Two Million Thoughts

One of my ever-favorite books is Paulo Coelho’s Veronika Decides To Die, a quite cunning masterpiece that discussed depression, sanity/insanity, and death as a way to celebrate life. It took me a long time to actually start reading the pages as my on-line friends warned me that it was not advisable for depression-prone people like me. But the book proved them all wrong.

Sure, the images Coelho painted with his words were quite dramatic, and at times, disturbing; but these situations howeer gave a new meaning of life. I find it really fascinating that one can write a story revolving around a suicidal lady and her desire to die, at the same time, showing the readers in the end that indeed, no matter how cliche-ish it may sound, life is beautiful. It is amazing to realize that human beings sometimes need to be subjected to the claws of death so they may appreciate their life more. As the song Iris goes, "you bleed just to know you’re alive."

Perhaps it’s my torturing moments with hyperacidity (which usually reaches its worst moment when I am in the middle of my oral examinations) or my sleepless nights of worrying and studying that made me change my mind. Or better yet, it’s the suffocating, monotonous, and routinary life I have right now, making me bored to the maximum level, that made me want to spice up my life. Maybe it is a combination of all these situations and some self-help realization, prayers, and quick-pick-me-ups from family and friends. I have cried long enough, carried my heavy heart for quite a while, and tortured myself too much with my self-proclaimed loneliness.

It is now high time to see the bud rather than the torns in a rose.

Oh sure, our professors are telling us that our answers in our midterm exams suck. They had belittled our undergraduate courses, as well as our inability to write our thoughts in a bar-like manner. I had stood up in front of the class without any clue of an answer. I had stood up and delivered an answer which was incoherent with the Code we were supposed to study. I had given an answer using the easier logic rather than "really squeezing" my mind out. I had given an answer which made the whole class laugh. I had listened to my teacher’s discussion without any idea of what they were talking. I experienced reading an entire page of one of our books and realized later on that I had not understand anything at all.

But I also have my own moments which made me believe that hey, I can do things well in life. It is said that life is 10% of what happens to you, and 90% of how you respond to these things.

My life right now is like an uphill climb of a very tall mountain, the peak nowhere to be found yet; an iron fist gripping me in the neck. It’s quite suffocating and I certainly need to breathe. It is like holding on to a very thin rope. It is like the Peter Pan ride which made me dizzy and sick and wanting to vomit.

Right now, I am just prepping myself up for the worst, making sure that I have an extra budget stashed in my wallet to guarantee that cups of yogurts, tacos, bottles of nail polish, or a hair spa treatment, is easily accessible and available should that worst moment come. While it is true that if you can not take the pressure, then, get out, this time, I am not going anywhere. I am staying. I want the whole world know that I have decided to live…

…on hell or high waters.

Anthony Bourdain once said something like people can tell whether you are enjoying your job or not. Although I don’t quite agree with his I-am-better-than-the-world style, I quite agree with this idea.

If people saw me during the first few weeks of school with a lousy t-shirt and a lousier pair of jeans, and an uncombed hair, and if these people jumped into conclusions that I wasn’t enjoying my life, without giving me the benefit of a doubt, I would not blame them; they were right.

Which then leads me to evaluate the entries of this blog. A quick scan would lead to the conclusion that I am selfish. Most of my recent entries talked about me, myself, and I. I overwrote about my certain problems, my incurable sadness which has turned into chronic depression, my whinings, my complaints, everything about me and me, and no one else!

Although I honestly would want to write about the oil spill in Guimaras and how the administration was too slow to react to it, or the new Melo team to investigate the recent killings of leftists and journalists and what took this long to organize this, I can’t. No matter what I do, I still can’t. Whenever I am faced with the computer, all I can write about is my life. Even in the middle of my classes, I would still yearn to write about myself.

During the late part of my undergraduate years in Silliman, I always had this desire to comment on current political and economic issues. I was always quick to check the papers and to rush to defend to those who I think were abused and exploited. I knew my passion and I freely exercised them.

But the tables have turned. I now write about myself and think of myself first. I don’t even do volunteer works anymore because I do not have the luxury of time. I think and write of my life in the hope of validating and justifying my acts. I write of myself and I, trying to convince myself of my own beliefs, and hoping that in the long run, I would find my self back.

There is a saying that goes this way: You can not give what you do not have. I can’t try to be concerned with national and local issues and concerns when my life is also at the mercy of cracking. I can’t help other people when I, myself, need help.

But this needs no alarm or worry. I just let myself go through this stage or period, because I know that this, too, shall pass!