vgu9

As of this posting, I am now 25 years and 10 hours old.

It doesn't feel like it.

Though not for lack of trying -- I've done enough over the past year to consider my 2022 self noticeably different from my 2021 self. A self whose family suffered an eviction. Who almost gave up on undergraduate learning due to overfatigue. Who, at one point in the dead of night, walked the length of A. Bonifacio Avenue in hopes that a truck hits me sight unseen.

So it is hard to believe that I've just turned 25. I don't look any different than last year, and my body is still frail enough that a fever and nausea can knock me out of commission for a week. I still play the same games, visit the same websites, and meet the same people. Maybe it's just the lockdown robbing me of any tangible sense of time, or perhaps it's my burgeoning insomnia. But from my vantage point, the initial projections can only say, "you've yet to move an inch, MJ."

Yet, at 25 years old, there are a lot of things that I'm probably too old for, at least if some curmudgeons near and dear to me have anything to say about it. Simultaneously, there are things expected of a 25-year-old that I still need to do or get enough of, like a stable income or the power to move out of my parent's home. It's rather telling that some of the professors I have this year have only, at most, five years gap in age between them and me. Some of the teachers I had back in 2019 (when I was still in STI) are about my age, if not younger. Almost all of my acquaintances have a job now. Even my younger brother has a girlfriend he brings home frequently for school work and movie night.

Meanwhile, I sit cross-legged on the mattress next to some stuffed toys, still deciding whether to take a nap and wake up at 3:00 pm.

Frankly, it should not have come down to this. I should be able to decide whether or not my efforts amounted to anything at all. Not in this state, at least. I'm supposed to be in the UST Library taking notes, searching for books, and blogging about my die-cast collection like there's no tomorrow. It was all meant to be simple: clock in, get work done, supper, sleep, wake, finish work, then a nap just in time before classes —- a safe routine (if a bit strange because of time zones).

But the truth is that I've about had it with this routine. It's too much work for a numerical gain that I can only see on a website. None of this feels tangible, secure, or binding. Any result falls out of my memory along with any deadline date, and the thing I was going to do right now is left sitting to gather dust for about an hour or two while I dawdle around reading drivel from wherever.

Behind the screen, in a world where my batchmates and co-workers can only hear my voice, I bet I sound like the most organized and prepared person they can think of. Every question -- answered. Every missing piece -- filled. Everything they're don't brave enough to say or are too frazzled to say -- I can deliver with good diction. And my constant appearance in dean's lister posts on this platform proves that effort. But that number only tells half the story. I am not the extemporaneous teenager I used to know and love, not to the same level. If anything, I'm just papering over the fissures that have started showing on my chassis.

In short: I'm a damn dirty wanker in every sense of the word. At 25, I should be better than that.

Still, I can't help but laugh at how I sound in this post because I heard that same dour tone from me last year. Two years ago. Three years ago. But I still live and continue working and studying, even as the fog forming in my brain gets thicker by the day. Either I've become an automaton or a servant to my desire to earn money and find prestige so I can fly to Goodwood and Marina Bay. I can hardly tell the difference.

What now? I've lived 30 percent of a human's limber lifetime, yet I feel stuck and moving toward certain oblivion simultaneously. It's like having my feet chained to a raft and sent to a muddy flood, my aspirations just barely out of reach.

I need rope. Not for a noose, don't worry, but so that I can pull myself ashore. I can't swim (yet), but I can at least bob my head about in the water as long as I can walk under the surface. That seems like an appropriate metaphor for my mental state. It's why today feels like the least fun I've had on a birthday.

Or maybe I'm just waiting for my brother to fly back home. That's probably it. Or maybe not.

Regardless, this post is a plea for help. I don't have my head screwed on shut. I overthink and act too little, or too little, too late. I'm not nearly as strong as my dad wants me to be -- only a sense of urgency keeps me awake. With the things I have total control over, I reckon I've done enough to improve. But I can't keep living forever like no one else is by my side. I can't keep holding in the pain, even if it's far more comfortable for me to keep doing so.

How, though? How in the everloving fuck do I start forgiving myself?

That's the one thing, the only thing, the damndest thing that has held me back in so long, and being cooped up here with nothing else to do has only made that pain hurt even worse. At the same time, however, I'm 25. I'm supposed to find solutions to my deteriorating psychological state without bothering friends or family.

It's the impasse I curse myself for allowing to be stuck on for five years.

And it's the only wish I have for this year that isn't material like the F1 cars Tarmac Works make (I still want those for Christmas). To free me or find someone to help me free myself from that burden. To never feel like I couldn't ask for help because "you're smart enough to know where to look." And to have the mental capacity to realize that it is both easy to be free from depression and that it took this much effort to pull me out of my head.

I only have half a season remaining before graduation. I'm well and truly on my own when I snap up that diploma. For the longest time, I thought I was only studying, working, competing, and writing to appease a few people and maybe feel good myself. Now I'm not even sure I have the strength to practice my thesis defense. But part of me will continue moving, motivated both by tantalizing opportunities and crippling mistakes I can't afford to repeat this late.

The only thing I can ask for now, at least until I can get my teeth fixed, is a hand to hold.