and im screaming in the palm of my hands

I was walking on the way home from my school, listening to Bound by Wet and Blood Orange and it had left me feeling the weight of it all settling into my bones. What a long a week, I thought. I touched my face and hummed along in the air. It was February already. The melody speaks of the unshakeable tiredness and I feel this in my chest as I walk. I can hear it in the song, the desire to break free from feeling bound to the rhythm of life. The beats feel heavy and there’s softness in the music, but it’s delivered with a kind of longing. I cannot help but feel that longing. The yearning to create, to feel something real, it is there, it's always there, with me, in my heart, but it gets swallowed within my preoccupations. Where is my time to create and to rebel?

I've been feeling an unspoken tension lately, where you know something is about to shift in your life but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what. Like something is getting out of reach and harder to grasp. And I may know it deep within but I do not want to acknowledge that possibility. I fear for the uncertainty. I cannot help but feel the bittersweet melodies playing in the corner of the space of my heart. I do not know who to blame. So, I took that uncertainty and poured it onto something familiar. Oh yes, it's my friends, I thought. It's the people I've surrounded myself by. My friends whom I love dearly. My friends who had scolded me for being unable to see my own worth, telling me how much time I've been wasting. They told me to at least look at myself and how much I deserve more, as if they aren't dating an ogre. My friends fall victim to men who take advantage of their vulnerability but my friends are too stupid to see that. And so what i am a mean woman now. They are dating an ape-like… thing they cant even call a boyfriend? Please. A gargoyle? If the men in my friends' lives had the decency to be gay, maybe, just maybe, I could have been a bit nicer. If they were funny and they make my friends laugh, I would've been a bit understanding. But they didn't. The men were the walking, breathing testament to my friends' utter lack of judgment. A big, ugly, inescapable reminder of their terrible, terrible taste.

I was so tired of it. God. And I've told them to break out of the box, men are not the only thing my friends are fit for, for fuck's sake. I've told my friends that attractions could turn into material. I carry pride about this because I am capable of doing that. Yes, I am proud and it shows, there were times i have caught myself turning almost into an asshole and maybe this is one of those. But is it really me? Have I demanded so much of my friends? Was it bad to want friends who value art more than anything? Is it so selfish to want friends who would rather drown in their own obsessions than drain themselves on men? If they could've invested more time into being in tune with their interests and creating something rather than being pathetic then maybe, I could have loved them more.

I was disassociating in the sidewalk of the busy city when I almost got hit by a motorcycle. Yes, while walking in the sidewalk. I shouted "tanginamo kuya" they always do that. This fucking city. Maybe I deserved that, have I been so cruel to my friends. I thought no good friend would think of such and no good friend would have such unspoken disappointment, therefore maybe I should get hit by a motorcycle.

I came home to a text from one of my friends that said "i miss you", followed up by a reel of animated dogs and a coffee shop somewhere in cubao telling me we should go there next time to hangout. I told her I missed her too.

That would be the last time we ever talked. I never saw her again.