I Have Been Her Kind

I’d Bet You’re Dreaming

ihavebeenherkind — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 18:29:30 +0000

I am busy typing on your keyboard, making small mechanical movements, tapping away maniacal woes and rants. I know I won’t get a surge of creativity for a long time, so I should and will take this chance. I hear you snore and I assume you’re dreaming. You are sound asleep and not aware of the noise I make when I press the space bar too hard or whenever I punctuate. Your rhythm never fluctuates, the rise and fall of your chest always steady…

I’d bet you’re dreaming of poker chips falling out of the sky.

Atychiphobia

ihavebeenherkind — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:35:20 +0000

Here you go again. You ponder about what you have become and how you came to be. All your bad choices have reduced you to this sad excuse for a human being. You wonder, at this age, if it is still possible to start over and you counter these hopeful thoughts with negative realizations. You fear to submit to failure, careful to make another wrong move, too careful to even start. You think, that your father unknowingly wasted hundreds of thousands for your education, signing check after check for fifteen trimesters, tickets to your college graduation ceremonies, but to no avail, because your transcript of records deserve to be trampled on and burned. And then, you think maybe you CAN start all over again and take a second undergraduate degree. But, that would take four more years, by the time you finish school you’d be twenty-six. And after that, you plan to go to graduate school and waste a few more hundred-thousands. These things take time. Now, how do you know if it will be the right decision? You can’t. Because apparently your trust in yourself is inversely proportional to your will and drive. You operate on a battery of opinions from insignificant people and that is why you have come to this. You fear to take on life, take off the training wheels, and just go. Sometimes, even the ones closest to you, think that you’re just lazy. But if you were lazy, then you wouldn’t have taken a job that requires you to work more than eight hours a day. It’s the Fear that you have been cultivating in you ever since you realized that the world is big and dangerous, that there are many sides to being a human being, that you can’t be spared from the real world no matter how you resist the idea of it. And why the hell are you so scared of being you?

Well, I’ll tell you that I don’t have the slightest inkling of who I am.

Here we go again.

Blah

ihavebeenherkind — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:17:53 +0000

0200H

You stop and think of your now shipwrecked life.

You were an accident, born out of sin and not of love.

You are a tiny drop in a vast ocean.

You are insignificant.

Just like these five lines.

This Is What Happens When Frustration Kicks In

ihavebeenherkind — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:23:40 +0000

There’s that biting pain lording over my left jaw, that stubborn piece of slanted tooth impossibly trying to sprout up like a mushroom, causing my teeth to break its perfect alignment. They serve as unnecessary reminders that pain doesn’t always have purpose, it sometimes exists for no reason at all. I should put a stop to it once and for all and pay my dentist a visit, ask how much the operation would cost, set a schedule for my operation, and then sit on the dentist’s chair for tooth extraction. The culprit, the cause, would be uprooted, but I reckon the pain would manage to linger on a few more days.

———–

I haven’t eaten anything since I woke up at 4:00 this afternoon. A slight tinge of regret surrounds me today. I could have gone to Berlitz and enrolled, or to the hospital to have another check-up. Last night I helped myself to a few bottles of beer, which gave me an excuse not to act like myself. I felt adventurous and I didn’t feel like going home right away–so I didn’t. I ate breakfast at the nearest McDonalds. What can you do early in the morning? So I hailed a cab, as I felt my eyes succumbing to sleep. It was an ordinary taxi cab driven by an equally nondescript driver. Heavy weights seemed to drag my eyelids down. I got home safe though and slept like a baby. And now it’s midnight and my day’s just starting.

———-

I watched American Idol today and I cried.

Monotony

ihavebeenherkind — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 18:08:30 +0000

The problem with me is that I let the monotony be. I wake to the digital sound of bells in the morning generated by my iPhone, take a boring 45-minute cab-ride to work, begin to slave my ass off until work is done, and then take an equally boring cab-ride home. And then nothing. I’m lucky if I even get to touch and turn a few pages of the book I am reading, and that is the only pleasurable thing that I can afford to do. I never get to digest anything at the end of the day, my mind is never pregnant with opinions and ideas and insights as it should be, it’s as if my brain cells slowly die with each synaptic transmission. The problem with me is that I let it be.

“Are you happy, Em?” Kirti asked me while we sifted through a number of applicant profiles inside one of the interview rooms.

“Why are you sad?” Rannel asked me while we were celebrating our 53rd month together browsing through thick and thin volumes of books in one of my favorite book stores.

Yes, I am happy. I was born with unlimited reasons to be happy but with limited means to appreciate them much.

“It depends. What do you mean by ‘happy’?” That’s what I said to Kirti while sorting the profiles of the nameless applicants that are either happy or unhappy wherever they are.

“I’m not sad. Do I look sad?” I asked Rannel while I was adjusting to the sudden drop of temperature.

Yes, I looked sad. Apparently, it showed in my face. But it’s far from sadness. It’s the feeling you get when you start coming to terms with the possibility that life will always be like this. It’s when all of your dreams line up in front of you, each one falling to the ground, while reality guns them down one by one. And all you can do is watch them die one after the other.

