It seems like the sun and the moon are trapped in an endless game of chasing after another but never at all meeting. These past two years, it’s been like as if that shifting game of the sun and the moon is getting me into nothing but the same old cycle of waking up into countless frustrations. And in between their alternating shifts, I am tossed- tossed between the days, the hours, the years until I am only left to wonder at how two years’ worth of all that tossing can both bring changes that can vary from being too little and too great. It seems that I’ll never quite know how some things make me feel like I’m already a hundred years apart from high school, while some things make it appear like it never moved a day at all.
I took the UPCAT two years ago today! :))
It may strike some as being overly sentimental that I remember the exact date so well. It doesn’t really matter now. I didn’t even go to UP, or even if I did, it still won’t matter when the date is. But this really isn’t about the test. It’s just that there’s something about that certain period in my life, that era when entrance tests were around the corner, which makes it a little too extra bittersweet to my memory when I look back at it now.
I remember having the “Bishi Rules”. It was this set of rules that I set up for myself as a way to force myself to study for the entrance tests. I remember that one of the rules stated that I must stop watching the teleserye “Tayong Dalawa”, which I was sort of hooked to at that time! (I was successful. I stopped watching that show!) I also really tried to wake up early every day to study, but I would always fall back into asleep whenever I do. :))
But really, I miss those times. I miss the times when all of the things I have right now were only still just day dreams. I miss the times when all I could do was wonder what college would be like. I miss not knowing. I miss being ignorant about the rough roads that college has. I really do, because then, I had a dream. I was optimistic about things. Everything was still just on my mind, and my mind could let anything happen.
It’s too different now. I’m here in Katipunan, not there in Legazpi. A lot of things happened this past year that were a little bit too disturbing and unsettling. College has been tough. And there’s a hole, a sometimes really painful hole that I feel when I retrospect. Sometimes its wholly bitter, sometimes its wholly sweet, at other times its both. The changes were a lot more difficult to deal with last year. Right now, I’d like to think I can pretty much deal with the differences and the surprises a little better. I can take them in, live the differences and know that the only thing I can do now is to wonder at them.
But at the same time, some things haven’t changed at all. Despite everything, I could sit down and think through things and realize that deep down inside my core is the same little girl who never could have thought that this and that could happen to her. That girl doesn’t know anything. We both don’t know anything about everything. We both don’t know anything about how to make it through this life. But sometimes, it’s a comfort to know that I’m still intact with that girl who, two years ago, took the UPCAT. Despite the frustrations, despite sometimes desperately missing her home, she is still sane and she’s still here with me.
