[Credits to Morgan Harper Nichols for the image]
Last week I caught myself thinking about how I thought I was in standstill — the sixth month of the year and I felt I wasn’t doing anything significant, and I was still me: unbelievably ordinary.
It’s been a sentiment I’ve been feeling since the turn of the year. I think that’s what bar review does for you. The mechanical feeling of waking up and studying, for months and months on end eats away at you after a while, making you feel like very little else makes you feel alive.
Then this afternoon, I came across this photo. Worried and troubled and having listed the things I would tell my therapist the next time we meet, I came across this photo. I paused, looked at my therapist list, then flipped the paper over and wrote about what I’ve done (and who I’ve become) since June of last year.
And honestly, it’s been a hell of a ride.
From graduating from my dream school to fulfilling 17 year old Joy’s dream of becoming a lawyer; from coming up with excuses on why I had to throw up after every meal to talking openly about my struggle with my mental health; from unsure to still, well, unsure, but with a little more direction.
Often we make years our benchmarks. 2018 was dreary, I wish it was 2013 again, can’t we all go back to 2010. Often we make these numbers that signify the chronology of time the benchmarks of our success, but I think this photo has taught me something incredible: that sometimes, we find out our successes in the least expected ways. Sometimes, a year is too huge a span to consider — many things, after all, can happen in one. This June from last June, though? That I can handle. That I can easily flip through pages of my beaten down journals to see: how much have I grown?
And more importantly, how wonderful has that growth been?
Of perpetual finds 
You’d be surprised how the current you would look at the past version of yourself – you’ve walked through a long path to reach this point. Reminds me of a lecture by Sir DM Reyes, an old fiction professor I had: characters in stories usually reach a better place from where they started, by the time the tale concludes.
(Oh, and by the way – it was nice meeting you in person some months ago. I don’t know if you still remember me, but we bumped into each other after disembarking from the Megamall-SM North P2P bus.) 🙂