speak. You are weak. She told you, “You are so strong for holding on to this.” She said it with such conviction that you wished to brandish the words into your own skin, make a scar out of them.

  Your body is the land pillaged, raped, and harrowed by your own destructive thoughts. You have to have the same conviction, then recoup and reclaim the land that is yours, wish it no harm, and let it return to what it once was.

  You have to learn how to be gentle. Your hands are calloused, and sometimes your desire to fix yourself comes with such a brute force that you end up hurting yourself more.

  You need to return. Keep asking for counsel because you are lost in your own thoughts. Admission, that’s the first step. Acceptance is next.

  80

  She feels like a fraud writing these words.

  She is no more or less than the person reading this,

  hoping to see the light between the cracks

  to keep her afloat.

  She is drowning in her own moat,

  standing before her kingdom,

  waiting to be conquered

  to fill in her throne.

  She feels unworthy of the love

  and the praise perched at her door.

  She is a fraud.

  And yet—

  She has the keys to the chambers.

  She has always been who she said she was.

  She was just challenged

  and afraid of the war.

  81

  Mother, here are your children.

  Two faces of depression:

  one who fought the darkness

  with the dark,

  the other barely clutching on

  to some kind of light.

  Both valid,

  both at the mercy of the demons

  living in their minds.

  You don’t have to compare

  and think of them as weak,

  poke at the holes of their

  lifeboats just to see.

  None of this is your fault,

  and don’t despair over what

  you could have done before.

  Your children are still here,

  and they need you—

  not just the one,

  always, both.

  82

  At this rate she’s just working to pay for medical fees, and her hobbies include sitting in hospitals and private clinics’ lobbies, driving to appointments, buying medicine, ninja crying in public. Sometimes it works; sometimes it still feels like she is a flinch away from breaking while everyone watches her spill her guts. She’s on the streets screaming for medicine, for a better feeling, to be anything—but this.

  83

  Remember when we were young and you took me on a bike ride? I sat in front, holding on to the handlebars while you pedaled, and you told me, “Lead the way.” It was scorching hot as I watched versions of us in black-and-white on the concrete—but that was my mistake. You told me to look up just about the time we hit the light post and we crashed. We both fell down and acquired scratches and bruises.

  You never said it was my fault, but I could tell that you thought it.

  We walked home, and we never rode the bike that way again. We never truly did things together anymore. I kept thinking that maybe if we’d tried again then, I would have paid much better attention, and we would have found a better sync.

  These days, I still see you pedaling without direction, a man on a unicycle craning his neck for which way to go, but you don’t know. You pedal in place, and you run out of air, and for the longest time, I thought this was just how you were.

  I kept missing your SOS. I thought you liked staying in place, waiting for someone with the handlebars to lead you on.

  I’ve got the handlebars from our childhood chained to my wrists as placement for my guilt, ’cause the last time we did this, we crashed on the floor.

  I rang the bells to call for help, because now I know: good intentions are not always enough to save someone.

  84

  The more I look at you,

  the more I see

  the similarity—

  only you’re not him.

  You didn’t know me.

  I wish you did.

  I wish you had our history:

  the years,

  the longing,

  the wanting.

  I wish you were him in a brand-new body.

  I’m cheating on a clean slate,

  a second chance.

  I just couldn’t get it.

  You’re brand new for me,

  but your face holds a memory.

  Your soul is still a mystery;

  I wish I knew you

  and you knew me.

  85

  Maybe for a change

  let’s assume that this ends well.

  Would you take the chance?

  — leap of faith

  86

  Last week, you came to me,

  not in a form of a dream or a memory.

  It was really you,

  all skin and bone

  and a heart, still beating.

  Funny, I thought I heard my name in between the rhythm.

  87

  If I told you how many times you’ve visited my dreams in all these years, you would think—no, you would know—how much you lived in me, despite living your life without me.

  88

  I remember your heart being so soft.

  I must have bruised it with my

  careless hands

  once or twice—

  or more; I never found out.

  You said you didn’t keep count.

  Instead, I watched your heart turn hard.

  I washed my hands clean,

  but they had always been

  stained red.

  Yours or mine,

  blood looked the same.

  I remember your heart being soft.

  My hands tried to handle

  something so fragile,

  maybe too late.

  Maybe too soon.

  89

  You said, “It’s us,” like this was in a conversation we’re still having. Like we didn’t try to end things. Like we didn’t run away from each other when the situation asked for at least one of us to show up. You said, “It’s us,” like it was an excuse for all the things that happened between us, the hurt we caused, and the time we wasted being apart.

  You, me, in continents drifting apart, and you just said, “It’s us,” like the plates would move back and bring us together: a constant, inevitable thing. Not a memory, not forgotten.

  When we met, I never thought that we would come to this. I had hoped that we would never have to reach the place where we expected hurt from each other, then used our love as an excuse for it.

  90

  And if you’re gonna leave again,

  don’t even think about

  coming back.

  My life can’t be a series

  of recovering from your

  calculated attacks.

  91

  You’ve visited me long enough that you are no longer a tourist.

  92

  She wrote love stor
ies

  but couldn’t finish them all.

  Only how they end.

  — happily ever after

  93

  You say happy ever afters are not realistic only because you are afraid that women would believe it, and if they do, they would not settle for the bare minimum that you give.

  You hate on the women who choose to believe that there is something better because you could not and would not be it.

  — on happy ever afters

  94

  It’s not gonna happen

  all at once.

  It’s going to unravel

  in the most beautiful way,

  if you could just

  stick around.

  95

  And what if the evil stepmother wasn’t evil after all? What if she was just a woman who felt jealous? Because who hasn’t, at least once in their lives, felt an ounce of it every time a young girl comes into a room with all of her naivety?

  What if she was just a woman who wished she could have that again, the blinding protection of “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”? What if she wished for a moment to be who she was before, not this person who has weathered hurricanes, earthquakes, and the drought that is fast approaching her?

  Maybe she missed the spring, and she recognized that young girls don’t always see it when it is happening. They are always too busy wishing for a life that is far away from what they have at that very moment, not knowing that this will never be anymore.

  What if she wasn’t evil but just a woman who was in the middle of a fall, waiting for her leaves to shed so she could blossom once more?

  96

  These are her sore spots:

  The word “weak,”

  how that bruises her.

  Green and yellow,

  black and blue,

  different hues.

  His presence,

  how he asks anyone she knows.

  Seems like he didn’t get the memo:

  she doesn’t want fake conversations anymore.

  She’s not thirteen.

  She has stopped waiting for phone calls.