Make me anything but lukewarm

4 May 2013

Feeling like an angklung player enlisted to play for an orchestra for their series of upcoming shows. Yes, a musician still, but angklung playing meant shaking the bamboo instrument to produce the sound of the single note assigned to you. Even if I was the best angklung player ever, I wouldn’t make it if I were asked to play a complicated musical instrument for the gala performance.

I love what I am doing. I love my current job and all that is in it, from conceptualizing to waiting for the team’s comments, to researching. All of it is wonderful, too wonderful for me. Why is it still difficult for me to attune my writing tone and my business mind frame to what’s required? I am flustered and flabbergasted because I don’t know what to do anymore. C’mon little monster friends, let’s dance around the carousel. Hand in hand, we will ring around the rosie and circle round and round in neglect and abandon despite the probability that a new plague would fashion a new nursery rhyme for us to sing to.

Sam’s been with me for a week now. She has been my healthy distraction (If you get to read this Sam, I am in no way hinting that sarcastically though you’re on the heavy side). I am trying to recuperate. I feel like taking a vacation from work because I’ve been too much shaken but I can’t! I have to push harder! I won’t let myself back out of this even if I have been encountering too many mountains on the way. Am I better off dead? Am I better off a quitter? I’ve been thinking of that as well. Let me fail over and over but I will not quit just because it is difficult for me.

Thank you for all of this. I’ve finally experienced how it is to be down, so down low which, I’ve always thought I’d never experience chronically. As I am typing this out, I am grinning from ear to ear. I’ve gone through the cycle. This is the cycle of life where I am brought to experience lots of things. I finally know how sore losers felt. Does having a complicated life translate to being alive?

I have seen several times this week how I should harden my heart at times. I had this Ministop ice cream cone. Three bites from that vanilla fluff and a girl blocked my way, extending her arm, “Akin na lang.” It came out automatically. I dodged my right hand, grasping the sundae cone, “Ayaw ko.” The force by which I have said that was firm. To me it sounded mean, maybe to her as well. I was surprised that it came out of me easily. A voice in my head congratulated me, “There you go, that’s your resolve!” a counter argument erupted, “Where had charity gone?”

The next night, Sam and I were famished. I came home past 6 pm. I felt I was unproductive at work again. What an emaciating feeling! My life spirit was sapped. Never would I relinquish the truth that I am alive though I am barely living.

Grocery shopping with Sam for Marby’s cheese bites and other food groceries was compulsory. Together, we seem to be eating too much that our supplies needed replenishment the next day! The miser in me was cursing then. The litany goes: electric bills, water bills, PRC ID, BPI account, Sam’s tuition fees, our combined living expenses, Shiela’s medication. Go ahead but don’t roam around too much! They do not give me a moment’s peace to piece myself as something untouched and beyond every kind of trouble. The simple finite shard of happiness I could get close to was wolfing cheese bites as we were leaving Rob. Sam and I both had mouthfuls when we came across two street children. They must be about Sam’s age, those teen guys. They mimicked our gobbling. When we were close enough, face to face at arms width apart, “Pahingi kami,” the elder ventured. “Ayaw ko,” I said again. The grin they had on their faces vanished as they walked away.

Beyond my compulsion to go to hospitals, I visited, with Aids, RL, RA and Camelle, Ma’am Rabuco. There’s no need to mention all the details. Though I was still averse to being there, I do not regret having gone with them. There’s no better way I would’ve spent that time. I’ve seen the life of people, just like me, living day by day despite the odds. Aids is a brave persona, RL is still the light-hearted person she was, RA was seizing life by its horns and Camelle never looked stressed. And surprise! Dr. Salamat has a lot on her plate! I hear her words as if she was telling them to me again, “Whatever you’re at, enjoy it!” Yes I am, enjoying at a different level through the specters of frustration.

People were dying everyday, dwindling because of sickness. People like those children I denied food from had to literally fight to live. I am so hung up. On what? I can’t feel anything. Living was drudgery. I slept soundly, not as Peter Lynch attributed as from peace of mind but because it was an escape from thinking.

There’s too much conflict. I’m being pushed to push back. There was a time when my every step had a sprint  (yes, a single step went on and brought me way fast to where I should be going), why am I trudging on with invisible shackles? Where am I being led to go? We will see. For the time being, I am laughing at myself. I barely laugh these days. I rarely cry too.