(Excerpt from a diary I don’t own. I’m very thrilled with my Christmas haul but I’m surprised that nobody thought of giving me a notebook. A small, 32-peso one would’ve done the trick. I’m a cheap date.)
My mood swings frighten me and I can’t blame it on PMS anymore. Last night I was sobbing uncontrollably, plauged by the pointlessness of waking up to another day of struggling with academics and an entire lifetime of struggling to make a name for myself in a capitalistic world, only to fall victim to clever marketing schemes and the illusion of the good life as shown in pristine real estate advertisements. It’s the complete opposite of where I am right now. Tonight I’m as zen as a Tibetan ascetic, a smart little motherfucker having multiple intellectugal orgasms with Foucault in below-zero degrees Starbucks weather. Perhaps a visit to the shrink is in order because I’m probably bipolar or something; the mood swings happen more frequently these days, with more intensity than ever.
Complete happiness is not what I want because I know it’s not possible for me to be happy all the time. To quote Veronica Sawyer in the movie Heathers, “If you were happy every day of your life you wouldn’t be a human being. You’d be a game-show host.” What I often wish is to be either consisently okay or consistently miserable. Unfortunately, the only consistent thing with me is that I’m inconsistently flailing between seriously-almost-suicidal and so-fucking-giddy-I-could-hug-a-total-stranger (I hate touching/being touched by strangers). I pity the poor soul who will eventually end up in a relationship with me; I wouldn’t be able to handle me at all.
In other news, my tongue-piercing experience got chosen to be a recommended read in the BMEzine website. Yay! My secret goal is to be featured in ModBlog because most of the girls there are unbelievably gorgeous. I have my doubts though because my piercings aren’t particularly exciting and I don’t have any tattoos yet. Perhaps someday.
A poem by my favorite poet and the only other woman who is perhaps more bitter than I am, Dorothy Parker. I think this is something a lot of people can relate to, particularly those who are graduating from college next March.
Resume
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
My resume is depressingly short. I think I have a fairly good idea of what I want to do after college, but I don’t want to jinx it by writing it down anywhere.
What depresses me even more than the thought of my uncertain future is how 70% of the graduating kids from my school aren’t stressing out about what to do upon graduating because they’re either a) smarter than me, or b) batshit insane richer than me. I’m betting more on the latter though. I have a sinking suspicion that at least half of the kids who go to my school treat their college education as a mere annoyance that they need to overcome in the quickest and easiest manner possible. Oddly enough, I do understand why they don’t feel the need to work hard. Why bother when your family has the money to pay for everything? That doesn’t make me any more fond of the conyitos y conyitas in my school though. I really resent the fact that they’re going to have it easy the rest of their lives while the rest of us actually have to struggle to make a name for ourselves.
I’d rather work for a paycheck than have daddy pay for everything, though. I can’t stand the thought of unearned glory and wealth.
I didn’t make it to the Dumaguete National Writers’ Workshop. It was a little expected, considering that I’ve only begun writing fiction last December and have had no professional training whatsoever. Still, the rejection came this close to breaking my fragile writers’ ego. What I’m particularly miffed about is that the bastards didn’t even bother to notify me through email or text. I had to find it out the hard and painful way - looking up the list of accepted fellows at the website and realizing with a sinking heart that my name wasn’t there. I also happened to note that this pretentious (assholey) person I know made it to the workshop, which made my rejection all the more painful
The crushing blow of my defeat made me swear off writing for the rest of the summer. Not that that’s going to be difficult to do. Instead of spending the last month starting the novel that would change the course of Philippine literature, I wasted my time on the Internet and other similar things that ultimately culminated in brain suicide.
“What do you think went wrong?” Pat asked me after I told him the news.
I shrugged listlessly and responded, “I suck.” And then I declared my intention to not write a word of fiction for a while.
Instead of trying to comfort me with cliches (never give up on your dream, you can always do better, etc. etc.), he told me to take my time. Any form of defeat hurts and it will take a while for me to get over it and get on with writing. See, that’s why I love this guy. He skips the lectures and moves on to saying the right things at the right time.
Since my ego still needed some more validation, I saw some of my writer friends the next evening and told them that I failed to make it to the workshop.
“Eh. Don’t worry about it,” my friend Pam said. “Writing workshops seem to be a space for all the pretentious people to go in and assure themselves that there isn’t too much competition, for one. Or to stroke each other’s egos.”
Hearing that made me feel so much better about being a National Writers Workshop Reject. I mean, come on. My rejection actually makes me better than all the other writers who made it into the workshop!
On the other hand, I’d probably think more along the lines of, “you’re just jealous” if I had made it to the workshop and some random person had told me that. Not that I’d deny the accusation. I need to some ego-stroking, damnit. I want writers of note to tell me that I’m good and that I have a brilliant future ahead of me. I want professionals to correct my mistakes and teach me discipline. Why else would I have applied to the damn thing in the first place?
Obviously I still feel quite bitter about being rejected and will be spending the rest of the summer playing Suikoden V and doing other non-writerly things. Sure, I will get back to writing eventually. Maybe a few years from now, I’ll kick everyone’s asses with the novel that will change the course of Philippine literature. But today, I just want to waste away in the living room and get boiled alive by the summer heat.
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