Yesterday, as the day ended with a grueling ELC quiz, Carlos and I were walking down Faura up to the car lot and I was talking about how that quiz might have sealed the deal with my ELC class for the semester. He countered my rants by saying something about smiles.

You do not smile because you're happy, it's the other way around. You smile first before you become happy. True fact as he said as we waved goodbye to go on our separate ways. As much as I smile in front of people, I cannot escape the basic truth that I am not at all happy. I would like to refute Carlos' statement but I held back because I was sure that I might snap at him and regret it later and after all, he was just trying to lighten up my spirit after that quiz.

So what happened was, when I was in the car, I began to think again -as I always do- about where my road is going. That thought always bubbles up whenever I drive in the car and with my music playing, (a beautiful collection of melancholic soul) I can't help but somehow shed a tear and begin to realize that I keep forgetting that life -mine especially- is like drowning in a pool. Drowning in a pool is a very quiet way of dying. Your voice is muffled as water fills your lungs and as frantic as you try to scream, no one really hears you. Your hands and feet claw for stability but you only find yourself falling into an eternal blue. Your eyes begin to dim as you sink further down, like a final curtain call as you make that transition into the unknown. Ah yes, life is like a drowning pool and I'm swimming in it.

Back in the car, I really wanted to talk to someone about my problems and people started coming to mind; people who told me that I could trust them, that they would listen, that they would care. I almost asked but in the end, I didn't as I realized that I was afraid to do so. The fear of being vulnerable crept up on me again and as I have done in so many occassions, I just sat back down and kept quiet. It's hard to trust someone, even if that someone is my best friend, or a person who happens to understand. Because I think I just want to fail and get it over with. I want to be hurt badly that I will never get up ever again. I want to sink so low that I would disappear and be forgotten to have ever existed. I hate myself so much that I want to see myself fall and die. What friend of mine, would allow me to do that?

So I sit idly on my chair, thinking about life or death, silent and still as the music played its dismal tunes. My fingers beat along with the tunes of the song and just as easily as it appeared, my thoughts of despair and angst disappear back in the recesses of my mind. The feeling of being trapped and hopeless can drive any person to lunacy and for me, my own trap happens to be... myself, ironically, as I have deviced my own failures and my own hole to fall into... or perhaps in the best sense, dug my own pool to drown in.