migblog

ever wish sometimes that your life would be so utterly different, fundamentally, to the very root of its core? as if your childhood had never transpired, as if your life had been lived by some other person... imagine the possibilities of changing something so uniquely yourself, what helped define you as yourself, and have it be taken away and replaced with something else. like, instead of having brown hair, you would be blond. or if your mother was born in mozambique instead of in america. something so seemingly useless a detail might prove ever so useful in changing someone's life.

one of my very first memories is looking up and seeing ceiling tile. you know, the kind of stuff you'd see when you looked up in the middle of biology because the lecture was not at all interesting and you tried to count how many of those little holes were on there. ceiling tile. beige ceiling tile, rectangular, and yes, with the same character holes as if they would never change through time. i was three. and the first memory of mine is being inside. not outside where the sun shone and the rain played, where the other normal children were. i loved to read childcraft encyclopedias and nursery rhyme books, like dr. seuss or the adventures of monkey, pig, and cat with the buddha. i remember my childhood as a picture book, full of the colors in my head that these pages would bring and the beige, the ever present beige that was in the background.

in all honesty, i hated going to school on thursdays. back in the ateneo the schedules were so fixed so that every student received a very liberal arts education in a small amount of time. music and art and home practicality were mandatory classes. but thursdays... thursdays meant physical education was on the schedule, and physical education meant strenuous activity.

i love soccer. the simplest rules, the simplest layout, the most complex strategies: who to pass to, who to defend against, where to hit the ball next. it was like a fast-paced game of chess, taking every ounce of concentration and perspiration out of your body. and knowing that i couldn't participate in anything as such because of this stupid heart condition i have made it that much harder to realize. it happened every time i liked a physical activity: i wouldn't be able to take the stress it would force upon my heart. soccer, rugby, or hell, even just plain running. i wanted to feel that "good burn" everyone else felt after they had done so. i wanted to sweat, i wanted to heave, and pant, and get dirty. but you know what? i had to write papers in order to get my grade for pe. every time i wanted to do something fun, even though i knew the other kids hated it, i secretly wanted to be in that group where they took being able to run for granted. even now, i still can't. sprinting makes me puke. literally.

and so living with a heart condition is not an easy thing at all. the first time i remember going outside was when i went to preschool out in the philippines in the jose abad santos memorial school (jasms). jasms had a playground and a sandbox. and the great thing was, it was outdoors. and outdoors meant that whenever i looked up, i saw blue instead of beige.

at the ateneo, i never got to do any sort of physical activity. i always had to sit out days when the other kids would play basketball or run around screaming "i want the ball this time" or "to the left, tommy, to the left!" up until 4th grade, i didn't run. i sat inside doing mindless dribble paperwork, like coloring pictures or writing up exercises or taking a written quiz in pe.

and then i moved to the united states, skipped over 5th and 6th grades, and began pe in middle school. there was the coyote run that took up at least four and a half minutes of everyone's time -- except mine, of course. to get a good grade in pe all i had to be was booksmart and verbose. i had to write papers upon papers to make it look as if i had been studying the processes of the human body my entire life.

without this heart problem, my first memory would have been the bluest summer sky and raindrops falling on my head, hearing giggling and chitchat in the background. the trees would sway the monsoon season's arrival, the air would smell ripe for precipitation, and the people were ready for the streets to flood yet one more time. the hammock out on the front area of the house would have to be taken inside, and all the clothes on the line would have to go under the carport's shelter. the sun would be up, and it would be a nice, cool day. the breezes would just come in, and the echo of the radio system announcing the approach of a tropical storm lingers in everyone's ears. outside, the sky is blue. and inside, no one is crying.

i wouldn't have to deal with so much people worrying about my health here. nor would undue stress make me almost keel over and cough up a lung. but it takes so much effort to be the person i am without having to act as if it doesn't hurt as much, or that my hands are always that cold or playing off the sensation of some twisted inner demon biting the inside of your left ribcage, gnawing and stabbing and pulling the entire time for fifteen minutes as i struggle to smile and comprehend the booming noise of people asking me if i'm doing all right or if i need a glass of water. i wouldn't have been on the floor of my dorm room cringing in pain, or on my bed crying, or in someone's car when something like a punch in the left gut all of a sudden knocks the wind out of me. i wouldn't have to worry about making so many people who don't deserve to see me like this have to go through an almost traumatizing experience like that.

the doctors apparently told my mother that i would have only a fifty percent chance of survival during my first week post-birth. my ventricular septal disorder was abnormally large for a baby of my size, and that if my parents wouldn't do anything over the course of that week, then i might die. my mother was a firm believer in the power of miracles and christ. she prayed for three days. i was out of the hospital the day after.

if only life were so simple as to say, i wish i had no more heart problem and it would disappear. that tears would never blur my vision, and that my smile would never turn into a frown. that i could run, and i would be able to run as long as i wanted, up and down and left and right to all corners of the earth. that pain would never hurt me, that pain would cease to exist. and that i would be a normal person, the person you met at school or at orientation or in band without anything wrong with him. if life were so simple.

i guess it's a good thing that life isn't simple. i wouldn't be scared of dying on a rollercoaster or flying on a plane. i wouldn't have fallen in love and back again. i wouldn't have met my friends, the most important people in my life who helped shape and mold me into who i am today. i wouldn't have seen such happiness blossom right before my very eyes, and feel the sting and agony of death. it tempts me, my problem. it makes me look at myself much more differently than had i not had this problem at all.

if i didn't have it with me, i would not have been the same person you know now. no wisecracking jokes, no sarcasm, no go bears attitude. i would have been the normal kid, the one everyone ignores because they're unique like everyone else. i wouldn't be the kid who took aspirin a lot, nor would i be the history buff in 7th grade, nor would i be the drum major in high school.

tomorrow promises to be blue. and i'll wake up knowing that i will still have this heart condition, no matter how much simpler i wish for life to be. but i have people to help me along the way, people who could make my life that much simpler just by simply being there.

so funny when you feel something like a heart attack annoying your left side for close to nine hours now. you begin to wonder about the most trivial things. and if things could change, how it would happen under your control.

if only life were so simple.

posted by Open Source Food @ 2:28 AM