vaccuum

whats it like to be living in a vaccuum? i suspect it would be like my life now. i keep on making the same mistakes over and over and over and just keeping on ambling on in the dark. i feel as if i can't escape this feeling of darkness. i can't see the light anywhere here in this situation.

should i have adjusted by now? everytime i hear someone say that i feel as if i might have swallowed a fish. cold and clammy inside. cannot for the life of me imagine how i have adjusted. im backtracking. its harder for me to study now than it has ever been before.

is it because the voices of duobt in my head are harder to silence, so that every shootdown is echoed, reverberating in this vaccuum? or is it just because i get closer and closer to snapping, to my breaking point, to accepting that maybe, this is really not meant for me? but where would i go?

i keep on talking to people who all have novel ideas of how to go about it, but all i do is talk. even i am tired talking about it. i feel as if when i sit down to study i forget everything i have talked about and just disregard it. like im reading something foreign and i do not have it in me to comprehend it. what if i am just wasting my parents' money staying here in law school?

i feel as if i am clutching at straws. i have lost hope of finding my rhythm, because i am so far behind. i keep on just listening to everybody without really thinking of what i am going to decide for myself, because there is no more time. no more time to think of what i should do, how i should go about it. there is hardly any time left for me to read everything i have to, let alone think about it.

i feel as if, if i can only make it through the end of the sem, i will haul my ass off to night class. for my sanity's sake. to prove to myself that i can still be good at something. this semester has been such a blow to my ego. to study and not learn, to read and not remember, to concentrate and not comprehend.

even that is a blow to my ego. fresh out of college, finding a job was never a picnic for me. how am i supposed to do it now, one year removed, and i was not exactly fantastically employed...even when i put my mind to it.

really, i feel as if all i really had going for me then were victories that werent at all victories, i was just a big fish in a very small pond, a legend in my own mind.

but will i just be a freeloader all my life? what will become of me if i leave law school? i feel as if, after much flak about who's to blame for my failures, it is i who will be shooting myself in the foot. i am my own cross. is that possible?

i feel so heavy today. literally, in all aspects. and so spiritually dry.

when i just have to hear everything over and over again

this weekend has been a hodgepodge of scenes and conversations that i have already had with the same people at different points in my life.

save for a pair of sparkly wedge thong sandals and brown ballerina flats, and movies designed to numb the throbbing pain of the midterm week, it has consistently deteriorated.

case in point: friday night, in a conversation with the lawyers from my dad's firm at UVA.

me: hirap na hirap pa rin ako mag-aral. hindi na ako nag-aaral for consti.
aimee: lahat naman tayo dumaan diyan eh.
cherry:mahihirapan ka sa finals though. kailangan mag-aral ka na
me: (in my head) eh hindi ko nga alam kung paano ako mag-aaral. PAANO NGA.

saturday morning: in a conversation with myself, as i mull over text conversations i am having with two of the people i set up.

optimistic me: am glad okay ang date nila. at least i wasn't wrong to set them up
pessimistic me: leche. so sinabi ko na nga ba nag-iilusyon lang ako nung inisip ko na sa akin siya nagpapacute before. may nalalaman pa na mga "she's a breath of fresh air" tong si gago.
me the middleman: eh alam mo naman kasi na yun ang mangyayari if i-set-up mo sila diba? alam mo naman na ganyan ang effect sa boys ni j. you knew that would happen.
optimistic: actually akala ko, they wouldnt hit it off. ang sama ko ba?
pessimistic: its like im back in high school. exactly the same. kaibigan mo ang mga lalaki pero lahat sila nagpapalakad sa kanya. so lalake ka.

at which point i had to stop talking to my other selves and talk to a real live person, in the form of mel

me: mel, why am i not the kind of girl whom guys would be compelled to take risks for?
puro sabit na lang lagi. muntik na. puro mga segurista na guys na lang (rehashed complaints from conversations repeating themselves since time immemorial)
mel: i don't know ia, i feel the same way rin.

mel actually said a lot of sensible stuff which i quite obviously chose to forget. when youre depressed there's no getting you over it.

in a conversation with debbie at 4:30 in the morning, anna's house after a marathon of sex and the city and conversations about her honeymoon.

