One more day 'til my big day.
Do you ever get that kind of excitement that couples with the day before your birthday? Strangely, it goes hand in hand with the horrendous feeling of becoming a year older. This cycle repeats itself every 365 days, the horror seems to increase with it.
There are two days in a year when we become the center of the universe... first is your birthday, second is Christmas. Apparently, after attaining the age of reason, or in some cases, the age of emancipation, we are swept on to the sidelines during Christmas to give way to younger people... those whom our parents and grandparents find cute, even when in tantrum mode.
About five years ago, this tantrum would be considered as rebellion, or even hormone rage. we're no longer cute and appealing as we used to back then.
That leaves us with one day of the year where all persons concern enough (or under other circumstances, were forcefully made to be concern) would greet you, send you gifts, give you this, give you that, etc.
Its the only time of the year where you are expected to be drunk, but can't afford to, 'coz you're the one holding that cash/card that will pay for the intoxication.
It is the only day of the year when your parents are willing to withold the bad-mouthing, when money seems to appear out of nowhere, and suddenly you become young, posh and loaded. Meanwhile, they cringe at price of your tuition, which rather increases exponentially every year.
Amidst the binge drinkings, gifts, shopping sprees and pampering, we're inclined somehow to look back, as far as we could remember....
I was the boy whose first clear memory was asking his yaya to make him cerelac.
I was the boy who clobbered my kid brother for being a stupid baby.
I was the kid that soiled his shirt while planting seeds and watering them with toy shovels and sprinklers at the small vegetable farm we once owned.
I was the kid who couldn't play with fireworks without wearing a towel aroud my nose and mouth 'coz I'd probably die of asthma.
Years ago, I was just a kid in kindergarten who made it third in class. Then the litany goes on 'til highschool. It was that day... that day when my mom came home screaming her heart out that i've made it to the third spot, that the pressure came in from all sides. It was what they want... medals, certificates, and more medals.
But what about what I want?
Finally, I broke the chain in college. I finally decided not to engage in extra-curricular activities, make new friends who'd see you as yourself, and not what you are. I decided that before going home, it is mandatory to hangout in the mall, play bowling, billiards, drink in between classes, smoke in public, and not inside your highschool comfort room, etc. No matter how my much hated mother would pressure me to study (even in a slightly endearing manner), I would tick off instantaneously. I've freed myself from her despotic and authoritarian rule.
In each stage of life, we become tabula rasa... a clean slate. Therefore we can create ourselves anew, reinvent ourselves. I've been doing alot of reinventing every year. We try to fit in with alot of different people. We change ourselves to become "cool", to be always aware of "the in" thing. Friendships are made, and friendships are destroyed in the process.
But only after you exit the happy place called college that you become mature enough not to accept new trends as mandatory rules of the juvenile religion. For one, I am no longer a colegiano. I am now a graduate student. And everything that you've enjoyed for the past four years now seem to be nothing more than youthful consumerism. Your identity changes even without you noticing it. No matter how much you'd offer to the gods in order to turn back the wheels of time to the better of days, it's all but memory. Something that people will talk about and reminisce every time another binge drinking session is in order.
Law school may be hell, but it was fun, once upon a time. The first year was the time when you fall in love again, once or twice. But it was momentarily, mostly ending bitterly. I am already certain at this point that it is a big joke played upon us by the blind goddess of justice. Definitely, I was blinded.
Now Law school is all hell, nay, the seventh layer of hell. Professors with pitchforks, with mouths spurting brimstone, noses flaring with sulfur.
Of course, I'm exaggerating. It's not all that bad.
Then we look at the bigger picture.
Twenty-two years after, look at what I have become. Look at where I am now. I may not appreciate it at times, but i tried to look at it from the perspective of the outsider. Once you stop thinking like yourself... then you appreciate who you are.
Look beyond yourself, beyond how your peers see you, beyond how your parents see you. Look at yourself with the eyes of the ordinary man down the street. Look at yourself with the eyes of highschool friends you haven't seen you in eight years. Then you'll see... you've achieved something that they can never can.
Now that I'm becoming 23, I might not have what they have, I may not be what they are.... But definitely, they can never be who I am now. They can never have what I have. They can never see what I see. They can never learn to love, what I love.
posted by ohme at 1:15 AM
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