A Batch Reunited

I told myself not to bridge the gaps of a school I once attended. Part bitterness, part hatred, part disgust. Yet I did. It was one of the best decisions I have made lately.

To make this post with sense, I have moved out of town from where I grew up. Left the traces of my childhood and cut personal ties with childhood friends (though I still keep in touch using facebook, etc...), I somehow felt alienated with the fact that I will be surrounded with people who, in every year that passed, plans a big get-together for all batch mates. I was not intimidated either. But the thought of being stared at and being whispered on with people whom I do not even chummy with is what irks me. That's what happens to a lot of reunion as far as I know.

What I thought would be a quiet night of catching up with long lost friends ended up a night of reacquainting boisterously with people whom I am not even close with. Let's face it. My greatest hobby was to collect Catholic uniforms from all places. The friends I keep are just a handful from each batch I attended. After 14 years of not seeing most of them, I was, surprisingly, up and about, catching up with everyone and vice versa. Even to those whom I just got their first names recently. But to make it clear, I was never a nobody in all schools I have been to. But I was certainly not a snob. I just tend to be picky with people whom I would like to trust a part of my life then the rest will be mere acquaintances. I underestimated my expectations.

Seeing ourselves getting wasted came to a point of realization that things hasn't changed in most aspects to people whom you have spent your teenage life with. Laughter will always be there. The grave teasing, embarrassing situations and "hot-seats" will never fade. Yet it changed as well. Some, for the better, some stagnant, but never worst. *at least for us*

Going down memory lane feels so refreshing. My once shattered piece from this year's hardship suddenly became whole again. So now I could say, this is a start of a new life after renewing friendships and moments of reflection between who I was to who I am now.

What's best is I gained and regained more friends whom I can share bits and pieces to remember. I, once again, opened another chapter that I will truly cherish throughout my span.

What Was Then.. And This Is Now

My little boy is not so little anymore. And, while I'm completely happy and satisfied with the way he should be (despite spontaneous angst), I get pretty amazed that right under my nose... Time flies so fast.

It seems only yesterday when I got hit with a truckload of guilt and remorse. I remember the time when he was at the height of dependency, I used to go out partying with friends, rather than taking care of him myself. And when he craves for my attention, I get really angry and tell him to go to sleep or watch Blues Clues on TV.


As anyone could probably guess, yes, I used to be an insensitive, irresponsible mother.

But all is forgotten. I've honestly thought of myself as a changed person.
I was able to reach a breaking point that my personal identity was not lost just because I bore a child.


Although there were (realistically) times that I still holler at him for disturbing whatever multi-tasking I'm doing. Or hitting a high stress-level for not following my instructions. I get so ballistic whenever he points out that he doesn't want me to be working here or there and express disdain whenever I had to sacrifice my time to work than be with him. All sort of negativity would pop right into my head because I thought that I have been given things more than I could handle.

Hmmm.. I guess it's just a phase every single mother gets at times.

As I change my views and perspectives. I realized that my son is my most important chore. That whatever I do, it was all for him. I now find comfort of coming home, knowing that when I wake up the next morning, he'll rush to my side just to show his unconditional affection to his once-irresponsible mom. I find joy whenever he goes to school, he'll utter the words "I'll miss you while I'm at school".

My life is changing dramatically these days just because of the simple things a child can do that touches the heart of a mother.

What all happened was then..
But this is now.
Although I should have learned this a long long long time ago.

On a brighter side, there is never too late for anything. We can always fill the gaps and become a better person, a better mother. It's also a good thing that my son turned out the best.

Reuniting With The World

I should be thanking my parents for making me move to different schools year after year. Imagine attending 12 schools in my academic life.. For a normal teenager, it must be a rotten hell. But for me, it was an adventure. If not for their decision to go to different places wherein they never included me, I would not have learned a lot.

For years of living in this world, I have been blessed with too much friends and acquaintances. People I have built connections and shared my life with. Friends whom I fondly call as the extraordinary people, who reached out their hands when I felt all alone. Who became a part of my family, much more, became a part of theirs. Together, we paved our way to self-discovery and realize our potential. Neat huh?

My childhood friends. My second family.
These people who are so used to the fact that year after year, they will listen to my rantings about going somewhere and still, are there, waiting for me at the end of the day.

I have always thought of myself as a best friend to everybody (hmm, almost) and so are they.
But as we grow older, we also realize that we can't be together forever.

There will always be a time in your life that even though you value a great camaraderie, friendships will become stagnant and conflicts will arise..
.. And rash decisions are often made for friends to lead separate ways.

That, happens to everybody.
It happened to us.

