A Taurus Wishlist, reprised

Whole 30 feelings

After a Taurus Wishlist, from my Tinyletter.

Before 30, there was 29. And 29 was always almost 30, but so was 28, 27, and 26. Now that I’m here, I’m not surprised because I’ve felt this way for a couple of years now. I’m on my computer, writing to you because it’s been a while. I’m here because it’s a lot better than the bottom of a bottle. 

I keep whole lists for everything: groceries, deadlines, bills, and events. My favorite is the one that keeps stock of every disaster that has happened since 2020. Taal Volcano. The transportation shutdown. Ada’s cancer. My dog’s cancer. Botched root canal. Police harassing Patreng Non. Palestine. My list of grudges against the universe and a few of its players. Of wrongs that were, in my opinion, divine mistakes. A list I’d love to take to God’s middle managers in human resources and tell them that we ought to be doing a lot better. Let’s close this feedback loop.

While we’re on the subject, let’s add this to my list of grudges: I haven’t seen my parents in two years. Not unless we count whatever their front cameras can capture. I now only know my parents as their faces, disembodied pixels. All smiles, frowns, tears. Forehead and chin. It’s always morning where they are when I call from my bed at night. But I know, I know it could be worse. I’ve seen the grief of friends who’ve lost their parents this pandemic. Some sudden, all at once. Some slower, protracted. I already lost him long before he died, she typed over Telegram. I’m lucky enough when you compare. All I’m saying is that at 30, I wanted BETTER. I wish we didn’t have to compare.

My mother was 28 when she had me, her second child. From all that she’s told me, she had a difficult time getting pregnant. She told me she tried everything—doctors and manghihilots. They told her she’d be with child, and that they would be a boy. The Magnificat reprised, in the doctor’s office or maybe the living room of her mother-in-law. My big sister would tell me and tell me often how she rubbed my mother’s swollen belly, saying hello to her baby brother. She laughs, and I laugh politely. I imagine my mother’s body. Growing, transmogrifying, contorting. Whole guts rearranging, making room, for a body that wasn’t what she was expecting. Her body giving and giving because mine kept taking.

In my opinion, May is the hottest month of summer. At least, according to my electricity bill that lands like clockwork in my inbox every month. Another bill coinciding with another paycheck. Another Zoom hang, another screenshot. Another package to unwrap. How many baby turtles have been choked to death by the loops of my facemasks? And guess what! We’ll do it again next month, and we’ll do it another 6 times and that will have been my 2021. Six more bills and it will be 2022.

So May came and went, and I wished for nothing. Or at least, nothing like the things I wished for last year. I joked that the only thing I’d like is to lose 10 pounds, and that sounds ambitious enough for someone like me. Because I’m convinced that this extra weight is permanently a part of me. My body shielding, insulating me from further damage. Keeping me far away from all the items on my list. Let’s add this, too, to the list: how can I hate my body, myself at 30? I hate that I feel so in need of fixing. It feels too much like a trope.

I’m 30 now. What have I learned? What lessons am I taking with me to the rest of my thirties? Kael told me to check my conjunctions. To stop capitalizing words after the colon. That white hair is inevitable. To mind alliterations or totally avoid them. That my dog is at the halfway point, a senior now. Mid-game, past the main plot of her life. I’m reminded daily that time is short. I try to be mindful of rhythm. The way a sentence reads, how it sounds in case you’re reading this aloud or in your mind. When I write questions, I wonder: do you hear it in my voice or yours?

And finally, I met a girl with her talking cat.

Let’s rewrite this as: “I met a girl and her cat said hi.”

A Taurus Wishlist, reprised

I want: outside. A salad with olive oil dressing. Another fountain pen that only ever writes journal entries and postcards. I want more postcards. I’ve gone through my entire life’s collection just last year. I want a haircut. I want my pimple scars to fade. I want to go away—far, far, far enough, to be away loooooong enough, for me to feel relieved about going home.

I’d love to see my parents. I want them to see me get married up close and in person, but I’ve learned to want whatever keeps them whole. I want to go to church. To tell God that I’m back because I’m out of options. See this list? Maybe you can fix it. Would you listen if I begged?

I want us all to be vaccinated, so I can get on a plane to Narita, Seoul, Cebu, Sydney, even San Francisco. I want money so I can get on those planes. Money, so I can apply for those visas. I want to ride my bike in a city with signs I can’t read. I want to bike and not die. I want to honeymoon in a place far, far from here. Oh that’s right, I’m going to have a husband.

I wish: to wake up rested. To share a bottle of my favorite wine this time, so I don’t have to finish it all at once. To be rid of what Kiki Petrosino calls that specific kind of ugly. To be rid of this grief, which I’m convinced will be gone with proper diet and exercise. I wish for better, I wish for it every day. I wish to wake up one day, kiss my fiancé’s lips in the morning and with my next kiss he’ll be my husband. I really wish you all could be there.