Just Me Being Me: Hello From Beyond the End of the World
In 2019 my husband and I moved more than 7000 miles away from Metro Manila, the only home I’d ever known. We left our families and our friends behind.
Just Me Being Me is literally just me being me, living my life outside my comfort zone when it happens as it happens. Since I’m a dedicated introvert, this doesn’t happen much, which makes it doubly interesting when it does.
In 2019, my husband and I moved more than 7000 miles away from Metro Manila, the only home I’d ever known. We left our families and our friends behind. We’d just started feeling like locals in Nevada when the pandemic hit.
What makes my situation somewhat unique—but also universal, eventually, I suppose—is that my father had just died.
Again: What Happened When?
He passed away exactly 525 days ago after a short bout with cancer, diagnosed far too late in the game.
This triggered the unraveling of what I’d considered normal up until that moment. (Actually, that last sentence is a bit of a lie. The specifics involved in clarifying the point aren’t important now, though. Another story for another day.)
Losing my dad didn’t affect my work much. However, my productivity and creativity stopped there. I used to make songs. I used to report on and write about music. I used to find joy in sharing my words. I used to be more.
What About Now?
These days, there’s not much to do in between sending applications, taking assessment tests, and scheduling interviews—but somehow it still feels like A LOT. What’s that about? But to be honest, it’s more than what other people have been left with, so I can’t complain.
Before these long stretches of painful inactivity due to lack of paid assignments, all I had headspace for in terms of personal exercises were short vignettes and explorations. Now I have all the time—that I used to think I didn’t have—to seriously consider what it would look like if I wrote more for or about myself. It’s terrifying.
Miao? Wow!
Which brings us to this newsletter.
I’ve quietly been doing self-work and shadow work for a while, as evidenced by the painful and sometimes quite explosive emotional outbursts that catch my poor husband off guard from time to time. It’s a process.
Why do I bring this up? Well. It’s my way of warning you that I’m going to get intensely personal up in here because it’s what I need to practice the most: real human connection.
This means vulnerability and accountability. This means believing that what I have to say matters, even if it’s only important to me. This means trusting people when they tell me that they want to listen and not falling back into the habit of emotional distance.
You may be familiar with my music as A Problem Like Maria. You may know me from my Tinyletter—Best Quality Heart—or from my stint as Amplify.ph’s EIC. You may even know me in real life—bless you for humoring me for the nth time, if so.
Hello, thank you for stopping by. I’ll be here a lot, so make yourself comfortable.
Photo by Kenan Sulayman on Unsplash
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