Dear Best Friend

Regardless of your boy drama, it still looks and sounds like you are having an awesome time in London. It sucks that you won’t be going to Paris this time around, but I promise you that in the future, we will have our version of Anna and the French Kiss.

So in regards to some interesting points in your email, I decided to list them out because it might just be a more organized fashion to address all the random things:

1. White coffee: Funny how I’ve never, ever heard this phrase before. I guess it’s something you really don’t know unless you’ve lived there for a while? Huh. Well, regardless, I had to look it up.
2. Moz’s pasalubong: Actually, I did bring it up with Moz that you wanted to know what she would like, but I never actually got a response back. Instead she was just like, “Oh my god, are you talking to Lore? Did she get my texts? I tried messaging her back but I never got a reply!” and etc. So I had to explain the whole France fiasco (alliteration!) and I forgot to ask about the pasalubong again.
3. Idin sounds like a total dream but the fact that he has not contacted you in any form means that he is a jackass. A charming, hot jackass. How unfortunate. At least now you have material for a manuscript. (And of course, I had to forward Letter #5 to Moz, but we both know it will be way too long for her to actually read so I [or you] will have to summarize it for her.)
4. Writing for YA: I’m so glad that your friends didn’t snub you for your interest in YA literature. And it makes me even more happy to hear that they can actually see you as a young adult author. That is quite awesome. I think it’s cool that there’s a great diversity of interests in your writing group. Maybe that will help you grow as a writer than your actual writing assignments. 😛
5. Facebook friends: You know, it actually has not occurred to me to creep on your recently added Facebook friends. This sounds like something only you would do. 😛 (Actually, I feel like Moz would definitely do it as well.)
6. Quitting: This sounds like a topic that I shouldn’t blatantly say out on the Internet, so let’s try to be a little vague? Were you successful on your attempts to quit?

Okay, and not to brag, but the weather right now is really, really lovely in New Jersey. It’s not quite 80 degrees, little humidity and the sun is shining. (It’s supposed to be like this for the rest of the week, but I am NOT keeping my hopes up.) Which sucks because I’ve basically been depressed the whole day for no reason or another. And of course it has not helped that I basically sat around eating with Iya while watching romantic movies that were happy and others that were not quite happy. Neither type helped with my mood.

So I ate a ton of ice cream with whipped cream, butterscotch, and peanut butter chips. Nearly a quarter of a gallon. So now I feel a little sick, but it’s okay. Actually, I think the fact that I am writing to you is a much more therapeutic process than anything else. But other than my wallowing…

BEA was a ton of fun and I’m really happy that I walked away with under 15 books for review, just like I planned. So yeah, there’ll be plenty to read when you get back.

I’ve also been going to school for the last two weeks, which has not been that fun. It’s only for approximately five hours on Mondays and Wednesdays but my lab section starts at 8AM. This means I’m up and out of the house by 6:35 AM so I can commute in time. I am not a morning person so this hasn’t exactly been a blast for me, but I am making it happen.

Sometimes after class, I meet up with Moz to hang out, grab a drink or a bite to eat (most of the time, it is at Maharlika). Or sometimes, I’ll go out on a date. But yeah, I won’t go into too much detail on that. It can wait until you get back. (Although this is a little unfair because you wrote me the most descriptive passages, ever – dude, don’t rule out romance novels in your future, just sayin’.)

I’ve generally been busy for the last two weeks, and it really was only the last two days where I just couldn’t find myself to be entertained by anything at home. I’ve been cleaning, eating, reading, watching movies and TV, blogging, etc, but I’ve just been bored altogether.

But I guess it’s not necessarily a bad thing altogether because it meant that I finally had no other excuse to prolong my writing of a reply back to you. So here it is.

I miss you. Come back soon! 🙂

x

PS. I am reading David Levithan’s Every Day, and it might just be his best novel yet. Honestly, it is beautiful. While reading it during my lecture, I had to stop and copy a passage because I was just stunned by the loveliness of his writing:

“What is it about the moment you fall in love? How can such a small measure of time contain such enormity? I suddenly realize why people believe in deja vu, why people believe they’ve lived past lives, because there is no way the years I’ve spent on this earth could possibly encapsulate what I’m feeling. The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations – all of them rearranging themselves so that this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In your heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is, you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe and time itself have crafted this long ago, and you are just now realizing it, you are just now arriving at the place you were always meant to be.” – Every Day by David Levithan, p. 22-23 of the ARC