A news reporter headlined this summer as The Summer of Discontent. Every news channel was all about the rallies, oil, and natural calamities around the world. I looked into the mirror.

Show me that game-face, baby.

Just great. 21 years old and I still had breakouts. It's not that I think I'm a superior being but other people were supposed to get those pimples. Just when I was about to go for my final interview. Then I wondered. What did employers think about applicants who had pimples?

I tried out the blouse I'd wear for the interview. When I opened the buttons it was probably the first time in my life I saw myself like that. It was horrible. This was not a grown woman's chest! Between the breasts that were hidden from the view was a vast desert. 21 years old, at 130 lbs., and I had no cleavage. I was no hermaphrodite! I thought at least when I gained weight this could be compensated. It was fine to gain weight as long as my stomach could not match my breasts in horizontal distance from my spinal column. But if my breasts remained like this, and my stomach was ever growing as if it had a fetus inside, this was dangerous. I would no longer count as "hot".

After hearing me, my friends would often say "you'd been complaining for four years, so what's new?" What's new was that while I was sitting and typing this, I could feel the skin of my stomach pressing against my breasts.

Just a few days ago I decided to decline a high-paying call center job for a more "challenging" work with lesser pay. I might sound like a princess complaining about her cellulites, but the truth is, I'm scared shitless. I am about to embark on a new voyage. Consider it a new dimension entirely. It's not like the line from my childhood will continue. It's as if the end point of that line has been lifted to a different axis and allowed to continue in a new direction. Jesus Christ, I'm talking in planes and figures!

My mother told me that the only way to pull through with work was thinking it was my only means of survival. I needed it, and without it, I'd starve. Worse, I couldn't shop. And so I recited it in my head a hundred times: Do or Die. She cut me short.

"Bear in mind that if you screw this up, you'll be pulling your school's name with you."

University of the Philippines- a breeding place for n00bs.

That was the scarier thought. I couldn't do that to UP.

So I was now four hours away from moving out of my parents' house. For good. My parents had officially lifted the chains. In four hours I was to become one of society's... er, problems. I was about to become one with Reality like having sex for the first time with the lights on. When Do or Die sounded too negative, I'd switch to Love and Fight. It was kind of early for me to conclude about life but for now I decided there were only two things that a person had to do to survive: Love and Fight.

Still, my stomach pressing against my breasts was the reality check I needed.