On a cold night

26^th, September 2011

11:29pm

The rain is pouring really hard. I went downstairs to take a bath but the cold made me decide to just brush my teeth and wash up a bit without really wetting my entire body. Call me a goat if you want to but, it’s really just so chilly tonight.

I would have turned off my light had I not realized that with this kind of fear I have in my heart right now, I wouldn’t be able to sleep immediately. So instead of spending hours wide awake on my bed and in the dark, I thought that maybe I could ooze my fears out by typing them in here.

So it’s been like what, a week? A week since I first felt it. That hard, freaky thing I have in my left breast.

I asked several people I know if there’s a possibility that this is cancer but all they could tell me are words of comfort. They tell me this might just be nothing, they tell me they know someone who has this too but it wasn’t really cancer.. blablablablabla.

Those people who try to comfort me are the people whom I call my friends but I don’t really feel consoled. I wish they are right, that this is just nothing but I can’t seem to have peace. And the whole time, I try to ask myself what those people would do if I really have the Big C. Would they be sad, would they feel sorry for me, would they hate the heavens for inflicting me with such agony? Would they cry for me?

 I don’t know. And I guess, I am now undergoing that phase in life where you get to doubt the kind of affection your friends have for you.

But I don’t really care if they won’t cry for me because I am hoping no one’s going to die at a young age anyway. I am hoping I’d live. Oh gawsh. Now I’m being a total paranoid here but, can you blame me?

It’s cold. I just had dinner alone. The rain is so depressing and worst of all, I still have this lump on my chest.

I pray to Daddy Lord that even before I had this checked by a physician, the lump is already gone. Benign or malignant, I don’t want this lump.

I don’t want any reason to worry about dying so early. I just want to focus on the things that I have to work on in school and I have a lot, mind you.

Right now, what I’m truly wishing for is my mother telling me all will be well. My mother telling me that I am not sick and even if I am, she’ll be there to help me stay strong and fight off whatever disease I have.

Maybe that is just it. I just want someone who could make me feel that he/she really worries about me. Someone who can feel the same fear that I have; me fearing that I’d lose my life and him/ her fearing that he/she will lose me.

And that reminds me, just when I opened my laptop a few minutes ago… I saw the photos I’ve had with Elpijay and I felt sad even more.

Goodness. I have so many plans, so many dreams. I know I sort of stop believing in dreams for quite some time but there are still those dreams which I have kept somewhere in the corners of my heart, hoping that I could still make use of them when the time comes that I have enough strength to dream again.

Seeing those photos reminds me of that dream I’ve hold on to for so long. That dream of going home to a home (not just a house) where my loving husband waits for me and that no matter how bad my day was, he could make everything okay.

How beautiful would that be.

I promised myself I will never make the same mistakes my parents did. I’ll never go wrong in choosing the person I’d love. But why is it that I feel like I am dying already? What about my dreams, my aspirations in life? Would I just leave them in this world?

And what about Elpijay, my best friend and probably the only person in this world who truly cares for me and understands my pain, would I leave him too?

I can’t imagine leaving my best friend that way. I even told myself once, “Someday, I’m gonna marry that guy.”

But if this lump on my chest is really something, what would I do then? Videotape my birthday, Christmas, and Valentine’s day messages for all the people close to me?

Dear Lord, I am so scared. Please, let this be nothing. Please.

.....And it’s not raining that hard anymore. Might as well go to sleep.

END- 12:01am, 9/27/11

How different can we be?

I remember the first time I tried to work on my column for the next issue of the newspaper, it was two weeks ago. And for two weeks, I’ve been trying to open the document that I have saved in my laptop but all I ever really did was stare at the blinking cursor, tire my eyes, type a few sentences and then delete them.

I don’t understand why suddenly, I don’t know what to say, let alone what to think.

I just am not in touch with my emotions anymore. I am now equivalent to a book with empty pages, a bucket without water, a body without soul.

I wanted so bad to identify the root of this sudden numbness and that’s when I figured out that for quite some time, I’ve seen and heard much from my surroundings and my little brain has had enough. My little heart has felt so much, I am now disillusioned.

