This is a personal story about a close friend of mine whom I've met during my college years. I've lost contact of him since last year after he left his junior college for the real reasons I intend to share. Will our fates intersect again in the future? Only God knows...Even before he was a student of this school, he already knew that life would never be any easier. While others lamented about common issues like home works and exams, he had to focus all his energy to better the lives of his family and himself. Everyday he prays that someday, somehow his life would be better and that his family would achieve success both in this world and the world to come, even though things get worse day by day. He understands that life is never easy but he strongly believes that happiness at home and at school could be achieved together.
He was never the best in his studies, just as he was around others. Having a social life was hard for him due to the mounting pressure at home. While friends have a good night out on Saturday's, he would be attending to his sick mother at home. It did not help when his father's perception of schools was that it is ineffective in bringing good grades for it's students and that studying at home serves to be a better option and way to achieve the same goal and help the family out with their income at the same time.
He could never understand his identity and destiny from the beginning. He felt that he was average in literally everything: not the smartest yet not the dumbest, not the most popular among friends and schoolmates but was never a weirdo, was never rich but not the poorest, was never handsome but was never born ugly... He wished that he could live the same lives just as others of his age. He did hope for simple things like time and money to hang out with friends, to own the latest gadgets and clothings or to have a girl that is fond of him but he knew that all this was hardly impossible now.
He had a unique ability to easily understand the sentiments and feelings others around him may hold through their words and tone and their actions. With such maturity of thought, he could comprehend complicated and intrinsic issues such as love and relationships, friends and enemies and problems that are withheld by others when they opened their hearts to him. Unfortunately he doesn't have the ability to understand himself. The mistakes that he had done constantly haunts him due to the very fact that he knows exactly what he was doing was wrong. He knows what is right, but chose the wrong instead for no reason. There was a constant conflict in his heart- a part of him telling him to do what's right while another part of him just advocating him to do the wrong things. His mind and heart is fickle and sometimes his action may seem irrational to his thinking but he does it anyway. He hopes, day by day, that he would finally be able to be a good son, brother and a faithful servant of God just to find that reality is far-fetched from that. A few knew his problem but none of them understands what it is like to have 2 persona, constantly at wars with each other.
It all became worse as the year end approaches and the Promotional Exams looms around the corner. More problems started cropping up at home and he begins to skip school even more frequently than ever. Although it was clear that he was trying to make ends meet, scoring for a promotion to JC2 while keeping his family alive and intact, the situation was too tough for him alone to handle. In the end, he had to make the sacrifice for the sake of his family...
Being a teenager is already tough with many decisions that are needed to be made at the crossroads of life. It becomes even more complicated when the teenager was forced to mature early to take over the helms of their own family. It is hard for this situation to be understood by others, if not impossible as it really takes one to know one. It is every teenagers dream to be like any other teenagers, living a carefree life while they had all the liberty to before they begin adulthood. But not every teenager had such a "treasured" privilege. And he is not the only one...<3
No comments:
Post a Comment