The Story, The Deal, The Pain, and The Pride

As far as I can recall, I've always been an accident-prone person. And because of that fact, I'd been known to humiliate myself, and possess a long list of embarassing moments.

In fact, this is, above all, one of the reasons I never truly had what you would call an ideal childhood. A freak accident in third grade had caused the turning point in my life. It was then that I experienced being constantly bullied. It sounds surprising for those who had recently met me, but to those who had grown up with me all those years ago, its as real as the name of our school.

What can you expect from a girl of nine to do at that time? Most likely, that girl would probably begged her parents to transfer her to a different school, keep to herself, avoid picking fights, find another hobby, and try to figure out who she can rely on as a friend. And you know what, she did all that, and the only thing she was actually successful at, was finding another hobby: immersing herself in books.

It was at this stage of her life she detached herself slowly from the people around her, placing her friends under various tests to feel confident that these people have her back, and cringing inwardly when she realized her trust was misplaced. It were dark times in the life of someone who had been a cheerful person to begin with. The ever-ready smile was replaced with looks of suspicions, recess times were reserved for reading books and doing homeworks, lunch, a welcome reprieve from the otherwise tolerant treatment of her presence. She felt for the first time how lonely it was, and how cruel the world is.

With limited options, she kept to herself, a child of forced seclusion, hardly daring to even speak up or volunteer any information she knew. She was made a fool many times over, even by those she had considered friends. She didn't belong anywhere and it was this feeling that had her hanging out with various groups of people, trying to find a niche where she would fit in.

The case would seem a hopeless one at that and it wasn't until later she realized what made her move on, to keep on looking. It was an idealism that she had found in the comfort of her books that talks about a friendship that goes far deeper than giving out answers in a whisper to a so-called friend sitting next to you during an exam. It was a friendship that accepts and love unconditionally. A bonding that comes along to those who keep as much faith in you as you with them. It was fortunate that she found them at end of her elementary years, but it was still too early to let the real person shine through. She had been scarred too many times over to want to let down her guard to the group that had included her as their own.

She came to them meek, keeping to shallow topics, listening but hardly offering any advice, a wallflower at most. But it was also at this time she started to write. Anything that came to mind, a tribute to a friendship she felt blessed to have stumbled in, a song to put into words a childhood crush, a poem about the various uses of a new set of colored pens... a collection that she would show sparingly, due to fear of expected rejection, and worse, a humiliation she would not be able to lived down. Whatever pride must be placed in a work of art could not be found for there was none to encourage a bolder show of a creativity previously unassociated with her.

As luck would have it, she was praised by someone who didn't expect anything from her. They embraced her gift for words and in turn encourage her to write more, to be open to new people. It took more than a year to share parts of herself, to slowly give her trust to hands waiting to accept it wholeheartedly and kept it sacred for all the years to follow.

With strength brought about by these select few, she had started to spread her wings, exploring more what she can do. For once in her life, she found people who would show and prove to her that ideal friendships do exist in this world riddled with the need to appear more than they are, to step on those who they think were not up to their level.

The years to follow was a revelation of the person she herself had not known exist within her. A person of quiet strenght, capable of withstanding the misgivings and embarassment accompanying an accident-prone person, an optimism she had not known she possessed, contentment and a desire to share the feelings she had been priviledged to feel to others.

And now, she stand before you now, as real as any person who had come to terms with who they are and what they are, accepting and loving the person that some had deemed deserving of it.

I want to thank all of you (Haidee, Jamie, Jamee, Jacky, Iris, Donna, Kristina, Marie, and Louie) for making me the person I am today, for bringing me out to embrace the brightness that can still be found in this world. I also want to extend my thanks to my college friends (Peachy, Eirha, Yola, Kath, Nikko, Nova, and Carlo) for the friendship and being my support system in an entirely new environment. I could list a lot more people to thank, but you guys are the best! Thank you for giving me my confidence back, for showing me that the world isn't a scary place full of friend-users, that I deserve a place in this world, and even if I'm the most unconventional person around, I'm not a senseless nor worthless in your eyes. Thank you for the gift of love, trust, and friendship, it is indeed a treasure I'll cherish till the end of our years, or the end of the world, whichever comes first. ^^