LOOKING AT CHANGE

The Lord of Dreams learned that he must change or die and makes his decision.

This was how Neil Gaiman was forced to summarize the 75-story arc, 9-year run of “Sandman.” (but he did like how his summary turned out, he said)

Wow. That’s quite a summary. Or maybe it’s more of a thesis statement. Anyway, I don’t know how related that statement will be to the words that will flow from my fingertips to the keyboard, but it felt entirely appropriate for what I have been feeling and thinking the past few months.

Eleven days from now, I will be turning 27.

And the idea of turning 27… strangely… thrills me.

Last year, before my birthday, I predicted my 26th year would be a mediocre year. I was totally mistaken. I’ve been to three major trips: white water rafting and jet skiing in cagayan de oro, a cebu-iloilo-boracay-carabao island-island hopping spree, and a return to calapan corner visit.

The Calapan visit proved to be a catalyst to the many welcome changes that followed thereafter. Once I closed that issue hounding me for the past four years and opened myself to whatever God decided to bring my way, I became at peace and consequently, happier. Which I can probably say emanated good aura from me thus attracting good karma.

A week after that, I had a four-hour long engaging conversation with a good guy with (some) bad habits who loved Gaiman’s work and knew about the Reavers X-Men story-arc (that time, I have yet to meet anyone who was familiar with it). A month and a half after that, with the help of office cupids and our own effortless hard work, we got together.

With that, some would think, “you’ve got a partner… life should be perfect!” Well, if falling in love solved every problem in the world, then half of it would already be gone by now. But it doesn’t. And many of the world’s little problems were caused by misunderstood loving feelings (which is a different topic all together).

It IS great having someone to share your day with, even if it is just mostly through PLDT’s 10-peso-per-call promo. Loving someone and being loved back does not keep difficult situations from coming your way though. Love works as a good buffer, but they will STILL come. I’m just glad Jan has been a pretty sturdy shoulder to lean on.

For the past few months, I have written about my depression. The tough part is finding out why I was depressed. I was just. But there has to be something, right?

Gimmicks felt escapist, and most of the time they were. I didn’t have as much fun as I used to but I needed the outlet to forget. Work was terrible (and still is). I began to hate going on monitoring visits. Neither did I get the same satisfaction I did seeing the Lumad kids learning in class.

Something was going on, and I wanted to find out. Months came and went. And all throughout, I felt purposeless and unnecessary… and old. At 26.

The five weeks in Manila did nothing to help what I was going through. Pressure from work became more intense, being surrounded by workaholics. The only thing I looked forward to was after-work hanging out with Jan. And some of those days, I’d burst into tears out of the blue, scaring the wits out of the poor boy.

Crazy as it is, it was Neil Gaiman’s visit that took away most of the gnawing feeling of emptiness I’ve been feeling. Waiting for him for sixteen hours for a one-minute encounter was ridiculous. Skipping work for three hours to listen to him speak was equally silly.

Yet those three days trying to drink up as much of Neil Gaiman’s wisdom as I can gave me a sense of purpose again, the purpose I lost months back.

And it’s almost two weeks since that one-minute encounter and I still feel a bit giddy about the whole thing. What’s more, I finally found out what went wrong.

I don’t know what I want to do.

Now that I know that, I feel much better. As the GI Joe credo went, “Knowing is half the battle.”

Right now, eleven days before my birthday, I still don’t know what to do. But there are things I know now, at least.

I AM CHANGING. Into what, I do not know. But my gut feel tells me I will find out soon enough.

The strange feeling of despair, in retrospect, could actually be an emotional molting. Getting out of a cocoon and possibly turning into a butterfly (or a moth). It could have been my whole state of being’s reaction to change, to the dying and destruction of an old self. Changes in desires. Changes in dreams. Changes in directions. And more of my gut feel tells me that my desires, my dreams, my direction will be MORE DEFINITE this time. (Nope, I have no idea what it will be so no running wild of the imagination please.)

Just for dramatic effect, this realization comes to me around the time of my birthday. Har. Trust my flair for drama. I guess, that is where the thrill of turning 27 comes from.

Hopefully, once I have deciphered what I want, where I will go and what I will be, that peace and the God I seek would rest on my heart for a longer period.

The Lord of Dreams learned that he must change or die and makes his decision.

Did Morpheus choose to die instead of change, thus replaced by Daniel? Or because he changed, he died, thus replaced by Daniel? I’d have to re-read the whole Sandman series to know for sure.

As for myself, though Death of the Endless would seem like good company, she and I would agree that accepting (and deciding to) change would be the better option for now.