Facing the Deep Blue

It’s a nervous thought. It’s really scary, looking beyond tomorrow and imagining what would happen to us in the future. I guess we really can’t help it, especially because all of us have that certain fear of the unknown. Here we are in college, preparing ourselves for the big “it” (A great turning point in our lives). Our performance in college would become a boundless basis of what we will be in our premium years.

When I ponder about it, or sometimes when my mind is at it's idlest state, I often end up with the most unusual but accurate analogy of sea turtles. I don’t know, but the more I think about it, the more I am fascinated by the way I can relate our very lives (as students) to that of the sea turtles’.

By the time sea turtles are lay by their mothers, deeply buried and hidden beneath the sand, they wait for the time that they are hatched. Mother 'pawikans' (as the natives in Occidental Mindoro call them) dig 4 meter deep holes in the sand- not just one but three holes and lay their eggs on one hole only. Why? As you can infer, digging two extra holes are meant to confuse predators. Neat huh? But sometimes, they can never really be safe from certain predators that eat them while they are still inside their shells… and at that stage; they die, without even having the idea of how great the deep blue is.

Lucky sea turtles make it to another stage, and they experience the breath of life. Excited, they all crawl and make their way to the greatest adventure of all, to face the deep blue. Rushing through the shore, all one hundred of them are ready to become "Ambassadors of the Sea". They want to explore the ocean so bad that they didn’t notice the arrival of sharp-toothed sharks. They happily enjoy the warm water and then… the next second, they are already being attacked by those cruel predators. A bountiful number of sea turtles would narrow down to ten. It is now such a small number compared to how many they were from the very start.

Akin to the pawikans' story, our parents carefully prepared us for our individual breakthroughs. Just like the sea turtles, we have been concealed and protected against those certain “predators” in our lives; predators that would cause us to drop school or put an end to our existence. But nowadays, sometimes most of us look for our predators instead of the other way around. For example, when we feel like having that certain urge to stay in bed the whole day instead of preparing for school, or going to the mall with our peers even though we still have huge piles of paperwork or projects on our desks; we place ourselves as very delicious meals for these predators that would hinder our success. And I think the difference between us and sea turtles is that they can’t do anything about their ill fate, while we have control about everything that would happen to us.

Our story similarities doesn’t end there. What about the ten sea turtles that survived? They would compete against each other as they travel. Some would circle the world, while some would die trying. Some would even stay on safe zones. One way or another they would acquire scars that would teach them that being ambassadors of the sea is not really a piece of cake. Or in their case- a piece of... well, seaweed. They have to work hard to achieve their goals. To flourish our dreams, we will become like these injured sea turtles as we continue our battles after graduation. With God's help, we would be able to pull aside our adversaries as we pray for his guidance and strength in facing the vast ocean. With that, plus our commitment, we would be able to win!

Facing the deep blue, the surviving sea turtles would have a look of contentment on their faces, and a grin which would say, “I did it!”




~anamellie, 110608

Author’s Note: I learned the "sea turtle facts" from the tour guide we had when we went to Apo Reef at Sablayan, Occidental Mindoro. So sue him if the facts are wrong. Haha... Kidding!

A Shadow of His Past

Even though I keep missing him this much, even though I keep thinking about him a lot, I know our hearts would never be an inch closer to each other, because I know that even though he's seeing me, and he really makes me feel that I'm important to him, I could tell that somewhere in the distance, beyond the warmness of his glance, he's still seeing someone far greater than I am.

I know, I cannot be compared with this person, I'll just end up the loser in the game of parity. It's like putting square pegs for round holes. It's stupid and unimaginable to compare myself with someone beyond my reach, that even if I stood at the top of the highest mountain, I still would not be able to touch the clouds.

It's really agonizing to think about him, to know that even if I try to forget him through my deep sleep, I would still be haunted by our memories... or at least, my memories, with him.

I often cry, and with the tears came another set of familiar pain and loneliness, covering me with doubt and hopelessness. Everything just died, what I thought our love was, his sweet forever's, everything!

In the end, I realized that he never loved me anyway, that all he sees when he looks at me is just the memory of the girl he once loved, that he's not ready to let go.

I was just a substitute for someone he had lost in the past, someone he greatly wants to hold and keep. I was just that blueprint, existing only for that sole purpose in his life. I was just that shadow of his past, someone who would patch his broken heart but never to mend it, for the pieces had been left with the girl he still loves, and it will be forever hers...




~anamellie, 102508

The Feeling I want You to Feel

Fifteen minutes to twelve… I toss here and there trying to close my eyes and sleep, but whenever I do, a picture of you and me together goes inside my head. I manage a deep sigh because I couldn’t get you out of my ,mind.

Memories… are they the reason why I have this stinging feeling inside my throat? Why am I holding back this possible downpour of tears that would wet my pillow? I’m not supposed to feel this. It is completely unfair for me to cry knowing that hundreds of miles away, you have no care in the world about how I am feeling right now. You may be celebrating that at last, at long last, you are free from me, the annoying and nagging thing you’ve grown to hate…

Because I was (at one time) loved by you, I could tell. But what happened after that, I don’t know. It’s as if I’ve woken from my most wonderful dream and seeing reality for the first time- a bittersweet reality.

To escape from it, I often dwell on dreams, on what-ifs, on wishes, on memories…

But to tell you the truth, there’s more to it than just memories.

I just want you to feel how painful it is to look back at the time our growing love declined. Though, looking back on good times was much agonizing than that.

I hope that you’ve figured it out by this time. But in case you wouldn’t be able to… love. This is the feeling I want you to feel towards me as it is also the feeling I’m feeling for you right now. Yes, it never changed.




~anamellie, 101708

Twin soul

The end of summer brought tears to my eyes.

That’s because I knew that it would be completely different without him. I knew from the start that it’s really impossible to be with him forever because we have our separate lives to live. We have different paths to take. Imagining him with me has been too impossible to form even with the dreamiest state of my mind.

It was as if I were standing on the shore and longing to see another island in the distance, but seeing only the horizon stretching into infinity. It was like being stranded on a deserted island waiting for nothing, and knowing that it would be like that until I die from the heat and lost of water to drink.

I lost hope that day, as I stared at him while controlling my tears from falling. I knew that that was a real goodbye. The goodbye I was most afraid to witness, the goodbye that said, “If we’ll meet, we’ll meet. If we’re not going to, then we’ll just have to forget each other as if nothing happened”. That was it. Goodbye to commitments. There would be no hurts and no tears…

But I knew we were wrong.

I knew that the real reason why I’m crying right now is because of that promise of no commitments. How I wish, we committed ourselves and just went with the flow, like the water falling from the mountain, with no choice but to go down… But we had our own choices, and choices made us part our ways and never to see each others face, nor smile, nor tears…

I guess he was not my twin soul after all. I was most certain from the start that he was. But after that painful experiences of late-night crying, of pondering about things about us, of quarrels, of being friends again, of awkwardness, taught me all about the things and the status we are in right now… Not friends, nor lovers… Not even enemies. We are but strangers, barely two random faces in a crowd, waiting for our twin souls that would eventually be ours forever. We are in the same state of searching, but he’s not mine, and I’m not his.

Never.




~anamellie, 100708