Of Something, Something and Something
I finally took the plunge and bought my own domain, so you can see why I’ve been so excited for this these last weeks. It only took me six years to do, but hey – I did it.
It all starts with the chances of your parents’ meeting. Your dad was maybe walking one day and out of 200 million women, he bumped into your mum. There is a 10 percent chance they exchanged conversations. 10 percent says they went on a second date. Another 10 percent to go on another one, and another, and another. Sparks flew, butterflies in the belly, your dad must have swept your mum off her feet. Yadda yadda yadda. Soon, love grows. But love doesn’t always work out the way we thought it would. They would have broken up after a big fight. Or dated long enough to soon grow tired of each other. The chances of your parents staying together long enough to have kids are 1 in 2,000. So far, the chances of you existing are 1 in 40 million.
It’s only getting started. During the years you could have been born. your dad has produced over 4 trillion sperm cells. Your mum, on the other hand, has about 100,000 eggs in her lifetime. They would have dated other people before meeting, or the other’s firsts. Yet, here they are together. That means that the odds of the one egg and the one sperm meet to later produce you is 1 in 400 quadrillions.
Are you still there? It’s not over yet. The odds of you being here – on Earth, at this time -meant that before you are 4 billion years of an unbroken chain of many, many generations that lived long enough to reproduce. Grandpa Philipp could have been hunting one night and never would have returned to his newly wedded wife. That’s 1 in 10^45,000.
But of course, remember that that one egg had to meet that one sperm. The odds of you now is 1 in 10^2,685,000.
Your mother could have turned left and never would have bumped into your father. Or he could have been 1 second too early or too late. Or many years down the line they would have met, only to have your father have his wife beside him. Or say, they fell in love. At a seemingly perfect time. Their careers are blossoming, social life pounding and energies ecstatic and wild. Only to have learned he’s moving away but she’s not.
The odds of you, here, now, is basically zero.
The odds of you and I? Incomprehensible.
What I learned from sticking to my last year’s resolutions:
Happy 2017, folks!
Life has a funny way to bringing all the things that you could ever want and all the things you prayed to never have. I have finally graduated college, fulfilling the dreams of my parents. And now, I am left with the responsibility to become a full functioning adult. I am expected to pay bills on time, with my own money, find a job that will both pursue my life-long dream (I still don’t know what that is) while having a really good pay off it and soon, find a husband that will love me and cherish my annoying ass.
Wow wow wow. If I knew all these were waiting for me, I would never have graduated. Stay in school, kids! For as long as you can.
But then again, maybe being an adult isn’t so bad. I mean, I am now fully responsible with my time. I can spend ALL DAY re-watching Gossip Girl and spend my 30’s still job hunting. Or I can work my ass off right now, and hopefully retire earlier than 65 years old. What a delight!
And so, this is me. A fresh graduate, wasting my time away on this blog. Because, what else am I to do? Seriously. Anybody? HELP????
PS. Don’t expect this will be my come-back post. I might be gone for another year. Again.
I know not much about love. God, do I even know anything about love. But here’s what I know.
Sometimes, the least we expect out of people comes out in their most natural state.
You wake up in the morning to find them lying beside you with their shirts rolled up their tummy and their hand laying softly by your rib cage. The night before, you were both a mess. You were both drunk off wine and conversations.
He was never your type. No, you’re attracted to well-suited guys in ties and briefcases. He neither had both. He lived on baseball caps and sweats, on a machinery you can’t quite put a hand on.
He said he grew up with the pressure to be the best. Or so, that’s what his dad pounded him for. Number one, champion, greatest. Never second.
But he was sweet, when he looked neither of it. Never was a big doer and believer of all things cheesy, yet somehow he pulls together an unassuming night of movies, pizza and duvets, not big roses in bouquets. And I, on the other hand, smitten.
He has a smirk when he thinks of something that once made him happy, and a different smile when he looks deep into my eyes. Sometimes I wish to crack his head open only to hear what he’s been thinking.
On days when he’s indifferent, upset or mad, his voice would echo the room and a lion was set out only to find regrets in his eyes and disblief in his hands.
