Revisions, Revisists

So. I’m not graduating. At least, not this March. And it’s that proverbial big load jumping off my too-bony shoulders.

I feel much better.

I’m not even dwelling on the fact that my father may pound at his chest in grief, or that I may ask my brother to scoot over and make room for me in the Out of School couch. There is hope.

And that amazes me. As much as my mother’s never-ending mantra to “Face up to it” (or the cocktail-induced variation, “Shit’s hitting the fan. You can duck, but you gotta stay and clean it all up”) actually rings true, if you just muster up enough courage to roll out of bed, to stop trying to convince other people that it’s okay, to stop lying to everyone–yeah, you never lied to yourself, because what would be the point?

There I was already imagining a future that involved me standing in my red suede boots along Quezon Ave. (But, really, after reading Confessions of a London Call-Girl, I realized that it’s high-class escortage for me. So, people and your rich widower daddies, line up.)

Why hide? Why didn’t I ever ‘fess up one drunken night and blurted, “I am such a faiiiluuure!”? I almost did, though, many times, and usually in the company of one charming grouch. But, you know how this is. Here comes Sasha, the Golden Girl, the fate of humanity.

(I remember in fifth grade, how I stayed in the classroom while my classmates cheered on the section’s contestant for the Chess tournament being held in the quad (yes, Chess under the basketball hoop). Eric, the town barber’s son, forever called to what was elementary school’s equivalent of the Dean of Academic Affairs, a 60 grade average, played a wicked chess game. I recognized that at 9 years old. And I thought then, If I’m so smart, why can’t I play chess? And I think now, It’s the detention boys playing chess in the quad you have to watch out for; the girl cocooned in the classroom with her paperback will prove anticlimactic.)

Here I am, about to blurt out that I am a bad investment. It’s been a rough year, a rougher couple of months. And I’m sure I only made my life harder because I didn’t want to go running to people, admitting that I’m not the horse to put your chips on, or however that saying goes. It’s the big D-word all over again, and there were times I wanted to throw my hands up and just end it all one way or another, but well, that’s a too-familiar story for my friends, for the people I love the most. Strangely, I ended up feeling like a copycat, never mind that I’m in as much a psychological mess as anyone out there who spends most days melting on the bed, unable to find a reason to get up. Oh, woe is me. I’m never the vindictive, slash-my-wrists-while-cackling bitch when the happy hormones submit their resignation letters; I’m the real sad dude, the one you talk about in hushed voices because her lack of obvious drama demands that you pass it off as an effect of the emo generation, the long, sad epics she likes to read. Coagulating in bed and creating constellations out of the cracks in the ceiling doesn’t make for good entertainment, or good gossip fodder.

But, well, life goes on, like all the Hallmark cards say. I’m still alive, partly because at the back of my head, I’d eventually want to get out of Sasha’s Bed and out into La-La Land, mostly there are too many people I love, and you don’t go drinking White Flower in shot glasses when you’ve got people to love, when there’re people who love you. Or at least people who’ll dig through six feet of earth just to wring your neck.

That said, I need to go. There are naked women to try drawing, and (if the writerly spurt this morning is any indication) fictions to weave.

‘Til next time.