If you know anything about me, you know that my favorite form of decompression usually comes in a thousand pieces. It provides a very welcome distraction from the maze of my thinking; a respite from the ever-present bouts of anxiety. It does not require my full attention, yet rewards persistence in the barely audible snaps of each piece connecting. Like most, I start with the edges. Symbolic of boundaries – framework – for the picture each piece will inevitably create. As the border forms, instincts begin to kick in, and that's where the fun starts to happen. That's when I know what I'm working with. I build piles based on colors and patterns and set aside any pieces I deem important for later. They reside outside the edges, mostly because I'm not ready to tackle them just yet. Until I am. 

 

I think I've completed upwards of ten puzzles this year, and five of them had one piece missing right at the end. You could probably imagine my frustration the first time, the ironic laugh that came with the third, and on Friday night, I wondered if this consistent pattern of a single missing piece was trying to tell me something. We'll get to that a little later. 

 

So, here's what you missed on Glee: Lau is now back in New York City, having spent a whopping seven weeks in a room she designed at the ripe age of eleven. She's still recovering from the unfathomable blow of Taylor bringing Travis out the night she had tickets for Eras a la Wembley Stadium. Love Island UK has come and gone, and she has since pivoted to The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives because if you have any insight into her fascination with Mormonism, this show is right up her alley. When she isn't watching mindless reality TV, she's busy convincing herself that she is as flexible as she was at ten years old and can perform Thunderstruck, Jump Splits et al., by the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders (please ask her to perform it for you, she's begging!). Lau has had so much free time; she's read twenty-three books, played eighty-seven hours worth of Rummikub, and watched How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days thirteen times. She just wrapped up her first week of classes at Teacher's College (pinch her!) and could not feel more like herself in those spaces if she tried. Lau does not enjoy speaking in the third person, and that's what you missed on Glee! 

 

A lot of life has been lived since we spoke last in this little corner of the internet. I'm thrilled to report (she exclaims, as her right eye involuntarily twitches) that I've been consciously and continuously making good on my promise to prioritize the art of releasing. In case you were wondering, this entails focusing entirely on me, myself, and I by means of healing, while still trying to be as Brat as possible. On that note, Brat summer is not over because I absolutely refuse to allow the weather to change until I am ready for it, which is never.  Let me be the first to admit: there is something to be said about excavating a very deep-seated negative belief/trauma/overarching-trigger-leading-to-a-menty-b, crying, and then hitting the MF Apple dance. I spent much of my trip home raising my emotional baseline because, if I'm being honest, which I'm allegedly meant to be, my anxiety had gotten so viciously out of whack. If I see one more tarot card reader on my For You Page, I'm going fucking rogue. In sharing this with you now, on the other side of bridge, it looks like parts of the puzzle of my life are starting to make sense. Remember when I told you that which you do not deal with deals with you? Damn, these little legs! So, we're adjusting our word and turning it into a phrase: Address, process, and then release. Unlucky for me, it is not for the faint of heart. Though, dear friends, there is a silver lining, and it's my new iPad.  

 

Being an iPad adult has become my entire personality. Once upon a time, I categorized the events of my life through pre-Scandoval and post-Scandoval. Now, it's 9876 B(efore)iPad and 80 A(nno)iPad. Author's note: I seriously crack myself up. Jesus, I'm looking specifically at you! You better be fucking laughing! Anyway, my iPad has been an excellent forum for working through that which no longer serves me, vacuuming the shit out of my emotions and ostensibly releasing it into the proverbial do-not-revisit ether. There is something to be said about a $2 Etsy font, and Pinterest quotes that scream: Alert the authorities, people!!! Lau is protecting her motherfucking peace!!! The only thing potentially disrupting said peace is the thought of someone gaining unauthorized access to my iPad. Apple is so busy trying to steal our data that they haven't even bothered to put face ID on every single app. The nerve! So, if I go missing tomorrow, please just throw my iPad into the Hudson. 

 

Ahead of my trip home and newfound iPad addiction, I had been looking forward to spending those seven weeks in reset mode ahead of grad school. The physical distance from New York provided me with an environment to regroup in, away from all of the noise in the city. However, what has become abundantly clear now is that all I really did was run toward all the other things I was trying to sprint away from. That's not to say this trip was not so good for the soul because it most certainly was. Much like categorizing my life in pre and post-iPad, the trip home feels a lot like a seminal event. I returned to New York with a renewed sense of excitement, armed with everything I needed to jump head-first into this new chapter. SLAY! Much to my dismay, the universe chuckled and said: you've got no idea what's in store. So, I'm doing my best to hold true to my promise of using this as a space to exercise unfiltered honesty in pursuit of my other promise of releasing. I'm still a little sensitive to interpretation, so go easy on me. 

