myoddjournal

[myoddjournal]

my crush since my freshman year is transferring to a different university. in a different city. in a different region. 145 kilometers away from me.

i saw this guy as a friend. we were in the same circle. we only became part of the same circle last school year--sophomore year. though we did have banters in our freshman year, we only became closer last year. but I did sort of like him during freshman year. i gave up on the idea because we had different interests... and he wouldn't like someone like me.

i thought it was weird for me to like him now that we were in the same circle. everyone who becomes a close friend, instantly becomes a sibling figure (I do this unconsciously because I'm an only child). so I immediately thought: "this is wrong."

but something changed last year that made the attraction come back. he wore perfume. yes, I know. it sounds idiotic and to some people, a tad perverted. i have always been sensitive to smells. apart from a person's eyes, another factor for me to develop attraction towards someone is through their scent.

it was our last class of the day. he strides into the room, but stops at the doorway--late, but our professor wasn't the kind to care if you're late or not, so he lets him in. this time, the standing fan was right to the professor at the front of the class. this guy sits right next to the professor's table so when he passed by the fan, I was instantly hit by the smell of his perfume. mind you, I've been with this guy for almost two years and I've never noticed that scent until that moment. i look up from the reading material our professor requires us to bring for every class. what is that sexy, masculine smell, I thought. then I see the back of his head. shocked, I was. the scent was intense. so manly. so musky. it didn't help that I was ovulating at the time. every time that damn fan turned in his direction and sent his scent to the seat behind him--to me--i was reeling. i chased after the scent that I would raise my head... then, I saw the back of his head and felt a pit in my stomach. why you? why did it have to be you?

i thought about that scent--about him-- for a week. that cursed perfume on his skin ignited the flame I had for him back then. i have a unique way of dealing with attraction. once I feel attraction, I'd sit with the feeling for at most, three days. if that feeling doesn't go away in three days, I tell the person I felt attraction towards. hey, I like you, I would casually say. they'd say something among the lines of "oh, blah blah blah." forgive me, I don't exactly their response is important. i tell them, not to get a response, but to get my feelings out of the way. they're an inconvenience.

but for this guy, i had spent a week thinking if I should tell him or not. i couldn't tell him because I genuinely did like him, unlike those before him. this wasn't a measly crush I could brush off after a few days. I've looked in his direction everyday since freshman year. pined for him. thought of couple-y things we could do together--holding hands, hugging, feeding each other, etc.

but in the end, i did tell him. through text. i made it as humorous as possible--to make it seem like it wasn't that serious for me. that they were just lustful thoughts, nothing more.

whats your perfume, i asked. what perfume? the one I was wearing earlier? the one you wore in our ethics class last week. oh, lacoste red. why, smelly? no, it just bothered me because it smelled like a handsome man. i was like 'damn that smells so good' then I see the back of your head and be like 'EUGH.' eugh??? nah, bro, I was ovulating and I was so ready to ride dick. i cant do that with a friend tf. the fuck, why are you so straightforward? i gotta say it out loud because it bothered me! it gave me goosebumps. then, he ends the conversation with a lengthy HAHAHAHAHAHAH

was that good? was he bothered by what I said? made him uncomfortable? did it change how he saw me? was he flattered? should I have just kept my mouth shut???

we saw each other again on the day we had to submit a scale model for our midterm. he seemed normal. and he was wearing that damn perfume again. i know he has other perfumes, he told me himself. i know he has free will to spray whatever he wants on himself, but did he really have to stand so close to me after I told him how I felt?

i thought he was bothered, but clearly he was flattered. it was a good thing i wasnt ovulating anymore, but it was too late. the seed was already planted into my head that i like him. maybe he thought so too.

why would he do that? my cousin said that maybe he liked me. i doubt that. i've seen the types of girls he's been with and the types of girls he likes on social media. none of them look like me or even has the same energy i give off.

i dont even know why im writing about him. did he really leave that much of an impact on me? i dont think so. or maybe i dont want to think that he did. he was just a fleeting infatuation i know would never be reciprocated. maybe i finally have the guts to reflect on my feelings now that he's far, far away from me. he wouldnt be able to see me or read my body language anymore. i dont have to pretend that i dont like him anymore, so im free to say whatever i want about him.

[myoddjournal]

i used to love reading--since 3rd grade. i would go far to say that I loved it ever since i learned how to read at 4 years old. PDF, ePUB, physical copies — I had the motivation and curiosity to read them all. but ever since the pandemic struck, i've noticed a significant decline in that.

