Writing A Fairytale

"Sana maging masaya na tayo." These were the words that a friend of mine told me last night. She was one of my colleagues in PS and she had also recently resigned like me. I was glad that I was able to talk to her last night because I wasn't able to talk to her personally when I left.

Like me, she had a boyfriend in PS and they're no longer together. But unlike me, she has another guy in her life.

If you'll ask me right now whether I'm happy in the truest sense of the word, I would say I'm not. I'm okay, but nothing makes me feel ecstatic right now. I'm getting by, but that's all that I am.

I've gone so tired of getting frustrated with the different aspects of my life that I have stopped planning anymore. I used to have plans for myself, but since I always end up not being able to do them, I've gone to not creating any anymore. I guess I've come to a point where I believe that there's no point in planning since you'll end up doing something else anyway.

I just live each day and allow it me to take me wherever. Though it seems like the days are taking me nowhere...

I used to look forward to things, to dates, to the future, but now, I just try to get by.

I want to be happy, but I'm tired of getting frustrated.

♫ I can pretend each time I see you
That I don't care and I don't need you
And though you'll never see me crying
You know inside I feel like dying ♫
- Anything For You by Gloria Estefan

***I just think these lines describe what I'm feeling lately.

♫ Every change, life has thrown me,
I'm thankful, for every break in my heart,
I'm grateful, for every scar,
Some pages turned,
Some bridges burned,
But there were lessons learned. ♫
- Lessons Learned by Carrie Underwood
***Things happen even if we don't want them to, but at least we should learn from those unfortunate events.

♫ Jesus take the wheel
Take it from my hands
Cause I can't do this all my own
I'm letting go
So give me one more chance
To save me from this road I'm on ♫
- Jesus Take The Wheel by Carrie Underwood

***Let go and let God. We don't have control on things, and sometimes, the more we try to be in control, the more we mess things up.

♫ Why do we like to hurt so much?
Oh why do we like to hurt so much? ♫
- That's What You Get by Paramore

***I just like the question 'cause it's so true.

She would change everything for happy ever after.
Caught in the in between of beautiful disaster,
But she just needs someone to take her home.
- Beautiful Disaster by Jon McLaughlin

***Something to describe my state right now.

Jane had always lived in somebody's shadow. Escaping a childhood of abuse by marrying oceanographer Oliver Jones, she finds herself taking second place to his increasingly successful career. However, when her daughter Rebecca is slighted, Jane's dramatic stand takes them all by surprise.
Leaving Oliver and his whale tapes behind in San Diego, Jane and Rebecca set out to drive across America to Uncle Joley and the sanctuary of the Massachusetts apple orchard where he works. Joley directs Jane across the United States in a series of letters waiting for her in designated post offices. Each letter gives concise directions to the next post office; each letter provides Jane with a chance to reflect on her forgotten past.
Oliver, used to tracking male humpback whales across vast oceans, now has the task of tracking his tantalizingly unpredictable wife across a continent. To do so he must learn to see the world-- and even himself-- through her eyes.


As Picture Perfect begins, it is daybreak in downtown L.A. A woman suffering from amnesia is taken in by an officer new to the L.A. police force, after he finds her wandering aimlessly near a graveyard. Days later, when her husband comes to claim her at the police station, no one is more stunned than Cassie Barrett to learn that not only is she a renowned anthropologist, but she is married to Hollywood's leading man, Alex Rivers.
As Alex helps Cassie become reaccustomed to her fairy-tale existence, fragments of memory return: the whirlwind romance on location in Africa, her major anthropological discovery, the trajectory of Alex's career. Yet as Cassie settles into her glamour-filled life, uneasiness nags at her. She senses there is something troubling and wild that would alter the picture of her perfect marriage. When she finds a positive pregnancy test in her bathroom, she is flooded with dark memories. Trying to piece together her past, she runs to the other person she trusts to keep her hidden-- Will Flying Horse, the policeman who had initially harbored her.
Out of loyalty he cannot fully understand, Will spirits Cassie away to stay with his parents on the reservation where he grew up-- and to which he never wanted to return-- for the duration of her pregnancy. Safe in South Dakota, Cassie contemplates her future. She weighs the ominous pattern of her marriage against her compassion for her husband. Cassie knows of the fear and self-loathing Alex harbors-- and of his hard-won transformation to the skilled actor he has become.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Alex's life is falling apart. Nominated for Best Actor for his most recent film, he can no longer conceal from the press the fact that his wife is gone. Lies beget lies, and soon his career is rocked by scandal.
When Cassie agrees to return to Hollywood with her son, it is with a conditional promise from Alex. But it is a promise he cannot keep. In order to free them both, Cassie holds a press conference and tells the world the secret about Alex it never knew-- and never would have believed.


