Relationships
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Let’s hang out online
I grew up in a neighborhood where your neighbor would call out for you on Christmas day with containers filled with Filipino Spaghetti, Macaroni Salad, and Buko Salad, and where finding someone’s lost cat was as much your responsibility as your own. It was a place where you are a part of a community that… Read more
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Letter no. 48
Dear reader from the future, It’s easy to dwell in the present and make decisions based on what you know now. But even though you don’t feel like anything would change at all, you might not believe how different things will be a decade from now. The people you think less of might end up… Read more
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I have forgotten what free play feels like
One afternoon, while my friend was exploring my tablet’s pen, she said, “Let’s play,” while drawing a hasty tic-tac-toe grid on my notetaking app—no tutorial, no settings to configure—just spontaneous play. We took turns marking Xs and Os, neither of us keeping score. The simplicity felt childish, so my adult self started to scream inside… Read more
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Gender expectations
Why are men’s emotional crises viewed as responses to external pressure while women’s are attributed to inherent emotional weakness? I never really understood society’s expectations towards women until I experienced the pressure to conform to the idea that women should never express intense negative emotions to avoid being labeled as “hysterical,” “dramatic,” and “unstable.” Speaking… Read more
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A leader without dreams and visions
If a man cannot communicate his dreams and visions for this lifetime and the next generation (and the next), he probably has nothing to begin with. And that is a dangerous man to marry, especially when you are called to trust him with your life. And why would a man withhold a good thing such… Read more
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Let me now bury the dead
There is a scream so loud it shatters my insides but it never had the chance to escape the vacuum of my heart. It may come about as whimpers but if you’d only see the wreck a silent mourning has caused, how the pieces spread out into the void, you would understand the magnitude of… Read more
jessa 