For Now December 10, 2008

Looking through the window from my desk, my gaze met the haunting blue of the clear sky above peeking through the large circle formed by the treetops… How the leaves gaily dance and rustle with every melody created by the blowing wind — they don’t have to dance against each other or prove how good dancers they are; they dance with the wind because they are created for dancing… and for rustling…. they seem to enjoy everything and yet they do it without emotions. They do their thing without attaching feelings…

For now, i’d simply be like those leaves… dancing around, rustling like they’d never rustled before and yet, feeling no emotion at all. I want to be like those emotionless leaves who move like automatons at every whisper of the breeze. I want to stop myself from giving my all because for now, there’s too much and yet it feels like there isn’t anything at all.

I might choose to run the race without investing my soul, but I won’t be satisfied, i know. I might just choose to be indifferent or simply feign indifference for self-preservation — but my heart knows that indifference isn’t me at all.

For now, indifference is a safe shell that keeps all the disappointments outside while, like the hermit crab, I am safely tucked inside, cocooned by the temporary numbness of my induced indifference…

For now, let me just pretend I am someone other than the person I know myself to be. For now, let me hide inside my guarded shell of indifference so I won’t feel the pain caused by unfairness…

For now….because tomorrow, when my heart is whole again, when my broken wing has mended, I would soar again…

For now, let me feel my pain so that tomorrow, I can fly so much higher….

Yes, for now…..

Why Me? December 10, 2008

Has there ever been a time when you were wrongly accused of doing something, reprimanded for things you didn’t do?

I’ve been to that road before.

When I was still a child, I was always the one to blame even if my younger siblings were the culprits because as my mother said, I am the eldest and it should be my responsibility to put some sense into the heads of my wayward brother and sister. So, every time they did something to irk my mother, I was the first to be whipped.

But then, after the punishment, I would, of course, make my sweet revenge. I’d scare the nuisance nitwits and they would holler and cry in duet and I would again, be whipped! Was that fair? Fair or not, that’s all water under the bridge and nothing can be done to change it. It’s just that, because of the experience, I have learned to stand up for what I think is right.

And there is no better way for me to illustrate the meaning of “stand for my right” verbally but to use my poor attempts at poetry.

WHY ME?

Why does the world seem unfair?

Why does it seem to notice only me?

Nobody tries to see

The good things deep inside of me

But everybody sees my littlest err

Everybody hears my faintest sneer.

How about even an ounce of praise

For those little acts of heroism

That I have done?

But the world is so unfair

It really is so unfair

For it picks on only me

The unlucky, unlucky me!

Why?

Aren’t others sinners too?

Aren’t they able to step

Every once in a while

Outside the margins

Of this impossible thread

We’re walking through?

Haven’t others fallen too

Even deeper, maybe,

Into the well of mistakes?

Weren’t the splash as they fell

Even louder

Than mine ever was?

But why does it seem

That my downfall

Was magnified a million times

To sound as great

Or maybe, even greater

Than other’s faults?

Do I have to live in this hell

For the rest of my life?

I’m tired, world

Absolutely tired —

I can take no more

Of this oppressive deed of yours.

So now, it’s time for me to rise and fight!

If I had to spend a hundred lifetimes

I’d spend the ninety-nine of them

To live in my resolve

… never to be one

Who just sulks and cries in a corner,

But one who fights

with nothing in the world

but reason,

courage

and GOD!

Now world,

answer me…

Why of all persons, you have to pick on me?

Of all humans alive, WHY ME?