Are You Lonesome Tonight, Arielle Collera?
By Mikael Borres
Quotes have been translated from Cebuano (Bisaya) to English for clarity and length.
A younger Arielle “Aea” (pronounced ‘ey-ah’) Collera felt lonely. That’s not to say she felt alone, for an explicit difference exists between the two.
To be alone is to be physically by yourself, without anyone around at a given time. Aea was not alone; she rode bikes with her friends in their neighbourhood and hunkered down at the local internet café to kill zombies while playing Left 4 Dead. To this day, she likes being alone, sitting in coffee shops and doing things on her own.
To be lonely, on the other hand, is to feel isolated despite having people around you. Even when a crowd surrounded younger Aea, some of whom interacted with her, she felt empty, keeping her thoughts to herself and hesitated to let them out for others to hear and know.
For younger Aea to disallow people to peer into her brain is a shame, actually, because finding out what she has in mind means stepping into something lovely. “My world is filled with pretty things, like small pretty things,” said Aea. “I learned that you have to actively seek fun and beauty, or you’re gonna die, like it’s gonna be so bad for you. For me, at least, if I don’t go out of my way to make my life interesting and just be deep in work, it’s gonna be so bad for me.”
Arielle Collera’s world consists of those “pretty things”, like buying flowers for her friends and going to new places to hang out. (Molave Community Marketplace, the space that used to be the place for Cebu’s youth, was Aea’s go-to in 2024.)
“For me, I’m interesting, but I don’t think I’m interesting to other people,” said Aea, chuckling.
Why does she find herself interesting? “Because I’m me! Like, who else am I supposed to amuse?” she laughed. “I’m amused by my own thoughts.”
“I’m so me. I don’t know how else to say it. I like being me, and sometimes I exist so much in my own world that I forget that people perceive me.”
She knows who she is, and she’s not sorry about it. When she finds herself enamoured with something, whatever it may be, she expresses herself with passion. She doesn’t always do so through her words, but through her clothes, music choices, or whatever fits with what enthralls her.
Pretty things have been on Aea’s mind for years, and Aea makes no apologies surrounding her world with them. But how would anyone know of this pretty world if younger Aea felt like no one was there to listen?
As a child, Aea had to reckon with a state called loneliness. Her parents kept her in the dark about the family’s problems, even when she sensed those problems lurking at home. “Like, I could tell something was happening, but they wouldn’t tell me,” she said. “Like, I just know that this [was] happening, but I was a child and I could feel that this is not what it should be.”
The imposed cluelessness compelled younger Aea to process what she was experiencing on her own, with no guidance. Her parents wouldn’t ask her how she was feeling, and other family members wouldn’t talk about the problems with her. She couldn’t confide in her friends about it since she herself didn’t know what was happening. “There was really no one there for me. That’s what I felt. They’re your family. They’re the people you’re supposed to lean on with things. But then, they weren’t able to give that to me.”
“So I had no one growing up to deal with that heavy kind of problem, and so I bring that problem as an adult. I go, I’ll just deal with this by myself.”
Her senior high school days coincided with the worst of young Aea’s troubles. Aea’s family life sliding to a more unpleasant situation not only affected her schooling, it deepened her habit of keeping her fears and frustrations to herself. As the emotional weight younger Aea carried got heavier, it all brought on her wish to be tucked away and be unseen. So much so that she would hide behind “tall people” whenever she felt timid in social settings. “You know that feeling? You’re so empty that it’s like you’re floating,” she described.
Aea believes that all that pent-up trauma from her youth resulted in her reluctance to socialize. “I was so shy in the past, and this shyness comes from me not being comfortable [with] myself. I didn’t want to take up space, and so I would just keep to myself, and I didn’t want to exist in other people’s lives.”
Those high school habits continue to loom around in Aea’s present like a fly resistant from the bug spray. Whenever a problem confronts Aea, she prefers to tackle it by herself instead of seeking help, avoiding what she views as burdening others. It was not a choice but more so a reflex. Years of believing “figure it out yourself because no one’s gonna be there” became part of her character.
Until recently, Aea still struggles to show her vulnerabilities. When someone asks about anything serious and deep, she may wall up, wondering whether the person asking is worth opening up to. “And then I just go deal with it at that moment. I tell myself, ‘It’s OK, you can trust this person.’”
The bruises of Aea’ childhood loneliness remain marked on her. The girl of the past, Aea believes, resides within the present self. “I think everyone has this layer that, on the outside, you’re having fun with your friends, but deep down, you know that there’s something wrong, and there’s always that underlying feeling, and I think that’s what young Aea felt,” said Aea. “She just didn’t know that the underlying feeling was there because she wasn’t emotionally mature enough to recognize it.”
In Aea’s words, younger Aea was “lonely, and she just wanted someone she could rely on.”
As Aea has grown through time and experience, she believes she holds a responsibility to take care of that lonely girl who never left. Those younger selve and those emotional injuries that come with their presence may trigger the present version of one’s self.
“So when I look back on younger Aea, I could tell that she was so wounded. She just didn’t know that she was. So now, I’m dealing with that and processing things for her–‘cause she didn’t do it for herself.”
In little steps, Aea is growing and unlearning what she thought made sense. She tries her best to be more open with her friends, sharing with them how she feels whenever something tips her off or makes her uneasy. She does so because she refuses to do what others did to her: being left in the dark.
And after years of hyper-independence, Aea’s trying to learn how to accept help. Instead of letting her instincts kick in and shutting people’s out, she reminds herself that others offer their hand because they want to.
If Aea ever doubts her growth, she only needs to remember one thing she does now that high school Aea never would have done. On a Discord call with a high school friend, she told him how she greets people–and doesn’t feel too shy doing so.
“He was like, ‘Really? You don’t hide behind tall people anymore?”
Who will ever know if Aea’s loneliness will ever go away. What can be a comforting fact is that Aea’s learning, and that’s all that matters. The bruises are there, but she’s getting them healed.
Aea and Mikael conducted an in-person interview on Sunday, March 24th, 2024.
Recommended Song: Are You Lonesome Like Me? - The Feminine Complex
