Proton Packs - A Reprise

Posted by Gino Bjorn on Oct 27, '08 11:15 PM for everyone

(pronounced /rəˈpriːz/ ruh-PREEZ; it does not rhyme with "surprise")  source: Wikipedia
What do you know? Haha! Anyway, this will be the last of this type. Enjoy.

How do we shoot down ghosts?

Your mind drifts more randomly than a vagabond, a disoriented cloud in an empty sky. You stare at your glass of liquor, stirring and stirring and stirring the ice until there is more water in your drink than alcohol. You flick your cigarette endlessly after just taking two hits from it, and lights another immediately as the ember starts to die down. You stare at the bottle of your beer, hoping that it would empty out without you drinking it. You come when invited, you smile when acknowledged, you talk when you’re talked to, and you bid “goodbyes” and “take cares” as mandated by societal law. You think hard but loosely, without any pressure on your way home. You get home, lie in bed, but you don’t sleep. You twist and turn in your bed more than a teenage girl in dysmenorrheal pains. You sit down, stare at your monitor, postured your fingers in the keyboard -- “air-typing” your thoughts, and finally you write something… erases it… and rewrites what you just erased. You wait for it to finish itself, read it a hundred times over, and finally keep it safe until you’re ready to have another person read it, and read you.

Is it absolutely necessary for a time like this to come to someone? A time where he realizes how much wrong was done in his lifetime. For a dying man: maybe. But for someone in a relatively young age, is it? Is this what they call the dreaded “mid-life crisis”? I certainly hope not. Because if you do the math, assuming that this is accurate, I would die before my children finish college. It’s definitely a bad assurance for people who are willing to invest their lives on me. But what is the purpose of these, and what do I do with these realizations? How do I battle the crises? Should I turn a shoulder, set it aside and carry on with the best years of my life? The past, they say, is the road to the present and the present the road to the future. If the past is a river of murky, malaria-infested waters, wouldn’t it mean that the future would be contaminated as well if I don’t filter out the soils in the present? Should I let my future surge as haunted waters, or would I rather have it as clear as crystal? Or do I make another river, forget everything that is past? Isn’t this the most convenient and most popular option, ignoring the fact that it is also the most cowardly one?

I’ve asked these questions a thousand times to myself, and another thousand times I doubted my answer. Influence and fear fueled that doubt, as I don’t want to do things I would regret in the future. But there is no room for fear now, as I would regret it more if I let myself be passive to what is handed to me. Now, I want to be true amidst the risk. I know that there is a lot to risk for a reason that is not worth it at all. But like in poker game where you are winning and you suddenly go All-In with just a 2 and a 4 (in different suits) and hope to win, it takes a gamble in order to make the fulfillment of winning it all and eliminating all opponents -- guilt and disdain -- possible. This time around I take a wager on the truth, as inconvenient as it may be, and hope for the Texas Hold ‘Em crown of life.

