I believe there is a beautiful weight in creating things by hand, an emotion that is only created through the grip of a pen and smooth paper. I’m in love with the curves and sharp ends of other people’s handwriting, it means the world to me. Handwritten letters and messages are personable and real, something tangible to hold and store away. The visibility of ink pools, slanting letters, and strokes of passion give way to intimate pockets of time, moments where the writer might have hesitated, rushed, or loved so much that the words wrote themselves. If I may confess, I first wrote this essay down in my journal before it could touch the pages of a typed document. I find writing easier this way, with the transparency of my mistakes and reorganized thoughts. I believe that my heart is connected to the ink in my pen. I have kept every handwritten note, letter, and drawing given to me since third grade. They’re stuffed in a shadow box that is currently bursting through the wood frame. They are my little treasures, moments and thoughts to read when I feel grateful for my life. Inside the box lives notes passed to me from chattering classmates in elementary, people grateful for my acts and words of kindness; Christmas cards from friends and family reflecting on our year together, wishing for another year of memories; drawings and letters written and drawn by my students, sometimes illegible but always heartfelt; and birthday cards, well-wishes for the year ahead, blessings written down on cardstock and sealed carefully with love. They all live with me, precious parts of my life that I’ve kept for myself to reflect on and cherish. There is one card that lives at the top of the pile, the very first note for my eye to catch when I open the box, a card bent from all the times I’ve opened and closed it. A birthday card for my fourteenth birthday, given to me by my grandparents. My grandparents lived with my mother and me for a long time. They raised me alongside my mom. They taught me my first language, picked me up from school, and they never failed to celebrate my birthday with me every year. It was never a surprise to receive a card and some money inside, but I hadn’t expected one on my fourteen birthday. My grandfather always wrote my cards, signing for himself and my grandma, a result of a futile argument he had every year with her. She always said he had better handwriting. At the beginning of 2016, my grandfather’s health declined severely and he was diagnosed with cancer. It came as a shock to my whole family, and the resulting year was somber. Come June, he was in and out of the hospital and his hands were aching. I couldn’t expect him to pick up a pen. When I woke up on June 7th, my fourteenth birthday, my grandma pressed an envelope into my hands and wished me a happy birthday. The card itself was simple, something that should have really been a condolence card with “My thoughts are with you” written in pretty cursive, a choice that only my grandparents would make. When I opened it, my heart broke. In my grandfather’s best handwriting, he had written, “Dearest Ally, I love you always,” and signed for both him and my grandma.

I have been a poet my whole life. I have written my existence into sonnets and prose. All the good parts and all the bad. Especially the bad. It gives me a reason to say that I've come this far. I imagine this is why my mental health is so important to me. I have struggled through my relationship with my mental health. I have been distant from myself at the same time I have been my closest confidant. But, I will never deny that how I feel will always carry weight in every aspect of my life; my ambitions, my values, and my purpose. I've lived my life in proximity to happiness and away from it, but the closer I am, the more genuine I feel. Without my mental wellness, I have no goals, no extra love to give, and I am left pouring from an empty cup. When I realized that I would never be the greatest version of myself if I did not prioritize my mental health, I learned how to treat myself with care and compassion. In my sophomore year of high school, I experienced the lowest moment of my depression and I nearly took my own life. I was able to reach out to a friend that night and I stopped myself in time, but it was the scariest moment I had ever experienced. I knew I never wanted it to happen again. My best friend helped me contact our school counselor and I started therapy. It was hard to process everything that was going on in my life without someone impartial to talk through it with me. I’ve been in and out of therapy for four years now, and it’s been a journey. I just recently graduated from therapy for the second time, and I feel bittersweet about it. It’s terrifying to be pulled out of survival mode and thrust back into life without someone to walk with me. Though I know I’ve graduated from therapy for a reason, and the reason is that I’ve built myself to handle my mental wellness by myself. I’ve grown to cope with my anxiety and depression with art, writing, and love in different ways. I tend to pick up new hobbies as I please to destress and give myself a creative outlet. Recently, I’ve been making miniature clay figures and painting. But, I always come back to my first love at the end of the day. My writing. I journal and vent and I reflect on the things I’ve learned and the things that I am grateful for. Practicing gratitude has opened up new ways for me to love, and above all, I maintain my mental wellness by loving. Reconnecting with friends and family after distancing myself for so long gave me the strength to reach out and save myself, and by opening up I came to realize I could never be alone on this journey. My mental health is important because I will always want to be better; for the students I teach, for the stories I want to write, for the people I love, and most importantly, I want to be better for myself. So, I am trying to be kinder to myself. I’m learning to speak to myself gently, to open myself to my emotions, and to appreciate the things I create and the way that I exist without condition.

