The Tragedy of The UnWriter

Thinking of something to share for my first post.

I am writing this essay the same way I wrote my entry to an international contest. The contest, which was about your story of inspiration to change the world, choked my breath as I try to pour down word for word of my memories. This story wanted memories, stories, narratives of change. Does my story have that narrative? Yes it does. Only that it is already caught in the mass of the trashbin you call “EVENTS I WANT TO FOR-GET-EVER”.

I don’t want to wallow through that bin the same way I cried my way through it in my four years of high school. I don’t want to open every crumpled piece of sheet, and reassemble every torn bits of paperworks that scream the monster I have become. I never want to return back. I resent all thoughts of a utopian future where everything is going to be happily ever after. I want to move forward. Two years from now, I am going to graduate in my university being one of the top students of my course, and two years is faster than you think. I am going to work, earn my salary, and work my way through that.

I will not live in my past anymore.

So I actually passed my entry without any actual mention of what happened in the past, only words of hints and ambiguity of what I have endured. While I continue to wait for the results, I know that a part of it are lies. My emotions made the lies, removed the truth, reconstructed my history into the trashbin of resentment where all unfulfilled dreams are thrown or burnt away. That bin is still staring at me, and screaming about the monster I have become.

Within my room there is actually a corner where all my college readings and my schoolworks are compiled and forced into boxes and filecases. Within one of those piles I know is the story of the writer that I once was. It was perhaps my most remarkable memoir yet of my writing career. It ended with a hint of hope after 3000+ words of memories. That hint of hope is gone. After that year I soon remade every blog that I had, and failed to fill even ten or more pages of my journals. Duller and duller my words did come, as dull and repetitive as my papers that aced most of my classes. I did not even read books unless necessary, and did not even buy any book of interest when an excess of allowance arrives. I write when I needed to write. I write, but I am not a writer anymore.

When my second year life was full of hopes and dreams; it was when our small course batch found comfort in each other’s presence as we endured that heavy literary criticism class, third year life began to wash it all away. The group that I built on Facebook now lost its founder, invaded by the new organization for our batch. Amazingly, the three representatives for that organization were the same people that I chose to administer that very online group. Other batch personalities shifted to other courses the year after, thrown out or hopeless from the demands of the course. Walls began to fill the divides, and our small batch now run in clusters. I now build a wall around me. My new location, in a new room, without any batchmate blocks away, is the epitome of my growing transformation.

I am my identification card. It has a crack on one side and scratches and white marks over the surfaces. Yet my face and my identity is still visible. The bar code is still useful. Yet look behind the card, and you see, that the place where the emergency contacts are located, and the boxes where the stickers for certification of enrollment, are all faded.

I still stand strong. I still answer with an angry tone when my mother tells me to ask my father for allowance. I still don’t answer text messages, and if necessary, reply them with the generic “I am fine”. My eyes are now blurred, and last time that I had my eye check-up, the grade did not change. I am still the same nearsighted person when I left my hometown. I am now reliant on my glasses, since when I remove them, I cannot even recognize people even under less than an arm’s length away from me.

I am psychologically in crutches. I have grown more apathetic to the people around me, unable to make the jolly baby of my landlord smile. Can I still write, when I cannot even feel? When all my emotions I have turned into hate and resentment, and that into the screaming trashbin behind my face? I still can, I tell myself. I tell myself that I have chosen this dark alleyway which I tread alone. I tell God to simply take care of my love ones, and my friend whom I chose to leave in arrogance and selfishness, since I cannot show how much I love or miss them anymore. I tell myself, I should take responsibility.

I still plan to enter three more international contests, but chances diminish as my academic load begins to weigh heavier than before. I want to use my prize money in order to build a new life, and build more walls and more houses and travel far, far away. I hope that writing, my only companion, will once again help me stand up and fulfill this.

I know I am selfish. I know I am arrogant. I know that I chose not to look at the people that still care for me and consider my presence wholeheartedly. Yet I don’t want people to suffer anymore. I don’t want them to be burdened by my very undoing. I will not flood other people with my very failure.

I look at the trashbin. It stares at me with its reddened, tired eyes, with its face marked in trembling ink the capitals “AC”. My keyboard burns hot from a whole day of use, like the torch that I have set to burn this bin alive. I tell him,

“I am not a writer. I only write.” 

LP

Author's Note

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