Living for that Moment

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My hair is fashionably tousled, my jeans a perfect fit. I've put on some cologne which I know would evaporate as soon as I walk into the club.  I wait for my friends, and once together, talk about how wasted we want to become, how utterly out of our minds we should be before the end of the evening.

A couple of shots before going in.  For courage. And because the alcohol they sell is too damn expensive.

I enter through double doors into a dark, cramped room throbbing with loud, unrecognizable music, and a barrage of people jumping to the beat. The room is warm, and I feel a bead of sweat slowly trace itself down the side of my neck.  I smile briefly before the crowd, until the many-headed creature swallows me whole and transforms me into another one of its many heads bopping to the rhythm of one song.

Sometimes it comes naturally, the ability to dance.  Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I stand in the middle of the room, a drink in my hand, while I am pushed around by strangers. I hesitantly mimic the tap-tap-tapping of the group beside me. Or the stiff, but captivating swaying of the confident young man on stage.  Sometimes I completely let go, and dance like a wild animal, eyes closed, my mind imagining the room as empty except for me and the beat.

Then there is that magical moment, when, drunk and exhausted, I stare at the ceiling and feel (not think!) that all is right with the world. And the feeling expands and rises and mingles like smoke with the music and the people through the wild, unplanned dance the crowd is participating in.

And I wish that the moment would last forever, and that everything will always be right in the world.  Except morning would inevitably come, and always, always we would need to go home. 

The First Morning I Did Not Think About You

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It was a typical morning. I woke up, late as usual, the sun already near its zenith, its rays streaming through half-open blinds, the day as hot and as humid as it can be. I forgot to turn off the TV. A Discovery channel host was talking about whales, his voice a deep, monotonous drone.

I stood up, my head slightly aching from oversleeping, my thoughts still a blur, my knees, wobbly and unsure.  I staggered to the door of my bedroom, and headed downstairs for a bite. I was hungry. My stomach was growling in angry, desperate need. What my brain still failed to register, my limbs automatically addressed:  I needed sustenance.

I stumbled onto the kitchen and saw my younger brother in his pajamas, eating cereal, his hair unkempt and looking like it was badly in need of a bath. Much like I looked I suppose. I stared at his bowl, and hungry as I was, realized I still hated the thought of having cereal so late in the day. I asked Manang Cely what was for lunch. She didn't reply, but I heard bustling outside, and the familiar clangs of pots and pans. I settled myself at the table, and held my head in my hands. My brother ate in silence. 

"What time did you get home?" I asked him.

"Just this morning."

"Mom and Dad already awake?"

"Nope. They were still asleep." My parents never really imposed a curfew on us, especially on weekends, but they did like it when we got home before they woke up. 

"Where did you go?"

"Nowhere. Just out with friends."

"Malate?"

"Yea."

"How was the crowd?"

"It was okay. Typical. Not a huge crowd, but enough to be fun. Why didn't you go?"

"I was bored. I figured I'd just watch television, play PS2 and sleep." 

My brother nodded, then finished his cereal. He left soon after to catch up on his sleep. I riffled through several newspaper sections, and settled on Lifestyle, reading an article Tim Yap wrote.  He was still writing for the Philippine Daily Inquirer then. 

Manang Cely walked in with a bowl of hot tinola. I immediately tucked in.

Then I remembered you. Right at that moment when the spoon, filled with steaming clear broth, hit my lips.  Rather, or more accurately, I realized I forgot about you first, and then only remembered you.

What a shock. After weeks upon weeks of moping, of listening to sad, lonely, love songs, of waking up to the deep, precious pain a young man getting over his first love can manage to inflict on himself, I woke up to a morning where you weren't the first thing on my mind. And outside of the overpowering relief, I realized how funny it was that moving on would come at a moment so utterly, absolutely mundane. While at a table, eating tinola for breakfast and/or lunch, my hair a mess, smelling like something the dog just brought in. How unimaginative. How banal. How anticlimactic.

