Bella Ysmael’s Road To Self-Discovery During A Pandemic

Read below an excerpt of this month's cover star, Bella Ysmael. Related: Queen In The Making: Bella Ysmael Reveals Her Future Plans Like all things, the Miss Universe Philippines competition took the a nosedive when the pandemic. What started out as a quick pause stretched out to a long and uncertain limbo that’s still happening as of today. Listening to Ysmael narrate what happened, it was like we were reliving 2020 again. “I guess there was a point right before the pandemic hit in March where I kind of felt like, ‘Oh my god, I’m giving up!’ You know? I felt like I wanted to give up. I felt so tired, I’ve had no sleep, everyday we have something to do: I have to go to the designers, I have to visit this [place], we have a sponsor visit—it was quite exhausting especially for me because I guess I consider […]