For years, I have become a busybody, either focusing on my career or my personal life. I have truly forgotten how much I enjoyed life with these people. To my guess, I think it was all about the wretched feeling I had kept through all these years that I never turned back and smile at them.

Yet time heals all wound. I have come to forgive them and forgive myself for any harm that we caused each other.
We're all grown ups anyway.

As the clock ticks, I am nearing my fate to them.
Reuniting with them is like reuniting with the world.
I felt home again.

Finding Peace In Failure

Cynical. That is what most people are.

In our personal relationships, we tend to listen but never absorb, we never understand. We take their word but never give the benefit. In helping others, we find flaws before giving assistance. Oftentimes, we turn our backs and dismiss it like there was nothing ever happened. In ourselves, we doubt our abilities, capacities, our gifts. We are sometimes clouded with pessimism that generates negativity in our lives...

It was only recently that I have given my utmost trust to a person I have long knew. A colleague which I had been respecting for so long. But what turned out was a complete disappointment and hatred. It was not a good thing but I had let it enter my heart, making me fastidiously restless and ungratified.

I began to believe that he can make a big difference since this person knew what I sacrificed to pursue a life-long dream. And as I have been counting the days, weeks and months, there was still nothing to compensate the things you have been doing for the betterment of myself and others.

It was then I started to cover myself with cynicism.
People really have a knack of making promises then break it. Truly talented in dashing hopes (myself included).

After ending such trivial pursuit, an old common friend has told me that disappointments are part of human err. That what is most important, is, I have been extended small efforts, gestures and favors. Something that can be made a big difference only if seeing it in another perspective.

I felt at peace now.
Besides, I have something to be grateful for... I gained new friends.

Looking for Something Deep

It has been approximately five months and two days since I haven't opened this blog. I realized that I stopped writing since Tommee left for overseas.

There were no special reasons.
It just happened.

And for that five months, a lot has happened in my life which left me alone and desolate. Other times, happy and contented. It was indeed a series of roller coaster ride fate has given me.

There were so many stories to tell, but I have seem to run out of thoughts.
Thoughts that I ought to be using in writing a piece.

This is a moment of a writer's life wherein complete brain inactivity passes through.
I'm hating it.

Thousand Miles of Space Between You and Me

As of writing, there's about a thousand miles between me and honey.
Tonight is the start of my calendar where I won't be seeing him for at least ten months.

It's tough to be in a situation where you have already let a person come and make a great impact in your life. It was indeed the day I chose who to spend my life with and love the person without any hesitations for the consequences that can happen. I could blame myself for this. Given that fact that we always knew that this will be the bottom line. But hey, what I felt and what we had gone through is worth the risk.

I never believe in long-distance love affair even though I have seen it with my own parents. Things will always be complicated but he put great faith in myself that this may work out if we persevere. He took away my fears and gave me a big room of hopes and dreams until the day we see each other again.

It is clear now. My honey is moving on to his next path. I am now happy and at peace.
The dreaded moment of saying goodbye is over and I am left to count the remaining days till he gets back. Until I come back.

So honey~
This space between you and me,
.. no matter where we both are--
I will always be true.

And where this space exist,
You will find me waiting for you.

Damn Signals!

Have you ever find yourself muttering and cursing to yourself since you can't do anything much?
Of course, everybody had this moment. When you are frustrated, you tend to react negatively.

Yeah, and I happened to be in that kind of situation moments ago.

This is supposed to be honey's last night in the country and since he had to spend it with his relatives, the only option we had to get in touch with each other is via text messages and phone calls.

Given that we already spent the last two days together, of course you can't blame a girl for wanting to spend time with her guy. Ten months is really ten months for you to wait, without any assurance that by almost a year, things will still stay the same. You had to make the most of it.

Around 9pm, we started getting in touch with what happened to our day. Thank God for SMS, I told myself, everything that you want to say will reach into the recipient's hands in a matter of seconds.

As hours passed, he called me on my SUN cell. Unbelievably, i got a strong signal in our house but whenever I answer the phone, signals seem to be extinct and line gets cut in a few seconds. We kept calling each other but calls were cut in less than a minute. Dialling a phone number takes much longer than us talking on the phone.

What's worse is, my good old reliable SMART phone is having problems with call connection and both of us can't get through the line. Need to say more?? Yeah, weird signals once again! Whenever I get through, All I get is that damn operator saying "All circuits are busy at the moment.."

AAAAAARRRRGGGHHH!

It was already past 1am and still could not get through that damn line.
Then, thank heavens! Finally I got in!

Unfortunately, he's already asleep.

And now I'm pissed. My phones, the networks, HIM.
This kind of thing never happened to us until tonight. What a great timing!