My thoughts may be hazy but there are a couple of faces I’ve seen not too long ago that seem to haunt me.

Pepe’s eyes

I remember my trip to Iloilo about two months ago. I left the city along with my fellow student writers early in the morning and on my way to the port, I chanced upon a young boy who was carrying his younger sister on his back while holding out a rusty can to passersby. I wondered if he and his sister have had breakfast but I didn’t bother to ask. When I got to Iloilo, I saw another kid whom I thought looked so much like the boy I passed by at the port. I looked closely but then I realized that they don’t actually look alike, they just have the same history of hunger written in their eyes. I knew I’ll eventually just forget about those kids, and I did. But only for a while.

Tatay Ben

He is an old man who first worked as gardener in the high school I went to but then he got sick and for some time, I didn’t see him. When I got to college, that’s when I saw him in the university where I go, picking plastic bottles from the garbage cans around the campus. When he retired, he was given an amount of money as retirement fee. This would have been a great help for Tatay Ben had a relative of his not tricked him and stolen his money. The last time I saw him, he was standing outside the second gate, I found out he is only allowed to enter the campus to attend the morning mass but he is not allowed to linger after some people reported to the school administration that he’s been begging money from students. Now, this is something that I couldn't really seem to accept as a fact for I am a 'friend' to the old man and yet he doesn't even asks for anything from me, so why would he from the others? And if indeed he is begging, and though mendicacy laws disallow us to give alms to, well, of course, mendicants, I however understand that for someone like him who does not have a family of his own and who is too old and sickly to be accepted even as a gardener somewhere, begging might be a more convenient resort.

The Innocent Bek-Bek

She is this carefree, bubbly, and ‘eternally innocent’ lady who can sometimes be seen begging money or playing with younger children in the streets near the University. She was featured in one of the school publication's magazine issues years back. Just reading about her, I thought she is the kind who will someday just grow old physically but would always remain a child by heart forever. 

Bek-Bek happens to manifest a certain delusion of grandeur. She believes herself to be a student of a prestigious university in the city, has several kids and is currently pregnant. She is usually the butt of jokes of passers by who have already considered her as nothing more than a laughing stock. It's a good thing that despite every insult and mockery she gets from people, our Bek-Bek is still strong enough to defend herself. 

But the point is, she is sick and due to her status in the society, she will remain as nothing more but an amusement for many of us who fail to see the rub beyond the joke. 

________________________________________________________________________________

True enough.

Three stories of unknown struggles and three faces of people that represent the sad realities suffered by many other little Pepes who can barely eat one meal a day, many other Tatay Bens who grow old without anyone to take care of them, and many other Bek-Beks whose ignorance serve as amusement for the mean ones.

Now, we could all just pretend these people don’t exist and go on living our lives. But if we do, how different can we be from those crocodiles in the government who enjoy comfort, power and prestige while millions of people starve every day?

For a cleaner air

After months of enduring the sight of cobwebs on my ceiling, dusts on my bookshelves and all sorts of garbage on top of my drawers and at the back of my door or just anywhere in my room, I finally decided to get rid of all the crap I've hoarded for months of  being a sloth. 

Oh. It felt so nice sleeping on clean bedsheets and laying my sleepy head on clean pillow cases. Whoa. It may be embarrassing for a young lady like me to admit it but, well, yes. I have lived in a totally untidy, dusty, trashy bedroom for months now. I tried to count in my head and I couldn't even type the exact number of weeks (months to be honest) that had passed since the last time I held a broom and swept my floor. 

My fan looked really ancient with all the dust it accumulated. My shelves seemed like it was built way back in the Japanese era. And my floor, well I don't even want to tell you how it felt walking on it barefooted. 

The last weekend was two days longer and though I've been thinking of cleaning my room since Friday, I ended up cleaning, sweeping, wiping and sneezing the dust off every part of my room instead of studying last night.

Lol. 

A lower score in exchange of a clean and tidy room? It may sound impractical but really, I think I'm glad I cleaned my room instead. At least, I could now study, and breathe a fresher air. 

