Infinities & In-betweens @natalienvyadams - Tumblr Blog

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i will be burying natalie envy adams soon and change this handle! i did buy the domain but fuck it i need a new era. kid, we had a good run

are you pagod to the bones and puyat to the max? yes

Money brings out the true character of a person.

I hate that I had to learn that again through someone I actually loved as a friend.

It started with small things. A favor here, a meal there, a place to stay, parcels sent to my place, messages that always needed something, little moments where I felt myself adjusting before I even had time to ask if I was okay with it.

I let her stay in my place just recently. It was a favor. She needed somewhere to stay, so I helped her. I opened my space even though I also had housemates to consider. The agreement in my head was clear, five days. I asked her if she was willing to share in the consumption and she did not answer. Then the energy started feeling like it could stretch longer, and the part that bothered me was she never clearly brought it up first. I had to ask. I had to be the one to say, “Until when are you staying? You told me only five days?” And I remember being proud of myself in that moment because the old me would have kept quiet and rationalized it alone. The old me would have swallowed the discomfort and told herself to be understanding. This time, I asked. I confronted the unclear part instead of letting it sit inside me.

That matters to me because this has happened before, a lot. I have been taken advantage of by people I loved, people I trusted, people I wanted to help. And for a long time I blamed them completely, but I see my part now. I allowed too much. I made my time, my money, my home, and my emotional space too available. I thought being kind meant being endlessly flexible. And also I was being dishonest, I used to not have the balls to speak up.

Now I know better.

There was also the ticket from last year. I paid first. I told her she could pay me when she had funds. I made it easy, no pressure, no awkwardness. Months passed and she never paid. I moved on because I did what I always do, I tried to be chill about it. I did not want to look petty over money. But things like that stay somewhere in the body. You think you forgot, then another situation happens and suddenly you remember everything.

Then the parcels happened. Things sent to my place, some under my name, and suddenly my address and my schedule became part of her logistics. I had to think about the lobby, receiving, pickup, Lalamove, updates, timing. One parcel sounds small. One favor sounds small. One message sounds small. But all of it together started feeling like shit.

Then the weekend glamping trip came... I absorbed the expenses and additional pax cost. I was planning, coordinating, checking, thinking of what everyone needed. All I wanted was for people to shoulder their own transpo, and I did communicate that, because our car cannot fit everyone.

That was it. Their own transportation.

And somehow even that felt like something I had to soften, explain, or prepare myself for.

That is when something in me got tired.

Because at what point do people offer? At what point does someone say, “You already covered so much, I’ll handle this part”? At what point does friendship become consideration without needing to be coached into it?

Then aside from the fact that they were not appreciative at all and have been complaining while I and my sister were picking up fruits from the trees there was the backstabbing. The Bisaya conversations with my other housemate. Like kids, taking sides instead of having one face to face conversations. I am not stupid of course I understood it all, even my sister understood it as well.

The feeling of being talked around while still being useful to them. That one hit differently. I can understand someone being broke. I can understand someone being lost. I can understand someone still figuring out things after a breakup. I can understand someone going through grief, instability, stress, whatever life is throwing at them.

But I cannot understand taking from someone’s kindness and then bitching about them like they are the problem. I did not force them to come with me and my family for that trip, they invited themselves in it and I was really fooled they were true friends.

That changed something for me.

I still care about them, and that is the complicated part. I admit this dynamic no longer feels safe for me so I am cutting them off.

I think that is what I am learning now. My discomfort is enough. I do not need to explain every detail until someone agrees with me. I know what happened. I know how it felt. I know how my body reacts when her name appears on my phone. My boyfriend said to take the high road and to not be the person who doesn't reply, but how else do I gracefully exit without causing too much conflict??

Anyway I am proud of myself for finally seeing it while it is happening.

Before, I would have rationalized everything alone. I would have said maybe she forgot, maybe she meant well, maybe she is just struggling, maybe I am being sensitive, maybe I should be kinder. I would have carried the whole thing inside me until resentment made me ugly.

This time, I asked the question. I set the line. I noticed the pattern. I admitted the truth to myself earlier. And I learned to cut off when I was disrespected!! And never owing them any explanation.

I have been the convenient friend too many times.

I have been the one who pays first, understands first, adjusts first, hosts first, forgives first.

I used to let that happen.

Now I do not.

#as i read this #and read my archives #napakafamiliar ng patterns ko nakakainis #sakit ko na ata to #pero at least natuto naman kahit papano #haaay people

sometimes you just gotta say I don't have time for this shit or I'm too old for this shit

#some things are not worth your energy because your energy is expensive yo

I cannot believe they closed the only off leash park in here 😤😤😤 I really want to move to the mountains

one time I brought ichigo to a mountain he was able to kill a chicken. but that was the most worth it 500 I paid if it means his happiness 😂

#how much is the rent in baguio???#or tanay!!!#😭😭😭#or caliraya #nasugbu

blood is thicker than water

I know people say blood is thicker than water like it is supposed to explain everything.

