1,688 WORDS OF SADNESS

I am into a state of whatever-kind-of-shock right now. I will try to put into details as much as possible. This is not what I am good at: storytelling.


For the past years, I fear sickness and death. I fear having to experience the same thing as of those people who grieve for their friends or family members going to that part of the human cycle. I fear thoughts of death and how one will going to die and things like that. I fear shedding bucketful of tears in one minute. I fear how much terrible emotional pain I have to endure in one second. I am afraid of being helpless. I have no billion-peso bank account; my career isn’t stable as of now. Haven’t found what I want to do in my life yet (that’s going to earn me a million bucks a year) and most of all, I am not emotionally stable yet. I fear great responsibility.


I know that I am not the only one who experiences this kind of emotional torture every single day. I stare at this blank page for more than a minute trying to put into detail how I really feel today. I feel confused, angry, sad and all. I don’t want to go back praying to God to take me right at this moment. I know, there’s more to life than that. And whatever they are, I am so not prepared!


My Dad is getting older every month. I barely talk to him. We barely have a meaningful conversation. I haven’t said a decent I love you yet. I once wrote a letter to him on his 65th birthday. (2010) and it says:


Tay,
Happy Birthday! Labyu! Hehehe..
Love, Di


I don’t know how to say it on a daughter-father way. One side of me felt happy. The other one is the opposite. Every night, I look at him sleeping and every time I do this, there’s this tiny painful pinch in my heart and a burning sensation in my soul. He’s getting old. So am I, with a little thousand peso in my bank account.


I am not sure if he knew what course I took or whatever talent I have. Sometimes I think he don’t know much about me. What makes me happy, what things I can do when I am mad, or when I am upset. I am not sure if he knows I am into writing, reading and day-dreaming. But there are things I am sure he knows about me well: my name is Dian and my surname is Licop. That we live on the same address, we share the same birthday and I love eating. I don’t know. I don’t have the courage to ask him. I don’t have the courage to tell him how much I really, really, really love him even if he knew little about me.


Every morning when I wake up, I see him in his old rituals: jogging inside our home, doing 70++ push ups, thousand jumping jacks and eat his oatmeal or sometimes, read the newspaper outside sitting in the driver’s seat in our vehicle / chatting with his fellow oldies. Hahaha! When I get home, it’s either he’s watching DVDs or taking a bath. And sometimes, we eat dinner together and watch DVDs again. And then, again he prepares to sleep. That’s how I spent a day inside the house with my Dad. We also have moments where I ask about guns, the DVD he is currently watching, and watch the same movie or a boxing match together. We don’t talk about school (or maybe he went tired after following me inside the school when I was in high school talking to my teachers and trying to fix my educational problems), we don’t talk about how a day went for me, we don’t talk about me getting into a serious relationship. Well, at least I am happy I get to shout “you are such a mother fucker boxer #1!” or “you go to hell, you son of a bitch” when watching a boxing match. And he doesn’t slap me!


Reality sucks, and I am always not in the mood of talking in the morning.


I fear sitting, unable to contribute financially to my family. I am not selfish. I just don’t want to be empty-handed in the future. I always have this thinking that when they have little, I got more to give. And I have proven that this kind of tactic works for me and for my Ate.


She’s definitely the strongest woman in the earth. She sent us to college; we went to a decent university in the Philippines because of her. She’s a fighter. I can’t imagine how much pain she had during a struggle in her past romantic relationships. I, myself experienced having cried a “bucketful” of tears while trying to get up and face the resentful seconds of a fresh wound in the heart. I can’t imagine how she went through that phase in her life while feeding us, going to work to pay our monthly bills and her credit cards.


She never got to have her own family because of us. That’s how great her love is. She’s working for three decades now while doing the first three sacrifices. I don’t know how to pay her back. I want to take care of her. But you see, I always have a problem about showing them how much I love them. But instead, I don’t let them see how I get affected by their sickness, their problems, and their hopes. My sister has this bone problem in her leg. She’s complaining how much it hurts when doing a simple activity. Earlier today, she showed us the difference of her right leg from the other one. And we saw a huge difference. It’s kind of flat from left side of her right leg. It’s not straight anymore. It slapped me hard. I want to do something. I wanted to cry but that’s a sign of again, a fucking weakness!


