Excerpts, Chronicles, and Pains of Growing Up

Written by:

Mark Francis G. Ng

Author's Note: This literary work appeared in the A.Y. 2006-2007 issue of The Auditor, the Official Publication of the Bicol University Junior Philippine Institute of Accountants (BUJPIA). The author was Creative Editorial Consultant of the said publication.

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I need not mention his name. He said even if I did, it would not matter. No one wanted to know anyway – at least that was his opinion. People see him as how they see him. In most cases, they never cared. In most cases, too, he didn’t care either. It’s as if he has built a certain detachment from the people around him, and maybe from the world even. He admits that he is used to building worlds which he could treat and call as his own… worlds that to him were perfect… worlds that he could run to every time he felt rejected… worlds where he could freely cry without anyone seeing him do so… worlds different from the one he’s living in and trying to escape from.

He’s twenty years old, but he told me that yesterday he was just twelve. Of course I didn’t take his words literally. I know he meant something else… something more than his spoken words. Somehow, what they said about him was true. They said he was brilliant; that he was smart, witty, disciplined; that he’s close to becoming a perfectionist, always aiming for excellence in everything he does; that he’s persuasive, with his words resembling authoritative orders. For these reasons, I understood why certain people admired him… why certain people somehow hated him… and why certain people seemed to fear him. But I wanted to know more about him. I wanted to know him on a personal basis, not know him because of what others say about him.

I waited for him to talk to me. I mean, he would talk to me occasionally, but more often than not, he would hesitate to do so. Every time he talked to me, he would tell of things that were utterly ordinary… things I already know. You might ask why I know those things. I have been with him for almost a decade already. Given that period of time, I should already know. I’m yearning for him to talk to me more… for him to tell me about the things I wanted him to tell me – the real things. I kept my patience. I waited, until finally, he decided to open up.

He told me he wasn’t used to talking to me that way. He would often describe himself as a reserved person. He told me that he was good at voicing out his ideas on a lot of things in the academic sense of those things, but when it came to voicing out what he really felt about certain things apart form their “academic” counterparts – the humane, emotional side of things – to him it seemed like a daunting task. What he usually does is to keep all those feelings to himself. He would talk about certain things but he never elaborates them. It’s as if he’s imposed certain restrictions upon himself, inhibitions that deter the true words he really meant instead of the subtle ones he would usually muster. But this time, it was different. He was breaking away from the rules he’s imposed upon himself. He decided to tell me the real things about him… things that I wanted to know more about him from the very start. He told me hundreds of things about himself… things he wouldn’t normally tell other people, even his closest and truest friends.

He shared with me some things about his childhood. A childhood that was brief, one he thought he never had. He told me that he had two families since he was a child. He knew who his real mother was, but the one who raised him was his second mother. He remembered that as a child his real mother and his father would take him every Friday night to their home far away from where his second mother lived. He told me that every time he’d cry but would have to stop because he knew he spent more time with his second mother than his real mother and that his real mother wanted to be with him too. He also told me of his other siblings. He was a middle child. Being one was not easy, but he managed to cope up with it. When he started to exhibit signs of potential intelligence and talent, it brought hope, excitement, and expectation from others at the same time. The first time he became an outstanding honoree in the first grade, he was so proud of himself. Since then, his toys were replaced with books, books, and more books. He garnered numerous lauds and recognitions which made him and his family proud. He told me that looking back to his childhood was a burdensome task. For one, he only remembered himself being a child ‘til he was five years old. He couldn’t even tell if his childhood was blissful or not. All he knew was that when he was six, he treated himself as no longer a child. He had no choice but to grow up.

Then he told me about his encounter with love when he was in high school. He told me he never knew he would be in love. He was too busy studying that he didn’t have time for love. But it dawned on him one day that he was in love. He never really told me the real reason why he fell in love. I just remembered him telling me that perhaps one factor was that he wanted to experience being in love and what it felt like. He had denied himself of many things and he knew that he should not deny himself of the one feeling that could probably cast the emptiness inside him that time to oblivion. For one he told me that he fell into depression then. He stopped being happy. All he could feel then was sadness, loneliness. He wasn’t himself during those times. His friends noticed it too. Most of the time he wanted to be alone. There were so many things inside his mind and his heart back then. Their family business was not going so well then. His older sister had no stable job. His older brother had just planted a seed in his girlfriend’s womb. His younger brother and sister were both facing the reality that they had to stop schooling. His college dream was also becoming bleak. All those things he kept inside him, not telling anyone a single word.

But he said when she came to his life back then when he was in the middle of solitude, a spark of hope somehow glistened and slowly became a beacon light. He found in her the strength he once lost and she was the one who helped him and guided him to get his strength back. He told me that meeting her made him forget about his problems momentarily, made him happy again, and made him realize that amidst all the challenges he faced that time, the world was still beautiful.