I cut my mother tongue right out of my mouth. I stitched a new one in with shaky, inexperienced hands, thread and needle stolen from my grandmother’s bedside table. Later, I would come to recognize this as my first act of betrayal. If I roll my tongue along the ridges of my teeth, my canines snag on the syllables of old stitches, catching onto parts of a self-inflicted wound that never set properly. You see, my first language was Tagalog. My grandma, my Nanay, had been my first, and my favorite, conversationalist; she helped me shape my mouth around the soft letters and hard endings of Tagalog. My first language was warm in this way, the way that we begin each morning with tsaa and kape, a comforting familiarity. When I began to attend public school in America, I learned the coldness of English. Kindergarten was just early enough for other children to notice how differently my tongue fit around certain words. After one too many fumbles, I went home one day and I never spoke Tagalog again. I grew to hear, to understand, but my muscle had split with disuse. My words were clunky where they should have been graceful, harsh where they should have been gentle. I often say I lost a part of myself when I came home that day, and I continued to shed the warmth given to me by my grandmother until I had dug a chasm between us, one where words lost themselves in translation. My relationship with my heritage as a Filipino-American has been complicated, rough, and bruising… but after my nanay’s death in 2019, I attempted to bridge over what I had so vehemently buried. Though I feel I lost myself for so long, my journey to reconnect with my family and my culture has given me the opportunity to gain even more than I could have imagined. In February of 2019, my grandmother was hospitalized for a severe asthma attack, but I was sure she would be coming home at the end of the week. When her stay spanned through the weekend, I still stayed. Come Monday morning, we received a call from the hospital informing us that my grandmother had passed away in her sleep that night. I felt like the world had slipped from my hands and cracked open, the core blinding me and stripping me raw. When the funeral came and I was asked to give a eulogy, I could only mutter shaky apologies and a quiet Salamat, Nay, the only word in Tagalog I could muster in the moment. I felt my grief mix with shame. How could I give up what my nanay had so lovingly taught me, what we used to spend our days giving each other? On the mother’s day following her death, I wrote her a letter written in broken Tagalog. It was my attempt at rekindling what used to tie us so closely together. After the pain subsided into an awful ache, I began to mold my mouth around the words I forced myself to forget. Relearning Tagalog was like suturing a cut in my throat, but this time, the scar had healed over, milky white and beautiful. It was a dedication to my love for my family, a marker of my passion and devotion. Speaking Tagalog again opened a whole new world of doors to me. I could communicate with my elders and relatives in the Philippines, speak to my mom in her native tongue, and I was able to find comfort in my community. After suppressing my heritage for so long, I opened my arms to loving the people who were part of it. I’m grateful that I grew up in a town that had a large Filipino community, one where I could attend church with my Ates and Kuyas and Adings, and go to a school that has a Fil-Am club and performances of traditional Filipino dances. In my high school years, I did three years of tinikling and I formed some of my greatest friendships there. In Tagalog, there is a word I love that I feel encompasses Filipino culture. Bayanihan. It exemplifies the Filipino spirit of loving and helping your community. I feel this deeply. After being around my Filipino family, I found a purpose in service and humanities. After seeing the welcoming love that greeted me, I knew I wanted to give myself and my care to people who need it. At the moment, I am a dedicated teacher and an advocate for equal-opportunity education. In my senior year, I dedicated my birthday to raising money for foster children, a tradition I carry until now. In my heritage, I found compassion, and my love for people, animals, and the environment. My care defines me and it is born from being Filipino. Trying to reconnect with my culture has been a struggle, but one that I have been so happy to push through. Through the trips and falls of trying to love the Filipino aspects of myself, I gained incredible confidence and love for myself as a whole. There is a stereotype around Filipinos and being loud, taking up space, and at times being “dramatic.” I am now proud to say that I do not escape the stereotype, but for a long time, I tried to. I spoke quietly, kept myself small, and I never made a fuss. When I was younger, I was embarrassed to have a family that was always the loudest in the restaurant, I didn’t like when my mom danced in the middle of the store, and I always kept the karaoke mic at bay. But in my attempt at hiding this part of myself, I drowned any semblance of individuality, passion, and shameless joy. I have been learning that to be Filipino is to take pride in loving things boldly and openly, and that love can be expressed in laughing too loudly across the table, singing in supermarket aisles, and serenading your family with Whitney Houston. We love in strange ways, but it is love none-the-less, and it is a love that we are satisfied with. I am tenderly in love with everything, and I am obsessed with saying it and showing it whenever I can. This is being Filipino to me. My culture and heritage has shaped me into someone who cares graciously for her friends, family, and little inanimate objects, someone who takes pride in herself and her loud voice and uses it for good, and someone who my Nanay would be proud of.