But in this world, in a world of lies, a world where it is encouraged to be pretentious and to act cool at every given opportunity; it takes a lot of courage to put life in peril because of honesty. It takes balls to take the fall when others chose to shy away and found convenience in lying. It takes balls to be labeled pitiable and have others bask in your miseries. It takes balls to shower people with laurels that you ripped off from your skin. It takes balls to be ridiculed even and most especially by friends, and branded “sentimental” or a “post-teenage emotional wreck”. It takes balls to be taken as someone who’s having a hard time carrying on, and allow that misunderstanding to flourish for their general entertainment. Am I being hard on myself? Yes, of course… Because I know better and yet I allow bad things happen. It is out of guilt of letting myself down, and I am brave (and stupid) enough to carry it for the rest of my life if I am not given the opportunity to fix it, of course, without losing the objective of fixing it. I do not run away from things, I do not turn my back on responsibilities. And now, in this age it morphed into a battle cry. No matter how seemingly improbable it is and how sorry I turn out in return, and of how pathetic I look… I want to un-wrong the wrongs. I want to fix things I have fatefully disarrayed in my life. It’s an obsession without anything resembling romance. It is purely an act of penance. I don’t give a cow shit on how most view me as someone troubled so much, to a point of socially dying, by a sorry cause. Frankly, I have started to care less of what people think and/or whatever sort of stone is thrown in my direction. Life is too short to be heeded by censure… So I resent people who give a fuck about me giving a fuck about the many things people don’t give a fuck about… Fuck fuck fuck! haha (ano to? Scarface?) Life is a waste when you don’t do things your way, and don’t give all for the things you love… and for me there are just two things I love: my self and my happiness... with happiness being a collective word. People who make me happy are my partner in life Karen, my family and my friends. I love them with all my ability and capability of loving. But unfortunately, making mends with the things I messed up earlier in my life also constitute that elusive perfect form of happiness… Like what I said to a friend, who mistook me as too drunk to make any sense whatsoever (in fact I was!), one should rid of excess baggage before boarding a plane to a flight of bliss. I am finally sober and humble enough to acknowledge that this continuous success is of naught when I carry around extra weight in my chest. Yes, I dwell in defeat… but not in the manner of a loser… I dwell in defeat because of the mere fact that I cannot accept a total defeat in my objectives. I was never trained to lose, and never will take it, even when it is certain, facing down… I will stare at it full-countenance even if it burns and ruins. Because I know that it is I who lit the fuse and it is only right that I cup it between my palms and my chest even if it blows me to pieces, because I am certain that I am able to pick those pieces up when it fatefully happens… I would try to defy the inevitable even when a very small strand of hope is left in my disposal… And I do it for the very selfish purpose of my happiness…Even if it means bleeding messily throughout the process… to right what was wrong, to smudge off grudges, to nullify disappointments, to win back friendships… To take out the “telenovela-factor” in life, that is what I aim to do… And that is what most people don’t understand… I don’t know, maybe because they are busy condescendingly bragging about how better they handle predicaments than you, or are too busy exaggerating their interpretation of your situation so that they can conceal just how bad they handle their own. It is fine and I can’t blame them. It is cool not to give a fuck, right? To each his own, they say… And lucky you! I say, that your brain doesn’t function as mentally complex and as cruelly masochistic as mine. Touché!

I am not glorifying whatever it is that I’m doing. There is nothing glorifying about being an outsider, and the strangest kind of that. I have turned into a “present” outsider rather than an “absent” one. I’m not sure how true this is though; it may be paranoia of sorts… Oh well… It’s just that sometimes the comfort that you always thought you can count on will now always be half-baked because of some things that are beyond control. An apparition of a social force-field appears randomly in what were once neutral grounds… Like a fault-line, a high voltage fence or a wired glass divider – you just can’t frolic your way to the other side. Adherence to a particular truth is expected, I guess. So there is no need to grow bitter over the matter… umm okay… maybe just a little. But then, that is just a parcel of what this whole ordeal is about. This is and will be always about my quest of trying to bust the myth of perpetual scorn, and testing the limits of human absolution; all in order for me to be completely happy…

I’m still realistic in what I yearn for and I know not all gashes are made good through time. But I hope these are the ones that do heal… because really, like every beauty queen in this world, I want World Peace (…and let it begin with me). That is the truth. I want peace, especially the variety that is conceived inside the human mind and soul.

Now, if we could only find a way to hunt and shoot down these ghosts – withProton Packs perhaps, or with any other ectoplasmic thingamabobs; or find a variety ofSebo de Macho for these scars that take so long to heal… It would take an instant to feel absolutely happy. But since these are not valid options, nor are these technically and medically possible (hehe), I guess I would just have to continue my campaign of uncertainty with nothing but a blind man’s faith and wait on how stories end. In that way, when the dusts and debris have all settled, I can sincerely say everything is alright because I tried. And I could say it with all honesty and without any hint of trying to be “cool”… because I’m done trying to be “cool” and failing miserably in the process anyway.

Consider this an open-letter, no, a manifesto on happiness that is born from truth… because I’m sure that everybody deserves to sleep without thinking about ghouls and skeletons hanging out in their closet.

“Now where the fuck is Slimer when you need him?”