Strap Me To An Electric Chair

ihavebeenherkind — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 12:00:19 +0000

I woke up this morning feeling a familiar sense of being “inadequate”, as Sylvia Plath put it. I have not felt this way since I got the job two months ago, so this might be the start of another episode if I don’t force myself to snap out of it (as if snapping out of it works).

These thoughts, above all others, keep on visiting and revisiting my mind and I find it difficult to block them out completely:

I want to be a lot of things but I can’t be all those things.

I wonder if I will be able to live an extraordinary life.

I am limited in so many ways.

I can be brave when I feel like it. I can also brainwash myself into thinking that all these thoughts are irrelevant; I have done that before and it proved to be helpful. But they still come back from time to time, especially when I find myself alone or in the company of some sad book. I don’t really have a problem, I like how things are steady with the amount of effort that I put out every single day. At least my life is not in shambles like before. I just don’t feel brave these days. I don’t know what it feels like anymore with all the crap in my head.

The Worst Part

ihavebeenherkind — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:49:56 +0000

The worst part of my day in the office is when I tell people that they are not qualified for the position they are applying for. I also hate it when I have to tell them that they should wait for a call from us if ever they get shortlisted for the said position knowing that they will NEVER get the job. I hate it most whenever I interview someone really arrogant and sure of himself because then I have to conjure up an authoritative facade which I believe is not that believable. I really suck at turning people down.

I also phone screen for Paolo from time to time, especially when I’m not busy doing recruitment work for Kirti. Calling people up, scheduling them, and ensuring that they show up on the specified date are the things we do. The hardest part is ensuring that they show up on the day itself. What I hate the most about it is that applicants who set an interview schedule would suddenly have an “emergency” of some sort. Most of their excuses involve family members and hospitals, which are such crappy excuses. We get those kinds of excuses everyday, which is why we don’t believe them.

So far so good. The bottom line is I have two things to work on while it’s still early:

(1) I have to rid myself of guilt and convince myself that I can’t please everyone, especially unqualified applicants.

(2) I have to immune myself from the frustrations of being a recruiter. These are things that I do on a daily basis and it sucks.

I love my job though, very much.

A Start

ihavebeenherkind — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:55:00 +0000

Black velveteen curtains

lights of multicolored hues

Empty beer bottles

Each one an excuse…

To be continued. Can’t think of anything with my heart pounding like this. Maybe it’s because of the beer.

Insignificant

ihavebeenherkind — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:28:29 +0000

I’m quite the stoic these days–either that or I am just too unimaginative that I find it difficult to write about certain things. So what’s up? Lately, there’s nothing much going on, nothing really significant.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the future, though. I never thought it would scare the wits out of me. Imagine a fork road that branches out into many different paths reminiscent of the veins in my hands. And the root of it all: What am I going to do with all this free time?

After two years of storage in the Lower Deck (or somewhere else, not sure), I finally had my electric guitar dug up. It was my first electric guitar (given to me by my dad) in 2004. I never really learned how to use it and I never took care of it. It’s not in good condition right now, so I’m considering taking it to the Guitar Hospital. I’m gonna have it fixed, and then maybe I’ll be worthyof it.

Oh, and there’s gonna be a new Sherlock Holmes movie. Robert Downey Jr. is Holmes and Jude Law is Watson and Rachel McAdams (finally!) is Ida. There’s gonna be a lot of action based from what I’ve seen on the trailer. Though I never imagined Sherlock Holmes to be quite a comic, I rather imagined him to be serious and eccentric. I guess I’ll just have to see if this interpretation works for him.

I’m obsessed with Moonpools & Caterpillars’ “Soon”.

Talk about being incoherent. Nothing is (coherent).

Freshly-squeezed Quarterlife Angst

ihavebeenherkind — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:02:06 +0000

I feel like a fugitive in hiding, a nun cloistered. I have only had a teeniest slice of the corporate pie as an intern, and when it ended, I am nowhere near useful.

I abhor being idle and settling here in our distant and secluded Novaliches house (a house that has far too many boxes, shipments, and workers to call a home), where going to the mall normally involves prior coordination with one of the family drivers, checking of availability of transportation, and having at least a plan to get home–such a tedious process for a few hours of leisure.

I still have daydreams about my old place–where I could be the reckless little black sheep of the family without anyone to interfere, to assume, to judge. I could go wherever I wanted. I go out and come home on my terms. No dad. No mom. Definitely, no other members of the family who are a tad too keen or nosy when it comes to my personal affairs. (It’s pretty sardonic how my parents are not at all worried about me the way they are.) Such as the one who used to look over my shoulder to see what I was keying in on a text message. Such as the one who used to listen to my phone conversations in high school and abruptly, rudely interrupt the conversation to tell me that it’s time for bed. Such as the one who, in front of other family members, including the younger ones, told me (or lectured, rather) that entering a relationship this young was such a foolish thing to do. Because love eventually fades.

This angst will not ‘smash into atoms’ any time soon. Unless I get a job. Unless I get a big fat bank account. Unless I make a name for myself. Unless I break free from the expectations of those who are constantly in doubt, constantly keeping me in check and praying I’ll stop thinking the way I think or act the way I act. Unless I break free, these bombastic feelings might just explode and there’d be pieces of me everywhere but no one to put me back together.