I got in.
Full scholarship. Top university. A name that made adults nod with approval and peers widen their eyes.
When the acceptance email arrived, I didn't scream or cry. I just stared at the screen and whispered to myself, Of course you did. Then I closed the laptop and started listing what I'd need to pack.
There was no celebration. Just motion. I didn't tell my mother until dinner, between bites of reheated sinigang. The kind that had sat in the fridge for two days and was now more sour than comforting. She didn't say congratulations. She just muttered, "Good," and asked if I'd remembered to do the laundry.
That was enough.
College was fast. Loud. Blinding. A whirlwind of moving parts and shiny distractions. My peers drank on rooftops and danced in warehouses lit with LED strips and secondhand smoke. I watched from the library windows, listening to laughter echo down the halls like a language I never quite spoke.
They wore denim jackets with paint splatters and mismatched earrings and swore by thrifted freedom. They talked about "learning to live" as if it were a subject they could major in. I sat with my planner and color-coded pens, highlighting deadlines like sacred scripture.
While they flirted and floundered and took gap semesters to "find themselves," I stayed focused.
Class. Work. Internship. Study group. Volunteer. Network. Repeat.
Every day was scheduled, color-coded, tracked. My dorm room looked like a bulletin board exploded—sticky notes on the mirror, handouts taped above my desk, a whiteboard filled with acronyms only I understood.
Even during holidays, while everyone else posted pictures with friends at beaches or Tagaytay cafés, I was doing online modules in the living room beside my lola watching teleseryes. I'd wear headphones, pretending not to hear the dramatic slaps or declarations of love and betrayal coming from the TV. Sometimes I'd envy the way those characters felt everything so fully, even if their lives were falling apart.
I treated success like oxygen. If I stopped for too long, I feared I'd suffocate.
And then, there was dating.
If childhood taught me anything, it was this: love is conditional. Unstable. Temporary.
So I treated romance like extra credit. Nice if you can get it—but never worth failing over.
I dated. Briefly. Strategically.
A fellow honors student who could spell "existential." A startup boy who read too much Nietzsche. A finance major with a jawline like justice and the emotional depth of a spoon.
Each one was a bullet point—neat, forgettable, filed under: Things I Tried.
We'd go to third-wave cafés where they served overpriced coffee on wooden boards. I'd sit across from them, hands folded neatly over my lap, letting them talk while I nodded and filed away red flags like case studies. If they complimented my drive, I stayed. If they asked about my past, I disappeared.
The minute things got real—when someone wanted to know my middle name, or asked what made me cry—I changed passwords, blocked numbers, smiled through the discomfort and ghosted with surgical precision.
I learned the rules. Wrote them in my head like commandments:
Don't be too emotional.
Don't be too available.
Never be the girl who loves more.
I watched the other girls—the ones who posted crying selfies, who chased after boys who left them on seen. They wore their hearts outside their bodies like bruises.
I didn't understand them.
Or maybe I envied them.
Because they got to feel. Loudly. Messily. Shamelessly.
I'd wear red lipstick, hold eye contact, laugh without showing my teeth. I was a master of the Almost.
Almost in love.
Almost vulnerable.
Almost real.
But never fully.
Because to be real meant to risk being left again.
And I'd rather be impressive than abandoned.
My roommates called me the "president of productivity." I was the girl they asked for résumé help, the one who always had a pen, a backup charger, and a five-year plan.
They joked about how "she's too busy to fall in love," and I laughed along, never admitting how much I had rehearsed that role.
I built a life that looked incredible on paper. Interned with the right names. Networked with the right people. My LinkedIn sparkled with endorsements, my inbox with invitations. I was featured in the university blog under "Women to Watch." I bookmarked it, stared at my own photo for a second, and felt… nothing.
Sometimes, I'd catch my reflection in the glass doors of the law building—hair pinned back, blouse crisp, heels sharp—and wonder who she was trying to impress.
And for what?
There were times I'd stand in front of the dorm mirror fixing my collar and see my mother's silhouette in my own posture. That same stillness in the shoulders. The quiet armor. And I'd wonder if I was becoming her—made of steel and silence.
I told myself I was building a future. I told myself I was breaking generational patterns, paving paths, making my family proud. And maybe I was.
But some nights, when my last meeting ended and the cafeteria was closed, I'd walk back to my dorm under the orange glow of the streetlamps, the city thick with car horns, tricycle engines, and the sharp smoke from vendors grilling isawand betamax, and feel something small and hollow twist inside me.
One night, a stray cat brushed against my ankle outside the dorm gate. I crouched down, reached out to pet it, but it darted away. I sat there for a moment, watching it disappear into the alley. I whispered, "Me too," before standing up and heading inside.
