Self-depreciated

I am so disappointed with myself.

For being so selfish and self centered. I had no right.
For being such a spoilt brat who expects life to be much easier.
For having the thought about giving up when things get difficult.
For not pushing myself hard enough.
For being such a crybaby when finding out there was no one to come home to.
For not being nice to those who deserve it.
For being so rude to those who mattered to me.
For taking things for granted.
For feeling so different than the others and hating myself more because I shouldn’t.
For not trying. Taking more chances, step out of my comfort zone.
For not quite having the strength to fight myself. To do better. To be better. To think better.
For not being able to forgive myself. Or others.
For not knowing the boundaries between more and enough.
For being this old yet feeling like I haven’t achieved anything to be proud of.

I feel like I’m running on a treadmill.

Lucky

There I was, crammed inside an angkot- the usual manner of transportation that took me to and from work. There were twenty of us wedged inside that half-bus-half-van, getting used to the pain that we were about to endure for the next forty five minutes it took us to get to our destination.

I could feel sweat trickling down my back, between the cleft of my breasts, and underneath my knees. Mosquitoes feasting on any bits of our exposed skins. My face was sticky and oily and I couldn’t be bothered fishing out for tissue out of my tatty black tote – there wasn’t enough space for my hands to move around anyway and it wasn’t like anyone would give a shit what I looked like – everyone was tired and sweaty like I was.

The level of humidity in that car was like a goddamn sauna, but people preferred the windows to be closed because the wind blew our hair around and the combination of the breeze and the humid air made some people sick. I thought to myself, “No wonder my workmates kept telling me I looked too damn skinny – it was the daily sauna treatment that I get.”

Some overweight guy who was sitting in front of me stank of sweat and cigarettes – some skinny girl’s knees were digging into my thighs. I moved, but every inch would only allow me different taste of pain.
The dimmed light on the roof was disorienting – it was strangely comforting though and the humidity was making me feel somewhat sleepy. I saw the others were slowly nodding off already, and some even swayed unconsciously, following the swerves of the car and waking up at every sharp brake in between. Sometimes I wished I could capture this view – of tired faces in every shapes and form, waiting, enduring, our minds somewhere else but there.

The girls at the front seat were chatting animatedly, their soft lull of voices blended together with the noise of the car.

Someone nearby exhaled – I instinctively held my breath. I got better by practice not to accidentally inhale other people’s bad breath. Usually though I was lucky enough to sit next to an over perfumed factory worker so the floral scent would camouflage the unpleasant smells around me.

Struggling to put my earphones on, 311′s “Amber” blared out through the tiny speakers and instantly I felt better. A small breeze of air seemed to escape from a window that hadn’t been shut properly and it went straight to me. What bliss.

The girls at the front burst out laughing for some reason. I smiled – happy to hear them being happy. I thought about the ocean – vast blue ocean and out of nowhere, completely unrelated, I thought to myself, “Someday, that’s the view I’m going to be waking up to, every morning, for the rest of my life.”

Suddenly things didn’t seem so bad, or painful. I knew I was there for a reason. I was crammed inside that car in that particular period of my life for a reason that only God knew why. And I believed that whatever it was, it was for the good of me.

For the small pain that I had to endure.
For the struggle that I had to deal with at work.
For the laughter I shared with my workmates.
For the feeling of doing something worthwhile, instead of bumming around all day like I used to, before I was employed.
For the difficulties I faced at work.
For the annoying people I’d like to give the finger to.
For the realization that there was still so much for me to learn.

And I felt so lucky to be alive. Truly lucky to be given so much in such a small time, it was overwhelming.

It was during these times that I felt so loved and blessed and that life and living itself was beyond extraordinary.

I remember

I was at my dad’s office for a design training the whole day today – mine and his are closely linked since the company where he works produces poly-cellonium which is used medicine packaging and I work in a pharmaceutical company, who produces the medicine.

I hadn’t been there for ages, and the last time I could remember was when I was little and my dad would bring me around and everyone would coo and say how much we looked alike. I used to enjoy being ‘paraded’ around the office because what child wouldn’t? There was the attention and the rare occasion that my dad felt proud of having me with him – the kind of pride a father feels about his own daughter, looking so much like him yet so different, and when people looked really carefully they would soon realize that we did look very much alike.

Now that I’m much older, it seemed weird and surreal, because as soon as I stepped in, the traces of my childhood memory about the place were completely replaced by the reality that took in really fast. As like any other huge factories, the place smelled heavily of chemical stuff, but it was the kind of smell you would tolerate just because it brought you a certain pleasant memory, especially because I remembered that my dad’s friends were really friendly and always laughing and threw jokes to each other, and how comfortable and neat my dad’s personal office was, with the little gimmicks he received from his clients at the pharmaceutical companies.

We came early, so he showed me around the factory to see how the stuff was being produced – something he’d never done before. I didn’t ask for it, he just did it. But I sensed it was the closed-connected feeling that he was trying to reach out to me, trying to make me feel comfortable because perhaps he didn’t want me to be sitting at the guest room being unattended and bored.

