An order of sanity with a side of purpose please.

You used to stare at the future with a smirk on your face and la-di-da thoughts running in your mind. The future? That's like, so far off. I'm 15, I have about 10 years to figure out what I wanted to do in life.

Suddenly, life happened. It swooped in and took over your sorry little ass. The next thing you know you're 25, wondering where the 10 years you seemingly thought was forever, went. It's a bit scary to come to the realization that you missed Future's knocks and danced with Procrastination a bit longer than you expected. Growing up meant you needed to bid adieu to Procrastination and welcome Future with open arms.

This doesn't mean that enjoying your life is a crime that warrants a lifetime punishment. You're only young once, you better believe this IS the best time of your life. Once a career, a family and a whole slew of responsibilities figure in, everything changes.

Am I too late? Or am I just being paranoid? Yes, the endless barrage of questions seem to never stop. The self-pity and crushing depression ain't strange either. Welcome to early adulthood.

Then again, if you're still thinking about these things, are you sure you're where you want to be? Order's up!

Babble-o-rama

The title of this blog entry leaves much to be desired. Then again, at this late hour, my thoughts are given free rein to make me feel nostalgic, longing even. For what or whom, I don't know.

For the past 10 minutes, I've been staring at a picture. Whoever said that a picture paints a thousand words (or something along those lines), must have been a photographer or someone who really fancied being one. I can't really make myself agree. The candid pose, the half-smile, the unassuming glint of the eye, all it tells me is that the person looks pretty contented. That's about it. My novice observation aside, I can't really tell what goes in a person's mind by simply looking at a picture. I can come up with a few extra ideas if I observe a person's body language, being the hypersensitive being that I am, but again that's about it. No one is an open book. Everybody's shut tight and the only way they can let me in is if I initiate a conversation.

No one likes a pity party, no one likes an obnoxious victor but most of all, no one likes to be a lone success. Being gung-ho for achievement, I must say that all the achievement in the world does not matter if it is not recognized. If people say otherwise, its either they're lying or they're deluded.

What if. What if all the things I've been constantly worrying about catch up with me? What if I had nothing to be afraid of in the first place and I wasted all this time psyching myself out? What if I never get this chance again? What if I embarrass myself and risk losing a precious thing? Or what if the risk was worth it and the paid off? What if?

I'm not making sense am I? I guess my cohesive thoughts took a break and won't be coming back anytime tonight. Or was it the milk tea? I think being drunk on tea and sugar does something to my brain. Might have something to do with the late hour too. Alas, sleep. You forever elude me.

The etymology of change - my changes, at least.

Stumbled across this entry that I wrote in my journal the past year. It seemed fitting for what I'm trying to make sense of for the last few days.

“Change is inevitable. The good news and the bad news is, nothing in this world is permanent”. When I came across this quote while neutrally surfing the internet, wedged between an advertisement of a marriage predictor date and a link to a budget hotel somewhere in Hong Kong, I was startled out of my reverie. There I was thinking how my life has changed so much in the last 10 years and griping incessantly about how adult life sucks when God pityingly consoled my sad self sans the need to stuff my face with fattening chocolate and ice cream. I mulled over the words, much like a surgeon probes the brain of a dying patient, for the next few days. I can never make sense of what I really wanted in life. Was it to stay in the past or sashay into the bright albeit vague future? Looking back, I never became the person I envisioned myself to be. Growing up wasn’t all rainbows and flowers like what I thought it would be when I was in grade school. I wished I stayed a chinky-eyed 8-year old girl forever, whose biggest curiosity was how the windshield wipers kept the rainwater at bay when it was raining really hard. Or that 15-year old girl who was running full steam inside the Haunted House, grabbing someone’s shirt in random and nearly reducing it to shreds due to the fact that she was so scared and didn’t want to be left alone in a house full of her worst nightmares. Was it really 13 years ago when I was lying in bed, keeping my eyes shut tight while pretending to sleep from 1 pm-4 pm? I used to hate siesta time and have given up on asking why my parents made us kids sleep in the middle of the day when our older playmates were free to play patintero until dinnertime. Was it really 9 years ago when I wanted to become a Chemical Engineer because it sounded cool and all the other kids wanted to do it too? I used to think that Chemical Engineers spend their time doing experiments and making things go BOOM! I never really gave any thought to the things that they are actually hoping to achieve with those life-threatening experiments like finding a cure for the latest deadly disease. Minus of course the making things go BOOM! part. When I was about 5 or 6, I used to watch all these American and Japanese shows all day long. When the opening theme of Pokemon would play before that day’s episode, I’d sing along with gusto, throwing a round-shaped object and saying “I choose youuuu!”. It was the time of no labels and I was one of the boys.

Grade school was a safe haven, a place for making new friends. Being in elementary brought about new experiences and routine afresh. Curiosity was never low in supply, and it was the time of unrestrained exploration (case in point: I was so curious how the stapler worked that I accidentally stapled my index finger). Break times were spent huddled under the trees in the school quadrangle eating our packed lunch and sharing funny stories about our teachers. In between classes, we used to play Blue’s Clues and imitate the way Steve would sing and dance when he gets mail or when he solves the clues Blue left for him. Memories that stand out during my elementary days were a combination of the funny, the weird and the unforgettable. I remember a time when I was washing my hand in the sink outside of the girl’s bathroom and accidentally cranked the water faucet to its maximum level, hosing down one of the terror teachers of our school in the process. I was scared but amidst the fear, I felt exhilaration since I’ve never done something like it before.

