Some things never change, which isn’t exactly a good thing I suppose. Here I am, in a cramped-up apartment room, just right smack in the middle of the busy and stress-inducing streets of Manila, yet I feel exactly the same way I did more than a year ago, locked up in my small bedroom in relatively more peaceful Bataan. But my mind is still chaotic, my thoughts restless.
You’d think that in college, everything would change. A whole other set-up; an entirely different game. In some ways, it is. It’s a refreshing break from the same environment I’ve known for nearly 13 years of my life, and it’s humbling to be in a crowd of different people from different walks of life, with intellectual capacities possibly even greater than mine.
Yet, this game is the ultimate challenge. Enough of the little leagues, I’ve graduated to the major leagues. And sometimes, it’s not about how well you play the game. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to play the game, there’s that chance that you will fall. Despite several vain attempts to get back up on your feet. Standing up victoriously is hard, especially if you’re severely wounded.
And you know what hurts the most? No matter how much blood, sweat and tears you’ve shed, no matter how many bones you’ve broken, and no matter how much you’ve tried and stubbornly refused to accept defeat, even if it’s right there screaming at your face, is that you still end up feeling like a failure. It’s like having your coach yell at you that you didn’t play the game right, despite you almost dying out on the field. It’s having him tell you that you didn’t try hard enough, even if you did. It’s having him let you feel like such a disappointment, such a shame to him, when all you wanted to hear was, “You fought well. You put up a good fight.”
How can you fight for something when someone’s already telling you that you’ve lost?
Some things never change.