In 2020, I picked up manhwa and manga because, for some reason, it was the only way for my mind to process what I was reading--through imagery. By 2021 and 2022, I had stopped reading recreationally entirely. It definitely got worse by 2022. It was my first year in nursing school, and I read textbooks more than whatever garbage I would usually find on the internet. Needless to say, that spark has long since been extinguished.

I used to be able to read 350-400 pages in more or less two hours. The words on the pages came to life in my imagination. I specifically remember describing the visions like a film playing in the eyes of an invisible spectator. It felt like I stood in that fictional world and watched the scenes play in front of me, unbeknownst to the characters.

Now, I have trouble conjuring up images of what's being narrated. I'm frustrated. I bought physical copies of books--new books. books from genres that would excite me from the blurb on the back of the book alone. I even bought a novel that was targeted for children ages 10 and up. I thought that juvenile texts would be easier for me to digest. But even that was discarded. I just can't seem to get a grip and read a book for at least a minute without pressuring myself. A whole page felt tedious. And then I sigh. What has happened to me?

I want to read all the physical books I haven't finished yet. I also want to try annotating. I'm not exactly sure what annotation is for and what to annotate. Back then, all I needed to carry around while I read was a pocket dictionary, just in case there was a word I was unfamiliar with.

I don't want to color-code anything. I could get past scribbles with a pencil. I don't think I'm quite ready for ink—permanent ink. It took a lot of courage to purposefully break the spines of my books. There were certainly a lot of tears shed that day. Though I never found the courage to break the spines of my Apollo’s trials books. I even had the front and back covers protected by acetate. I did it the very moment I took off the packaging.

I was the type of reader who barely opened the book to preserve the spine’s condition. More so because almost all the books I own were paperback, which were definitely cheaper than hardcover books. I also had a way of turning pages that would prevent them from curling, denting, or folding. Never in my life have I ever dog-eared any book.

I used to have a ritual after I opened up a sealed book and before I read a book.

Picture this: I just purchased a book. I either keep it on my bookshelf or go straight to reading it if I can no longer contain my excitement. I’d pull on the plastic packaging from one corner of the spine, just enough to stretch the plastic so I can wedge a boxcutter or scissors in there and make a tear. I’d slowly peel the plastic off, preserving it so I can put the book back after i finish reading.

The first thing I would do is run my fingers along the edge of the book. Flip the edges of the page—really feel how crisp the paper is. I’d wedge two thumbs in the middle of the book—a small slit—to poke my nose through and breathe it in, inhale the delightful smell of pulp and ink. Then I’d feel the edges of the pages again. Now that I describe it in my words, it sounds like a precursor to lovemaking.

And now, I've stopped... That was sacred. That wasn’t just a ritual. That was a prayer. The act of reading felt like an intimate practice, one I have trouble returning to. No matter how much I crawl, pull myself back until my fingers bleed...

As the only child in the family, I was sheltered my entire life. I didn't have the liberty to go out and play with children my age or invite them to my house. I found solace in the written word that would alleviate the loneliness I felt. I grew up reading whatever I could find on my grandmother's shelves--a dictionary, a bible, an atlas. boring reads, you might think, but it felt like home.

I'm scared. I'm terrified. What would be left of my mind? Where are my fantasies? Where are the colors? My friends? My sense of childlike wonder?

[myoddjournal]

📓 🌿

Do I want love or do I just want to be wanted?

Sometimes I wonder if I’m actually yearning for a person, or if I just want proof that someone could want me back. Because lately, it feels less like I’m craving a relationship and more like I’m desperate for confirmation that I’m not too weird, too much, or too complicated to love.

There are moments where I catch myself projecting, falling in love with the idea of being chosen rather than the person. It’s not really about dates or affection or “relationship goals.” It’s about being seen in my full mess and still being wanted. It’s about someone looking at me—all of me, and saying, “Yes. You’re enough. I want you.”

And maybe that ache I carry in my chest isn’t about romance at all. Maybe it’s inherited from every time I had to earn love by being useful, or good, or smaller than I really was. Maybe I’m still chasing the kind of love that doesn’t ask me to perform, just to exist.

I don’t think I’m asking for a fairytale. I just want to stop feeling like love is a prize I’ll never be good enough to win. I want to believe that being alive and honest and trying my best is reason enough for someone to stay.

I don’t need grand gestures. I just need someone to want me, not in theory, not temporarily, but truly. And until that happens, I’ll probably keep asking myself this: Do I want them? Or do I just want to believe that someone could want me?

[myoddjournal]

📓 🌿

When joy feels borrowed

Happiness always feels like a loan I can’t repay. Like I stumbled into something golden that wasn’t meant for me. And any moment now, someone’s going to come take it back.

