Escape and Transformation

Blog-owner’s note: Let’s take a look at Marty’s point of view about change in life

By: Spectralkid

taken from my 2nd blog named “Magic” — dated March 20, 2009 @ 1am

Just a little over a week and it’ll all be over — I can’t say I’m not excited but I’m not looking forward to it as much as I thought I would. Or maybe I am but I’m just in denial. Needless to say, graduation is just around the corner and with it, the closing of doors of a lot of things.

Perhaps the one thing that lingers in my mind all throughout my five years in college dates back to sitting in my Literature class in Berchman’s, listening to Ma’am Diaz’s discussion on the theme of the novel we were taking up — The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

I remember her giving us the knitty-gritty of the novel we were about to take and deciding to give us the theme straight off the bat so we wouldn’t have to dawdle on it for the following three weeks — that is, of transformation. She told us that despite the prevailing coming-of-age story that Kav and Clay laid out, there is also the constant theme of escape and transformation — wherein every act of escapistry connotes a form of metamorphosis.

I remember taking each chapter of this book solemnly to heart. For a person who badly wanted/needed to change, I related to the fact that I’ve always felt out of place most if not all of the time and because of it, strived eagerly to put on all sorts of masks and faces just to get by. The book was right about changes that come with the escape as I realized that each passing moment of unbridled chaos brought out a deeper consciousness of things after the dust settled. You learn more from a lie rather than living a life full of truths, so to speak.

Yet at each moment of transformation, the recipient should be able to free himself completely of the bonds that hold him in his previous state. Think about a magician escaping from a water chamber, extermities bound — a brief moment of hesitation would sully the entire trick. One cannot exclaim to have committed an escape with one foot still in the hold — No, escape as well as transformation demands the entirety of the person to be conducted. Letting myself be shackled to past grievances would only limit my will to jump the bridge and at this moment of my life, looking back on those five hellish though glorious years, I came to realize that I have indeed, changed.

You learn, honestly. You learn to let things go if you give it the time to. For people like me,  you really don’t have a choice — you either come to terms with your demons or let it consume you. Yes, you can run but it eventually catches up — all you can really hope for is that amidst the running you pick up a trick or two to ready yourself for the inevitable. For me, it came in the form of a blue rose and a prayer — that was enough to push me over the edge, to take that one lost foot out of the chamber.

All that running came into a screeching halt as I faced the cold fact that I will never have a chance of surviving in this world if I did not discard some level of hope. In that moment, I felt every emotion that I shut out for nearly a decade and I finally said to myself, I’m tired — my soul was so damn tired.

When I finally stepped out of the box, it was a brand new day. Despite all the anger and pain I had to endure, tomorrow always had a way of coming and with it, the realization that I’m still alive in this world, no matter the number of wounds inflicted. I have always been who I was before said person and it always did me well to remember that — change and transformation are private affairs after all.

Yet tomorrow is still ridden with more challenges and I could never tell when God decides to put me in a blender just to see what comes out of it. It’s the scariest sort of feeling to never be in control of the changes around us but it might just as well, since we are at least in control of our own transformations. Honestly, I think we all dawdle too much on things that we think are too important to let go but you know what, I think the only thing that’s important worth living for is what you are willing to fight for every time you wake up to a new day. Somehow I think I just get too caught up in moments that I don’t see the big picture.

Thinking about those days in Lit class and looking at my own copy of Kav and Clay now, it dawned on me just how long five years has been and between then and now, so many things have happened to lead eventually to this transformation. And you know what the punchline is? It’s not even over yet and isn’t that an exciting thing to think about?

“Do not fear what you are escaping from, reserve your anxiety for where you are escaping to”

And people wonder, why I love this book so much.