Twenty-two years ago, I left without saying goodbye. I don’t remember her face anymore, only the possibility that her name was Charmaine and the circle we drew in the dirt to play diketo. This is the story of a childhood friendship that never got an ending, and the first room I unknowingly left unfinished.
Category: Outside These Rooms
These are the rooms built afterward.
The ones shaped by memory, longing, fear, and inherited ways of loving.
Here, I try to piece together fragments of the house —
old understandings of love, closeness, grief, and survival that were never meant to fit neatly together.
These are stories about what survived outside the house.
Because the blueprint itself was fragmented.
Returning to the Blueprint
I thought growth meant leaving the house behind. Instead, it asked me to return to it. In 2026, I learned that some foundations cannot be rebuilt until you are willing to study the blueprint that created them.
Blueprints
I still build relationships using the same blueprint the house gave me: hold tightly, stay close, do not leave me.
Unfinished Rooms 