For every moment I’ve laughed, there’s been a sadness either before or after. Like the universe is trying to balance me out. like it’s saying, “don’t get used to this.”

and maybe that’s why i get scared when i start to feel okay. because i know what happens next. i’ve lived enough to know that joy doesn’t stay.

sometimes it feels like the universe is spitting on me for daring to feel light.

But sometimes... Sometimes I try to hold onto it anyway. just for a second longer.

[myoddjournal]

📓 🌿

The ache without a name

There’s this kind of yearning that doesn’t make sense. Like I miss something desperately, but I don’t know what it is.

I keep thinking: maybe it’s a person. Maybe a friend I haven’t met yet. Maybe a lover whose voice I’d recognize instantly, even though I’ve never heard it. Maybe it’s something I used to believe in, a version of me that felt fuller. A god, I stopped talking to. Maybe it’s money. Maybe it’s safety. Maybe it’s a hug from someone who knows, without me having to explain anything.

I don’t know. I just know something feels missing. like there’s a hole in me shaped like a word I’ve never learned.

And sometimes the ache gets louder when things are good. Like joy turns up the contrast, and suddenly the lack glows neon.

i’m trying to be okay with not knowing, trying to build a home around the gap. But god, some days I just want to scream, what am I missing?? Just tell me what I need!!!

Because I’m tired of guessing...

[myoddjournal]

📓 🌿 🐸

How to collect pieces of yourself from forgotten places

Start with your old school backpack. The one shoved in a closet or under the bed. Unzip it slowly. Inside, you’ll find crumpled papers with messy notes, half-done worksheets, and a few aimless doodles. Maybe even that ��edgy” poem you wrote in middle school and swore was deep. It was. In the way everything is, when you’re young and trying to be understood.

Check your notes app, especially the ones with no titles. The half-poems, grocery lists that turn into journal entries, cryptic dream fragments, quotes from strangers, and unfinished thoughts that still hum with something close to truth. You were speaking to yourself and didn’t even know it.

Open your favorite childhood book. The one with the yellowing pages and secret underlines. The one that made you think that maybe one day you’d wake up in that world. Maybe you’d look out the window, and the sky would be different. Maybe the magic would finally arrive. Maybe it still could.

Scroll through the photos you never posted. Blurry ones, screenshots of songs you sent someone, almost-deleted selfies, random textures, and skies that meant something in the moment. And if that’s not enough, go open your family photo albums. Let your fingers pause on a face you haven’t seen in a while, yours. See how you were already trying to say something back then.

Could you listen to the playlist you forgot existed? The one you made during that oddly specific era. Maybe it was for a friend, or a crush, or no one at all. Feel the ache rise slowly and quietly, like fog off a lake. You don’t have to name it. Just let it move through. Memory is not a straight line. You’re allowed to go back.

Stand in front of the mirror. Really look. You are a collage of selves. Some lost, some found, all stitched together by longing. You are not broken—you are gathering. Piece by piece. Softly, stubbornly, quietly becoming whole again.

[myoddjournal]

📓 🌿 🐸

My comfort aesthetics, ranked by how delusional they make me feel

1. Witchcore🔮

I own candles and a deck of tarot cards. i like to read the cards with my more spiritually in-tune friend. she doesn’t really know how to read them, so i’ve basically become the translator. i used to make little shrines in my room. my new room doesn’t have one yet, but i bet i can find a place to hide it. maybe behind my sketchbooks. maybe in plain sight.

2. Goblincore 🍄

i love hoarding stuff. especially small stuff so my room isn’t too messy. yet. i like shiny things, rocks from the sea floor, seashells (broken and intact), beads (from snapped bracelets and phone charms), and dried leaves and flowers from plants i can’t name. it’s less of a collection and more of an accumulation of vibes.

3. Dark Academia 🕯️

i’m not smart enough to be a walking almanac but i like to imagine i am. for months i’ve been jealous of elio from call me by your name. he’s well-educated and so are his parents. i wish i grew up like that. these days, i’m just the burnt-out former golden child who takes long breaks between pages and listens to classical music to add spice to her study sessions.

4. Royalcore 👑

shrimp build with the bank account of a broke college student, but somehow i still believe i’m meant to suffer beautifully in a silk gown. delusional? yes. elegant? also yes. i want to conquer, rule, and deliver powerful speeches to my subjects.

