Twenties

Numerically, 2020 is an interesting year for me. It’s the start of a new decade, which happens to coincide with my exit from my twenties. (I turned thirty last December.)

I started writing this post one morning last month, hoping to quickly cap off a Buzzfeed-style ‘twenty things I learned in my twenties’ article that had been brewing in my head since before my birthday.

I wanted to start with a general preamble of how I viewed my twenties. However, as I started writing, the paragraphs kept coming in and never stopped. The sun rose high and my coffee mug ran empty. My stomach grumbled. I sat back and stared at what was never going to be a list of bite-sized lessons. So now, we’re here.

Here is a recap of my twenties. If you’re reading this, it’s because you’re (hopefully) someone close to me and not some rando on the internet who stumbled across my thoughts. That is to say, this is going be to an emotionally heavy read.

(Edit: I rewrote this after my husband complained that it started really good and ended so abruptly. I went from detail to a general abstraction and jumped from my early twenties to my late twenties. I don’t expect great cohesion from this piece since I’ve edited it many times across many weeks. I hope it’s still comprehensible.)

Looking back from 2010, the experience feels as though the years sped by, but were drawn out by long moments.

Family

I watched both my parents start over with new partners, and saw the difficult, but rewarding experience of building new families. I said good-bye to my younger sisters as I saw them one last time before they set foot in the ‘land of milk and honey’, and watched them grow through photos online. How they’d grown, quite literally, over the last eight years.

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With Eliza and Jenna, January 2011

I watched the house I grew up in empty itself, then rekindle the beginnings of a home through the births of my brother and niece. Then, I said good-bye to that house, too. I remember the gleam of the sunlight washing over every corner of that house as I spent one more Christmas there, with the premonition that I will not see it again. I was right.

I watched my older sister sail away from her hometown to start a new life with her partner in Manila. I remember the afternoon where I helped her pick out a nice cardigan, dress shirt, and skirt to wear for her job interviews.

I lost two grandparents. One was sudden, the other a bit drawn out. For both, I was able to visit them in the hospital, and spend time with them, before they passed.


I remember early mornings with Pauline, getting up at five o’clock, taking up two sets of 3-in-1 coffee and instant oatmeal, walking the length of Katipunan Avenue (there were hardly tricycles at that hour), taking the LRT-2 to Cubao, walking through that incredible bustle, and teaching Pauline which HM Liner placard to to look for to get to her college campus (was it ‘College’? ‘Santa Cruz’?). This repeated every Monday or so, until Pauline was comfortable enough that she didn’t need me to walk her through. One Friday, it was she who woke me up in my dorm room to announce her arrival. In my sleepy state I apologised for not picking her up at Cubao, but she said it was okay, she got to my dorm fine.

One time, a year or so later, I prepared Quaker instant oatmeal with milk again in front of her. She exclaimed, ‘Oh, it smells like Dormitoryana!’. I’ve become too pudgy, too comfortable, and too cosmopolitan to eat instant oatmeal for breakfast, but I wonder if, when I do, would it take me back to Dormitoryana, too?


Memories with Papa often coincide with the late nights. It evokes the image of his childhood home in Brooke’s Point, San Mig Light, the smell of cigarette which I’ve never learned to pick up, a packet of Piattos, the electric fan, humming near the staircase landing, and the occasional visits of bats. They swoop inside the house, a bit aimlessly, then swoop back out. It was always a relief when I find a dark blur speed across the air and realise it’s just a bat, and not a flying cockroach.

In contrast, memories with Mama often coincide with the early mornings. Coffee and biscuits at 3:00 a.m. Eating sisig at Coal after picking her up from the airport. Getting up in the mornings after Vitor was born. Travelling late to my grandmother’s house, so that I could spend a few hours sleeping next to my mom, before she caught her flight back to the States before light. The carefree feeling of chatter, laughter, and endless conversation that the uncounted minutes stood testament to. She was a light sleeper; she had always been. I have memories very cloudy, but lucid in its authenticity, of treading lightly, barefoot, where my mom slept, in fear of waking her.

