When All Else Fails (Light Bearer Series #1)

05

CHAPTER 05
hya
⋆˚✿˖°

From: Tito Caleb
Hyacinth, hija, can you promise me na masasali ka na sa top students this school year? You don't have any other chance to prove yourself to the family. So better do it now before you run out of time.

From: Tito Caleb
I know you're smart, you just have to work harder and step up so you could be like your cousins.

Those messages rang in my head until morning. Iyon ang huling mensahing nabasa ko bago tuluyang matulog kagabi.

They always say they want me to do my best, but their 'best' and my 'best' don't feel like the same thing.

All the time, they kept telling me: How was the test? Did you study enough? Why don't you try harder? How come your cousins made it and you couldn't? What's so hard about having an almost perfect grade?

My head feels heavy with their words, but they just couldn't understand that sometimes I'm too tired to even think straight. I wish they'd just see me as me -- not someone who they wanted to be, but just me, as who I really am.

Perhaps, I guess, I will only be enough in their eyes when I already have something to prove to the family.

You don't have any other chance to prove yourself to the family. So better do it now before you run out of time.

Time...

I always feel like... time was one step ahead of me.

Everything is slipping away too fast, leaving behind nothing but a trail of forgotten days. They're literally slipping through my fingers faster than I could even catch them. And I've always had this persistent, unsettling feeling, that it's quietly outrunning me... for a reason.

Maybe it was only because we were all so busy?

This school year, we're buried under assignments and deadlines that most of us stopped noticing how quickly the days had passed. We don't even have the time to have fun anymore. The pressure was relentless, unyielding. Every week felt like a blur of PTs, quizzes, and endless activities.

"Hindi ako ready sa research, tapos may defense pa. Paano kung bumagsak? Ayoko na!" madramang sabi ng isa sa mga kaklase ko.

"Kung sakali mang makaka-graduate nga tayo next year, college na rin tayo sa susunod na pasukan. Nakakatakot! Sabi pa naman nila mas nakakabaliw daw doon..."

Sa tuwing nag-uusap ang mga kaklase ko tungkol doon ay hindi ako nakikisali. My heart always race just thinking about the second semester—research. That word alone made my stomach twist in knots. It was the kind of thing that could either make or break me. If I'd fail that subject, then I might as well kiss my graduation goodbye.

Grade 12... was a whole different kind of beast! How much more... college? 

I wasn't ready for all the questions I knew college would throw at me: Who am I? What do I really want? Do I even have what it took to succeed?

Sometimes, late at night, I'd lie in my bed, staring at the ceiling, imagining myself on a  huge campus, standing in between the sea of strangers. And it always made my chest feel tight like I couldn't breathe.

What if I fail? What if I wouldn't be as successful as other people? What if my dreams weren't really for me? Then my family's judgements about me would finally come to life?

The fear felt so overwhelming. But College was a dream I couldn't let slip through the cracks. Iyon na ang huling laban bilang estudyante, kaya hindi ko pwedeng sukuan at isawalangbahala 'yon.