I always tell myself just one chapter. And then it is 3am and I am still there, completely gone into someone else’s world, and I don’t even feel bad about it.
I’m Klara, and I live in Cebu City. My evenings go to school, where I’m studying Special Education, and the rest of my time goes to the people I love, friends, loved ones, the kind of company that doesn’t feel like effort. From the outside my life probably looks quiet and ordinary. But I have come to think that quiet and ordinary, done with the right people and the right stories, is actually everything.
The thing I lose myself in completely is reading. Manga, manhwa, BL, Wattpad stories, anime when I want something to watch instead of just imagine. There is a particular kind of disappearing that happens when a story is good enough, where you stop being in your room, stop being in your life, and exist completely inside someone else’s for a while. I think that’s why I keep coming back to stories the way other people come back to certain songs or certain places. They hold something I keep needing. The best ones are always about people, about what they carry and how they find each other, about the quiet moments between characters that mean more than anything dramatic ever could. I didn’t always connect that to why I chose Special Education. But I think it’s the same thing. I have always been drawn to the interior lives of people, to what they feel when no one is watching.
For a while I told myself the reading was a waste of time. That sitting with a story instead of doing something productive meant I was falling behind somehow. So I put it aside and tried to feel okay about that. But emptiness has a specific texture and I started to recognize it. Without the stories, something in me felt quieter in the wrong way, like a frequency that had gone missing. So I stopped feeling bad about it. I started to understand that the things you always come back to are usually trying to tell you something about who you are.
What keeps me going now is the people. My friends, my loved ones, the little moments that don’t look like much until you’re looking back at them. I have learned to pay attention to what makes me feel most like myself and to stay close to it without apologizing. Life is actually really good, not in a grand way, but in the way of a 3am chapter you didn’t plan to read, or a hike with someone you love, or a conversation that starts about nothing and becomes about everything.
Showing up is the thing I do best, and I think that comes from the same place as the reading. Stories taught me to pay attention to people, to what they’re not saying, to the small moments that matter more than they look. So when a friend comes to me with something bothering them, I try to actually be there. Not just present but listening. I don’t always know what that means to them. But I think it means something, and that is enough for me.
“I feel most alive when I am with my friends and loved ones making memories, both feel like exactly where I am supposed to be.”
What is it that you keep coming back to, that might be trying to tell you something about who you really are?