Memories with all my sisters involve late-night videogames or YouTube videos. Playing old JRPGs on emulators. Stepping into the master bedroom we all shared, and every night trying to find a cosy crook in between everyone else on mattresses spread on the floor. The aircon welcoming, as it only belonged in bedrooms at night, and yet, even when pillows and blankets were scarce if you were the last one in, the last thing you think before you fall asleep is that nothing matters because every moment was golden from sunrise to sunset. Nothing mattered, then. ‘The essence of nostalgia,’ Milton Eisenhower wrote, ‘is an awareness that what has been will never be again.’

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Mid-2012. The next time we would all be together again was at my wedding last year.

Self-worth

I can say without hesitation now, that joining the college orgs I joined was one of the worst, most destructive decisions I’ve made during my college life. I wasn’t a fit, and didn’t fit in. Never in my life have I felt so small and insignificant. In hindsight, I didn’t have to feel that way. Now I know, after years of working in decent companies, that every relationship—even with an organisation—is two-way. You have to get as good as you give. You have to recognise when people are just trying to keep you busy doing meaningless work, while they carefully kept you out of important projects, all the while quietly reaping the benefits of your blood, sweat, and tears as you ran little errands for their benefit, and their benefit alone.

I remember being criticised for projects I had virtually no support in. I remember the public humiliation of being asked an unfair question, being put on the spot, during an assembly, because I dared to run for Vice President for the Academics Committee. Hearing close friends recount how the question was unfair. And seeing no other candidate be put on the spot that way. Back then, I didn’t have mentors or figures who knew better, who could tell me that I didn’t have to go through what I did.

I remember being the subject of so much gossip. Being a blind item in the org publication, which I didn’t have the strength to read. Honestly… I’m recounting so many bad memories as I type this. Some songs and memories still take me back to those unpleasant feelings.

They say a toxic relationship is one where you constantly feel bad and your self-worth diminishes. Well then, good riddance.


In 2011, I saw myself dressing up in the only pencil skirt I owned, submitting countless resumes and failing so many job interviews. It wasn’t a negative experience. In hindsight, I honestly didn’t know how to interview. I sat there timidly expecting to dutifully answer questions about me, and having none of my own to offer.

It’s little wonder how easy it had been for me to stay slim, then. My day started with a twenty-five minute walk to my first class. Followed by more walks within the campus. Followed in the weekend by adventures in visiting a project site located in Valenzuela, or was it Marikina? There was also Los Baños. All powered by my feet and the kindness of jeepney- and bus drivers. Perhaps bottled water. Don’t forget the instant oatmeal.

I watched myself deign to accept an interview at Nokia. I remember telling a friend, ‘I’m going to graduate with honours in engineering. This “writing” job is beneath me.’ I watched myself humiliate myself in front of the German line manager, by failing to perform a very, incredibly basic differentiation. Honestly, I think it was f(x) = x2. In my trepidation I differentiated it thrice in my head and wrote zero on the paper, to the astonishment of Eberhard, bless his heart for still hiring me, this oh-so-smart laude graduate from oh-so-amazing UP.

I watched myself ‘only checking out’ the offer from Nokia and accepting it the next day, forsaking fields I thought I would be good at—data analytics, logistics, and supply chain management. When asked by my peers why I took the job, I said quite plainly, ‘Money talks.’

I found myself enjoying what I did, making friends and learning how to conduct myself in social settings, which, until I turned twenty-three, consisted of just… sitting there, and laughing when other people laughed. Awkwardly saying ‘I’m fine,’ when someone asks me if I’m okay, and answering questions when someone tries to include me in the conversation, without asking them back.

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Suzhou, Jiangsu PRC. I got to travel overseas for the very first time, thanks to Nokia.