He related to me that she too, like him, was a writer and a poet. He found in her a certain kind of solace that writers and poets alike find amongst themselves. Every day he would be thrilled at the idea of seeing her and would walk her home after class. Inspiration would always follow him that he was able to write ten lyric poems in one day with just her in his mind. He told me that every time he looked back and read the poems he did, he would laugh and wonder if he really was the one who wrote those. Truly, out of love people do trite things, special favors, humble works. But she told him that she wasn’t ready. He told me he understood it. He wasn’t ready for a relationship either. He liked her. She liked him too. They liked everything about each other. But they both weren’t ready. For one, he wasn’t courting her yet. Those things he did for her were not considered as courtship. To him they were only subtle acquaintances, he told me. Maybe after ten years as they have both agreed, they can start again.

Then he entered college. He took with him all the strengths and lessons he learned. He was now trodding a new journey, the path to maturity. He had to be firm, disciplined, educated. But as he had predicted it and feared at the same time, the problems that haunted him when he was in high school tested him again. He knew he had to face all of them like a man. Many times he did so. Many times also he did not succeed. Their family business closed. His parents and siblings had to transfer to four different places and houses just so to find shelter. His younger brother and sister had no choice but to stop school. He was fortunate enough to have his second family support his college education. But what good is that when you know that your real family is suffering while you try to pretend that everything’s fine, he asked me. I didn’t answer. I knew I wasn’t in the position to do so. And so he told me that in his sophomore year in college, he decided to distance himself from the things that bothered him then. It broke his heart doing so, but he had no choice. For two years he distanced himself from his family, not aware that his older sister already bore a child; that his older brother and his wife already gave birth to his first niece; that his younger sister was yearning to go back to school; and that his younger brother had already given in to peer pressure and already became a chain smoker. He knew about all those things, but he did nothing. After all, he said, what was he to do? He couldn’t change the way things were then. But he’s hoping that somehow and someday he could, and he told himself he would.

He stopped talking to me after that. He was busy perhaps. I know he was. He always was. I decided to wait again for our next conversation. A year passed and he still wouldn’t talk to me. I was worried that maybe he was avoiding me. But I know he wouldn’t do that. I’m a friend of his. One of his few and true friends.

It took two years before he talked to me again. This time, he told me that he would already speak the truth. By that he meant that he would already tell me what his heart and his feelings really wanted to say. Plainly. Straightforward. Sincerely.

He told me that he missed his real family, even though he had for hundreds of times denied it. He had always convinced himself that he could always stand alone. That he needed no one. But all those were naught but pretense. It was just his way of saying in subtlety that he needed someone to be with him.

He told me how thankful and grateful he was to his second family. His second mother raised him up well and treated him as if he were her own son. She was the one who took his mother’s responsibilities ever since he was a child. She was the one who taught him how to sing, how to write, how to be who he is now.

He told me that he wanted and wished to talk to his younger brother. He knew he was one of those who were to blame why his younger brother became the way he is now. He told me that if only he could have been by his younger brother’s side in his brother’s adolescent years, he could’ve guided his younger brother instead of allowing him to stray away from the right path.

He told me that he wanted to hug his mother and father just like the way he hugged them when he was a child. But he had been told and taught a long time ago by life’s challenges that expressing one’s emotions through actions or direct spoken words were somehow signs of weakness. He did not believe it. He knew that what he had been led to believe in was wrong. But despite of it, he could not present proof of his non-belief. Because in spite of the fact that he looked and appeared tough in the outside, he was actually weak in the inside.

He told me that he wanted to feel like a small boy again. To feel the freedom he denied himself of. To play with the toys he already threw away and forgotten. To feel that the world was somehow still a happy place to be in. He’s all grown up now, but deep inside him he knows that he’s still just but a little boy… yearning for the innocence that has been marred by life’s cruelty… vulnerable to tears… wanting to love and be loved in return.

If only he didn’t choose to grow up too fast, he told me.

Then, after our conversation, I didn’t know whether he did it on purpose, or whether it was just coincidence, or whether it was really etched in the stars. He left me on his chair as he went on his way to his next class. I was there, left alone inside the room. Moments later, a young man came inside the room I was in. He was searching for something – a book he forgot perhaps. I noticed that this young man was someone whom my friend considered as a close friend in his ideals, though my friend has not opened up to him entirely yet.

Knowing this made me conjure an idea. While on the chair, I did sort of whisper so that the young man would know that I was there. At the same time, I prayed that he would finally go to the chair I was at and notice me.

Finally, he did notice me. At first he was hesitant, knowing that it was awkward reading someone else’s private thoughts. But I knew his curiosity he could not always contain, and this was a case of honest curiosity technically. He picked me up from the chair, opened my cover, and started reading my first page. I felt a sense of fulfillment in that I was linking my friend’s thoughts and his unspoken words to this young man who was just like my friend – a reserved person, a weaver of words, and a poet alike.

I need not mention my friend’s name anymore, ‘coz even if I didn’t, the young man would know by heart who I was talking about anyway.

February 17, 2007
Saturday
11:00 p.m.