And still, I felt happy, and finished my meal in unanticipated felicity. Though lacking in theatrics (perhaps a lightning bolt or two in the background would have been nice), I exulted in the unadulterated joy of knowing that I have finally, completely moved on.  

Moving on, is a simple thing, what it leaves behind is hard.

~~David Mustaine~~        

Irony

I've been taking stock of my life lately, and as what usually happens when I go through this process, a slight sadness has settled into my routine. Nothing major, only the after-effect of my directionless existentialist musings. I've been looking at the things I find important right now, and I weigh them from different perspectives. Sometimes I feel like I've made mostly right choices; sometimes I feel like I'm in a rut that I need to get out of; mostly, well, mostly I'm just undecided. What am I doing with my life? Where am I going?

To be perfectly honest, this blog has been something of an anchor for me. It's nice to think that someone out there is actually listening to me, when I air these things that usually pervade my mind. I don't know, I just feel... restless. Rudderless. Lost.

When I was younger, I realized that I lived my life in cycles of highs and lows, in an almost too predictable way that, if I were to chart my life, I would definitely see a pattern of repetitive peaks and valleys. I tried to understand my motivations, and I realized that the reason for this repetition is an almost uncanny need for...drama? I can't even find a proper word for it. I guess it's like this: I seem to be unable to be content. For me, contentment breeds restlessness, boredom.

And that's the funny thing, because even now, after I've taken stock of where I am, and how perfect my life is at this very moment, I feel the urge to run away and disappear. Does that make sense? My thoughts are a jumble.

Maybe it's just the season. Another year has gone by. Maybe this is just nostalgic musings masquerading as pain. I don't know. Maybe I would feel better in the morning.

Photo taken here.

Failure and Success

Here’s how I ended up in law school: I lost a bet with my dad. I told him that if he helped me finance a small business and it doesn’t work out, I’ll study law as a back-up. He agreed. The business failed, so I found myself taking an exam. Obviously, I got in.

Please don’t read too much into what I’m about to say, but I’m really not accustomed to failing. I’m one of those people who never had to try hard to excel. And in those few instances where I really did my best, I usually came out on top. The fact that the business failed wasn’t that big of a deal for me because, at least this was what I thought; first, I didn’t really try, and second, I felt that if I really tried, it would have been successful. I figured, whatever, it doesn’t count.

Besides, I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and lawyering seemed as good a job as any.

When I started, I thought it was going to be a piece of cake. I’m sure that the other 249 students felt the same way too. Which was why we were all so shocked. At the end of the first year, almost 50% quit, or got kicked out.

Here’s the thing. The first lesson law school teaches you is how to handle pain. Mind-numbing excruciating pain. Physical pain, in the form of headaches and ulcers because of sleepless nights and skipped meals due to non-stop studying. Psychological pain, because the professor will make you feel like an idiot for every mistake you make, and you’re bound to make a mistake each and every day. Emotional pain, because each day is a battle between your sense of worth, and the constant pressure to do better. In law school, there is a tendency for you to be defined by your grades. The school will not look at you as a person who is artistic, or interesting, or charming. It can only see you as that guy who failed Obligations and Contracts, or that girl who got a perfect score in Negotiable Instruments. It’s very difficult for a normal person not to question his significance when every day they give you a number as a yardstick for your value. “Here, you’re 74, the guy who almost passed."

There’s a reason why half of the first batch of law students leave or get kicked out; not everyone can handle it.

“Sleep is for the weak,” one professor said, and we believed him, at least when we were freshmen. We never slept. We had no choice, there was too much that needed to be read, or written, or understood. Each morning I woke up wanting to quit.

But I didn’t. Which surprised me to my core. How can the perennial quitter, that guy who never failed because he never truly attempted anything, stay the course for something this difficult? It was mind-boggling.