I learned, through the years, that while I spent most of my formative years shut off, preferring the company of strangers on the internet, I missed a lot of the social aspects of growing up into a ‘nice, young girl’. I didn’t play sports, didn’t go partying and having a good time with people, didn’t really get the aspect of being loosely connected to everyone. Once, after a night of food and karaoke, I sat at the back of the taxi, telling the group that I had fun. After hearing it for the umpteenth time, someone asked me why I kept saying that. I don’t know, Glenn or was it Mark? Maybe I just wanted to feel like I belonged, and wanted someone to acknowledge me. In hindsight, I was rather pathetic, especially with all one-liners I posted on Facebook. I was desperate for attention.

The first time I ever got drunk was at a small gathering of friends. It was Bianca’s birthday. I was in safe company. I insisted that I was ‘not drunk, just tipsy’, because my notions of drunkenness were: vomiting, blacking out, and making a public spectacle of yourself. As far as I could tell I didn’t tick any of that. I fell asleep on the couch and Bianca only woke me up when it was time to go. She sent a friend, Kenneth, to safely send me back to my dorm. But honestly, I wasn’t drunk; I was just sleepy. I used to break out in hives at the slightest consumption of alcohol.


A dark tunnel

Ambivalent. Mean-spirited. Angry. Bitter. Those are words I can use to describe myself in my early twenties. I was driven by many desires and felt that the world owed me, this bright, long-suffering girl whom nobody appreciated. I left Nokia for a government post that paid 30% less. I wanted to prove, to nobody in particular, that I didn’t just waste my education and talent on a writing job. I squandered my happiness in the months that followed. I left a long-term relationship (good riddance, still), and clung to a rebound insisting to everyone who would listen that it wasn’t a rebound.

That was my fall from grace. I remember the afternoon in government, sitting at a workstation that belonged to a coworker on leave, using a desktop computer that used a clunky old-school monitor, and discovering the woman’s browser history consisting of countless Pinterest pages on home and childcare, learning the odd artefact that was LotusNotes (this was in 2014). My tasks consisted of a mixture of printing memos, hunting down managers who needed to proof or sign them off, apologising to every senior I came into contact with, and compiling information that my teammates sent in email attachments. We all commiserated with each other on the culture of scraping, deferring, and being the recipient of the occasional verbal abuse, depending on how traditional your manager was. My first big project was to fill a corkboard in our area with ‘interesting tidbits and news in IT’. I found myself printing, cutting, and pasting pieces of paper to decorate what felt like a high school project.

In those days I felt like I was wading through a river of uncertainty, and a faint light gleamed at the edge of my vision. The light was unpleasant, because it was the glint of lucidity that told me, plainly and forebodingly, ‘You made a mistake.’ And I couldn’t undo it. I spent many nights sobbing because I kept trying to undo it.

I was twenty-four. I made less money. I no longer had decent health insurance. I had left a boyfriend of seven years who could have been my husband for how much he supported me. I left the place I was renting and lived in the attic of relative (I chose this living arrangement.) I left a comfortable job for one that was a long and strenuous commute away. Then I caught rubella. And in those nights at my new boyfriend’s place, in terrible pain, unable to eat, while he was equally helpless at helping me, and without a doctor I knew I hit the rock-bottom of my life.


I have a friend who posts original thoughts frequently and eloquently online. One thing he once shared that stuck with me was that people respond to their circumstances. Sometimes people are unbearable because their circumstances make them unbearable. I became a sad, angry mess. My days were dominated by my morning and evening commute. I spent mornings with my heart pounding, wondering if I could reach the MRT station just before the queues began to extend into hours. (The rule of thumb was to be on the platform by 6:00 a.m.) I had felt the sweat trickle down my back one morning, having had to spend one hour just to get on the platform. Those days you looked at yourself, and everyone around you, and thought, ‘This is life. I can deal with it.’ My evenings were worse, staring at a sea of people at the bus terminal in Megamall, hoping that the next bus that stops would stop right in front of me, so that I could actually get in. I’d gotten into spats with people on the bus. It was embarrassing in hindsight.

