Birthdays come with a lot of self-reflection, especially when you’re nearing the end of what they call your “roaring twenties.”
Many people who knew me from way back would agree that I have changed a great deal. I remember back when I was still in the Philippines, I had lunch with a high school classmate who was so surprised by how different I was. She pointed out how even the way I speak is different. To be fair, I used to be fluent in bekimon, walks in our school hallway with just my socks on, don’t know how to sit like a lady, and eats lunch alone while I read books. The last part is still true.
That lunch was 7 years ago. Since then, I reckon I have changed a lot more. First off, I now use words like reckon, keen, and spells things in British language (because for the life of me, the US spelling here keeps getting errors).
I digress. As always.
There must have been hundreds of different versions of us, each one was born out of an event or encounter that changed the way we choose to exist in this world.
I always believed that my best version was college (or uni), between the age of 16 to 20. It was a time when I was most hopeful and passionate. Young Steph sure has got her shit together because I had a clear vision of who I want to be and how I can get there. It was pretty straightforward to me. I wanted to be a girl boss who struts into the office in her chic corporate outfits, earns loads of money and can buy things for herself while helping her family. That vision motivated me to get good grades, so I left my university’s dance company (La Sallian Pointes & Flexes) and in my last two years of college, I focused on getting good grades (at least for the major subjects, I still don’t get why I had to learn how to code and design a freaking website to be Public Relations professional). It was the only way I knew to get to my dream life.
It was at the age of 22 when I started asking myself “will I really be happy if I get those?”—all I felt was emptiness. Little did I know, this will commence one of the biggest shifts in my life yet.
Realisations started drizzling; one by one they drop lightly in my stream of consciousness making me see what’s wrong with my priorities, my relationships, and how I perceive myself. Eventually, drizzles turned to rain, then out of nowhere… it became a hurricane. It became too strong to ignore. I was confronted with a truth I had a hard time accepting.
It’s true what they say, “ignorance is a bliss.”
One of the biggest misconceptions when one chooses happiness is that it will be an easy peasy undertaking, just ask Gretchen Rubin. My heart broke to tiny pieces every time someone I love is suffering or was unhappy about my decisions; but it is in staying true to my values that I can live a life that I’m happy about. I need to love myself enough to believe that I deserve to live a life that makes me genuinely happy rather than anxious, insecure, and bitter that I was able to see that going back to the status quo is not the solution.
A lot of people, including my family, didn’t understand what was going on in my head. There was a time when I shut everyone off for two weeks. I hid somewhere, took time off work and didn't contact anyone aside from a handful of people (who also didn't know what was happening). I was having thoughts about how if I had a nightmare and died, no one would know. I closed my eyes peacefully that night. I was okay even if that happened.
I wrote blogs during this time that I kept it in my files. Here’s an excerpt of what I wrote on April 2017.
Dying wouldn’t be such a bad thing to happen, after all. I’m not sure where I read or heard this line, but I think I understand what the writer felt when he wrote it.
In my 23 years of existence in this world, I have always been identified as the one with the strong heart and mind….
I loved how I am; now I’m not so sure.
It’s not because I have become one of those pessimists who hates everything in the world. I just feel that if for some reason, I die unexpectedly; maybe that is really where my story ends. Maybe my heart just needs to stop beating because it’s too tired to fight; my mind needs to stop processing these thoughts and feelings because the people who should understand never really do.
This may not be the best version of me but it was hands down the happiest version of me so far. After the heartbreaks and dark nights, came the light. To borrow the last paragraphs of my then private blog:
I’m just really thankful for the few people who still manage to make me feel alive even just for a moment. The beauty in all of this is that I now have this even greater appreciation for the people who really try to make me feel better by making me laugh, listening to me rant, making time to be there for me, or even crying on my behalf all because I’m hurt. Thank you so much. You guys are the reason why I feel less lonely every day.
Despite everything, I still believe that we all have goodness in our hearts. We may have different perception on what is the righteous thing to do, but our intentions are always grounded on what we believe is true and correct. I know I’ll make it through this, but I will never look at things the same way again.
Putting the embarrassingly vulnerable and borderline emo lines aside, I almost cried for my younger self reading this now—especially because I know that life will get better after all. All the pain caused by that shift allowed me to identify the lines and boundaries that I need to put up in key relationships I have—familial, romantic, and even professionally.
That wasn’t the happy ending to my journey for self-development, though. As I said earlier, we’ve all gone through so many versions and we have to keep evolving, adapting, and learning from these because that’s what being alive is all about. It’s taking what we can get out of a bad experience then making something good from it. In the same way that we take out the best from our good moments to power us through the worst.
The journey will end when we die. Before you think I’m being emo or something, all that meant was that we always have a second chance to be better. As long as we’re allowing ourselves to learn from our mistakes, opening ourselves up, and putting in as much good that we can out into this world—we can do better.