My Achilles' Heel

My Achilles' Heel
It is that memory
That I buried
A thousand feet under
My so called intangible thoughts

My Achilles' Heel
It is that portrait
That I have painted
Black and white
Concealed by my towering pride

My Achilles' Heel
It is that word
That I dare not utter
A word so warm yet so cold
Eradicated from my vocabulary

My Achilles' Heel
It is your name
A word I dare not utter
Vanished from my memory
Forever.

Guilt trip

The things and people that I value before, I don't value anymore.

I received a text message from a friend who seemed to be obliging me to go with her as she visits my school. I read the message again after I got to the bottom of it but, it sounded the same. I can't seem to explain why I was annoyed all of a sudden but, as soon as I acknowledged the emotion, I felt the guilt. I thought, how is it possible for me to feel that way when it was my 'friend' who sent the message.

Well, it meant only one thing: I've changed, A LOT.

Somehow, I am not totally pleased with the changes I have acquired but once I begin to recall what I had to give up, how hard I had to try, and how much I had to go through before I became who and what I am today,  I could only wish that all those sacrifices would do nothing but good to me.

I keep on telling myself that it's normal, that everybody goes through this phase but, really, is there anyone out there who was irritated by his or her friend only because he or she wasn't at all amused with his or her friend's way of speaking to him or her through text?

Sigh.

I am trying so hard to be good at every role I play in life but, it seems that it doesn't anymore include me being.......... a FRIEND. :/

What seems to be a Cliche

4^th, August 2011

Thursday, 9:11pm

I retreated to my room right after dinner. Taking off my uniform and changing into some comfortable home clothes, I let myself feel the homey vibes radiated by my room. It may not be as tidy as it used to be but the perfect square, unusually messed up, and unsurprisingly girly space is the only sanctuary I have in this world which I consider as a perilous battlefield. In this room, I am queen. I do what I want, when I want and how I want it. So as I plunge into the alluring softness of my bed, I didn’t worry that I probably looked awful with my face distorted into a frown or that my body looked perfectly round with the numerous folds stuck in my belly.

What bothered me is that all of a sudden, I wish I was somewhere else with some loud, fun-loving companions who could make the noise inside me die down. Sigh. Now think about that. The whole day, you keep on dreaming for that time that you’d be all by yourself and when the moment of solitude comes, you just want to run away because along with solitude, are the memories.

Lying flat on your stomach, you feel lonely. You remember that in a few weeks, it would be your birthday again. It should excite you, but the thought of it makes you feel otherwise. The thought of your upcoming birthday makes you remember all your other birthdays where your mom bought you the most beautiful birthday dresses and invites almost everyone she knows and yet the only person who would have made everything else more meaningful and happy wasn’t there.

The thought of your birthday makes you remember that birthday of yours when you should have danced with him, and yet you hadn’t, because he wasn’t there.

And you try to remember that only birthday of yours that he was around. You didn’t have a celebration, you even cried, because he scolded you and you try to remember why. But it was so long ago, and you just can’t vividly remember anymore…. You dig deep into your heart and search for that memory, that one precious memory. You search for anything about it that could help you feel better. But you find nothing.

Suddenly, you realized, you’re a big girl.

Birthdays should mean nothing to you anymore. It should mean nothing but a date that marks the start of your existence in this world. 

Is it really promising?

This was what I wrote for the Column Writing competition of the Philippine Information Agency Basic Journalism Seminar at Iloilo City about a week ago. All details were only based on what I had in mind, on what I have already heard even before we came to the event and not on research. Heck! We didn't have enough time. But, anyhow.. This was promising, or at least they thought at that time.

Hodgepodge

Now who’s the Boss?

By Coleen Edrea F. Ematong

He rallied the nation with his battle cry “Kung walang kurap, walang mahirap” during the May 2010 elections over a year ago. He seemed so determined to get rid of the existing crocodiles and pigs that fed on the funds of the government. He had organized a Truth Commission, uprooted a bunch of government officials and replaced them with those people whom he trust, went out of his car along a busy street in New York to buy hotdog, and implemented the Wang-Wang Policy which is among the most mentioned word (or is it even a word?) in his entire speech. It’s been a year however, and reading his prepared speech for his second State Of the Nation Address (SONA) last July 25, I can say that he hasn’t learned much in his first term of service.

