Swept by the tides

Image from here.

Can't believe it's been two months since I last wrote here. I do literally feel as though I've been swept by the tides - into a strange and unexpected version of my life. October and November have gone by in a blur, and I am the first to be surprised at how quickly time passes now that I am starting to live my life again.

For the most part, not a lot has changed. I am still the same person that I was when I last wrote here. The change, if I can call it that, has been an inward one. Stories are always better when they are character-driven rather than plot-driven, as one of my teachers often say (more on that later). The change has to come from within. And so it has, in my case. I have just given myself the permission to do things again: to see people again, to have fun again, to be out under the sun again, to believe that I can begin again.

In the months after I've failed the bar, it has been a struggle (it still is) to function as myself. But what can one do except to continue? If you do not die from your failure (as I had hoped I would), what else is there to do except to live on?

I keep trying to remind myself that I did not die from failing the bar, yet in the immediate months after (and in the quiet spaces in between then and now), I have been living as though I had. I cut off all communication from almost all of my friends. I had a hard time getting up from bed, not believing that I was capable of achieving anything worthwhile after failing so badly. But after a while, the sting of failing gets dulled down, and you find yourself capable of hope again.

The bar (and the continuous questioning of whether I will retake it or not) haunts me up to now. But I suppose, it is a necessary kind of haunting. I’ve read that it is when we are haunted (by the absence of something we are yearning for or by the presence of something we do not wish to acknowledge) that we do our best work.The writer said  “It is in this haunting that the nation will be created --- and not in that condition of denial where one refuses to acknowledge that one has been shocked, seduced or has sinned, nor in that state where one has erased memories of what has been violated. Shock, seduction, and sin are elements in the field in which creativity flourishes – for so long as we can (and surely shall) prove ourselves strong enough to weave the various strands of our shared life into a stronger sense of self and nation, a fuller and richer soul.” – Resil Mojares (talking about the Filipino writer, but he might as well have been talking about me)

My own haunting has led me to a new and different path, of which I am equally uncertain; but as I keep having to learn and relearn, there is nothing else I can do except try. And so here it is, my path for now. I got accepted into UP's Creative Writing Master's program, and I have enrolled myself this semester. It's a bit terrifying, the idea of wiping your slate clean and beginning again - at a much older age nonetheless. But for the most part, I've loved having to get up for it in the morning, and having to fall asleep to it at night. It's all I can ever hope for right now, isn't it?

Scrambling to make my own footprints before the waves wash them away! (Unawatuna Beach, Sri Lanka)