Love & Alice

26/10/2025

25/10/2025

24/10/2025

Keep going.

24/10/2025

🥹

😂💯

24/10/2025

Trigger warning: Mentions of mental health struggles, emotional burnout, and hopelessness.

There have been so many posts and quotes about mental health lately. Last week, it was about Baek Sehee’s passing, and now, Emmanuelle Atienza’s. To be honest, it’s been triggering. I probably just had the longest cry I’ve had in months. It felt healing, but at the same time, like many other times, I brushed my feelings under the rug because a part of me still believes I don’t deserve to feel them.

These recent losses hit too close to home. Not because I’m trying to relate for the sake of it, but because I understand the quiet exhaustion that comes with fighting invisible battles.

For months, I’ve been looking forward to this family trip. I thought it would be healing, something to help me breathe again after juggling everything. Life has been heavy and fast, and I’ve been tired in every possible way. I’m hard on myself; I always feel like nothing I do is ever enough. I try to excel at work because I’m now the only source of income for my small family, but in doing so, my daughter’s schoolwork and well-being have suffered. That guilt weighs on me every day.

I recently started taking my meds again. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve made, but I needed to face the truth: I couldn’t handle everything alone. I had to let my daughter stay with her dad during weekdays so he could help discipline and guide her. She still comes home on weekends, and I try my best to make up for lost time, helping with schoolwork, ordering in her favorite meals, and simply being present. But the guilt remains. On some nights, I punish myself, thinking it’s my fault she isn’t with me full-time.

During this trip, I’ve felt so many emotions I couldn’t regulate. I became the person I never wanted to be around, irritable, emotional, and overwhelmed. My husband, who I’ve been slowly rebuilding a relationship with, often shuts down when I show emotion. I know he’s still healing from what I did, and I know I hurt him deeply. So now, every time I express pain, I question whether I even have the right to.

There are moments when I feel like I’m walking on eggshells, that every time I show vulnerability, it resets us back to zero. He doesn’t tell me I’m not enough; it’s me who thinks that. I carry that thought quietly, wondering if my efforts will ever make up for the past. But deep down, I also know he’s like me, someone who struggles to say the things that matter most, someone who shows care through small gestures instead of words.

And even if it’s not the grand kind of love, he still finds his way back. He checks in. He stays connected in the ways he knows how. And for now, maybe that’s enough.

Some days, I believe that I’m moving forward, and some days, I don’t. But then I look at my daughter, Alice, and she keeps me going. She’s the reason I fight. She’s the reason I still wake up.

I guess what I’m really trying to say is this: mental health isn’t always visible. I might look like I’m having the time of my life on trips, but nobody sees what’s underneath. Everyone is fighting something you can’t see. So I hope we learn to treat each other with more kindness.

People will quit on you. Just make sure you don’t quit on yourself.
And if you ever need someone to talk to about the hard stuff, I’m here.

Be kind. Always. 🤍

24/10/2025

It was so brave of me to show up, even when I was tired and drained. Even when my heart was heavy and my mind begged for rest. I still showed up, quietly, imperfectly, but I did. People may never know how much strength it took just to keep going, to smile when I was breaking, to care when I was empty. But I know. And that’s enough. I’m proud of me for surviving the days I thought I couldn’t.

I’m proud of me for choosing to heal, even when it meant reopening old wounds. I’m proud of me for learning to let go of things that were too heavy to carry. I’m proud of me for forgiving myself for the times I stayed too long, trusted too much, or gave more than I had. I’m proud of me for starting over, again and again, no matter how many times I’ve fallen apart.

I’m proud of the person I’m becoming, softer but stronger, quieter but wiser. I’m proud that I never stopped believing that someday, all this pain would mean something. And maybe it already does, because every piece of who I am now was built from the parts of me that refused to give up.

24/10/2025

23/10/2025

Immediate mood booster.