President Benigno Simeon Aquino III (PNOY) said that his critics are right, for him, eliminating the corrupt government officials is indeed personal. I admire the president for having said it but, then again, I couldn’t help myself from remembering the promise he made in front of many excited Filipinos who watched his inauguration as president a year ago. He said that the people are his BOSS. But by the looks of it, he is his own boss.

On the same day of his SONA, student activists and various rally groups all gathered to protest about the budget cuts and deprivation of ‘quality’ education from a number of Filipino youths. League of Filipino Students (LFS) activist Patz Ombion even shared that instead of doing something about the state of education here in the country, the government under the reign of PNOY even allowed budget cuts which is the decrease of the budget given to non-performing (low performing) State Universities and Colleges (SUCs) to increase the budget of those performing (high performing) SUCs.

If we think about it, this budget cuts is totally unfair because every Filipino has a right to quality education and decreasing the budgets of schools that are considered non-performing isn’t really the best way to make this nation a nation of well-educated and able people.

I may be one of those who stood up for PNOY during his campaign for presidency but I must say that he has forgotten about us, being his boss just as quick as the year went by. And as I watch more youths quit school, I could only ask silently, now, who’s the Boss?

*****

The controversy about the church being one big corrupt institution took its roots right from the time when the country’s national hero Dr. Jose Rizal was writing his first two novels. Even I, though brought up by religious grand-parents never really doubted that there is corruption in the church. However, dropping the bomb about the donated cars and Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) anomalies right at the time when the religious leaders of the Catholic Church are very firm in going against the proposed RH Bill is obviously a diversion tactic of those politicians who thought of embarrassing the bishops to make the people see that their ‘beloved’ priests are nothing but imperfect as well.

Seriously, could there be anything lamer than what they thought of?

Exposing the flaws of those bishops who, in their despair, accepted and even asked for cars from the government because they really need it in their ministry anyway did nothing but only show that nobody in this messed up world is perfect. There are only those who could commit a mistake out of need and those who could deliberately do wrong things out of want.

But just like what Sen. Miriam Defensor- Santiago said during the Senate probe on the involvement of the bishops on the PCSO anomalies, “KEEP THE BISHOPS OUT OF IT!”

*****

I live somewhere in the east of Bacolod so I don’t frequently pass by the road where the first ever skyway in the city is being built. But when I passed by that road on my way to our publication’s printing press, I was appalled. Had I not seen the skyways built in Manila and Iloilo, I would probably just admire the infrastructure but sadly, that’s not exactly what happened.

With the length of the skyway, it seemed to me that the traffic would only be minimized at one end of the skyway since private and other smaller vehicles would pass by the infrastructure only to face a much worse traffic at the other end. If its length was made to reach from the Ramos intersection and end just beyond the factory of Pepsi Cola, it would probably be of help lessening the road congestion. However, by the looks of it, this skyway is only another not-so-useful-infrastructure-built-for-the-sake-of-building.

It won’t really do much help with the traffic but, it did help politicians in showing the people where funds go: to some crappy skyway, where else do you think?

*****

The College of Engineering Society has recently launched their Zero Styro project which aims to lessen trashed styrofoam in the school campus by encouraging students to have their food eaten in the foodcourt instead of taking them out and having to place them in a food container which is of course, made of styrofoam. Engineering Society president Rupert Simeon also suggested that if the students really don’t want to eat inside the foodcourt, they could still take their food out even when placed on plates and then just go back afterwards to return them.

I was very much willing to support this project so as I paid for my lunch, I instructed the lady in the food stall not to place my food in the Styrofoam anymore. I was proud of myself at that instant but when afternoon came, I chanced upon the trash bin near our publication’s office and saw just how full the bins were. I was upset.

I know everyone of us has principles and each of us has the right to choose whether we should support a particular project of some school organizations or not. But then again, this Zero Styro is not just ‘another’ project. It is a step being taken by its proponents to somehow help in saving the environment and if not, at least slow down its destruction.

Seriously, would this feat really be too hard for us to do?

After all, saving our environment is not just an advocacy; rather, it is everyone’s moral responsibility.