High school was an alien world to us when we were in elementary. On the first day of high school, we were positively petrified with fear since the feeling of familiarity was gone. There were a lot of new faces, new names to remember. Everybody was more sophisticated. My boyish state of mind noted that the girls were starting to use make-up, the stuff that I found neatly arranged in my mom’s dresser table. The prettiest girls in class reeked of expensive perfume that irritated my nose. I felt different and out of place in this whole new world. Nothing was familiar except the institution and my friends. It was nice though that we were given something to hold on to. We were the first batch to retain the short sleeved blouses that we wore during grade school. Nothing’s changed much except for the more difficult lessons. My antidote to stress was to head to the library after dismissal time and borrow the numerous Sweet Valley books that crammed the shelves of our mini-library. My love of books started during grade school, when I first stumbled upon the “Goosebumps” series by R.L. Stein. I loved that I was a part of the story and I have a say on how the story will end. For the fun of it, I would reread the book over and over again until I read all the possible endings. Seeing that I was a budding bookworm, my parents gave me the complete set of Harry Potter books (of course back then, only the first four books constituted the “complete” set). I stayed up for about a week reading about Harry’s adventures sneakily avoiding the lights-out policy in our house at 10 PM sharp. I distinctly remembered the time when the 5^th book of the Potter series was released and I scoured five bookstores in total just to get my hands on the latest installment. I love to smell books. The musty, old smell of the brown pages and the crisp, clean smell of the marble white pages were like rugby to a bookworm like me. The four years flew by and another round of firsts happened – my first time to not be included in the star section, my first time to be included in the honor roll, my first time to say goodbye – to a bunch of people I knew since I was a little kid. I was vulnerable once I entered college. I didn’t know anybody, was culture-shocked to say the least. I wasn’t prepared for the freedom, the uncertainty that college brought to the point that I came home from the first day of orientation blubbering and crying like an idiot telling anybody who would listen that I wanted to go back. But as with the body’s ability to adapt, I managed to carve my own little niche at college. I met friends whom I considered very dear and experienced almost every ritual of passage a college girl should experience. I experienced no uniforms, a different set of faces, a whole slew of activities to choose from. I was immersed in a totally new environment where fast food and street food became a daily part of my life, where cutting classes was optional but sometimes necessary, where giving up something you love was inevitable after it broke you down bad, and where rivalry was almost synonymous with pride. College was fresh, liberating, and downright FUN. As with high school, I never wanted to leave. But again, fast forward to 3 and 1/2 years, I bade goodbye to my daily routine and readied myself to be devoured by the big mean world. The real world brought about a fresh supply of surprises. Rejection and being told that you aren’t good enough were knife slices, they weren’t meant to cut you open. Rather they were meant to be healed and a lesson to avoid the knife in the future. But alas, we’re only human beings. Changes will still come and maybe, just maybe, someday it will bring about something warm and familiar. I’m still keeping my hopes up."

Back to Basics

I kind of hate myself for abandoning my blog, yet again. Half of 2013 has passed since my last entry so we have a lot of catching up to do. Or not. I don't know but the first half of the year felt like nothing special, save for the Boracay trip and my 22nd birthday. Maybe I'm just looking at this the wrong way and the little things may have been the highlights of my 2013. But whatever, I really can't summon those memories right now. 

I guess I created this blog entry due to the fact that I'm (suprise, surprise) confused for the nth time. I just turned 22. Taking a step back and viewing my life in a nutshell, I really can't say I'm pleased. Honestly, this was not how I envisioned myself when I graduated. I don't know what happened to that girl who was full of hope and dreams when she stepped out of the PICC hall after getting her college diploma. Now, it seems like I was replaced by a robotic version. Mechanically going about my daily routine, not caring what I did or what I'm going to do.

When the clock struck 12 last June 26, I was overwhelmed with a lot of emotions. 22. Wow. It seemed like adulthood was catching up with me fast. My mind instantly replayed what happened during my 21st and I couldn't help but feel sad. Blessings? Too many to count. Accomplishments? Nothing much :( Being someone who built her confidence around tangible accomplishments, my sorry ego took a rather bad beating. I'm a far cry from the version of myself that I wanted to be. 

I'm tired of pep talks. I'm tired of convincing myself that something's going to change and tomorrow when I wake up, I'll feel different. I'm tired of the inspirational quotes, the psychobabble, the mind games. I just want to turn my mind off for a period of time and start over again. Back to basics. Back to the version of myself when I started out in grade school. Not act childish, mind you. But take everything one day at a time and cross the bridge when I get there. Take things slow and steady.

Lying on my bed and listening to the strains of Taylor Swift's "22", I took a deep calming breath and told myself that everything's going to be alright, I'M going to be alright. 

So, 2nd half of 2013, what do you have in store for me?