5. Cottagecore 🌿

oh to live in a cottage in a small town in the middle of nowhere. whoo. i’ve been playing too much stardew valley… and coral island… and fields of mistria… and wylde flowers. fine. this fantasy is completely driven by my video game addiction. still, it does sound really nice. a quiet place. a garden. a found family of villagers who care for each. peace.

[myoddjournal]

📓 🌿 🕰️

"Love, which exempts no one who's loved from loving."

i’m not even sure if i’ve ever been in love. not in the real, messy, soul-altering way people write about.

i think i’ve wanted to be in love. i think i’ve felt things. the kind that make your throat tighten and your chest fold in on itself a little. but love? capital L? i don’t know.

this quote makes it sound like once it happens, it changes you forever. like it sticks. but what if it doesn’t? what if i just imagined it? what if i thought it was love because i was lonely, or flattered, or desperate to feel something that mattered?

and even now — sometimes i feel echoes of something. something warm, or nostalgic, or weirdly tender. like a song that almost unlocks a memory i don’t actually have. and i wonder if that’s what love feels like: not a person, but a haunting.

if this quote is true, then i must’ve been loved once — because i still catch myself loving in fragments. people, moments, even strangers on the internet. so maybe i do love. or maybe i’m just tired, and i want it to mean something.

either way, it lingers. and maybe that’s enough to count.

[myoddjournal]

📓 🌿

Things I miss from my childhood

the feeling that my childhood bedroom had a secret portal if i just pushed myself against a wall enough

being watched over by gods I used to believe in (borderline animism)

The soundtrack that played in my head whenever i was outside

My cavalry plushies coming alive at night to protect me from nightmares

[myoddjournal]

📓 🌿 🕰️

Kipo

Kipo is one of the most beautiful shows I’ve ever seen — but OH MY GOD it also made me want to scream into a mutated flower.

Why is she so NICE. Like yes, empathy is powerful and all that, but girlllll you are living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and still giving third chances to people who almost murdered your friends five minutes ago???

And don’t get me started on the purple jaguar moment. The ego arc was so real. She gets glowy and suddenly everyone’s just a background character in The Legend of Kipo, Savior of Everything™. Ma’am. Calm down. Drink some bug juice and rethink your tone.

That said… she grew. She made mistakes. She got called out. And I really respect that the show let her fail without making her "bad." She's just a teenage girl trying to be good and sometimes she overdoes it. Which is realistic for someone her age.

But anyway. FUN GUS.

SEASON 2. EPISODE 15. I wanted to BURN that fungal forest to the ground. A telepathic parasitic mushroom CHILD who just wants “friends forever” and proceeds to MIND-CONTROL everyone? Absolutely not. I was ready to throw hands. Don’t let the baby voice fool you. He reminds me of children who need some classic discipline methods.

AND ANOTHER THING! Why the heck did they just leave Dr. Emilia passed out like that?! With the sonic emitter close by too! Like hello??? They knew she'd eventually wake up and they just left a mute deterrent close by?! If that were me, I would've used that deathstalker stinger to finish the job. Stabby stab multiple times all over her body and slit her throat with it. The stabs would've just been for personal satisfaction ngl.

The ending was something I didn't expect ngl. I dont know why I felt that way, considering it actually made sense that the mutes and humans finally made peace. Maybe it was Kipo's style that threw me off🤷🏽‍♀️ Hugo will be missed. I'm glad he got redemption before that happened to him.

[myoddjournal]

📓 🌿 🕰️

In Defense of "Weird” Animation

someone told me Mitchells vs. the Machines was a “bad” movie because the characters were “too weird.” and honestly? that’s exactly what makes it brilliant.

the film is unapologetically chaotic. stylistically, emotionally, narratively—and that’s the point. what other animated movie looks like a film school dropout’s sketchbook got struck by lightning during the apocalypse? it blends 3D with scribbled doodles, stickers, frame glitches, random little animations that pop in like intrusive thoughts. it works because that’s how Katie sees the world — loud, messy, layered with ideas.

And beyond the style, what really stuck with me was the way it captured something achingly familiar: The grief of wanting your parent’s support while also rebelling against them. That bittersweet, stubborn kind of love — where you're so sure they don’t get you, but you’re still watching for them out of the corner of your eye, hoping they’ll try. Katie’s whole arc is “please let me be weird and messy and passionate — and still be someone you’re proud of.”

If that’s weird, then good. I want more weird.

[myoddjournal]

On Small Hauntings and Resurrections

sometimes i think the version of me that loved things without fear is still somewhere in this body, buried beneath stress and adulting writing like this — tiny posts into the void — is how i dig her up again.

not to be dramatic but this might be a ritual. i 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘦 it's a ritual. it'd be more fun🕯️