 

In the spirit of emotional-purging-on-the-internet-in-addition-to-telling-everyone-on-my-impromptu-facetime-rotation, It feels pertinent to admit that the last two weeks have felt like a pendulum, rapidly swinging from one extreme to the next. It's the first time in eight years that I have truly felt the distance between Manila and the States. Want more honesty? Yesterday was the first day I gave myself permission to feel the weight of the last two weeks. Crazy, considering this bitch LOVES a good cry. I should also mention I started Lexapro two weeks ago. The exact same day my life turned upside down. Call it divine intervention or cruel irony, but in my own life, maybe that was a pile of puzzle pieces I finally felt ready to conquer, and I think we just have to laugh at the timing of it all. It's been a challenge to parse apart my emotions, which rarely go unarticulated. A new phenomenon indeed, since I usually process my emotions by talking about them. It's the first time in my life where I wouldn't even know where to start. It's been two weeks of beginning the process of what Jen calls anticipatory grief, acclimating to grad school, nausea, and weird ass dreams, all while striving to find those little pockets of joy that exist in the quiet spaces before each swing. Every day brings a new whirlwind; all I can do is put one foot in front of the other. We're just asked to inhale, hold our breath for four seconds, and then let it go. Reducing the most complex part of being human and the incessant need to feel and regulate our nervous system down to something as simple as a four-second breath. Life is so weird like that, isn't it? The dust never truly settles, yet we're tasked with moving forward. To cope the best way we know how and create spaces where we feel relief from the weight of the things we're carrying, even if it's just for four seconds. 

 

Coping has always looked like giving all of myself to others, but I'm quickly learning that this is the first time it isn't coming from a place of self-abandonment. Instead, it feels like a very conscious return to one of my many personal mottos: love shows up. Care extends both ways. In this current chapter of figuring out who I am (again, for the nth time) amidst all the external turmoil, my strength is drawn from doing my best to be that reliable, slightly neurotic ray of sunshine for the people who matter to me. It's about being where my feet are – whether that's in class, on the phone with my mom, or creating the same space I'm craving for someone else– so I can show up for myself and in turn, everyone around me. Spoiler: I don't always get it right (in fact, I literally just got it wrong), but that's who I am. Now, taking care of others is how I seem to be able to take care of myself, and you know what, wise guy? It appears to be working. Maybe, all along, that was the missing piece of this specific puzzle. 

 

Here's an admission, free of charge: I'm terrible at asking for help. I'm far better at being a source of support. This poses a distinct matter of contention because right now, I think I could use all the help I can get. I need my sweaty hands held and squeezed three times, and to be told to take things one day at a time. Badly. I need to be in spaces where I'm allowed to feel positive distraction – to belly laugh, dance, and feel connection in its purest form. I don't know where you are as you read this – maybe you're fine, maybe you're not. Wherever you are, and before I proceed any further, I'm grabbing your hand, squeezing it three times, and we're closing our eyes. In through the nose – one, two, three, four – out through the mouth. Let's do this. 

 

At the ripe age of twenty-seven years, three months, and nine days, I've come to learn that so much of life is about its seasonality. Okay, prophet Lau(ra)!  It ebbs, and it flows, and it ebbs, and it flows. We're all, always, at any given point, healing from something. Enduring something, even. Hopefully, overcoming and better as a result of it. We're all making sense of the tough shit and doing our best to celebrate the wins where we can get them. Where you classify these moments in your own Saffir-Simpson windscale of emotions is your prerogative. There are times when we can weather the storm reasonably unscathed or instances when the aftermath is deeply etched into our existence. Maybe you got a paper cut. Maybe you're watching someone wither away. Category one or five? All that really dictates is the effort needed to repair. Much like a puzzle, you can't know for sure what the picture will create when you're in the thick of it. Healing is a value assignment, much like coping. It's subjective, and it belongs only to you. We shed these parts of us, voluntarily or kicking and screaming in defense, because they come at the cost of what's ahead.

 

I wish I could put a positive spin on this, but it would be inauthentic to where I am now, so I won't. Instead, I'll say this: sometimes, healing, and in my case, anticipatory grief and the inability to control what's happening around me, is fucking messy. It doesn't make for a neat conclusion or a gargantuan epiphany, and don't even get me started on letting the people around you help. At this point, it's tempting to believe that we're afforded a map that spells out why a puzzle piece is missing or the exact rhythm at which our emotional pendulums should swing. I hate to be the one to say it, but sometimes awful shit happens for absolutely no reason. More often than not, it feels like we're at the mercy of that pendulum, or if you're anything like me, you're also trying to find meaning as to why fifty percent of your puzzles are missing one singular piece, or your version of that. If I had to guess, I'd tell you that the pendulum never really stops – it just slows down, and we learn to sway with it. We conclude why there is that one missing piece, and eventually, it appears out of thin air. Or it doesn't, and we move on. Healing is about showing up for yourself and everyone around you, even when none of it makes sense. It's more about learning to accept that this discomfort and pain is eventually woven through the strongest parts of us, even if we don't see it now. That not every storm needs to be weathered alone, and there's beauty to be found in letting people in to hold your (my) sweaty hands. The light at the end of the tunnel may be nothing but a sliver you see through a microscopic crack, but you see it nonetheless. It's as much about acknowledging the broken pieces, letting light in, and piecing them back together, if at all. Maybe the missing puzzle piece and the space between the pendulum are one and the same: a quiet resilience in enduring,  yet still staying committed to putting one foot in front of the other. A symbol of something as simple as saying: it's okay to not know what moving forward looks like, but we'll get there. I promise. Oh! I'm still holding your hand, and I hope you're still holding mine (sorry about the sweat!). Would you look at that? We're walking forward. 

 

Okay, losers and virgins – enough with the sap. I feel better, and I hope you do too, so now we can return to regularly scheduled hilariously self-deprecating programming. This b*** is, if nothing else, a paper trail of my verbal diarrhea. Next time I see you here, I hope it's on happier terms. Until then, I'm sending you all of the love my little body has to give. I hope you're enjoying this as much as it gives me indescribable therapeutic relief. Thanks for riding with me; it means the world. 

 

Big hug, 

Lau