ia: deb, im just so annoyed that i cant make myself become one of those girls. the kind who do nothing and have guys just fawn over them, falling over themselves to win her over. why? why? why?
debbie: because we are all different i, alam mo naman yan diba? i choose to see it as that. like, if i didn't act friendly towards mark, hindi siguro kami. not because segurista siya na guy, but more because until that point, he didn't think he had a chance with me.
ia: i just feel as if there's nothing in my life that im in control of anymore. para akong struggling to cover all these boiling pots.
debbie: i think the better analogy would be you, in your struggle to fill ten buckets of water, end up filling none. if you could only focus on which bucket to fill first.

i already know all of these things.

what i lack i think is sheer determination. the passion to make my dream a reality. which was aptly brought to my attention by my brother.

he wants to be an artista.

so today, against jeers from my family, and potshots regarding how he will never be good enough for it, he went to the starcircle quest auditions on his own and lined up from 6:30 in the morning till 5 in the afternoon.

he was participant number 8, 612. more than 10,000 were there.

he made it to the next level. on his own. he even paid for his head shots.

that's what sheer determination will do for you.

whereas here i sit, the "overachiever ate", not really achieving any of the pertinent things i have to do. musing about why i am here. not really doing anything.

hooboy. we've a long way to go. sabi nila, hindi naman dadali pero masasanay ka.

hindi dumadali at hindi ako nasasanay.

san ba ako talaga dapat pumunta?

hating a successful attempt

i have a sour taste in my mouth still for a matchmaking attempt gone right. what do you do when you hook people up hoping they won't hit it off and they end up falling for each other anyway?

ugh. the world really must hate me.

but he was never going to ask me out anyway, so what's the point of crying about it?

best you can do is to wipe off the dust, stand up, and move on.

i need a date. badly.

if any of you reading knows of anyone. please. help. me.

grooving

i feel somehow that i have never been a student ever. i think this is the first time that ive had such little determination to study. i dont remember what compelled me before to study, so now, this week especially, ive allowed myself to whittle little by little into nothingness. not studying, watching reruns of the OC and one tree hill and jerry maguire and everything else half-decent on air.

today, i have made a resolve not to watch tv except for news. officially grounding myself. i will see if it works.

funnily, apart from that, nothing has really happened.

i suppose even last weekend, the things i have attempted to do are all in the hopes of getting my groove back.

it was an amazing weekend.

spent the day with joanne in makati, got a haircut, had a good lunch, bought some shirts, and talked about law - where joanne wisely told me to try and separate my feelings from my motivations. just stop thinking about how and i feel and just go ahead and do it. i said i would try, but three days after, nothing has really been read, and i go to class shaking to the core at the thought of being called. i literally almost threw up in the room out of sheer panic that i might get called.

saturday night was even better. my yfc friends slept over, we had dinner and we worshipped and we talked and for a few hours i felt like my life was perfect all over again. i actually forgot that i was in law school. saw it as something funny. liked the way i thought and spoke again. liked that i was praying again.

sometimes i go to school, and sit in class and talk to my blockmates and i feel like i am the stupidest person on earth. the topics they discuss and the opinions that they share are not ones that ive thought about, and i have this desire to bolt quickly in a different direction. do i just avoid it because i dislike it? or have i developed a habit of not thinking about important things for the sole reason of me not liking them.

to all who read this, please please please pray that i get my groove back. i really do want to feel comfortable in law. comfortable with my books. not scared of reading them and discovering that i am actually stupid.

suddenly suprised to find out that i am smart after all of this confusion.

i hope so.

displaced

i was sitting in law this afternoon and all of a sudden i felt sad. there i was sitting in up, one of the places i loved the most sharing fishballs with my blockmates in law. and felt so weird. different.

it finally dawned on me that life is no longer the same.

i missed the prayer meetings. i missed the people. how could it be that on a thursday afternoon i was sitting there in law eating fishballs while waiting to be picked up so i could go home and study? i guess, when your undergrad is as wonderful as mine was it will really be a tough act to follow. all of a sudden, i had the urge to go to AS to the yfc tambayan and see the familiar faces and get a hug.

knowing that i am in the same place and everyone else isn't made me feel so displaced. and sad.

in my block now, im not sure that i belong. im this soft-voiced girl who always has to wait her turn to speak, lest never be heard. i guess now, here, im not sure which role i have to play. where i stand with people. how good a friend i am, and it makes me sad. i feel as if now im no longer sure of anything.

familiarity does NOT breed contempt.

i love familiarity.