My teacher said to write a Personal Essay and so, I did.
Caitlin and I had a laugh at Maginhawa at 1:00 P.M today. We are both having our usual meals; the waiter knows. I sip my Matcha Latte and she sips her decaf Spanish Latte. Neither of us chose to get drunk in caffeine. We do not need to be awake for an all-nighter anymore; she, who used to cross arms with me every single day for almost eight months on the way to our classes, is bound for Singapore in a week.
Walking alone to my friends’ condo, while waiting for the stoplight to turn green, I had a conversation with Sean, a senior whose outfit belonged on the cover of Vogue. Multiple conversations, in fact. They told me about dyeing their hair after leaving our private Catholic school and their style, where they bought their “eccentric, chic, and vintage” clothes, then proceeded to compliment me for mine despite having a green stain on my white tube top.
Finally up high on the 17th floor, seeing eye-to-eye with the lights of Katipunan Avenue, Yohan, Cammy, and I got ready. Eyeliners were winged, eyebags were hidden, tummies were tucked, and no creasing was found at the sides of our cheeks. We rushed to the meet-up place, where me and my friends had arranged a small party to celebrate the freedom from our 6-year sentence we called, “Highschool”. It was fun, glittery, glamorous, and utterly messy.
The sun is about to rise and yet here we are, still bright awake, and outside an infamous fast food chain. Less and less cars are passing by the avenue. It was more trucks than anything for that matter. She, who I have religiously secretly liked for a year, has been in realization that she likes me back. She holds my hand and confesses the ache of her heart whenever she sees me and refuses to talk to me. While I share the same pain as the person who had half of my heart in the past year, fortunately, I have graduated, not just from High School, but from her, too.
All these may have happened according to plan, but all these happened in a span of five minutes, too. All these happened as I’m in my blue polo uniform and tight pants, while staring at my teacher, who was talking about something or something and how time is of the essence. I figured I have 5 essays due in the next few days, Php 20 and a few dispensable receipts in my wallet, and a 13 out of 15 in my last quiz. Unlike what the teacher was talking about and the dreams I dream at night, daydreams, I remember.
In daydreams, I am awake, conscious, and above all, in-charge.
Daydreams are a player of time and I’ve learned from a young age how time is restless, continuous, and unforgiving.
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Birthdays become repetitive. Classes seem to never end. Deadlines catch up. Food becomes a teller of hours and measures, especially when one is thirteen and alone in her room. Gym sessions are doubled, tripled, or quadrupled based on the minutes spent on the mirror. A second of a card swipe would steal months of hard work that isn’t even mine. The beloved, who has only experienced my love, so innocent and pure, for four years, will turn to ashes.
Time will never stop, but daydreams can slow it down and transform it for you. Suddenly, fifty minute lectures turn into ten. Hours on the treadmill is a stroll at Central Park or the streets of Vienna. My body is as perfect as the upcoming Miss Universe and my aunts and uncles cannot say a word about the Carbonara I’m about to devour. I have the right posture and words while arguing with my mother about how I should stop biting my nails. I did not tell her it relieves my anxiety; instead, I proposed having clear polish. I boast the additional years playing with my grandfather and the red rocking horse he gifted me before he was rushed to the hospital on my 4th birthday celebration, but actually, that never happened, because someday, he will walk me down the aisle with my dad, who has freed himself from smoking, in my right arm.
Day dreaming opens for me an escape route– a way for things to be how I want them to be, even if it is only in my imagination. When time doesn’t owe anyone anything, daydreams may become debts in place of one’s reality.
The thing with debts, though, is that they must be paid. In the state of daydreaming, I may feel alive. But life unfolds before me and yet I am unbeknownst to it. While I have a habit of significantly, unconsciously, and unfortunately falling into the rabbit hole of daydreaming, I have found it to be hopeless rather than hopeful for this reason. It is easy to assume that thinking in power to change everything would give the thinker hope, but where is hope in dreams that wastes time in paralyzing you in only ever dreaming?
That particular moment when I widen my eyes, adjust my thick frames, stretch out my shoulders, lay my feet flat on the floor, and take a deep breath, I ascertain that these dreams may never happen if I don’t stop. I’ll stay stuck in the ideas and thoughts of my mind if I don’t use my hands to do them. Plans stay on my Google Calendar if I don’t show up. My five minutes will never become the rest of my life if I restlessly linger solely in my mind. Realizations and preparations will only ever be beneficial if it is actualized. They’re dreams, not to live in, but probably, to look forward to.
Like everything else I love and love doing genuinely, I find certain parts of it to hate too. That’s what makes me devoted and forgiving of it. Amidst knowing what is coming for me and what may come from it, I still choose it, anyway.
Hence, here I am, still dreaming day and night. I’ll continue to stubbornly and willfully dream of what was and what’s next, but never forget to then consciously find hope in it. And fortunately for us human beings, the only way is through, face first and head on because with the right balance of visioning and living, dreams can come true.
The hope of dreams is found in living and experiencing itself.
