Too many
events lately squeezed my life dry. Different forms of loss plagued my 31st
year of existence. I had renewed hopes and strength to carry myself into
finishing my graduate studies, but instead of all emotions set for a grueling
reading and writing, my being was swallowed into a deep sorrow that shattered
my core. Plus, I have to extend effort to shield myself from distraught as I
need all the sanity to function well in front of my colleagues, and most of
all, to my students.
I am used to
broken glasses, cigarette smell, and alcoholic rage growing up as a child, and
maybe the next worse thing that could happen to me will be at gun point;
however, the sadness I now have is a bullet wound. When I am idle, I cannot
read, I cannot look at the letters in silence as memories, events, stories, and
recent affairs all come rushing down like floodwater from a broken dam. It even
took me awhile to gather wits to write this short note.
Songs begin to
hurt. I used to jam even to the heart wrenching melodies due to their poetry
and tune, but now they pain me as their meanings burst into the soundwaves and
pierce not just my ears but my heart. I have a rather stoic approach to life,
and many see me as a killjoy because only a select few things and events make
me truly happy. The rest is just matter obstructing my perception. Now, it is
different, my rather dull and pessimistic take on life has been overshadowed by
the crucifixion of my heart.
Never have I
reflected so much on the crucial decisions I made in my life as I was always
sure, and I was willing to work out the choices made not because of pride but
because life is too short to be mistaken. You work on the things that were
practical and pragmatic within the given situation. True that in life we take
detours; but I do not have that luxury, and as much as possible, the course has
to be clear rather than to be strolling around the abyss of possibilities. I do
not want to be trapped in perpetual anxiety of a future without clarity. And
neither do I want to sink in pipe dreams when survival is an everyday call much
so with my continued devotion to teaching.
This time, the
“what ifs” come creeping as if telling me that it could have been better if
such did not happen. I did not even bother to have a what-if of my skewedly-hideous-with-a-pinch-of-redeeming-experiences childhood, and that is why
I see entertaining the loathing with time travel is a mere helpless exercise
trying to move the clock backwards. Working with what one has in the moment for
the future with the context of past is all what there is. All the what-ifs I
think most often are not existential as I entertain possibilities in work and even in my
intellectual exercises, but the existential turn is creating this uneasiness
within me.
The heart is
exhausted but still wants to beat as it still yearns for the love that it
has chosen. I remembered my Latin teacher that saying “delegam te” (I choose
you) rather than “amo te” (I love you) is more profound as the latter is
emotion while the former is a fusion of heart and mind. Animals can do the
latter perfectly fine, but humans are those that continue to hold on to things
that are slipping into the void with the hope of preventing a soul carried
further by the current of river Styx. See how a human heart continues to pump
even in the absence of the blood that made it glow before; and that is how choice
drives a soul to a corpse - life to an organ.
Take the
beating. Swallow it like a man. Hope. To live is to suffer. To suffer more just to
gain drops of happiness as life is a never-ending labor.
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