I miss being passionate about something. I am at a point in my life where everything seems routine. My excitement has been reduced to a trip or even a weekend to look forward to. The ambitious woman inside of me has gone off somewhere and I don't know when or if she's coming back. I miss being able to go anywhere I please, do anything I want. The life I am living has confined me in so many ways. This is not a whiny complaint. It is what it is.

And an awful truth that I realized last night was that... I miss being single and unattached.

I've hopped on my present relationship not long after my last one, which makes it seem like I've been in one for 4 straight years already. I have been happy, and blessed to have been loved in return. But putting all that time and energy to make the relationship work and be a happy one has left me losing a part of myself through the years. My faith, my ambitions, my relationships with family and friends, all of them have been rocked by my dependence on a man who I relied on to make me happy. And he does so, unfailingly. But I am afraid to come to the point that I can no longer satisfy myself and my happiness would only depend on him. Or has it reached that point already? Just yesterday when he mentioned his coming trip to the homeland I found myself having anxiety attacks.

Everyone's personal objective in life is to be happy. It can come in different ways, but more often than not, it comes from the feeling of being loved. And because I think that no one in this world is capable of loving another person unconditionally, to be loved requires you to give. A lot. I have given much, and I have no regrets. But I might have given something that was meant to be for me. Maybe I didn't leave myself enough to keep.

It's high time that I give more "me time". Throw out the gloom and depression. Quit relying on someone or something else to validate me. It's not going to be a boyfriend, a career, a size 0 body with size D breasts, tons of money or a functional family who will gratify me. I seek to find thrill again, to never let myself drown in self-pity, to find joy in the shallow and the mundane, to be creative again and be pleased with my creation, to study and not get caught up in just the academics of my education, and to constantly seek to improve myself.

I am smiling as I type this, because within the few minutes that I was going on and on, I found something to be excited about.

My mind is blank. I cannot think of anything interesting to write. I just wanted to post something for the sake of posting an entry. If I had my camera or its memory card with me I would have photoblogged.

There's not much going on. Almost half the year has gone by and I feel like I'm not as productive as last year. I might have been more forgiving on myself last year since it was my first full year in the country but now that I've been here for almost two years, there's no room for slacking off. Sure, I have school, and I have my part time job. But I've procrastinated so many things that could have been done earlier. Obtaining a driver's license is one. I haven't even taken the written test for it. We also didn't advance in our salsa lessons. I still haven't taken an art course, which I was supposed to do last year. I have a ton of books still left unread. And I haven't been going on as much trips as last year. My days as a tourist/newly-landed-immigrant are over. Hello routine and boredom. Hello debt and hard work, and not necessarily party harder.

I do have New York to look forward to. After much delays, we're going back this year, in late June. Everything's booked. I now just have an itinerary to plan and a bank account to deplete, haha. I guess the trip is the calm before the storm, as work would be busier, my partner-in-all-things would be vacationing in the Philippines, and my second term in school would be coming to an end.

That's it pancit for me.