Heels clicking on the pavement, heart quiet in my chest—I'd realize something terrifying:
No one knew me.
And I wasn't sure I knew myself either.
Chapter 5
By the time I turned twenty-four, I had everything they said a woman should want.
A career that made people tilt their heads and say, "Wow, you're really doing something."
A wardrobe built on clean lines, neutral tones, and the occasional silk blouse that made me feel expensive.
A LinkedIn profile more active than my dating life.
And a walk that turned heads, even if my eyes never turned back.
I was, as one guy once said, "a little intimidating."
He said it like a compliment, but I knew better. That word was a mirror. It meant: You're beautiful, but I'm scared you don't need me. You seem like you already figured it out.
He wasn't wrong.
I had become excellent at curating myself.
Witty on first dates, articulate in awkward silences. I knew how to laugh at the right times, tilt my head just so, sip my wine like I wasn't already scanning for red flags.
I could read a man's intentions by the way he held the menu. If he asked the waiter "What's your cheapest wine?"—red flag. If he spoke Taglish in a British accent—redder. If he talked over me the entire meal and made no eye contact with the server? I'd signal the end by ordering dessert to-go.
Dating in your twenties in the city feels like an audition you didn't know you signed up for.
We all pretend we're not trying too hard while trying harder than ever.
Everyone is performing.
Everyone is slightly detached.
We match on apps with perfectly filtered smiles. We write clever bios with just enough irony.
We go on dates that feel like interviews disguised as intimacy—same questions, same stories, same shared laughter that doesn't quite reach the eyes.
I learned to play along.
First dates were easy. I could talk about books I half-read, podcasts I only listened to the first fifteen minutes of, current events I skimmed on the subway.
I told them just enough about me to seem open. Never enough to seem fragile.
I wasn't lying.
I was editing.
Sometimes we'd meet in Bonifacio, other times in hole-in-the-wall cafés tucked behind Quezon Ave. Once, a guy brought me to a rooftop jazz bar in Poblacion that overlooked the city like it was something worth falling for. We drank whiskey on the rocks and talked about childhood fears and capitalism like we were philosophers who never had to pay bills.
Men said they loved that I was "driven." That I "knew who I was."
They liked me for the same reasons they'd later leave—when they realized I wouldn't melt in their hands or chase them down the street if they pulled away.
The truth was, I wasn't looking for love.
Not really.
Love, as I knew it, was a gamble. And I was done betting on things I couldn't control.
So I dated for the company. For the stories. For the illusion that maybe, if I kept trying, something might eventually stick.
I downloaded apps during slow Sunday afternoons, swiping between bites of leftover turon, with a glass of red wine in hand and lo-fi playing in the background. Some part of me liked the game. The surge of dopamine with each match. The power in choosing who got access to me.
But even when things went well—even when the dinner turned into drinks, and drinks turned into tangled sheets—I always left before the sun came up.
I didn't want to see what love looked like in daylight.
I wanted to keep it brief. Beautiful. Forgettable.
And so began the parade.
Men with nice smiles and unhealed wounds.
Men who read Bukowski and called it therapy.
Men who loved the way I held myself until they realized I wouldn't fall apart for them.
Some lasted a week. Others a few months.
But none of them ever got close enough to see me naked beneath my confidence.
I became familiar with the sound of unanswered texts. Learned to laugh off ghostings with friends over overpriced coffee. We'd toast with caramel macchiatos and say things like "Men are trash" or "Baka busy lang siya." But we knew better. We always knew.
Because no matter how many dates I went on, or how many arms I woke up in, the door inside me—the one that closed the night my father left—remained locked.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I'd wake to the buzz of my phone and find a message: You up? or Missed you today.
And for a moment, I'd feel wanted. Not loved, just…wanted.
And I'd debate—respond or stay silent?
Most times, I didn't reply.
Not because I was proud. But because I was tired.
I filled my calendar with work, events, deadlines, check-ins, and mentorship programs.
My therapist—yes, I finally got one—once asked, "And when do you rest?"
I blinked.
"Rest?"
It felt indulgent. Like softness was something I hadn't earned.
On Instagram, I looked thriving.
Pinned down and polished in every post. Corporate events. Conferences. That one trip to Palawan with the team where I held a coconut and smiled like I wasn't checking Slack every ten minutes.
But at night, my makeup off, bra unclasped, lying in bed under a single dim lamp, I felt like a well-decorated apartment no one really lived in.
And sometimes I wondered…
Was I protecting myself?
Or punishing myself for needing anyone at all?