Assimilation (sacrificial post for my writing class)

Important Note: This is a journal entry from way back 2005, posted merely for my writing class' exercise in methods of exposition and partially because I am delighted with what you guys have been posting so far. The others who still have nothing posted on their blogs...well, we are waiting.




Assimilation
The process of receiving new facts or of responding to new situations in conformity with what is already available to consciousness – (Merriam-Webster, 2009)



Last night sent me on a rollercoaster, or rather, he had me riding an emotional rollercoaster. He said he and I were going to have dinner at their place and I was to meet his mother. Yes, in a declarative tone, like he was delivering the latest traffic update. I went through the emotional stages—albeit, probably not in order—that normal human beings go through went confronted with such predicaments.

Denial (ha? Ano sinabi mo? What mother?); Anger (ang daya mo, sabi mo sa kin April, tapos March, tapos Feb, tapos nextweek…tapos ngayon ngayon na?! Sumosobra ka na!!); Bargaining (please, next week na lang, I’ll just finish the work I have to do and wala talaga ako sa kondisyon ngayon); Self-deprecation (lagi na lang ikaw masusunod, lagi mo na lang ako binu-bully. Kawawa naman ako!); until finally Acceptance (fine, goddamit! Is my hair okay?!)

So I met his mother, and she wasn’t bad. Not bad at all. She’s actually cool: very sprightly, warm, and frank. A bit intimidating especially when she looks at you with a gaze that kind of holds you in your place, but she can whisk all that in a second when she smiles at you. I don’t know her yet, so I can’t make generalizations.

Meeting his other friends, though, got me down. Really down. I don’t know why, because they’re a cool bunch—amazing in fact. But they—all of them including him—just made me realize how much I miss my friends, the kids at the punk gigs, the fellas in the pit. How much comfortable I was with people who sang the same songs, who moved to the same music. Now they seem so…I don’t know, maybe, far and out of reach. I felt strangely out of place. Awkwardly uprooted.

And because I am the kind of person I am, I know I will make no such effort to fit in. Oo, bahala na.



-----oh, I found a photo, too-----




Me and then co-faculty, Charelle, ca. 2005 (around the time I wrote that) taken during a DLSC College faculty get-together bonfire.


Have a great weekend. \m/