Reading Room
A selection of personal essays. Find your way in.
Love
My parents’ analog-era, long distance love story
This essay is for you if you want to believe in love again
A Greek love story that only lived in one place & time
This essay is for you if you want to be whisked away into a full blown romance
A fleeting encounter in Florence & the grief of a chance not taken
This essay is for you if you’re in the mood for yearning
On being seen & valued for who you are, not who you could be to someone else
This essay is for you if you want love but are also terrified of getting hurt again
Letting a compliment land instead of handing it right back
This essay is for you if you've ever deflected kindness before it had the chance to settle
On the relationships we neglect & the ones we tend back to life
This essay is for you if you've ever wondered whether something could still grow if you started paying attention again
Inheritance
Moving back to a country that's supposed to feel like home
This essay is for you if you've ever had to translate yourself inside your own culture
Chasing a feeling of home across four sunny days, three cities & every version of yourself in between
This essay is for you if you've ever come home to somewhere & still had to leave
The childhood favorite ice cream shop that was my family’s before it was mine
This essay is for you if home is less a place and more a feeling you keep returning to
Learning about the people I came from now that I’m living on the land they came from
This essay is for you if there's someone you never met but still somehow miss
On the love stories that existed before me & shaped what I believe about love
This essay is for you if you want to understand where your capacity for love came from
A childhood game with an art book I don't remember, & the mother who shaped my eye before I could talk
This essay is for you if you've ever discovered, later than you should have, exactly where a piece of you came from
The People Who Hold You
A miscarriage, a mother's journal from an ICU bed & the debt she believes was repaid — doubled
This essay is for you if you've ever had to choose hope again, fully aware of what it might cost you
Female friendship & the language of touch
This essay is for you if you've ever just needed someone to hold your hand in the dark, no questions asked
On seeing the truth of who you are through the eyes of someone who always knew
This essay is for you if you want to honor the person in your life who has always made you feel like you are enough
On a rain-soaked wedding day, a phrase meant to keep me close, & the surprising shape it took two years & twelve time zones later
This essay is for you if you've loved someone in another time zone & learned that closeness was never about the clock
A vintage Florence cinema, four people who loved me well & a video message that arrived six years later, right on time
This essay is for you if you've ever found out, long after the silence started, that you were never as forgotten as you feared
Between Versions of Yourself
Being loved versus being known — & finally getting both
This essay is for you if you've ever wondered whether anyone would love the real you
Leaving a piece of yourself somewhere & becoming whoever's next.
This essay is for you if you're still becoming — & you're okay with that
Unpacking a balikbayan box, and the parts of yourself that don't come with a tracking number
This essay is for you if you've ever wondered how long it takes to actually arrive somewhere, even after you've already landed
Watching someone else's steadiness & wondering when it's your turn
This essay is for you if you're still waiting to grow into your own certainty
The Body & Womanhood
A note: this one touches on body image & weight — read when you have the space for it. Growing up in a body other people felt entitled to comment on
This essay is for you if you're tired of your body being a conversation other people think they're invited to
Being measured by a strength that was never the one you needed
This essay is for you if you've ever forgotten to keep score, & liked who you were in that moment
What a flowy skirt & a bare midriff taught me about being seen, wanted, & guarded on the dance floor
This essay is for you if you've ever had to guess whether you were wanted for your talent or your body — & learned to keep dancing anyway
Trusting the pit in your stomach before your mind catches up
This essay is for you if you've ever talked yourself out of what your gut already knew
Being questioned for choices that were never anyone else's to weigh in on
This essay is for you if you're done explaining your timeline to people who didn't ask nicely
Three dresses, two thrift stores, & the difference between being lucky & being recognized
This essay is for you if you've ever found something so exactly you that it felt less like buying it and more like retrieving it
Also see: The Reliable Narrator, a three-part series on learning to trust your body over everything else
The Reliable Narrator
Before I trusted my own voice, I trusted my body — even when I didn't have the language for what it was telling me yet. This series follows one romantic encounter in three parts: the list I built to protect myself, the self I edited away to keep the peace, and the moment I finally believed what my body had been saying all along.
ON PAPER. (PART I)
Building a checklist to protect yourself from heartbreak
This essay is for you if you've ever tried to outsmart heartbreak with a list of requirements
IMPROVISE. (PART II)
Making yourself smaller for someone who called your freedom a flaw
This essay is for you if you've ever edited yourself down just to feel safe with someone
DISSENTING. (PART III)
The body as the most reliable narrator you'll ever have
This essay is for you if you're finally ready to believe your body was right the whole time
Not Yet
On wanting something before you have it — and what it costs to keep going anyway.
These essays live in the space between the life I'm building and the one I haven't reached yet. The rules I make about when I'm allowed to speak, the waiting that doesn't come with proof, and what it actually feels like to want something ambitious and not yet have it. This section will grow slowly, on purpose — I'm only writing here when something in this territory is finally ready to be said.
On the invisible task, the decade of rejection behind it, & writing toward the one thing I'd been too afraid to name
This essay is for you if you've ever made yourself a rule about when you're allowed to speak
Presence
Learning to exhale before the proof arrives
This essay is for you if you've been waiting for permission to stop rushing
Watching the Mindanao earthquake from a safe distance, & asking if your unfinished life would've been enough
This essay is for you if you've been living for a future version of your life instead of this one
Releasing the idea that struggle means something's wrong with you
This essay is for you if you're tired of fighting a life that was never yours to fight
Revisiting a decade later a list of things that make you happy
This essay is for you if you want to know what's still true about you, underneath everything that's changed