Sunday afternoon is like a horror movie for this every seven-year old. This seven-year old who despite getting good grades(except Math of course!) still fears the pang of school. From its prison-drill class sessions to its warden-like teachers, school is this menacing prison in the mind of this fledgling seven year old. The seven-year old wishes to live out of this prison, but with a care of his solid-heart grandma who wields a “licking” stick and who could honestly scare the heck of Grim Reaper to his wits ends, the wishes of freedom is nothing but a hopeful myth. Anyway-

Wait wait wait!! Am I narrating the wrong thing? Yes I am narrating the wrong thing! Sorry guys! Now for the real story.

There once was a fledgling 17-year old who goes to this….uhm….school. He is a high schooler who has a skin of cactus and a tongue of razorblade. One time he was having his….uhm….breakfast, I mean dinner, I mean creampie custard, I mean lunch when he saw a beautiful lady walk by him. The lady got the nicest...what do you call that?...donkey I mean birdie I mean ass that the good lord Brian I mean Jesus had ever created…….wait that doesn’t sound right? Hey reader, do you think I sound right?(leans on the camera) wait what do you mean by that?(leans on the camera) Oh, so you mean to say I ain’t telling the right story? Oh okay well then I’ll tell the real story.

The piper went to Europe to clean the-

Reader:Hey! Wrong story!

Sorry what?

Reader:Reading a wrong story!

Oh sorry,  let’s start over.

(Rewind, rewind)

Okay  guys my name is Christian Jocson and I just invented the time machine and….(fast forward...fast forward) and I wanna go back when I first saw Amber’s ass.

Reader:Hey stay serious(clicks the serious button)

Now Am….ount of idiocy can now be

Reader:God this sucks!

(LIfe switcher on...programming….programming...,.And)

Reader:Okay, this should work.

Okay guys my name is Christian Jocson. Currently life has been quite a bittersweet pill for me. I got Psych SL test on Friday, APUSH test on the same Friday, and an AP Lit test on Wednesday which really sucks if you know that your noodle is of Top Ramen not of Tortellini

Butthurt conscience:Hey racist bastard! Asians are better!

Don’t care conscience:Cut it I am making an analogy.

Butthurt conscience:Well make something that…

Hush you filthy consciences! this ain’t a race class. Anyway, sorry guys so as I was saying, it is really bitter to take a young man’s test(Sugarcoat conscience:He meant college course) especially if you have a mediocre mind. However, there is also something sweet. One sweet thing is that I am still standing and has not noosed my head on the 378-inch building(Sugarcoat conscience: He meant commit suicide),(superego:Stupid idiot who doesn’t think) which is good cause it is worth living beyond the pressure.

Superego:Hey Christian you’re down to a few words you know. Why don’t you…

Id:Hey don’t rush it! You can’t rush an art in process. You-

Superego: Hey who told you to-

The...uhm, other conscience:Hush guys he’s about to proceed.

On the midst of hellish school day came floods of memories about my childhood. On those floods, one thing stood out. And it wasn’t sweet(Grammar snob conscience:Hey don’t start with conj-) one, rather it is bitter. Kinda ironic to think on a time where you feel regurgitating the most from the bitterness of sweet pill. But(Grammar snob conscience: Don’t start with a conju-) sometimes tasting something that we do not like(lest you like bitter stuff) can make us long or appreciate tasting something we like. Everyone of us has their own telenovela(Annoying conscience:Haha so cheesy Filipino!!!!-) And in every telenovela there is always this moment where a star-crossed female lover(Sarcastic conscience:Yeah Shakespeare You-) who gets separated to the male ones(sorry for grammatical inconsistency) and the male chases the car, or bus if you are middle-class, or a jeepney if you are poor, or a tricycle if you-just feel like being unique and not doing a filmmaking cliche, but realizes it is too late and she’s gone. Quite a bitter image don’t you agree?(Reader(on their mind):Yes that is pretty bitter), but the good thing is that this male lover out of intense love waited and even write letters to her. His love grew like a burning hearth. Dreamed of her, imagined her ehhh..,you get the point. The point is that a bitter memory gives way to a sweeter one(not too sweet though lest you get type two diabetes.)

Reader:Wait, so is this a love story then!

Reader:Oh schucks I thought this is an action movie!

Reader:I was hoping he’ll turn into superman and stop the bus!

Reader:Wait, what’s going on? I just woke up.

Reder:Man he should have digged on her and she might have stayed.

Reader:So what’s your thesis?

There is a loud clamor and pandemonium of voices as written in this paper which is the one you are looking now. Then-

Silence! A great memory should never be rushed! And yes reader I am capable that I am writing too much, that I am two pages in and you are probably getting bored to death. But you are making me break the fourth wall and I am trying to stay true to the rules of prose, which- I am no longer doing.”

Anyway, let’s get to the meat of thought…...Hey reader, what are you doing?

Reader:Is the sweet like...too sweet? I have type 2 diabetes and my doctor said that-

Boy we’re not eating it. We’re listening to eat. And how can you have a doctor if you are a figment of my imagination? I’m literally writing your lines you know.

Reader:Wait, really?

