since i was little, i’ve always experienced my emotions in extremes. i don’t know what any of them mean. forever, i am begging for normalcy— an experience that doesn’t leave me feeling supernatural. i keep chasing God in the sunrises. in Kafka’s diaries. in anti-depressants. in the silence. 

sometimes i wish to go back to therapy. but i’m scared. and broke. so i’ll take an ice bath instead. i am baptized once again. when does the salvation begin?

i fall in love easily. perhaps it’s infatuation, but i’ve never cared to know the difference. it all weighs heavy the same. i am a magician. illusion (delusion, rather) is my barrier between blind love and truth. how can i love someone i don’t know? something i’m not familiar with? flashes of a past life ping in my chest. is that how we know? 

i’m trying to be a cool girl. though sometimes, i cannot pinpoint the objectivity of “being cool”— or even being a “girl.” i want to stop falling so easily. to stop trusting. to stop believing. diffidently, the only thing i used to believe— used to be so sure of— was that vulnerability was my superpower. this world is incredibly convoluted. we swipe on each other to make previous feelings disappear. we ghost. we pull the trap doors out from one another’s feet. we are magicians. these days i’m having an incredulous time— believing that my superpower is presenting myself authentically, intentionally. i am real! here! in all my glory! (or all my shame.) the crowd boos. they want a spectacle. i am far from it. 

is it self-righteousness? to assume that i am honest? in April, my great-grandmother passed, and i still haven’t made sense of it yet. i’m not quite sure i ever will. i saw her last in 2019, right after i graduated high school. i was so unsure— so enthralled with the growing and taken aback by the pains. back then, my Nunu seemed so sure— of who i was then and who i was going to be. a language barrier could not put conditions on her love. when she passed, i turned back to prayer, kneeling and pleading to God to make me a magician. to magically bring her back somehow. to see her again and feel the fruits of her love. to prove that i was everything she knew i’d become. these days, rather, i feel like the subject. i am being tested upon. is that authentic to who i am? how can i love someone i don’t know? she was so sure.

when i was 17, i remember thinking this would all be different. i am 23 now, and i often feel as though i am running a marathon. consistently watching life run past me. i am not getting any younger. i have lost a thousand times over.

i am the hanged man. the magician. the fool. the high priestess. a culmination of polarizing energies. i want to be sure. i hope to lay in my sureness.