So in short, the only sentence we were able to exchange was "Hon, kadungog na ka nako?" (Hon, can you hear me?) for damn 4 hours!

And this is what I will have to remember until we come back and see each other again.
WEIRD, DAMN SIGNALS...
Di marunong makisama!
Grrrrrrr!

Frustrations of the Heart

Time flies so fast.

It seems only yesterday when I let someone come into my life, of whom I let the person fill my senses with so much happy moments. Well, life always have its ups and downs and in one way or another, these happy moments are bound to cease and become a part of a memory.

Just this afternoon I was online and had a chat with my honey on how did our day go, when he said, "at least you won't be lonely when I leave."

Like a knife stabbed my heart, I evaded the topic and told him I don't want to feel sad. Not this time.

But like any other person, I regret to say that it stuck in my head for the rest of the dog-gone day about the situation I will be into in the next nine days. After one such difficult time, just few hours ago, I receievd a message from him saying, "Open up hon okay?"

Words cannot contain the real situation so I chose to keep silent. Anyhow, the bottomline is he'd still be leaving. And I knew that a long time ago. I have prepared myself for it. Have I chosen to leave last month, my guess is he'll be feeling the same too, yet, I decided it would be best if I see him leave first so I can have my peace of mind knowing he'll be on his way for his dream.

So now I don't understand myself why am I feeling this way... Of why depression has entered my life again. Maybe because apart from it, I still have other personal issues that I have yet to deal. Or it could also because I have truly let myself be fully attached with him, not caring about what will happen next.

I came up with a conclusion:

I have risked again myself for my heart's glee. And I'm starting to pay the price.

In the coming days, I am sure there will be laughter, and there will also be days which everything seemed not right.. so unfair. My life for sure will be like a bumpy roller coaster ride, shifting from one emotion to another until that dreadedfully excruciating day.

But I have to keep going and persevere.
Hope for the things may turn into it's right path. And the one most important thing that I should do is to find my way and channel it out and know this is not the end.

Now I am aware of the things that needed an action, why is it so hard for me to get rid of it?
In life, these things are inevitable.
Bear my frustrations.

If Your Ship Doesn't Come In, Swim Onto It.

"If your ship doesn't come in, swin onto it."

- Jonathan Winters


Ships. Swim.
These are the very same words I have been visualizing about for the past 7months.
It's getting to be pretty tiring.

While Luzon is being hit by a storm, I am on a peaceful solace right inside my home, contemplating for what should I do as soon as sun shines.

Thoughts of giving up lingered my mind, along with the determination to fight such ill ideas.
I've been thinking about moving on with another scheme for me not to get stressed.
A lot of nerve-wracking noise bugging my head, telling me what to do and not to do.
I am pretty stressed lately, I could choke someone.

I never asked for any sign until today.

Browsing through sites to keep me out of boredom, a quote caught my attention and I started to think:
Yeah, this is one halluva one-liner. My wake up call.

I'm not saying that I should swim my way to M/S Amsterdam (that would look hilarious) but more on doing more efforts than what I have been doing now.

But how do I start the effort when things are already in its right places?
My ship is right in my face but why are they letting me swim onto it when I can just walk?
When things are clear, there will always be something that would come up, making me wait for more.
There is no other way, just wait. As they say, perseverance is a virtue, yet its becoming to be devastating.

Time to clear my head for the meantime and think happy thoughts.
If there's still happy thoughts.

The Lost Tomb of Jesus

I always believe I was a scholar or a historian in my past life.

I'm not trying to be cocky on this one but I always have this great fascination of studying and searching for history. Most people find it odd whenever I get myself totally engrossed on something that would make my head ding that would keep me out of my social life for a few hours, even days, weeks, or worse, months.

This is just one of the times.

When I was in Manila, my aunt told me that she has a DVD of Discovery Channel's The Lost Tomb of Jesus.

I have read about in 2007 and made an extra mile to search for everything there is to know. I have spent a lot on this topic discussing it to my students when I was teaching, encouraged friends to read the same and debate whether it is authentic or not. Yet, I haven't watched the James Cameron production until now.

Then I realized I left the DVD and I was very devastated so I searched if there's one in youtube.com. I'm so lucky there is!

If you think this would interest you, you can go to URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHBQz6GWJAI. It has basically 10 videos so just look for it in related videos or visit www.tvshack.net, go to documentaries and look for The Lost Tomb of Jesus. I made an effort of adding a link so others will not have a hard time watching like I had.

Anyway, I enjoyed watching it and have concluded that this is possible since people nowadays are so innovative in search for the whole truth.