There were days when it was better. Sometimes my commute was mysteriously shorter and lighter. Sometimes the managers were chipper. A few times I got handpicked to attend meetings in fancy hotels and gleaming buffets. Twice I got to set foot inside the ADB headquarters. But in my heart of hearts I missed tech. I missed the dynamic culture. I missed the flat organisation. I missed being able to use Confluence and Outlook and web conferencing. So after seven months I quit. A deputy director-general implored me to stay, then guilted me for choosing ‘my own personal interest over service to the nation.’ Still, I left.

To my surprise, everyone else understood. Government work is not for the faint of heart and you have to be driven by passion. You have to be in it for the long haul. I respect my younger colleagues especially, who chose to stay, stay, stay, foregoing everything else their education and opportunities could have afforded them.


An old friend, Madess, singularly changed the course of my life then. She knew I was looking for a job back to tech writing. She knew someone who could refer me. I got the job. I got a salary that was more than I asked for, because the company thought it fair. I was back on my feet and moved into a tiny, dingy room in Pasig to eliminate the stresses of traversing EDSA. It was all I could afford, at PHP 3.5k a month, and it was rife with mold and cockroaches and no cellular reception indoors and very low water pressure, but it was all I could have asked for.

I was in my element again. I could plan my life on my terms. My modest salary afforded me to have fun a bit with self-care, afforded me pillowcases and modest pieces of furniture to help me create my own haven.


Flutter

Looking back, I learned that attraction, pining, and yearning never go away throughout life. I’ve watched my parents fall in love in their forties. No matter how old you are, or how many times you’ve fallen in love, each new connection brings with it its own tempests and flutterings of the heart. It seems timeless, the human propensity to love. And yet…

I’ve learned to acknowledge my feelings, compartmentalise them, and not let them run my life. I had learned, after all, to let go and walk away from a stagnant, festered relationship even when it cost me my life as I had known it then.

I remember the boys in college whom I thought I was in love with. In hindsight, I wasted a lot of mental energy on boys who seem as though they would never grow up, and seemingly never figured out what they wanted out of life.

I learned, through experience and watching friends go through the same thing, that it’s best to end relationships cleanly, and not stay friends afterwards. A lot of exes try to take the high road and remain in contact. The reality is that they enter a long and laborious limbo where they date like friends and sleep together in secret. Then, months later, ask themselves where they stand, and start to get back together once more. This repeats until someone finds someone new. I am grateful to my then-boyfriend / rebound / now-ex, for choosing the clean slate.

I remember losing my virginity at twenty-one, to my old boyfriend, at the time four of seven years running. It wasn’t because we were chaste up until that point. It was because we were both virgins and the poor, hapless boy took the better part of four years to understand where to put it (or to ‘jam it in‘, if you want to be extra funny). Apparently porn, for all its liberations, doesn’t really teach you anything practical or valuable.

I struggled a lot with my self-worth after that. It’s easy to talk about now. Ten years ago, it wasn’t. We all just pretended that no serious couple slept together. Within my peers and circles, nobody acknowledged that anyone had sex. This closely guarded secret was only gushed and confided in closed spaces. Today, my husband and I can laugh about it.

What? You think I wasn’t going to talk about it?


Like a comet pulled from orbit…

In 2016 I seized an opportunity once more and found myself working for an Australian company. That year would divide my life into before alcohol and after alcohol.

Before that, like I said, I wasn’t a very sociable girl. I was a bit of a legbeard whose judgment was, ‘I don’t even know why people drink alcohol. There is no benefit to your health. When you’re hungover it’s literally your body dealing with alcohol toxicity.’

Then it became, ‘Sure, I’ll have a beer’ on Friday afternoons. A coworker, Ben, dispelled all my notions and previous judgments on alcohol, and offered me wine. I discovered cocktails that wasn’t a margarita.

The same Ben confessed his feelings for me late that year. ‘I could be the best thing to happen to you,’ he started confidently. ‘And you could be the best thing to happen to me.’

