blessed

When it rains, it pours.

And how the rain pours.  I hate it when bad luck has her eyes on me… who does?  But somehow, she seemed to have me as the focus of her attention lately.  Her eyes just got hooked and I’m wishing hard that she’ll soon divert her attention to someone well-deserving of it.

It will almost be three months since I’ve gathered all the courage I could muster to face life in the bravest way I could have ever imagined.  And yes, I’m proud to have somehow survived the whipping wind, although not without scars.  It may be a no-brainer for others, and I admit, it doesn’t need that much intelligence to survive my life.

What was difficult was enduring the emotional torture of everything.

Sometimes, I just ask God why he had to give me the biggest weakness of all.  And along with it are all the challenges imaginable just to instill in your sponge-like brain that, yes, you are weak.  I guess, He has His purpose, which may not be clear to me as of now.

I’ve thus learned to face every stressor with apathy, a facie I’ve learned through adaptation.  Ever since I can remember, I’ve always been demonstrative with my pains.  And lately, I’ve found it tiring to contort my face to whatever feeling I have to express.  Thus, came the blunted affect.  I’ve learned to stare into space, my vision penetrating every matter that occupies space and has weight.  With it is the classic, “I’m ok.”

I’ve learned to walk along the streets looking at my feet, unaware of the droplets of rain splattered on my skin.  Funny how it always rains when I feel the worst.  I guess, God still has His ways to sympathize with me.  If my eyes do not cry, He’ll let the heavens shed my tears.

I’ve learned to keep my mind blank, unaware of my surroundings, as I seem to endlessly walk to wherever my feet take me.  Good thing that instincts are inherent to every person.  When everything shuts down, instincts kick in to keep me in one piece.  I go home as if it’s my sanctuary.  I eat as if it’s my last meal.  I sleep… or I hope to be asleep

Nope.  You can never have everything.  Even the peace you so much desire amidst the chaos of your life cannot be given fully to someone endowed with bad luck.  I pray hard every night for the angels to sing me a lullaby and let me drift to a restful sleep; a slumber with my mind away from my body and would hopefully find a life who will give her some peace; a time away from the ticks of the clock to some era where it never matters.  I guess I have not been praying enough.

I haven’t had a good sleep for months.  Sleep was a luxury to me.  I’ve learned to pay for it with physical torture and this alone.  No amount of mental or emotional work can bring me the best slumber in the world.

And thus, faced with an emotional set-back and desperately trying to forget everything by sleeping, I find myself exercising my brain to think.  I would find myself staring at the ceiling, counting every speck of dust, every cobweb my eyes can see.  In my most begging state, I would find myself in veranda counting the stars.  Sheep counting is never enough to see me off to my dreams of peace.

I’ve had this going for the past months, keeping every negativistic feeling inside myself, trying desperately to seal it off from the prying eyes of madam bad luck who’ll quickly figure out that she had won.

28 September 2003


"All of us have bad luck and good luck. The man who persists through the bad luck- who keeps right on going is the man who is there when the good luck comes- and is ready to receive it."
--Robert Collier