Inner Merds

For the mamarus that were taught to shut up

Ah High School. Might be uneventful for some, but definitely formative for me. Comes with a lot of baggage but there is hope that you’ll eventually get over it.

My flavor of it is of the All-Girls school kind. I don’t know if its a personality thing but this rant is triggered by a lot of attention I got from an event earlier. Complements all around. “

Antayin namin yung book behind yung 9 word pitch mo!” : the 9-word story pitch just being my answer to a Question on the Participants Form: “Janitor working in a POGO Hub wants to Escape”.

When asked by Miss F.H.Batacan how the idea came up, I answered in front of around 50 people: “We usually look up to the people na taong magaling, mga makinang, (we don’t usually see) the invisible people in our daily lives, the Utility Staff, the Security Guards - tao din sila.” God I probably sounded so proselytizing and so Miss Universe-y, but well that’s where that Idea really come from. Looking for the extraordinary, for the good, in ordinary situations and things. And besides, they do see everything. They’re not just Non-Playable Characters in some pa-Main Characters’ Life.

But I digress.

I felt reaaally uncomfortable with too much Attention. I have always maintained a position about myself that I do not like Attention. But do I really not like Attention? Or do I not like the eventual criticism that comes with it, the “evil eyes”? The Expectations? I would rush to make jokes to self-deprecate myself, to fold and crumple, to make them feel good, that rush to make it look like Hey I’m not special, to make it look like its not a big deal. Maybe I still fear being disliked - being told a semblance of “Ang dami mong alam a” by someone nicknamed Merds from a History Class back in high school and no one actually countering that thought in my head. And if there’s thing that I also observed/learned in High School is that people are annoyed with the Bida-Bida. The know-it-all. So much that I have internalized it and spot it right away when it happens.

And that made me shut up sometimes until now, in some situations. But eventually I will also learn not to care about what people say anymore, just internalized the self-help mantra of Not everyone will like me and that’s okay, just not interact with people I don’t like, or just gauge how receptive someone is to the things I will be saying.

In any case, the default still is some form of deflection.

But man, how many people with great ideas are out there, unaware that they’re still shrinking themselves just because of an off putting remark from someone back in High School?