In my personal writings I called out to a north star to help me find my home. I called him a star that shone brightly for me.

Just like my foray into alcohol, my choice to grow closer to Ben showed me a different side of who I was, how I approached my life, and how I lived. My life drastically changed, and so did I.

Fast-forward our wedding last year, we danced to ‘I See the Light’ from Disney’s Tangled. To me, it perfectly sums up our story:

And at last I see the light
And it’s like the fog has lifted

And at last I see the light
And it’s like the sky is new

And it’s warm and real and bright
And the world has somehow shifted

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Every stupid heartache in the past seemed laughable.

Springboard

2017 to 2018 was a whirlwind of excitement and the gleam of possibility.

Ben took me to Hong Kong, then back to his home in Australia. I met so many new people, experienced firsthand an entirely different culture, and lived through so many sights. I have never known the sea to be cold, yet it was freezing as we stopped in the many beaches along the southern coast on our way to the Twelve Apostles. I had not known the stillness and almost predatory silence that descends in suburbs when you do not live in a developing, overpopulated nation. I remember a comment Eberhard made whilst he was in Manila, all those years ago in Nokia: ‘The city is so noisy.’ I would stammer every time a cashier or barista would say ‘Hi, how are you?’.

I felt dwarfed, living in countries and terrains so vast. I was dumbfounded by the ‘culture of abundance’ that I experienced. People living there could not have possibly been wanting. Structures and standards of living seemed to consider even the smallest aspects of how you walk, breathe, eat, or conduct your life.

If a shop sold you, for example, a ham and cheese toastie they didn’t seem to scrimp on the ingredients, and cared about the serving. The toastie was warm, had the right crunch, and was neatly wrapped in wax paper so you don’t get too many crumbs in your fingers. I bought one late morning at the station, and the woman told me that the toastie wasn’t ‘fresh’ anymore and if I might mind that. Why did she care? Here, a ham and cheese sandwich would fetch the cheapest possible cost, would probably have a half-square of processed ‘cheese’ product, a sliver of the cheapest ham, and a glob of mayonnaise. It would be wrapped in a plastic bag and therefore would be a bit wet and condensed as it cooled. What’s the problem if you don’t like it? You chose it, didn’t you?


In 2018 I opened LinkedIn by chance and found an opening posted by a man who would become my manager, friend, and mentor. A few months later, I was flying to London and was welcomed in the aircraft cabin with a small flute of sparkling wine.

Those two weeks in London remain memorable. All the while I was there I couldn’t believe where I was. I read about this river, these streets, and these structures only in books. (I was not exposed to British film.) I couldn’t walk ten paces without stopping to admire old structures and novel things that was outside of my culture.


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Celebration

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Later that year, in Singapore, Ben proposed to me behind the waterfall in the Cloud Forest. We celebrated our engagement, dressed to the nines in a waterfront dinner. It was exorbitant, but I will remember it in the years to come.

It was nine months of planning and a little misery that came before our wedding, but it was all he and I could have dreamed of: a small, beautiful church, an angelic choir, a priest who knew us both well, an evening garden, wine and beer, a smooth program, and all the people who mattered to us.


Crucible

I hark back to my journal entries around the time I was twenty-five, as the time I started seriously questioning who I was, and how I conducted myself. I recognised then that my mind was constantly filled with negativity. Why was that?

Very slowly, I began to right my course. I shed, very agonisingly, the parts of me that were bitter, angry, and prideful. I started caring more about the people who mattered to me. I learned to relax my shoulders and not sit so stiffly during meetings. I embraced the mellow parts of me that cried when I felt lonely, admitted fault when I was angry, and said ‘I love you’ to all the people in my life who mattered to me, without hesitation.

I’ve learned to accept that people don’t always follow their degrees—why should they? We are driven by passions and motivations not limited to theories and axioms, algorithms and hypotheses.

I learned to acknowledge that a rebound is a rebound, but, to quote a cousin in one of those rare evenings at Christmas, over Kahlua and spirits, just because someone is a rebound doesn’t mean you treated them any less. You still gave them the same courtesy, the same respect.