And still, we fall in love. We fall in love in their most natural state, as we least expected to.
I have, once again, went through a 6-month long haitus (probably even more, but I lost count). Since then, a lot has changed in just half a year.
I’m writing again, there’s that. I’ve got a private blog. I’ve published a lot on there. And no, I’m not telling you. There’s some intimate closure I have with my published writings on there. I’m sorry. I will, however, try my best to fit in a little bit of my time to publish decent (except this) pieces on here.
I am also, currently, on a 360-hour internship. And I am tired. But I am writing. Because I miss it. And there’s nothing else to say about that.
I’m not sure what I’m trying to say here but maybe I just want to go back home. And maybe that isn’t so easy to do for some things.
But this is home.
He had brown, curly hair when I met him. He wore a black pants that sagged just right. I had my favorite sun dress on. He was a full-on sport guy. I was 17 and young. I had too much of my life going on. There were parties and night outs and all the boys I want to kiss and not wake up next to with. He was young and just as naive. He had all his life figured out. He played ball and went to church on Sundays. I lay on my bed hungover on Sundays. He liked me, he said. A lot, I asked. And laughed and laughed and laughed at the thought of someone liking me so much. He didn’t say anything. I kept on laughing. He stared at me until I finally stopped. Why, I asked again. His eye glimmered and faded into nothing. He looked down on his knees and pressed his fingernails into them. I looked away. I could no longer bear seeing him worship me so much. I didn’t deserve the way he treated me. And he did, for an interesting turn of events, treat me good. But I was scared of how good he treated me that long after all these will last, I will crave more and more until he no longer can give. And I can’t be too selfish to ask that much from him, when I only laugh in the middle of his sentences.
And now I look back, reading all the messages we exchanged. I just was never sure of him. Until today.
And I guess summer, like the feelings that come with it, lasts only for a short while but stays in our memories forever.
There were times when I never get to thank you for the little things. But mostly, I always forget to thank you for the big things. And as I write this letter for you, remember to always always ALWAYS buy me watermelon for dinner.
As a seafarer, it must have been hard to not see your girls grew to be as they are now, and even harder to imagine that one is nearing the end of college! But as to not feel like you’ve left out a huge part in their lives, all I can tell you is this: You did not miss out on us. We lived like any other young girls did. We went into kindergarten at 4 and to college at 16. On our 18 birthdays, we gathered around for an intimate dinner party. On Christmas, we had the usual. You know the stories.
But as years passed, while you’re away sailing into wherever and us getting crushes over Hollywood boys, you never failed to offer what you can. If not, even more than you can. You have always been our rock, the one to run into when we look for shelter. You’re strong enough to hold us into your arms, no matter what the situation comes. Thank you.
Thank you dad for all the things you’ve done right for the family. We never give you enough credit for what you do, but we love you. So here, for all the thank you’s I’ve missed, the guidance you’ve given, the support you’ve provided, the love you were never too selfish to share and for the sacrifices made for us, thank you.
Happy father’s day, my captain! I’m always proud of you.
There’s beauty in us. The way we can say a lot by not saying anything, how we can never deliver what we truly feel nor imply the complications of what must come. As we lay side by side, our bodies are impalpable by all the natural senses and it is both irrational and well-grounded to think of us as one. I can feel your chest when I lay close to it, but never the words lurking around and in it. I see the veins in your arms and up through your temples but unable to find the energy that runs with it. You can look too long through my eyes, but not too long enough to see the soul within. If we stare, touch and feel a little more, would we be able to? At times it is baffling and a blur and yet I continue to see the different versions of ‘what if’s’ for the both of us awaiting to be discovered and lived. The negativity surrounding itself is, however, overriding the possibilities of happy ending, but so what? I am intensely imaginative and have compelled myself to believe that what can never be, may be. No matter the odds written for us by the gods, we have all the power in the world to create what must be created for our own. And whether that is grounding, terrifying or momentary, I don’t know.
All I know is there is beauty in our nothing.
