Friday, March 25, 2011

Thawing

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For the longest time, I've been nursing a numb heart. I don't know how it became so frigid, but I hardly attribute it to the scarring prison lock-down that was high school. I'm not even talking about an inability to love romantically - I'm referring to an inability to feel compassion, an inability to care about things that move normal people. Undoubtedly, it's benefited me on the whole. I've learned how to listen to my friends' problems without batting an eyelash, offering possible courses of action, and how to bounce-back almost immediately from any roadblock. More than once, I've heard people call me strong. And it felt good, knowing deep down, that nothing could touch me. Because only a handful of things in my life mattered.

Lately though, I've been getting a bit emotional again. I'm not sure why either, but the feelings suddenly just shot up, until I realized my heart was functioning properly once more. I became capable of relating to movies Mary likes, movies like Never Let Me Go and stuff. Watching Skins, my strongest response wasn't my typical 'I'm-so-lucky-I-live-a-normal-life' kneejerk - I actually felt sad for the series' characters. And reading Beneath the Lilac Tree by archangelBBQ on FFNet, I felt moved instead of insecure and jealous.

What is happening to me? Why am I becoming human?

Saturday, March 19, 2011

brainstorming

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The tambayan smelled odd when we got there this morning. Something like a combination of days-old Rodic's tapsilog and accumulated dust. Or maybe the smell from the dead cat we found in one of the ground-level cubby holes. I don't know - it hardly mattered. The air flowing in through the window, the unlocked gates, mitigated the weird odor anyway.

In sum, we spent almost seven hours poring over our LArch 1 project. I did the pre-final editing - what fansubbers would call typesetting - and wrote part of the script. Jeck lent his voice for the dubbed parts. Michael lent his music-mixing skills, honed from years with a world-renowned choir. Reg left early, but did a great job tweaking our amateur videos all the same. Nike and Alvin discussed things like al fresco dining, bubble fountains, and sinusoidal patterns. And Anina did odd-jobs - this task entailed impromptu entertainment, of course.

I've never had to work this much for a group project before. To be honest, I've never truly worked in a group before. I don't study, much less engage in group studying, and I prefer being left alone with a book or my computer. But today was fun. It was eye-watering, neck-straining, back-breaking hardcore fun. I'd never imagined working with other people - all of you able to contribute something significant to the final product - could be satisfying.

Even after Reg and Nike had already left, we were still at it with our lazy bantering. Michael was trying to leech flash games from my collection, while I tried to convince him that was a bad idea because Lavinia hasn't been exposed to anti-virus systems for three years. Jeck was tutoring Alvin and Anina how to best hit their target in that dratted viral game, Angry Birds. The lesson ended with Alvin feeling very bad because he couldn't defeat the pigs. (They are pigs, right? The opponents in Angry Birds?)

We parted, minutes and a few more words past four, tired, hungry, nursing mild headaches. My time might have been better spent working on that group paper for PI100, or writing my revised drafts for CW10. But I had fun. Tiring fun.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

finally, i belong?

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The Normal Curve looks like this:

For the first time in my life, I am Normal.

Like something straight out of a cheesy American movie plot - of a type so depressing you dare not shed tears - my existence staged its peak during high school. (Aren't I too young to be going through a midlife crisis?) These college days have filtered by in a succession of multi-colored pixels compressed to form teenage girls in sailor outfits, and I don't remember anything huge or life changing that happened to me in the last four years. No falling in and out of love. No tears caused by an intrepid, close-knit Catholic school faculty. Definitely no lasting effort to reinvent myself for my own sake. For four years, life just happened. Only it didn't happen remarkably enough.

I would offer my entire Harry Potter collection - novellas and all - to be one of those girls who bloom in college. The type to excel so rapidly my progress'll shock everyone. The type to register any progress at all. But I'm past my prime. I've shown all I could show in high school, when my world was smaller, and the other fish liked my scales well enough to think they shine. Here, in the microcosm of the bigger world, I am fish feed. I am the wriggling worm whales look at when they're unsure of their size. And when they see me, their doubts evaporate. Yes. Compared to some, I'm good enough. Or so I think a whale would think.

Consider this my rant page. Or a neon-flagged blog post in a sea of angst-filled soliloquys. The cutesy, witty site mast fooled you, dinnit? I'm your resident Holden Caulfield, just less eloquent. A perfect, well-balanced life can do tortures to an idle brain.

Here's to hoping I'm just hormonal.