I went from going to church on the rare occasions I felt despondent, to going to church nearly every week. (I had an edgy, agnostic phase but this was largely gone by the time I was twenty.) I’m re-learning what it means to be a Christian, and the wealth of doctrine and wisdom presented to me is astounding. I hark back to my high school and wonder little why it was so easy for me to shed such a watered-down brand of faith.

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MONA at Tassie

I went from ‘I hate small talk,’ to ‘How’s your morning been, Claus?’ I recall a Slack call with a Head of Product, with cameras turned off, where I asked if he was well, because he sounded like he was in pain. (You could tell from the sighs and laboured breathing.) He admitted he was a bit sick. I found there was no real secret to the art of conversation—just ask after them, and listen to what they have to say. It took me years to be able to do this. When two souls connect, there’s nothing much to labour on. When a conversation feels stilted, then that’s when you fall back on what etiquette books have to say about how to withdraw yourself. Or perhaps which topics to talk about. Despite its flak, talking about the weather has broken a lot of ice, and has been great fodder for knowing someone else’s culture.

I learned to chuckle at something funny I saw on the bus television, where previously slapstick comedy never stood to impress. I learned to softly sing along to songs on the radio, uncaring of who heard me, and I’ve experienced the human solidarity of having a complete stranger sing along to the same song in a public place. No, you don’t have to make eye contact, good grief, this isn’t High School Musical.

I learned to listen and not ‘wait for my turn to speak’, which meant I chose not to hold on to many thoughts when I’m interrupted in conversation. People have gotten the impression that I have the memory of a goldfish, or that my head is in the clouds. That is not the case. I just choose to let go, to let the other person’s thoughts unfold in full.

I never need to worry about who would listen to me. The people who care about me—whether in socials or at work—have the means to draw my thoughts out of me. And I write, like so.

I learned to pick up the pretentious art of table manners. Or is it dining etiquette? I looked up how to hold a wine glass, to impress Ben, on whom I didn’t want to leave an impression that I was uncouth and didn’t know my wine. I know a bit of wine, now. I like a good Bordeaux Cabernet Sauvignon. For whites, Ben knows and picks what I like, all the time. He hasn’t been wrong yet.

I’m eternally confused as to the table setting. They say to start from the outside, inwards. But restaurants very rarely set the table this way. They’re more likely to clear your cutlery, before setting down the next set for the next course. I thought the soup spoon was at the top of the setting. Whatever, very seldom have people cared to notice. (Except when Eberhard did, that one time!)


Closing

Many Christmases ago, I gifted Pauline a copy of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. ‘We keep living,’ I wrote on the first blank, ‘because we believe in better days and brighter smiles.’

I no longer try to read Dickens (there is something about his writing style that’s tedious). But I still believe in what I wrote. In the last ten years life has been very kind to me. I made some mistakes, and went through periods of anxiety and depression, but I came through. Every single effort I made to reach out, sometimes into a seeming darkness, eventually led me to the people and experiences that have continually changed the course of my life.

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Most everyone I knew started to heal. The world continues to look better, in spite of people’s political views and perspectives of turmoil going on around us. Maybe I will look back at this in my forties and sadly chuckle at my naivete and hopeful outlook on life, more pronounced now than it was when I was twenty.

My world is small. I don’t pretend to understand the global economy, the end-game of politics right now, or who is doing bad things in this world. I only try to be a good Catholic, a good citizen, a good daughter, sister, and wife. Hopefully mother, soon. We all have our duties to fulfill. I will continue to put my efforts in what I care about—the return to values and common courtesy, a mindset of love and abundance and sharing, an honest work ethic, of living gently upon this earth we are all stewards of, of doing my civic duty in building communities in my greater society.

To end this piece, let me share with you a portion of the closing passage in Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo (Lowell Bair translation):

There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss…

Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that, until the day God deigns to reveal the future to man, the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and hope.