Jandrea...so far

Aug 31, '10 10:01 AM              I was seated on one of the wooden benches in DAP taking in this beautiful sight on a just-right cool day in Tagaytay when I noticed that the light on the lawn would change from minute to minute. First, the sun was bright and intense on the ground, then suddenly the light softened, and then the colors of the trees and grass would glow again. It was like someone up there was playfully folding and unfolding a giant umbrella over the area where I was. Looking up, I noticed a flurry of clouds move from the end of the sky farthest from me towards the direction over my head. Sometimes, the clouds took a lazy pace, taking their own sweet time to traverse the distance. But when I chose to pay close attention, up there was a spread of feathery clouds that seemed to be racing to get to a finish line.                And that was when I realized how flimsy-looking clouds can reduce the intensity of the light and heat of the sun. Even for a fleeting m

    Maybe because I am able to share my innermost thoughts on things which fill my mind and keep me awake. Maybe because I need a catchbasin for my feelings that occasionally overflow.  Maybe because I have so many stories to tell, every one of them I want to remember. Maybe because I like painting pictures with words. Maybe because I am desperate for any kind of attention, even from strangers that wander their way into my blog. And most of all, maybe because I want to leave a little bit of myself when I am all gone.

               Some years ago, my siblings and I created what we would imagine could be the titles to our mother's life story if it were to be filmed. 1.  LIFE SUCKS! 2.  Luluha Ako ng Dugo 3.  Balang Araw, Mararamdaman Nyo Rin 4.  The Many A ngst of D 5.  Survivor of Own Torments 6.  I Live to Grieve 7.  Why Me, Lord? 8.  I'm Happy Being Unhappy      The titles were borne out  of our frustration with having to deal with a mother who was to my mind pathologically unhappy.  It all sounds really irreverent but humor was one way my siblings and I faced what was a pretty regular situation in our family.   It was the weapon we used to prevent our spirits from being weighed down too much. It took quite an effort (at least, for me) to soar away from the doldrums because unhappiness can be quite contagious. To this day, I wonder why none of us siblings ended up seeing the world in this dim light, or in psychological terms, how we managed

"May we never let the things we  DON'T  have or  CAN'T  have or  SHOULDN'T  have, spoil our enjoyment of all that we  HAVE . "         This is something I would love some people in ( or out of ) my life to learn.    I don't know if it is my fate to have had more than my share of unhappy people play significant roles in my life. Almost daily, in the past, I would be caught in the trap of having to listen to how life has treated them unfairly. My role in these talks,  it seemed, was to point out to them how they would feel better if they saw the bigger picture of their lives... how they only seemed to focus on the dark and bleak parts and glossed over the brighter splashes of color during their day. If I succeeded at all in letting them see what was promising about their lives, I seldom got any clue.           Close to emotional exhaustion one time from having to  "help fix"  someone's problem for the nth time, I c