Jack St. Bride was once a beloved teacher and soccer coach at a girls' prep school - until a student's crush sparked a powder keg of accusation and robbed him of his career and reputation. Now, after a devastatingly public ordeal that left him with an eight-month jail sentence and no job, Jack resolves to pick up the pieces of his life. He takes a job washing dishes at Addie Peabody's diner and slowly starts to form a relationship with her in the quiet New England village of Salem Falls. But just when Jack thinks he has outrun his past, a quartet of teenage girls with a secret turn his world upside down once again, triggering a modern-day witch hunt in a town haunted by its own history…


What happens when you do all the right things for all the wrong reasons? As an assistant district attorney in York County, Maine, Nina Frost prosecutes the sort of crimes that tear families apart. She helps clients navigate their way through a nightmare – even though the legal system is not always the faultless compass they want and need it to be. She learns that the easiest way to cross this devastating minefield time and time again is to offer compassion, battle fiercely for justice, and keep her emotional distance.
But when Nina and her husband Caleb discover that their five-year-old son Nathaniel has been sexually abused, that distance is impossible to maintain. The world Nina inhabits now seems different from the one she lived in yesterday; the lines between family and professional life are erased; and answers to questions she thought she knew are no longer easy to find. Overcome by anger and desperate for vengeance, Nina ignites a battle that may cause her to lose the very thing she's fighting for.


Delia Hopkins has led a charmed life. Raised in rural New Hampshire by her widowed father, Andrew, she now has a young daughter, a handsome fiancé, and her own search-and-rescue bloodhound, which she uses to find missing persons. But as she plans her wedding, she is plagued by flashbacks of a life she can't recall. And when a policemen arrives to disclose a truth that will upend the world as she knows it, Delia must search through these memories – even when they have the potential to devastate her life, and the lives of those she loves most.


In Sterling, New Hampshire, 17-year-old high school student Peter Houghton has endured years of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of classmates. His best friend, Josie Cormier, succumbed to peer pressure and now hangs out with the popular crowd that often instigates the harassment. One final incident of bullying sends Peter over the edge and leads him to commit an act of violence that forever changes the lives of Sterling's residents.

Even those who were not inside the school that morning find their lives in an upheaval, including Alex Cormier. The superior court judge assigned to the Houghton case, Alex—whose daughter, Josie, witnessed the events that unfolded—must decide whether or not to step down. She's torn between presiding over the biggest case of her career and knowing that doing so will cause an even wider chasm in her relationship with her emotionally fragile daughter. Josie, meanwhile, claims she can't remember what happened in the last fatal minutes of Peter's rampage. Or can she? And Peter's parents, Lacy and Lewis Houghton, ceaselessly examine the past to see what they might have said or done to compel their son to such extremes.


When a young Amish teen hides a pregnancy, gives birth in secret, and then flatly denies it all when the baby's body is found, urban defense attorney Ellie Hathaway decides to defend her. But she finds herself caught in a clash of cultures with a people whose channels of justice are markedly different from her own… and discovers a place where circumstances are not always what they seem.

***after reading "My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult, I can't wait to read her other books.***


Leningrad 1941: the white nights of summer illuminate a city of fallen grandeur whose beautiful palaces and stately avenues speak of a different age, when Leningrad was known as St Petersburg.

Two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha, share the same bed, living in one room with their brother and parents. It is a hard, impoverished life, yet the Metanovs know many who are not as fortunate as they.

The family routine is shattered on 22 June 1941 when Hitler invades Russia. For the Metanovs, for Leningrad and for Tatiana, life will never be the same again. On the fateful day, Tatiana meets a brash young officer named Alexander.

Tatiana and her family suffer as Hitler's army advances on Leningrad, and the Russian winter closes in. With bombs falling and the city under siege, Tatiana and Alexander are drawn to each other in an impossible love. It is a love that could tear Tatiana's family apart, a love that carries a secret that could mean death for anyone who hears it.

Confronted on the one hand by Hitler's unstoppable war machine, and on the other by a Soviet system determined to crush the human spirit, Tatiana and Alexander are pitted against the very tide of history, at a turning point in the century that made the modern world.

***This book is recommended by my friend, Joline. This is the most well-known book of Paullina Simmons.***


Una Cavan doesn't believe in ghosts. But ghosts seem to believe in her. At least, her father's ghost does, walking into and out of her life as casually as if he were entering and exiting a room. Una has always believed the Cavan women had the power of witches, and from the beaches of Connecticut to the bustle of New York City they've shared the special unbreakable bond of sisters. No man has been able to come between them…until Lily marries the "perfect" man and begins to drift away and Margo gets engaged. With another failed relationship behind her, and a thriving career as an actress ahead of her, Una wonders if she's destined to be alone–or if there isn't something more, something magical that life has in store for her. Then an unexpected encounter gives her the answer she's been seeking.


