Today marks the seventh year of my never-ending journey with Lupus.

It was on August 3, 2001 when I walk up almost paralyze from waist down and can hardly move my body that was just the start of what seems to be the endless battle with the invisible disease that has changed my life.

I don’t want to rant about it anymore. I just want to believe that everything happens for a reason and I may not truly understand what God has in store for my life and I sometimes still wrestle with Him about having to endure this chronic illness but through it all I am still holding on, I am still keeping the faith.

I used to be a plan-ahead kind of girl, I often schedule everything and follow a certain path towards my goal. Like I always say, my life used to be perfect. I have everything just the way I planned, I have what it takes to be successful and happy in life but Lupus changed all that. Now, I have to adjust my life with the illness and the uncertainty of it can be so difficult at times.

I may fume with anger sometimes about having Lupus and how it ruined my what so-called my perfect life but I always tell myself, my plans for my life may have been good but God’s plan is always the best.

Green is out and brown is in. Now, that the Philippines switched to machine-readable passports. I have to renew my passport since I’m traveling to Singapore in the next few weeks. My passport is not yet expired but I just want to have the new one before I travel again. I’m excited to see my best friend again in Singapore, she’s five months pregnant but I think she can still go around the city with us. We may have a side trip to Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok as well as Bintan, Indonesia. I’m so excited.

My brother is into collecting stuff and I don’t blame him, we both share the same interest in collecting a lot of bits and pieces. My first ever collection were stationeries way back in first grade and I was so into Hello Kitty stuff that I still collect them up to this date, some of them are already vintage and will probably cost a fortune. I also collect books, perfumes, bags, shoes and so much more. Some of them may have some value, some probably don’t matter at all but I don’t care it meant a lot to me to be able to collect them. I love everything vintage, I just think there’s just too much history and story that comes with it. Maybe I’m just too sentimental but I always have a hard time letting go of my things, especially my precious collections. My brother on the other hand collects various CD’s and he’s really into photography and playing music. He has a collection of old cameras that he purchased online and he’s starting to collect various musical instruments too. Now, he’s into collecting vintage t shirts, he just find it so amusing and interesting to have them and he loves hard to find shirts as well. I’m not sure what is it about collecting stuff that we are so passionate about.