beingbeaple

The terms autobiography and biography used to confuse me. I kept wondering which one was created by a writer to talk about himself and which one was written by someone to talk about another person. I’ve had a shrewd idea of what an autobiography was supposed to be, but it never really made an imprint in my memory until my English teacher asked the whole graduating batch to write one.

So there I was, trying to compile my almost-sixteen years of existence into one page of special paper. I even considered checking my old diaries for research information (since I barely remember what I used to do when I was younger) but then I realized I didn’t really want anyone to look that deeply into my past. For one reason, it’s all in the past. For another reason, I thought it was too sad for me to read about.

Although it’s the president’s job to collect (and distribute) most of the stuff for our class, Ma’am thought it would be better if it were a girl who collected the autobiographies of each student. Since I am next-in-line I was granted the duty of filing all of my classmates’ works into plastic folders. And, yeah, I had to stay in school longer – just to wait for those who hadn’t passed their autobiographies yet – but in the end, I learned a lot of things during my extended stay.

When I got home from school this afternoon, after another round of waiting in vain for the missing stuff I had been assigned to pass, I saw my card collection sitting on top of the kitchen table. The container was there, but with the lid off. I saw my diary – remnants of my junior year - sitting pretty near the top of the pile and I prayed no one read it. Feeling a slight thrill of foreboding, I got the pile and ‘sifted’ through it. The first thing to catch my attention was my diary, the cute little pocketbook my best friend Karla had given me during Christmas last year. My writing was cramped and very different from the writing I sport now, but the way the words flowed out of the pen was the same as ever. Same old sarcastic me, with the penchant for talking to myself as though I’m listening. (To be honest, I don’t listen to myself and I even end up realizing the truth behind my own feelings months after the incident talked about took place.) The pages gave me a brief recollection of last year, from the trip to Del Monte to that fateful Game KNB episode, and even allowed me to glimpse souvenirs from the past like the tissue paper I once wiped my tears with and that clipping from the Philippine Daily Inquirer about people born on April 19.

And out of all the tiny lines of random ramblings written there, one line caught my attention.

It was located in the entry written on the first day of 2006. It said something like, Well, the new year is here and I do hope it’s far different from the last one. And it struck me as ironic – how things could turn out the way we wished them to… only with a slight twist to the tale.

To be honest, I don’t know why I even bother to keep diaries. It’s not the same as keeping a blog – because I maintain my blog mainly to satisfy my need to channel my creative juices somewhere outside school. Just like Aimee, there are some things I would much rather keep to myself and to the innards of my journals, far away from the prying eyes of the people of the world. In my entries, there is just so much passion, so much emotion that is worlds different from the casual way I write my blogs. And I’m not sure if it’s abnormal, but there are parts of my own life I still can’t bring myself to read.

On a happier note, I think my blogs are an improvement compared to my diaries. Although I still succumb to mixtures of self-pity and PMS in some of the entries, in general I feel I’m happier when I blog than when I reflect and jot down stuff in my Big D. Maybe it’s because I prefer typing words than writing them?

Poof!

P.S. Has anyone heard of the Candy Teen Blog Awards? Check out www.candymag.com for more details!

P.S. 2 And honestly, Alex, I thought your blog was very nice! And I’m not being plastic! I already get into so much trouble being too real, as it is!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.