Prose

  • Confessions of an Instagrammer #3

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    Dear You, 

    Stop giving me mixed signals. Okay? Stop pm-ing me late at night “hellos” and winking emojis. Do me the favor and stop because I know I am so stupid to reply every single time. Even when I know that anytime you can simply drop the conversation without saying goodnight or bye. Or brb.

    You know, I try so hard to make my every response interesting enough to make sure that you reply.

    Stop it. Okay?

    It’s bad enough that you act like you don’t know me when we see each other.

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    I need a hug. #clingy

  • Confessions of an Instagrammer #2

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    The cupcake I’ve ordered arrives. It is a chocolate cupcake with mint-flavored green frosting, chocolate chips and strings of chocolate syrup on top. It’s carefully laid down on a dainty little embroidered cloth. It’s like this cupcake place is made for Instagram.

    It’s Instaworthy.

    I immediately get my phone from my old Jansport on a seat beside me. I try my best to get the best angle, shooting from every possible position. I try to shoot from the top, from the bottom, from the side and up close.

    As I was about to tap on my phone screen, someone walks by in the background, which ruins everything.

    It is him. With someone. A girl, who’s not his sister or his cousin.

    I should know because she is his girlfriend.

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  • Confessions of an Instagrammer

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    I wake up in the morning and the first thing that I do is take a selfie. 15 minutes later, I finally take a good shot. A shot that’s perfect in a way. Maybe not that perfect, but I do hope that it gets likes from my followers, at least a like from him.

    I try different filters on my photo. Each displaying the same face in a different light. I choose Walden since it gives an “I care about what people say but it doesn’t show” feel. 

    I decide not to upload it anyway. I think he is still asleep at this time. 

    To be continued…

  • Frozen’s ‘Let It Go’ and Homosexuality

    With the recent win of Let It Go (Best Original Song) composed by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, we would like to share one of our interpretations of the song and the movie Frozen.

    Watching the movie, we immediately begin to relate Elsa’s supernatural powers to “homosexuality”. For us and as far as our experience go, being gay is both a gift and a curse.

    And one that makes it a curse is when you are forced into hiding it to make your family and friends proud and away from shame. You are afraid of people’s judgments that you’d rather portray a different character in the public eye.

    Inevitably, being in the closet, you’re forced to close the door and isolate your true self even to your own sisters or brothers. Like Elsa, you watch your every move for people not to know. The way you talk. How you walk.

     Conceal, don’t feel. Don’t let them know.

    It hurts because your siblings are supposed to be your best friends. It hurts because you can’t fully do so unless they know you’re gay. Unless they know who you are.

    Let It Go is a song that celebrates individuality. It is a song that sets aside all inhibitions. All the crazy anxiety that hinders you to achieve or just be plainly happy.

  • January

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    In the next two weeks or so, we become as hopeful as a little boy wishing for a baby brother or as optimistic as a high school student dreaming to make the world a better place. We are neither fazed by the wind of uncertainties nor afraid of the heartbreaks of winter.

    In January, we can be anything we want, do anything we like and try to as much as possible make the new year ours.

    Because at least in January, the new year is ours.

    We scribble neatly (or not) in our new planner notebooks a long list of resolutions. We make vision boards filled from construction paper and cut-outs from old magazines.Will we get all of them done for the year? No but at least in January, we do.

    We change our routines and create new personal superstitions. We pass a different route going to work because it’s faster. We try to commit in documenting every day of our lives in a diary. We brush our teeth before going in to the shower instead of the other way around. We realize how much has changed since January of last year and it feels okay. Though there is still regret and bitterness, it is okay because in January, we welcome and accept change.

    We read our horoscopes (western and Chinese). We believe that our luck is changing. We think that we are lucky enough to win the lottery so we buy tickets. We imagine what we can buy with the prize money. How much we will donate to charity and how much we will keep. We look forward to find love for the first time or again for the nth time because in January, everything feels attainable.

    We dream. We plan. We aim.

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