Eh, nevermind. Just nevermind really! Time to shut you down! Now back to the story. We all have our own telenovela in life. It may not be exactly that Romeo and Juliet-like type that I showed you but the aspects regarding loss and love all correlates to any of our lives. A loss of friend is just as painful; loss of passion; of motivation, or even the reality. Everything is a part of one general  prospect

I was only seven years old when I remembered the taste of this bitter pill. If I could describe the bitterness in this pill, it is like taking the fever medicine I took when I was roughly...uh...seven years old I think. It is a type of bitterness that I find quite elusive. It is like my brain registers it to be sweet yet my tongue registers it to be bitter. I remember a jittery feeling on my head and a light feeling on my stomach and how both of them are having a debate whether for me to throw up-or rejoice on what I have taken.

This memory is like that, or maybe even bitterer. It was a dreary afternoon morning and the roads were a pandemonium during that time. The sky was as grey as the impotent ash which is not uncommon in a metro-manila city, the sun was setting in his bedroom, the smokes of rude jeepneys runs through the windows of  Toyota SUV we were riding. I was sitting in the car holding clasping on a water bottle between my hands. We were like driving underwater-a typical thing in a Manila afternoon where rows of cars, trucks, and vehicles drive in unison not realizing any faces-or any hearts. Just keep driving away like robots in an assembly line.

I was starting to get bored during the Trek. God, it felt like a race of the tortoises! My seven-year old brain cannot take this anymore! We’ve been stuck in this freeway for like an eternity and I want something quick! I want something fast! I want something-

Then for the first time in like a few minutes I saw the face who probably swallowed the bitterest pill. Actually it is not like it at all, rather it is way beyond that irked and grimacing reaction of the pill on your tongue. It is an excruciating one similar to the ones where you fall of from a chair and punctured your delicate scalp or when you slipped on a water bottle and ended up crunching your arm painfully to a wrong orientation. It is like that, only it was not of the flesh but of the soul. One that doesn’t have any prescribed pill at all.

She was looking at the headrest rains of tears welling in her eyes. Her eyes are as red as the crimson color of Nemipterus fish which is painfully coupled by the lamenting shape of her sad-arched mouth and her painfully-contracting cheekbones. She wears a face akin to the ones in a funeral. A funeral that seems to be the hardest twig to have ever puncture a gentle heart.

And just like pressing a button, a tear slithers down from my eye finding refuge on my oversized yellow shirt and my face contracts a painful shape of expression. It is arching up. Arching up like that of my grandma’s and suddenly I felt a dull pain in my heart.

“Naynay, that’s how I called her,  why are you crying?” I asked her “Are you sad? There’s nothing to be sad. Mommy’s going to be in America for a short while and she’ll come back.”I told her trying to choke up my sobs despite it seeming to crush my face to get out.

Naynay looked at me with those sorrowful eyes, heaving heavily on her sobs. Her cries suddenly bursted into a timid bawl, the ones that is bold but not yet courageous, as she looks at me. I continue to look at her as my sobbing grew exponentially and I saw in her eyes the looks of pity and guilt-and I realized that this departure is bitterer than I thought it would be.

I looked at my mom anger starting to build inside me like a boiling water in a kettle. Have they lied to me? Is mom really just be awhile in America? How long is she really going to be gone? Is she going to be gone that she would miss the times where I get my first communion, my elementary graduation, my first Academic excellence, my first crush problem my-

I looked at my mom heaving heavily, my anger bursting through every arteries and veins of my body. I felt a boiling warmth crawl up to my flesh as I look at her sympathetic face. Her face is no different than my grandma’s they could be interchanged.

“I am leaving baby. I am going to America but I promise I’ll come back.” she said.

“Is that true?”I asked “Are you coming back?”

Then a single tear slithered from her eye. “Yes baby.”

I felt my muscle relax and the fumes subside leaving the cold and icy pain of sadness in my body.

“How long are you going to be gone?” I asked trying to choke my sobs.

My mom sniffed and heaved and she put her head on my chest. Feeling her seems like I felt a concrete upon my heart. Like it is a heavy lament. A lament a mother feels when torn apart from her cub.

“Not too long.”she replied.

“How not too long?”I asked.

She hesitated and in a mouthful voice she said “Because after those times I would still remember your face and your favorite meal.”

I nodded to her but not really of approval but because I felt the pangs of fatigue in my bloodshot eyes and a slight wither in my flesh. I am weary. I am too weary to feel an emotion. And so I laid down and my mom stroke my hair then van swings right where the Ninoy Aquino INternational Airport. I guess I am going to save my heartbreak when I have the energy.

Persona:Finally! It is over!

Reader(sobbing uncontrollably):God! What a touching story!

Reader:Nah! More like a creative wankery in my opinion. I bet he fabricated the story to make it more appealing! Not counting on it.

The “duh” conscience:Hey you know you created this.

The…..conscience:What do you mean? I-\

The “duh” conscience: You created this prose for some competition you know. You thought it would be great to embellish and exaggerate some stuff so-

The…..conscience:Hey I don’t know what you are talking about! You-

The “duh” conscience:You really are a (insert insult in here) if you haven’t figured it out.

(As the two consciences battle argue against how really existent they are, Christian Jocson, which is I, is  almost relieved except that he is still typing this exposition-whatever the name of (insert cuss here) this is thanks to my brain and into my conscious reasoning. And so, he which is Christian Jocson who is I is almost done just let me finish this long-ass exposition which I already did if you excluded this last phrase…..Or actually this whole italicized paragraph...or if you want maybe the arguments and banters of my conscience….Or maybe the time where I had to remember what I was supposed to read…..