unseasonable evening
hello bloggers and blog nation B) not quite a Flashpoint Retrospective for y'all today (but don't worry! i've been building up a backlog and i plan to release them every week or so ;]). tonight i'm going back to the ol' mainstay of Write Your Feelings And Put Them On The Internet.
i've gone back to my folks' house for an overnight stay. i've got a dentist appointment in the morning, and it'd be easier than commuting in at an ungodly early time, so here i am. it's quieter here, seeing as they're out further in the suburbs than i am right now. you can see the moon more clearly.
today my dad offered to get me something from the shops, so i picked up these sesame red bean balls that i used to really love. i still loved them! but idk, the sesame or something made me feel kinda strange? sometimes food just tastes and feels weird to me (partly that's anxiety and partly that's because i've got so many food allergies lmfao), so it was a bit... not upsetting, but maybe jarring? to have that happen to something i used to enjoy and only enjoy. i ended up offering the other one to my mum, which was great and all except now i'm craving the red bean balls again!!! bad move on my part haha, i ought to have saved them ^^;
my childhood room is as big as i remember it but it feels smaller. i've read a lot about how childhood rooms and places you used to frequent in your youth feel smaller upon return, partly because you (generally speaking) grow to be physically taller, and partly because you've seen more of the world, and are able to contextualise the bounds of your old life against everything else you've learned.
i've done a LOT of learning over the past year. i moved out for the first time!!! i graduated uni!!! and a bunch of other stuff in my personal life has happened that i don't want to talk about right now lmfao. it feels weird coming back to my parent's place. i've got my stuff strewn about and i'm sitting on the floor like this is a cheap hotel room that i am making my own for a single night... which in a way i guess it is??? my uncle stayed in this room less than a week ago while on holiday here. and it feels way better to feel like a wanderer in this place than it ever did to Properly Live Here.
i'm filipino, and i know it's pretty common for filipino people (and a lot of other asian people in general) to keep living with their family well into adulthood. as much as there is no love lost between me and the west, i do think that it is important that independence of some kind is encouraged and celebrated. not the hyperindividualistic neoliberal exceptionalism of the west, but...! y'know. something that isn't just "be born -> live with parents -> maybe get married or something there idk -> die". one of the more relaxed managers at my old job used to talk a lot about how difficult it was to be living under the same roof as his parents AND his siblings AND his siblings' partners. he would always tell me how impressed he was that i had moved out successfully. and regardless of how difficult finding my feet as an Adult With Adult Responsibilities has been, it's been LOADS better than any of the problems i had living w my parents.
there's this tumblr post that i really like (which is a sentence that shows my ass better than any blog post could haha), which goes a little something like: "i would take every single difficult thing about living by myself over the problems i had when i had to live with my family". and i want to be clear, i don't hate my family!!! there are just certain incompatibilities between us that make me really happy for their support, and willing to give my support in return, but that are also best resolved by us having our own spaces.
that's all for tonight, aries nation!! take breaks, eat nice things if you can, get as much water and sleep as is feasible for you. hope you're doing well wherever you are, and that you see the moon or maybe a cool bird.
-aries