"Gladys is dead."
How a simple text message changed a hopeless writer's life & become a self-published author
At two o’clock in the morning of August 2021, I received an unexpected WhatsApp message from my younger sister, from the other side of the world, eleven thousand kilometers away from me. “Gladys is dead,” she said in her text. Immediately, I paused and stared at the words for a while before I snapped my senses back.
My heart clenched at the thought of my first-degree cousin passing at a young age. We grew up almost together, witnessed each other’s ups and downs, and shared aspirations for a seemingly far and impossible tomorrow. Years later, she was happily married, 28 years old, and scheduled to give birth to her beautiful daughter two months later.
Who would have thought bringing her previous baby was her last mission on Earth? Who would have thought that it would only take a simple cough and sneeze to take a life like hers? Who would have thought that her death would commence a long family drama I never thought would spill out, breaking everyone’s hearts and hopes?
It had been almost three years since she died. But until now, I couldn’t let go of that feeling. Even when my family and the rest of the relatives seemed to have moved on, as if her death didn’t matter, it lingered inside me. Still fresh from yesterday. That grief kept clutching in my heart like a pounding fist, getting stronger each year. As if it wished to be acknowledged, not forgotten.
Sure enough, that same tragedy caused a life-changing turn in my life. Her death had marked me in a way that I couldn’t find any sense in the things I used to value before. Power, fame, success, financial security, anything most people in a capitalist society value most these days. Not family, relationships, community, society. Love.
Although I’ve dedicated years to the freelance writing industry, I felt like it was the right time to move on and embrace change. A God’s sign, if you will. Even though it almost looked like an impossible quest, I drew all the remaining courage inside me, conjuring all the will I had to make a decision.
As fixed and stubborn as I was, an event like that struck me by surprise and caught me off-guard on a level I hadn’t expected. While the news barely sank into my head, a big question mark flashed like a quick but potent image, a reminder in my eyes of what was truly valuable.
I simply didn’t have the will to carry out the most important mission in my life, thinking it wasn’t worth my while, assuming that finding security was the only important thing in this world.
If life could come to me like this someday, just as unexpected as this, would I spend the next life resenting myself for not doing the things I should have? Would I become a regretful ghost, haunting people to please myself, feeding my ego with their screams and fears? No, I told myself.
The next year, I decided to leave my freelance writing life entirely and devote my time to being an artist, a creative writer, an author. The transition wasn’t an easy task, but I had to. Though I encountered discussions with people, though fear embraced my consciousness, I endured and stood firm.
It was the first time I began revisiting my old unpublished works, which had been hidden since it was written in 2018. Although some of them were left published on Inkitt and Wattpad, I hadn’t had the drive to read or touch them. Not because I didn’t care. It was more than that.
I was way too emotional to handle objectivity. Because I knew when I read them, I would encounter errors I couldn’t ignore, fearing the frustration and annoyance of my mistakes would reach my head. I was too volatile and unstable to embrace a growth mindset. My mind wasn’t ready for the inner critic to attack my bullshit.
And I hadn’t realized how much time had passed until I welcomed the creative life I once dismissed, almost forgotten. The attempts I’d made in my early twenties were there, crystal clear in my eyes as a thirty-year-old. “I could have done something about this,” I told myself, feeling bad.
It wasn’t because I didn’t have something to show. I simply didn’t have the will to carry out the most important mission in my life, thinking it wasn’t worth my while, assuming that finding security was the only important thing in this world.
Her death may have caused a lot of family rift, but in my heart, it will always be a reminder of why I’ve chosen this difficult journey, why I became a self-published author. Forever.
In my previous newsletter, I wrote, “She became a stranger to the childish world she’d built. She could picture herself, the young girl that she once was, wearing a smile and watching herself how she’d made them, but she could never figure out why she couldn’t feel anything.”
True. When I began this newsletter years ago, this was how I generally felt. All the time, every single minute, every second of the day, I bore the heavy weight on my shoulders. The responsibilities and obligations were stones in my stomach. And I held them closely in my chest like precious valuables to keep.
As a writer, I always felt the need to chase something, as if chasing was my primary job, which wasn’t. Looking back, I could only offer compassion and forgiveness for my unhealthy self, for the self who never believed she had something more to give. More than just a high-quality copy or a web article.
For the self who gave up.
Though I won’t see the chance to see and talk to Gladys again, though I will always bear the last memory of talking to her, our petty last talk, before I leave the Philippines, it is my dearest wish to stand before her tomb and tell her how grateful I am. Her death may have caused the family rift, but in my heart, it will always be a reminder of why I’ve chosen this difficult journey.
Why I became a self-published author. Forever.
Her death may have caused the family rift, but in my heart, it will always be a reminder of why I’ve chosen this difficult journey.
Now, I’m working on my fourth book. The third one just came last month. And it has been quite a journey for me. Especially in the last few months. I know you will be asking me what happened to me. That alone will require me to write a series of newsletters to explain to you and to share my story after months of silence.
Don’t worry. I’ll keep them going in the next following newsletters, but not today. I won’t bombard you with a lot of things in my first newsletter this year but rather make it quick. Just to say hi and give you a glimpse of what I’ve been thinking and feeling these days. I want to share with you the most personal, the rawest of me, through the words you’re reading now.
Whether this inspires you to do something or not, it’s your decision. As a writer, aspiring or experienced, it is up to you to listen to the little whispers of your heart and take the time to acknowledge them. If you’ve been ignoring them for quite some time, it’s time to listen to them. Perhaps, they bear the answers you’ve been looking for your whole life.
Before I leave, I wish you a great start to 2024 and more power to you this whole year. After publishing “My Name is Pepper” last month, I felt thrilled to see how this new year would be for me. At the same time, I also felt a sense of self-justice for the time I’d spent ignoring the artist living inside me.
If you’re reading this, thank you for being part of my crazy writing journey.
Photo by Patti Black on Unsplash