of soft spots here and there

If I remember correctly, this picture was taken in one of those yogurt shops in downtown Charleston, SC.

I have a soft spot for a particular type of people that could sometimes result to excruciatingly painful jabs to my stomach filled with the acerbic combination of sensibility and guilt. 

I have no one to blame but myself, of course. But it is in this blame game that I surrender; that I make peace with and forgive myself, over and over, again and again, just like that of a pen that gets tired and weary, used up, whose ink is depleted only to be filled up again to serve its purpose. 

I know from time to time our sincerity may be questioned. But I am. I am. Conscientious, too. 

Let me re-post this entry I wrote a long time ago in a blog from long time ago: 

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Title: I am. I am.


Conscientious 

This was the word that stood out on the performance evaluation form my former immediate supervisor filled out. I reckoned the word shouldn't be that bad since it was after all listed under my supposed “strengths” and (later) I got the pay increase it was intently filed for. But somehow I felt strange towards the word. Being described as conscientious is as if I've completely used up my conscience like a fairy did to her wand and she’d be absolutely useless without it. So if for some reason my conscience flies out the window, I would then be lying on the floor as limp as a bed trudged over by an elephant in labor. 

I don’t see anything wrong at being described as conscientious. After all, it can be true when I have tried to feed Luke. 

Feeding Luke is something I felt so self-righteous about that I see myself like a child who heroically placed a toy a friend wants at the counter because she knows her mom would be paying for it using something that appears like a card that works like money except that you don’t see money when you use the card and like most children, don’t know where that money is coming from. I was generous and I was unworldly, inexperienced about money that’s not even my own. 

Luke was a classmate I got close to in college. He was brilliant in Math and best of all, he was gay. He was a good company in between horrible, dreadfully, effortful long exams. In fact, there was this one incident in college that still makes me smile and giggle. We were making a program in the computer lab when Luke misspelled the word “spaghetti”. Having noticed the mistake, two of our classmates pointed out and laughed. 

“Hoy Luke! You don’t spell spaghetti like that.”

 And effortlessly with his gay-coated tongue, Luke retorted, “Don’t you people act so proud. I am good at Math.” 

Everyone was left stunned and speechless because I know they know there was truth to whatever he said. 

Luke insists he comes from a relatively poor family. So he relied on a scholarship stipend that would come too late he’d be hallucinating due to hunger when it comes. So when Luke drops by my boarding house with that I-don’t-have-my-stipend-yet look, I take him to the carenderia where I keep a credit account and eat with me. Sometimes he would surprise me. I would find a note charged to my name in a handwriting that can never be mine – Luke’s, of course. Yet I never raised a stink but just laughed at the thought and laughed some more on days he never shows up. These are the days of the week after he gets his stipend. Then one day he shows up with that sad look in his face again. But no matter how hard my friends try to persuade me to flick him away with my fingers like some fly, I still decide to let him hover over me. When asked why, I’d just shrug my shoulders off and pray silently that I can postpone answering by inserting the question somewhere in my mind like I’d probably insert a candy wrapper to one of the slats of a bench I’m sitting on and decide later whether to forget about the wrapper or get back to it when I’m ready. Who knows I could even get lucky. The wind would be kind enough to blow the wrapper away. 

Being conscientious could be my best that could turn out to be my worst trait. But to be asked why I am such is like asking the sand why she chooses to stay in the beach when all the sea does is draw nearer or farther away from her. 

Perhaps, we could ask the moon. 

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Regardless of what or who you think you are, enjoy (and forgive) you. :)