Drink at least eight glasses of water a day. Go easy on subzero beers. Slow down on cocktails and margaritas, no matter how good they taste. Alcohol will not help maintain normal bowel functions.
It’s the safest piece of advice anyone has ever given me. My dad told me countless times: Drink one glass when you wake up, two after each meal, and at least one in between meals. I believed in his advice, but did not religiously follow it. Yet it’s the only advice I’d wholeheartedly give anyone. Any other advice I’ve heard in my life is never as real.
Drink more water. Drink less alcohol; invest in moments you’re going to remember the morning after. Don’t drink too much soda, unless you’re okay with diabetes. Don’t drink diet soda either. It has aspartame in place of sugar, and numerous articles exploring the hidden dangers of aspartame have been published.
Science is science, and “drink water” will always be sound advice. You can’t tell me to stop overthinking, or to believe that things will get better, or to trust in God’s plans, then expect me to feel relieved. How do I know? More importantly, how do you?
I’ve struggled with myself since I grew enough to realize I’m nothing special. I’m not the perfect, overachieving daughter my parents wanted, and not the obedient, prim and proper granddaughter my lolo and lola hoped for.
I’m 19 and trying to graduate from college, and it’s a daily struggle to even get out of bed. I’m not winning medals for anything but tardiness.
I spend much of my day on Facebook, going through my feed and feeling worse about myself by the hour. I’m barely passing my classes, barely attending them, and barely fulfilling the minimum requirement. Other people my age are directing short films outside school, fighting for the rights of the oppressed, and studying to be future surgeons.
Other people are trying to save the world, and I can’t even finish a 500-word essay on communication theories. How are people this young so sure of where they want to go and what they want to do?
I’ve been repeatedly told to chase after my dream, like it’s the easiest thing to do. My next-year graduation feels more like a deadline than a starting point. Once I’m out of the university, I have no choice but to find my dream. I’m not sure I’ll find it in this lifetime.
It’s the most excruciating thing, hiding behind this supposed upward trajectory toward graduation when in fact I’m up and down and left and right all at the same time, a broken compass whose arrows never settle. I know I should be doing more with my life. I want to stop asking myself why I am where I am, and where I took a wrong turn. I feel like I walked too deep into the labyrinth that I just stopped trying to find a way out.
This ramble is a note to everyone else struggling to find their place in this world: Someone is just as lost as you. I can’t tell you to chase after your dream, or to trust in God’s plans, or to just be yourself. We’re all on some level of struggle, and ridiculous, and confused, and it’s unfair to supply people with advice based on past experiences.
I don’t want to dispense advice I don’t believe in, but I promise you, it’s never wrong to drink more water.
Josef Gacutan, 19, is a film student at the University of the Philippines Diliman.