The Third Letter I Sent To My Friend

I think college has ruined me.

Okay...maybe it hasn't ruined me YET. But it's definitely leading there. I'm not pertaining to the dissipation of my innocence caused by the frequent encounters with realities of life that I never really knew existed since I've been mostly sheltered from it until my high school years. That's a whole other topic that I should share some other time. For now, I have to deal with a more pressing matter about my death. Yep, I'm dying. I'm not overacting. This isn't a joke either.

 I really am dying. 

I guess it's safe to say that since our friendship is nearing two years now, you already know how I feel about writing. I have a deep, fevorous relationship with words, poetry, compositions, and the like. My soul is basically composed of 90% literature, 5% goodness, and 5% evil (the percentage of good and bad is arguable though). Writing is who I am. My compositions are the only things that I can really call as my own. They are my most valued possessions because those are the only things that can absolutely and utterly reflect me. I don't write for a purpose other than the fact that my entire being is contingent on weaving words together to form coherent paragraphs. To me, writing is very sacred. It's more than just a piece of art. It's not even a past time. It is my life. It is my identity. And as soon as I stepped into the grounds of UP, I was forced to unattach myself from writing. I was forced to devalue writing.

Sure, being a student was much more stressful when I was in high school. Time was always an issue. I had no time to sleep, no time to eat (a decent meal,obviously. I stuffed myself with unhealthy snacks like a hungry hippo during my junior and senior year that's why I look like a pink blob right now), no time for the interactive kind of social life (I'm talking about the one where you go out with friends, not the chat-on-facebook-and-constantly-subtweet-each-other-on-twitter type), no time for my family, and barely enough time to deal with issues that normal teenagers go through. I almost always had no time however, my ideas never really dried out. There were times when I would suddenly wake-up in the middle of the night, turn-on my laptop, and just type away. I would just type profusely as if my life depended on it. I had never seem to run out of words. My mind just felt like a melting-pot of ideas and emotions all stewed together in a colorful, eloquent, and untempered way. I had no one to write for but myself so there were really no boundaries to consider. I was just always operating on an explosion of cogitations which produced unfiltered, unedited, and sometimes wanton compositions that had ME written all over it.

But college seem to have drained the creative juices out of me. I no longer experience the same impulses to write like how I did before because my once Promethean mind has turned barren. The space where my words are kept has slowly been taken-over by worries about my future. 

I used to know how to strike a balance between being an idealist and a pragmatist. That skill helped me survive the demanding life of being a student and at the same time, being true to who I was. But when I started tertiary education, all I could worry about was my future. Everything that I do and anything that I enroll myself into should be of value to the career I want to pursuit.The things that I did for leisure before became mere distractions. Whenever I pick-up a book to read, a voice in my head bombards me with questions like "Is this going to help you become a lawyer?" "Is this going to help you through Math, Stat, and Econ?"; and when the answer to those questions is No, the voice tells me to "just throw it away." I could no longer paint because. again, it's not a skill an Economist or a Lawyer needs. I couldn't dance,sing or act because these do not involve numbers and charts, which clearly what I'm supposed to be focusing on. Everything that I gave a premium to suddenly became senseless including my writing.

I am not sure what caused this shift in paradigm. Maybe it's the pressure imposed by the society which dictates that only numbers will get you to places. Maybe it's the stiff competition inside the university. Maybe it comes with age—a natural phase everyone goes through as we mature. Or maybe it's self-inflicted. Maybe it's my own fault why I'm turning into this sick person who's bordering on insanity. Maybe I could turn things around, take better control of my life and dictate how it's suppose to turn out. I really don't know the answer and quite honestly, I'm afraid to find out that a perfectly rational answer exists because if it does, it would only act as an impetus for me to hate myself more.

I used to not care whenever I'm writing. Typing and scribling was my source of freedom from all kinds of toxicity and pressure. However, my recent struggle with my craft has left me clamoring for any kind of alternative which would help me regain what I had lost. So I did the unthinkable. I tried writing for people. It was a ludicrous idea for me at first, and I really wanted to burn myself at stake for even considering it because writing for another person's entertainment was never my cup of tea. I wanted to keep my compositions pristine and boundless—free from any kind of influence that would utilize my words to reflect something that wasn't me. But I was desperate. I needed to trick my brain into thinking that there was actually a pressing necessity to write. That's why I subscribed to the demands of the general populace; I created a fanfiction. I created a blog. I created a site. I used these things so that I can have a reason to write. I used the fans that I gained and their demands for updates to mum the voice in my head that keeps stirring me to just do things that were sensible and practical. Don't get me wrong, I am still proud of the achievements I garnered for the things I have posted online. However, these things never really did anything to feed my soul. They felt like staplewires which temporarily held me together, preventing the growing hole from further ripping me apart. 

Now what is the conclusion to all of these? Nothing, really. I didn't have a clear agenda when I wrote this. I wasn't able to come-up with any kind of enlightening realization either. This is just me sharing (or ranting) what has been going through my head for quite some time now. And just like any other senseless crap I've shared with you, this is going to end ugly. No closure. No anything. Just a bunch of PS and PPS after this paragraph.

P.S. I hope you haven't gotten tired of reading the useless crap I send you every night.

P.P.S. If you're comfortable enough, maybe you could send me some of your thoughts about random things too.