heartshape

Forced
Claudine Lim
Obcompfreak


Coming home to a series of glitches isn’t exactly the therapeutic setting you think you deserve yet for some reasons you feel empty without the little misfortunes that fire up your otherwise bland existence.

At times you wonder how on earth you’re going to survive the upsetting course you only have half a heart to take. You’ve been playing the piano since you were three and would’ve definitely loved a taste of UP Conservatory of Music hadn’t your parents insisted on sending you to that prestigious Christian institution in Negros Oriental to take up (ahem…ahem…) Nursing. There are various reasons that propel you to excel and who knows you’re only here because you just wanted to step out of your folks’ shadow to show independence without needing to. But then again, maybe you’re just forced to live up to your family’s expectations or to choose what’s practical where money is a’ flowing.

You find yourself overran with subjects that you know are of little or no use to achieving your goals. You plead the conformists to please stop with the holistic education crap as they very well know that quite a number of students feel they could do away with the extra subjects on the prospectus, not to mention a reassuring cut on their tuition.

Your mood dampens when you are compelled to write something against your principles because it’s what your narrow-minded teacher wants to believe you’ve learned from him/her. Your flair for words becomes useless because as much as you want to give the divine (ha!) educator a piece of your radical mind, the last thing he/she wants is an opinion contrasting his/her own. You can always rise up to the challenge by roping in your own convictions. That is, if you’re strong-willed enough to see an unusually low mark on your grade sheet.

You rant about how your teacher’s soporific voice barely keeps you awake to understand the lessons, then the next thing you know you surprise yourself by laughing at another teacher’s corny bathroom jokes. You don’t know how it happens but you deliberately sit in front, make yourself noticed, and guess what, laugh (too unnaturally) at a funny story your teacher shares for the nth time. Your seatmate also laughs (too unnaturally) but unlike you, he’s just trying to be polite by giggling.

You’re finally free for the day. There’s still time to grab some Quesadillas or watch 1408 with your friends. But as you cheerfully amble along Langheim Road, you receive a text message from your on-and-off boyfriend, threatening you to get back together with him else he’ll kill himself (a.k.a. deliberately flunk his majors). Your sunny afternoon returns to its gloomy state, gloomier in fact than you when were inside the sleep-inducing classroom fifteen minutes ago. You know he’s faking it but still agrees to see him because, though you deny it, you still love him (cringe…cringe…).

You decide against eating and head instead to your meeting. You’re happy with your organization but you wish not to come face to face with co-members who think they’re all that when they truthfully aren’t worth an iota of attention. You coercively engage in small conversations (if you can call it that) but pray that the chitchat on boys and make-up or girls and basketball would soon end. You crave for brain-stimulating topics and gratifying talks but at the same time bear in mind to avoid morphing into a self-professed intellectual who, in all astounding wisdom, couldn’t seem to understand the words “Keep Your Voices Down”.

You’re done with your research, decide to skip dinner (again), and by the time you reach your apartment, your tummy’s uprising becomes unbearable. You inwardly smile at the silence of your abode and as you settle for a cracker, you start picking up your roommates’ discarded clothes and washing their used plates. The place would never be clean as you hope to be. And since they’re out for the weekend you realize how much you missed being alone. Sometimes you get tired of reluctantly cheering up to avoid frustratingly being asked “Okay ra ka?” or feign laughter to get your chums to shut up about your stern humorless expression. But at the end of the day you yearn for good company (who sometimes forces you to go out of your comfort zone) and perhaps a hundredfold of shame to fire up your otherwise bland existence.




*as published in the Weekly Sillimanian (September 26, 2007)