No matter where you live, you have a next door Savior who loves you more than you can ever imagine. That's the greatest news of all.

***This book is a non-fiction book. This is by my favorite Christian writer Max Lucado. Eugene highly recommended this book to me. I'm in the middle of reading this book. I really love the way Max Lucado writes because his books are so light and so witty, and yet are full of good messages.

"Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age 13, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplementation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate--a life and a role she has never challenged...until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister. So, Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable--a decision that will tear her family apart and possibly have fatal consequences for the sister she loves."

Jodi Picoult's novels are more than interesting. They do not draw you into other worlds, but makes you take a look into things that are either taken for granted or people don't dare to look at.

In this part romance, part courtroom thriller and part social commentary, Picoult drives her readers through a family's tale of dysfunction, betrayal and redemption.

What enticed me in picking up the book "My Sister's Keeper" was it reminded me of a CSI episode that I watched where the "victim" was a girl, conceived the way Anna was, and whose seeming sole purpose was to give body parts to his brother with cancer. But "My Sister's Keeper" is far more complicated than the kidnap-murder case of CSI that I watched.

Here is a story of a family  who battles with death every single day for 14 years and is in the midst of moral and ethical dilemma with regards to their two daughters. The story is not just told through the eyes of Anna, the  "giving" daughter who seemed to only exist in relation to her sister Kate, but as well as through the eyes of Brian, the father, a firefighter who can save everyone else's life but his daughters'; Sara, the mother, a former lawyer that opted to just represent her children everywhere, every time, even in the court of death; Jesse, the brother, frustrated for not being worthy to save his sister and thus became obssessed with controlling something as uncontrollable as fire; and Campbell and Julia, Anna's lawyer and guardian ad litem, once lovers and now are caught in the Fitzgerald's war with Kate's leukemia and Anna's struggle to still be part of that war without being the only weapon.

Once I started reading the book, I wasn't able to put it down. I couldn't wait to know what happened to the characters. Picoult has written these characters in a way that there was no room for me to be judgmental of them, but a lot of space for hopes for them to grow.

I hoped for Kate to get the organ she needed to live, yet I also hoped for Anna to gain control of her body. I hoped for Jesse to feel he's worth something even if it didn't mean being a donor to his sister. I hoped for Brian and Sara to keep their family intact and not lose any of their daughters. And I hoped for Campbell and Julia to workout their issues from the past, not just for themselves but for Anna.

I had all these hopes for the characters, but the ending of the book was something far different from what I hoped for and nothing that I expected.

Sidenote:
From Wikipedia: There are plans by New Line Cinema to turn My Sister's Keeper into a feature film, to be released sometime in 2008. Nick Cassavetes is attached to direct it. It will star Cameron Diaz as Sara and Alec Baldwin as Campbell. Dakota and Elle Fanning were originally set to play the sisters but Dakota changed her mind when she found out she would have to shave her head to play the leukemia-suffering character of Kate. Elle dropped out along with her sister, and they were replaced with Sofia Vassilieva and Abigail Breslin.

Awww... The Fanning sisters would have been perfect for this movie!

I have this quirkness with the books I own. I don't like lending books that are in my "collection", and those are the non-fiction, inspirational, Christian books that I have. I'm not at ease whenever even just one of these books in this collection is not on the table by my bedside. I'm not really "madamot" because I would rather buy a copy of the book and give it as a gift to the person than lend it, and with that, the person can read the book at any pace he/she wants and not have to worry returning it to me. I actually can't part with my non-fiction collection. If I'm going to another country, I'll surely bring them.

But with regards to the fiction books that I own, that's another story. That I can lend, just be sure to return them or else...

The fiction books that I like can be divided into
six categories:

First one would be is written by Asian authors. For the longest time, "The Kitchen God's Wife" by Amy Tan has been a favorite of mine. I liked it more than "The Joy Luck Club", which is the more popular book, but I like all the her works anyway.

The next category would be stories about the paranormal, vampires and witches. Here comes Stephen King and Anne Rice.

The next one would be works by Neil Gaiman. I like reading his novels though apparently most people would prefer his graphic novels/comic books.

Next would be courtroom drama such as Jodi Picoult's novels, which is my thing for the moment.

And then there are the mystery novels. Seriously, I like shows that involves crime solving, and I like that in my books as well.

And last but not the least would be adult fairytale, which Sean says is a weird name for a genre because adult and fairytales don't mix. I'm into fairytale retellings such as the
novels of Gregory Maguire.

So, right now, if you'd ask me what to recommend for reading I'd probably saying "My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult and "Confessions Of An Ugly Stepsister" by Gregory Maguire because I just finished the two. Hehe ^^;