When I was young, Peter Pan taught me to follow the north star to find faith, trust, and a little bit of pixie dust to make everything magical. I was blessed with my own north star in my dog, Tinkerbell, and she is every bit of magic I could ever want. Tinkerbell came into my life when I was eight years old, freshly facing my drastic move across the country from New Jersey to California and dealing with my parent’s separation. At the time, I hadn’t felt the gravity of the changes in my life, but looking back on my past, I realized that I was facing rocky foundation and I desperately needed something to keep me grounded. My savior came when a family friend called to ask if we were interested in adopting a puppy, his Yorkshire Terrier had given birth a year prior and they had yet to give a home to the runt of the litter. I had always wanted a dog, but my mom and dad were too busy to properly take care of a puppy and they believed my sister and I were not old enough or responsible enough to take care of one ourselves. I suppose a small benefit to my parent’s divorce and being separated from my sister was the fact that my family felt I needed a companion, and thus, I was granted Tinkerbell, my wonderful three-legged, stubborn, and feisty little girl. She was my miracle, and she is everything to me. Tinkerbell hopped into my life during a raging storm and I clung to her like a lifeline. She was my closest confidant in the times I tried to keep my worries and struggles to myself in fear of causing trouble for my mom and grandmother, my greatest companion after school to greet me when my mom was traveling between her job in Jersey and her place with me, and my dearest friend when I floundered to find my place in the town I would eventually call home. In my early years, I found myself saying that I was an only child the more I grew up without my older sister, but I failed to consider that Tinkerbell had filled a role in my life akin to a sibling and family member. I have always been, and will always be, grateful for the magic that found me when Tinkerbell entered my life. When she came, I was struggling through massive change and she has stuck by my side through all the shifts that have happened since then. Through all my lows, and all my highs, she has been my constant. Tinkerbell is 13 years old now, we just celebrated her birthday on October 2nd, and I love her with the same childlike wonder and giddiness as I did when I was eight. As I grow into new chapters of my life, I keep my pixie dust tucked into my pocket for luck and magic to find me just like Tinkerbell did, right when I needed her.

baking soda and hydrogen peroxide. i’ve been writing with my teeth covered in blood. i think i am coming around to the idea that women can be carnal and savage. that we are made of unholy things. impatience, anger, bitchiness, and smokescreens. i am tired of waiting and loving and making myself small. i want to take and kill and walk over things that no longer serve me. i think of the divine women who came before me, goddesses and witches and sirens. i want to be like them. i want to be vengeful and i want to hate. i want to smite and curse and possess. i want to own things like they are mine, not borrowed or stolen. i owe my talents to people who hurt me and i hate that, that even the things i make are branded with someone else's name, that there is evidence of bruising and tenderness, proof that people have touched me. it’s not true. it’s not. i have never been touched in my life. i have taken this skin and burned it clean, my fingertips are rubbed raw, calloused and smooth. i have never even been held, how could you touch me? i am not yours. i won't let you have me. i am all i have. the blood on my teeth is not from biting my tongue anymore.