Whenever I Tried To Write
By Kristine Bartolome

There had been a time when words would come pouring forth from my lips, a never-ending poetic stream flowing from mind to mouth or hand. Ideas from my brain would be assimilated, arranged and verbalized in a matter of minutes. Emotions would solidify into tangible tiny black letters or would float in the air and hang... stunning my audience.

That was before.

Now, it would take me hours to do a small meaningful paragraph. Ideas would still come, but once I come into contact with a pen and paper, or a computer, they disappear. Poof. There it goes. Just like rainbow soap bubbles in the air, they'd vanish in a few seconds.

The last time I wrote anything was yesterday. Just a little poem induced by unspoken grief. I named it "goddess". It went like this:

I grieve
For a friend's loss
Of a father well-loved
And wish
To wax
Poetic.
Do I
Spread mist over the purple sunset,
Blow horrid rains through green lands,
Spread devastation
To show my sympathy?
No.
Let trees spread forth green shoots
Reaching for the sky.
Let flowers bloom
And give glory
To the one on High.
Let there be no change.
For my grief is not the loss of the world
But the loss of the inner being.

It is nothing like my old style of writing. I miss it, being able to write and be poetic about it. But so many things have happened since that time...

I remember clearly all the unfinished stories saved in my computer. Blue Wings, What If, Black Sabers, Reckoning, Humanity, these are all my abandoned children. I could not duplicate the intense emotion I used to write these tales with. I have lost it, lost it with the many things that were taken away from me in the past two years.

That intense emotion was a mixture of everything sad and lonely. Pain. Anger. Dismay. Frustration. Love. It was a time of trial. I was a blooming teenager. There was a need to form my own identity. I was part of the last batch of Gen X'ers. (Webmasters note: "Gen-X" officially ended with those born in 1979 so Bart is technically part of "Gen-Y") I did not want to conform, like most of peers. I wanted to be myself, a person whom I chose to be. I would control my life, from wants to needs, from present to destiny. I was determined. I had hope. I came from a fairly affluent family. Not much trouble there. I had friends, deviants from the norm just like me. I'd see them everyday, meet with them, talk with them. With them I shared my thoughts and emotions. From them came my words and inspiration. And so I wrote.

But my upbringing eventually caught up with me. Brought up with semi-strict regulations, I began to see faults in other people. I began to hate my friends. They violated the well-embedded sense of values deep inside of me. Values that came from experiences not my own: the experiences of the older generation.

From there, my writing had gone downhill. I wrote and deleted paragraph after paragraph. I could not accomplish anything. I was scared. I isolated myself from those who gave me the strength to weep and bleed poetry. I needed to find myself.

Things eventually cooled down. I rejoined the barkada, and there was a cool truce between us. I started having fun again. I started writing once more. Storyline after storyline, image after image, they'd all float in my mind, ready to be transcribed on paper. But I couldn't. The emotion was lost. I needed to find a new one.

And so I got a new writing emotion. It was everything that puts you apart. Cool. Aloof. Business-like. Suppressed feelings. I wrote about more serious things, the composition of the human being, the maturation of a young girl, and the loves and sorrows of my barkada. All these once again made me alive. It made me powerful. I had friends, I had talent, I had money and a family. I had it made. Then the crisis struck.

ALPAP went on a strike, demanding a change in airline policies concerning employees. No planes flew from port to port. Prices increased. The economy of the Philippines started falling. I was hard put. Money was scarce, with no hope of receiving more. I had to scrimp and save. And I lost my concentration.

I couldn't write for days. All I could write about were necessary papers for school. Money was on my mind. The future bothered me. A strike is a serious thing, especially on that could bring the economy down so drastically as the ALPAP strike. The pilots were in danger of losing their jobs. And my dad was one of them.

But once in a while, there seemed like the strike would end with good. And with these uncertain hopes, I cleared my head and regained my concentration. And wrote a little. One paragraph or two, a couple of spoken lines here or there and, Viola! I had a chapter on my hands. There were still clear skies in otherwise stormy weather. But I didn't recognize it as the eye of the storm.

My dad lost his job, eventually. The strike never was resolved. I had to put more energy into studying than I ever had before. I was in fourth year high school. I had to get into a good college. My concentration finally broke, and my mind went on to more 'important' matters like schoolwork and college applications. I had to pass U.P. to save us some money.

But I failed the U.P. entrance exam. My father was disappointed with me. It was only the most prestigious university in the country. I should have been able to get in. It was hard to accept that we'd have to choose second-best. Especially if second-best costs an arm and a leg. But we did not have much choice. I ended up in Ateneo.

Dismayed as I was with my failure, I was excited at the thought of the new field I was to till. I would finally have male classmates, new people to meet, another chance at a new image. Another chance with a new life. I thought, perhaps, that I'd be able to write. I'd be able to get some relaxation time and write. I was wrong.

Ateneo started bombarding us with schoolwork. Research work and art for Botany, Readings for Filipino and English, papers galore for all the subjects. I lost time for my recreational activities. Coupled with my anxiety about the future (the ALPAP strike is still unresolved), I couldn't think straight. And I lost the cool emotion with which I learned to write with.

Now, I have yet to find another emotion to write with. Would it be happy, yet tired? Would it be pained, yet streaked with joy? Or would it be numb, like a block of wood or an iron pipe? I have yet to know. Perhaps it will be a mixture of all. Perhaps not. Or maybe, just maybe, I won't ever write at all. No time, no space, no energy. No me. I had to conform. I had to fit into the box set out for those who studied in Ateneo. I lost the battle. But I have yet to lose the war.

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