But this is where it gets weird: the more difficult the course got, the more I wanted to finish it. It became an obsession. Every morning I woke up thinking “fuck I want to quit,” and then I’d change my mind right after. Against all odds, it became a dream. I plodded on, with 3-4 hours of sleep, a couple of Red Bulls, and a Venti Caramel Macchiato everyday. I was miserable, but I wanted it so badly the idea of failing was unimaginable.

It came with a lot of sacrifices. My then-boyfriend broke up with me. I fought with my friends. I barely saw my family. My social life was practically nonexistent. And my already short temper was made even shorter. Every day, I blew up for no reason at all. I almost lost my best friend.

And why sacrifice so much? Why would I put myself in a situation where I could fail in the truest sense of the word? Why would I put my heart and soul into something so badly that I sacrificed so many other things that were also important? Why would I do that?

The answer was simple: Because I wanted to, and it was my dream.

The idea that one can achieve something significant or important in one’s life, grabbed me. So I took a chance. I’m still taking that chance. It’s very possible I will fail, but I will make sure, at least to the extent of my capacity, that it will not be because I did not give it my all.

There are successful people, and then there are successful people. I want my success, if I would be given the opportunity to reach it, to be defined by the idea that I took a risk, and won. That I poured my heart into something I really, truly thought was important, and I managed to come out on top. I don't want my success to be an accident. Success, without the real risk of failure, is not success at all.

Happiness

I used to suffer from intense bouts of depression. It came in waves; there would be months when I was normal and happy, followed by days (or moments) of crippling loneliness. At some point I learned to anticipate it. Every time it happened, I locked my room, turned off the lights, and wallowed.

There is always a certain poetry in the experience of emotional, abstract pain. It is distinguished from the physical kind in the extent of its subtleties: sadness is not just sadness; there are depths and layers. When you wallow in your pain long enough, you learn to discern the differences.

When my depression came, it usually didn't last very long. The worst was three days (I skipped school and just slept. Sometimes I played video games). In one case, after 24 hours of not moving, I got hungry, so I started to look for something to eat. I rummaged through my kitchen (I was already living alone at the time) and found nothing. I saw this box my friend gave me two nights before. Nothing was left in it except for the few paper cups that used to contain cupcakes. I scraped off the few crumbs remaining and had that for lunch. I even chewed on one cup to get some of the cake out. Because I forgot to buy water, I drank directly from the tap. I crashed in bed, and slept until midnight. By the time I woke up, the depression had lifted, so I took a shower, went out, and had goto in Chowking in Salcedo.

The depression was not always triggered by something. Sometimes it just came, and I had no choice but to deal with it.

I had a conversation with my friend Ron a few years ago. He was telling me that maybe my depression was not legit; that is, it's not clinical depression. I told him it's possible; that maybe I'm addicted to the pain because I considered myself a writer, and I wanted experience in order to be able to have something to write about.

Another anecdote: I was much younger, and I was writing my first short story called "A Few, Unimportant Things". I had a soft spot for neurotic, emotional and quiet characters with a lot of internal struggle. In my early short stories, nothing really happened in the physical world; the issues were mostly in the character's head. I found dwelling in their psyches emotionally thrilling.

Anyway, I wrote that short story in three weeks, inhabiting the character of the protagonist fully: his life was constantly running through my head. At that time, a different type of loneliness settled in my life. It was subtle, but the world, and everyone who inhabited it, seemed sadder. It was as if every person I met was being crushed by the weight of mysterious, depressing circumstances.

Fast forward several years later, and my depression is practically gone. At the very least, I haven't wallowed in a dark room not eating for years now. When asked about it, I tell them that I realized at an earlier point in my life that my happiness was more important than my art. One day I woke up and I decided to be happy. It didn't happen immediately, but I got there. I explained that I still understood why young men would want to go through such sadness: a lot of great art are produced everyday, all over the world, because these artists have such a profound well of experiences to draw inspiration from. I said I used to dream about that, and then I realized it's not worth it, at least for myself. I was content with being content.

Photo taken here.