Crossroads

You know that point in a journey when you are faced with two roads that go opposite sides? You wish there was a sign for you pointing towards your destination, but there isn’t. And the choice is yours to make.  And you think travelling is the hardest part of your journey so far but you’re quite mistaken.  Decisions are bound to break you – again and again.  Why are they so hard to make?

Because I think I have the best of both worlds, but not really.  Long have I realized that I need to zero in on a solitary path if I want to thrive at something.  Feels like a crossroads – at her prime yet at sea floundering to go ashore her island of permanency.  I am not soul searching though; my life’s timeline has a clear demarcation sometime September of 2006 when I found myself – or to put it more accurately, when I was found.  If you ask me what I really want to do with my life, I could stare you straight in the eye without so much of a blink and not think twice of the answer.  I know what I was made to do. But how I am going to do it brings me to this point.  I may be able to do it a number of ways but that wouldn’t exactly yield the best and the very fact that I know it haunts.  So instead I ask, right now, how? Dreams come and go, some have rested quite eagerly in my heart but they can’t be chased altogether. So goes the elimination and slowly I pick some, leave some.  But it’s not enough.  Inside of me, there’s like this raging ball of fire burning for only one and I have to find it – or choose it to consume me.

Why am I even in law school? I must have made up my mind countless times about it, but I’m back to square one.  They say it’s normal to arrive at this point where you’ll try to figure out if it’s really for you.  There are nights – oftener now – when I’d rather do other stuff than study, days when I’d go to class mechanically, classes when I’d space out and find my mind wandering instead of focusing on the professor’s lecture.  Perhaps it’s the leniency. Second semester has been a far cry from the torment of first semester.  Professors are relatively less demanding.  But the desire to study shouldn’t be based on the terror level of the professor or the demand of the subject.  Regardless of the subject, I guess law school should always be law school.  You either absolutely want it or absolutely not.  So why does it feel like I’ve lost it?  Have I been disillusioned early on? I haven’t lost heart, have I?  Maybe this laxity is affording me more time to reflect as compared to the hullabaloo of last semester when thoughts of assessing life choices went to the backburner.  When you have no time to stop and think, you just press on and on even when your spirit’s desperately crying for a halt.  And when suddenly everything slows down, you suddenly catch yourself in a relapse or worse, at an inception.  I don’t know which is better.

I haven’t been through the friendliest of times during and right after the first semester.  I got a lot of first heartaches.  And when I say heartaches, I really mean it - drama aside.  But as mentioned, I really hadn’t had the time to indulge myself some reflections so I just went by the surge, scathing myself in the process.  But never mind the wounds; they don’t hurt as much when you’ve been through storms.  They seem to numb you at the onset, but they actually don’t.  Eventually you disregard them because you get bigger lesions.  What I am more concerned about is the bleakness before me.  I know what’s behind the fog and I am secure of that.  I just need to get it out of my sight.

But I never thought I’d find myself back here – or I knew perchance but I never really welcomed the idea.  It’s so familiar I want to puke.  I find myself in a paradox of getting used to unfamiliarity.

One can’t help it: why was I brought here in the first place? Why give back a dream that seemed only His to give when it feels like drifting away? I let it go once.  Afterwards I told myself that if and when it comes back, it’s mine for the taking.  But why does it feel like this? Did I just hear You wrong?

I get back the thrill every once in a while.  Then I lose it every once in a while.  Instability has always posed precarious dares - never a friend, always an obstinate foe.

Is it only to please mom and dad and the rest of the world who is dreaming for me? They have invested more than I have.  I can imagine the devastation it would bring if I say I’d had enough.  They’ve dreamed this dream for me and with me since time immemorial.  But I catch myself musing about the possibilities of my alternate world, what I could be doing if I wasn’t pursuing this.  I catch myself with questions. Why am I toiling during the best years of my life? Why am I letting myself absorb all the stress when this time of my life could be the most stress-free?  Why am I stuck in a classroom when I could be exploring the world? Why am I subjecting myself to this when I could be doing other things I also want to do? Why am I stuck here? Let’s see. At one point, I wanted to be in the Judiciary, but the institution seems snobby to ordinary people, like they’re creating a world of their own – utopian in aspiration but not close in fact.  So I figured I want to become a legislator instead if only to make laws more sensible or make sensible laws.  Bottom line is actually public service, veiled in the grime of politics.  I haven’t lost heart actually.  It’s just that it’s all a haze.  And up until I get to that point of lucidity, I’ll hang about this path.  I guess I would just have to fight and fight even without knowing if it’s all futile.  I couldn’t really stop, could I? I couldn’t really bring myself to a standstill.  I have to keep moving because the rest of the world won’t stop for me.  I am staying because I am hoping that even as I choose to continue, soon enough the mist will dissipate.  I am staying in the hopes that it is here and in the process that I will actually figure it out.  I am led to believe that answers won’t really come if I stop. Soon enough and not belatedly, it will fall into place.

Even amidst all the burns and bruises, I think I didn’t hear You wrong.  Even when it seems like time passed by mockingly, I will remain. I just needed that thud inside me, that leap to know it’s all alive.

Yeah, it’s all alive.