After a long day of dealing with Macs computers and getting enough poly-pitch measuring in my mind and overburdened with having to alter our usual ways of designing, I had enough and I wanted to leave. I searched for my dad because I wanted to go home at five on the dot-the privilege I rarely deserved compared to my own working hours-and my dad told me to come upstairs and wait for him because we had ten minutes to go.

I didn’t know my way around the place that well since it had undergone a lot of massive changes ever since, but I managed to figure it out and as soon as I got there I was in for a big shock. How different the place looked now – my dad was placed in an open-plan area where everyone’s desks were adjacent to each others’, papers stacked messily on his desk, an old computer with a “Windows 98″ wallpaper on his monitor. The people that I remembered were always so friendly and jokable were now wearing glasses, each in their own desks with the same resigned state as my dad, no longer encompassing the same reaction I used to get whenever I had the fun occasion to visit.

I felt like my heart was just about ready to break.

I don’t know. Perhaps it was just them getting old. The state of the office. How much everything had changed. How my dad had worked there for over two decades and instead of getting more appreciated he was now being ‘demoted’ into a sad state that made me want to cry. My dad’s retiring in two years – imagine leaving a place where you’ve worked for over twenty years in the condition that pretty much states, “you’re just here because we’re waiting for you to retire so we can replace you with someone younger who doesn’t waste as much money on health insurance as you do”. And it wasn’t just him – it was his work colleagues who’d been there for as long as he was, with that kind of defeated and tired look on their faces, like they really didn’t like what was going on but they couldn’t do anything about it.

Maybe a part of me feels a cold blanket of fear surrounding me because that’s how I’d probably end up to be if I chose to go through the same path that he did. Maybe I worry as much as he does for what’s going to happen when he retires-and to think that it had never been such an important issue to me before. Maybe it was a part of another happy childhood memory taking off its rose-colored glasses-what was once remembered as something sweet had turned into something heartbreakingly sad. Maybe it was the remaining love of a daughter to her father. Maybe I wasn’t prepared to see another side of my dad I never really knew; that he was a human being too, with the problems I could identify with, with the frustration to something that was out of his league, that he was not as powerful as I – or any other little girls would – thought, no matter how negative or positive the statement would seem.

I could identify to the desperation that suddenly he’s that age and he’s about to retire soon and all his life flashed before his eyes, and now what? Where does life go after twenty years of hard work and suddenly the looming thought of being unemployed entered the mind and it doesn’t really go by the expectation of how life should be? I’m twenty four and the thought that I should make my own course in life scares the bejesus out of me, because I felt like I haven’t achieved anything and that I haven’t worked hard enough.

But my dad.

I mean, he’s fifty two. It kills me to want to know how he must have felt to be that age and still having the same fear that I feel, whenever I think about life.

I feel like I’ve aged several more years today, now that I know what he knows and I feel what he feels.

When he drove us home, he complained about the motorbike riders, how they pissed him off so badly but how he didn’t mind anymore about those assholes who drove their cars so recklessly, as if they owned the road. I tried to cheer him up by telling him about what I’d learned that day and how funny it was that his work colleagues didn’t seem to realize that we were related until we told them so. I snuck a look at him and felt a growing admiration to his patience of trying to deal with his abrupt change of mood knowing that he had high blood pressure and being in that kind of working condition didn’t back him down.

At that moment he was exactly who he was – my dad.

I had always liked the way the sun looked around that time because when you were in a car those little rays of lights got you more in the eyes but you didn’t really mind it because it was warm and soft and after being trapped in an air-conditioned room the warmth was enough to make you feel better.

I felt safe with my dad. Safe to know he was taking home – that we were going home.

I remember these days how much more worried I became, whenever he came home later than usual. How quiet the house felt when he wasn’t home, even though I usually got home after eight and he was already in bed, the lights of the TV flickered through the lattices on top of his bedroom door.

I remember even further back when he used to carry me on his shoulder and I would spread my arms and he would pretend we were aero planes. I remember when I was little we would go out in the evening looking for herbal drink and he’d get me the one with the raw eggs and honey. I remember just two weeks ago he and I went to have dinner, just the two of us, and I was telling him about my senior who was giving me a hard time and that we were actually having a father-daughter conversation. I remember how I couldn’t stop crying for three hours straight today – something I haven’t done in a very, very long time.

I know that none of what I’m writing is making any sense whatsoever, because it’s jumping all over the place, from one thing to another. I remember so much in so little time, and I oversee the things that had disappointed me in the past, because I choose to.

I’m writing this because I want to remember, what I felt and realized today, and how, even though I have ten more bricks on my back, I have never felt so light before. Because I remember, and I decide, right there and then, that I would do anything to make it work so that my parents wouldn’t feel like they have been living in vain.

This piece was written on Tuesday, August 8th 2006 at 08:00 pm