Why I still worry. Why I still think about meal plans, vitamins, work injuries, whether he is eating enough, whether somebody would notice if something happened to him in a country far from home.

I did not forget how he treated me. I did not forgive him completely. It does not make the hurt smaller.

But he is still my father.

Some part of me will always want him safe, fed, and alive, even when another part of me knows he did not always protect me the same way.

Is blood thicker because it is stronger, or is it thicker because it is harder to wash off??

natalienvyadams

I’ve listened to the podcasts and read enough bits and pieces of Jung to say projection, repression, and integration with the confidence of someone who has probably integrated nothing.

Now I’m trying to find hard copies of Man and His Symbols and this shadow-work workbook because knowing the vocabulary is not the same as facing any of it. I need to actually do the inner work. From what I understand, the shadow is not only the ugliest part of you. It is everything you rejected, denied, buried, or decided did not belong in the version of yourself you prefer to present.

I want physical books I can underline, argue with, and write all over while I face the mountainful of bullshit I have carefully filed under my personality, intuition, standards, and that’s just how I am. Apparently, the next excavation site is me. Horrible. Exciting.

TikTok - Make Your Day

To this day, I still have not properly acknowledged the fact that, man, I live in a penthouse. A penthouse. That word sounds very Succession, although this is a very old building and parts of the house are falling apart like one after another, I do have housemates and a tenant. Still, I wake up to the golf course outside my window and a scenic view of the skyline every day, and somehow it never really sank in. It never fucking did.

I barely take photos of the view. I have not savored it enough. I think part of me is still standing outside my own life, asking, Do I really deserve to be here? So instead of enjoying it, I got used to it too quickly, as though looking impressed might alert someone that I had entered the wrong unit.

There was a time when this was not even a realistic goal. It was the kind of life I could only imagine from very far away, and now it is so ordinary that I wake up, glance at the skyline, and immediately check my emails. Rude. I need to stop doing that. I want to take more pictures, sip coffee in front of my dream view, sit by the window longer, and let it register that this is where I am today. I have lived here for more than a year now and I still cannot believe it.

I am so grateful. I just wish I had allowed myself to feel it sooner. This is real.

#Spotify

Progress with a tiny funeral inside it

I’m getting bigger. I can see it in photos, in my clothes, in the numbers. I’m no longer underweight, and I no longer have that very narrow model build that books certain jobs more easily. That scares me because I know how unforgiving the industry can be. The bigger I get, the smaller the pool of projects may become.

I remember being sent home from a casting because they thought I was too big, because my build was considered more commercial than high-fashion. I weighed 50 kg at the time. They told me to come back when I was skinnier, which I can only assume meant skin and bones with excellent posture. Anyway, I kept going to castings and eventually found designers who were looking for exactly the build I had. But that was 3 years ago. If 50 was already considered too big then, imagine what they would say now. Might as well give up, right?

But strangely, I do not feel too bad about giving it up. Maybe because it does not feel like giving up anymore. It feels like that version of the dream already had its time.

The confusing part is that I actually feel better. I’m stronger, I have more energy, and my body scan says I’m healthy and in good shape. The machine says optimal. My brain says career crisis, wait not just crisis but career funeral.

There is another part of the dream I am quietly letting go of. The PH industry has always seemed to have more room for the half-foreign, mestiza, or fully foreign archetype, the kind of beauty that already looks familiar to Western eyes. I had hoped I would at least get the chance to bring something unmistakably morena & Filipina abroad. I wanted to knock on those doors myself, even if none of them opened. I did not need an entire international career. I just wanted to tick that box once. I wanted to walk into those rooms looking exactly like where I came from. I suppose that dream belongs in the funeral too.

I think I became too used to treating thinness like security. As long as I stayed small enough, I stayed marketable for jobs that require bodies to disappear into clothes. Now I’m learning that becoming healthier can still come with grief, especially when the body you are leaving behind was the body that opened doors for you.

Some dreams do not die dramatically. You simply look at them one day and realize you have already lived enough of them.

I like doing my daily check-ins here almost religiously. It keeps my brain from turning the entire week into one mysterious, unlabelled container at the back of the fridge. I can see where each day went, what happened, what I learned, what I survived, and whether I made it count. There is something comforting about giving every day its own little page and saying, okay, you happened. You had a plot.

Sometimes I get so lost in the day that I forget to write about it at all. Life gets too busy, too full, too many things happening at once, and suddenly I have three days of lore sitting in my head with no proper timeline. I just hope I can keep coming back here and write everything down openly, in full detail, before I forget the good parts or accidentally make the bad parts sound prettier than they were. I like writing things as they are and my thoughts as they come.