The cold nights I spent in the hospital a few years back while she’s sleeping in the hospital bed while fighting for dengue went back to me vividly. As I wrote my Christmas Vacation project for my Journalism class that night, I was crying helplessly. I was counting the room’s corners. I am unable to contribute help that time. I want to take away the pain. I want to take it fast and transfer the pain to me. Or I can take all the shots from that evil needles every three hours so my sister can sleep long during the night. But I can’t. And that made me feel so helpless. I stopped writing for a while and went downstairs. I called a friend and that is one reason why I still remember her telephone number. My sadness made the night extra cold. Everything went frigid; everything is so vignette around me. It is as if I am walking down the hallway alone yet, everyone is there, frozen. My world went blank. The only thing I contributed during this time was, I requested for a promissory note and didn’t use the money she gave me to pay for my tuition. And that is what we used for her other hospital bills. (Unknowingly aware that this event might happen)


As I gathered my emotional strength while examining her leg, I snapped back “you have a lot of time to visit a doctor, you can file a leave and visit a doctor and you didn’t! You bought a special sandal and it’s no use!” In that second, I was furious. The next three seconds, I am helpless. The next minute, I am sad. The next hour, I am writing.


I know she knew a lot of things about me. How I went mad over a missing pair of socks. How I went gaga over a movie. She knew when I am happy, when I am sad or when I am mad. She knew almost everything I am not even aware of. She’s literally the family’s walking encyclopaedia and I fear of losing her. She’s my favourite debate partner (because I always want to snap the opposites when we are discussing things) and my best friend.


Because of these things, I am into a deep thought. I need to gather all the possible strength from life’s sources. But I don’t know where. I don’t know how. I fear losing all my family members right before my eyes. I believe they are all immortals. In that way, I can patch the sadness and fear of losing them. I can turn the world upside down. I can control how the world will work with me.


As I blog my way around, I am immortal too. I am immortal by stamping these 1,477 words (recent count) on the net. When I gain my mortal state and leave my sanctuary, someone’s going to read this once in a while. And then, I realized: I fear that this account will be hacked. I fear of leaving. I fear of not seeing the world. I fear getting out of someone else’s life. I fear of closing my eyes forever. I fear of not hearing the world’s greatest sounds. I fear of forgetting and remembering. I fear of losing my immortality. That’s the reason why one night, I was kind of remembering what I was in my past life. Because I said “It is okay if I die, I am going to live and reincarnate anyway. I am going to see the world again.”


Lord, whatever you want me to do while I am still alive, please help me through this. Please give me the strength I need. I always fear of getting sick, I fear of not having a billion-peso bank account, I fear of losing all my family and friends. I fear well, everything. You know what I have in mind. Please, please, please. And thank you for the Novartis job.


I am closing this blog with word count of: 1,688.

HURRR..

June 15, 2010

And yet, again, another day to spend at the office. I wasn’t in a good mood to sing my heart out today. I dunno if I feel nervous right at this moment. Is it about the class opening? Has it something to do with my mood as I heavily stood up earlier (darn, it’s such a cold, cold morning!), set-thinking that I should get up early to avoid the Tuesday traffic? To add a little pressure on my busy morning, I rushed to the front porch earlier to hang my almost-dry-washed clothes.

I wasn’t into this kind of rituals after a household activity on a weekend. I feel tired and well, consumed. I don’t want my sister to literally do everything around the house. It’s not good. One thing I repeatedly realizing: I should do things on my own now. I should get out of my comfort zone and battle the unknown! I should bravely stand and face all the monsters in my closet! For God’s sake, I’m 25! But, how? Getting back, after the non-usual-household activity, I lazily went up on our main bedroom, slumped the dry clothes in the corner, gathered all my personal bath materials, went down and bathe my lazy ass back there. Surprisingly, the water isn’t shower-cold.

I happily took the opportunity because It’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime event. After I washed all the lazy-morning dirt out of my system, I went back upstairs, iron my clothes, and comb my ever-tangled hair blah-blah-blah. And oh, it’s also my nephew’s first day as a senior kinder at Narra Learning Center. I wasn’t able to see him wearing his baby blue uniform because his Tita Di needs to get out of the house before eight. Hihihi.