I’m throwing away my debit card. Lately I’ve been using it like some vital internal organ, my pancreas and its precious little islets of Langerhans, perhaps, and depleting my hard-earned savings as quickly as the toxic industrial fumes are the atmosphere’s ozone layer. One of these days I’m just going to break it in half with one crisp snap and chop it like onions into even finer shreds with our trusty kitchen knife. I’m going to put it in a good blender and grind it into a smooth, creamy pulp. I’m going to ride a boat and throw it into the heart of the ocean where some big, gentle whale will swallow it and keep it safe in its blubbered belly before some cruel Japanese fishers catch her and cut her open. I’m going to dig a deep hole in the backyard and bury it there where it will rest in peace forever beside my old cat’s bones. I’m going to burn it until all that’s left is whatever’s supposed to get left behind when you burn something like it or pour some acid on it until it melts into absolute nothingness and some foul smelling smoke or crush it into fine bits with a big rock and sprinkle it on my food like gourmet seasoning or seal it in an envelope and airmail it to someone in Mount Kilimanjaro where it will be worshipped as some pagan earth spirit or something. I just have to get rid of it. Or should I?
Last week I was cleaning up my room again, and while I was lost in the oblivious moment of changing the linens and pillowcases some new, rather disturbing, realizations came to mind, tearing apart the cobwebs that have been left clinging stubbornly in the corners of my mind’s ceilings, clearing up the space and breathing much needed new life into the small, dark room in my head I call my brain. I changed the old, bland cream curtains mounted on my windows and put up new, silken green ones adorned with lace and pleats and delicate flower prints that made them look like they’d been taken from a life-sized dollhouse, wiped the thick dust off of every pane, every glass louver and jalousie they’ve peacefully settled on in the past weeks, swept the small fragment of space that is the floor, and moved some of my clothes into a new container I had bought the day before. The closets and cabinets were full, and there simply was no room left for another one. So my clothes are now folded, stacked up in piles and crammed inside plastic containers like they were healthy little sandwiches neatly tucked inside a lunchbox.
While moving my clothes to their new coffins I rediscovered some shirts I had not seen (let alone used) in the past few months. I had forgotten about them as every other week (or day, depending on my mood) I would go buy stuff and new clothes were quickly piled up on top of each other, relegating the older ones to the bottom where they would never again see the light of day. I had so many I honestly didn’t know what to do with them. And so it led me (I don’t know how) to wonder why we do the things we do and go through the things we go through over and over again. Why do we dust off the furniture when we know they’ll be covered in dust again a few days later anyway? Why do we work hard to earn money and then spend it all anyway? Why do we buy clothes and end up not wearing them anyway, and then buying some more? Why do we take a bath when we know we’ll end up dirty soon thereafter anyway? Why do we go to school and forget the things we’re taught anyway (or end up not learning anything at all)? Why do we eat when we know we’ll end up hungry again later anyway? Why do we sleep, wake up, and then end up sleepy again later anyway? Why do we take medication when we know we’ll still end up sick again later anyway? Why do we choose to live, to continue living, when everyday we die a little inside, and sooner or later we’ll die completely anyway? Why do we ask ourselves questions when we know we’ll never figure out the answers anyway?
Of course the only answer I ever give myself, and the only answer that seems necessary each time, is because. Just because. If I don’t satisfy myself with that answer I could very well just go mad. So I take that answer, if only to keep myself from asking anymore questions. That is how living life in this great big universe is. You can, of course, choose not to live it, to stop living it. But for as long as you are, that is how it will be like. Morning, noon, and night. And I’ve no plans to stop living just yet (although the temptation is always there and I could change my mind anytime), so I’ll just take things as they are, live life like it is. Even if living it is such a burden.
After recuperating the weekend before and feeling a bit better earlier this week, I’ve had a relapse of sorts and had to miss classes again the past two days because of my arthralgias. I can’t say it’s a big injustice and I don’t deserve it (so you should pity me and send in donations) because I went around walking and strolling and malling again, roaming the city without a care in the world even if my feet were telling me, protesting, that they were tired and needed some rest. I ignored their complaints and went on curiously and eagerly peeping into every boutique and shop that lined the mall’s interiors. At the end of the day I was limping like I had been viciously run over by a rampaging ten-wheeler truck.
I know this is probably some sort of connivance between my subconscious and my body, another attempt at sending me some subliminal message about something I haven’t exactly been paying much attention to. I don’t know. But of course I won’t dare go back to my rheumatologist yet again and ask for help. Otherwise he’d think I’m some stubborn, helplessly ignorant patient who isn’t taking any of his expert medical advice seriously. Or that he’s so far been altogether unsuccessful at treating my mysterious illness. I’m sure people like him don’t take apparent failure lightly.
Life is a bit stubborn, you see (much like me and most of us), and it will not stop until you learn the lessons you refuse to learn, giving you the same redundant, repetitive (and painful, if necessary) experiences over and over again like you were some hapless hamster running in circles inside the same old wheel of a treadmill in that small, cold metal cage of yours. Everything just seems to go on and on in an infinite, senseless cycle.
I guess life is about that. Just taking whatever it is you’re given and going on living and moving along like any other student lined up in the canteen on lunch hour, taking whatever strange, radioactive mess is dumped into your plate by the cranky cafeteria staff with terrible make-up and that ridiculous hat and yellow apron. Life is about persevering, going about doing whatever it is you have to do despite the monotony and adversity, continuing, moving from one day to the next. Until you no longer have to.
Everyday for me now, after all that cleaning and wiping and neatly stacking up things and unguarded thinking, is another chance. It is in itself both a beginning and an end, and therefore no two days can ever be the same. Everyday is a different one. What was there yesterday might not be there anymore, and what was not might suddenly be. It may sometimes feel like they’re all the same, but they are not. Now that, of course, is also in itself both a blessing and a curse, as although your worries and troubles might be gone, so could your successes and joys. Although the things you want to change could change, the things you don’t want to change could change too. And although the things you don’t want to change could stay the same, the things you want to change could very well stay the same as well. But that’s just how things are and should be, I guess, so there is no wisdom in opposing it.
You just have to hope and pray that things get better, because whether they do or not, they are what you will have to face and they are what you will have to live with tomorrow and the day after that. And the rest of the days to come.
I got a headache writing this and trying to make whatever sense I could out of all of it. But life’s like that. I guess.
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