Chapter 3 - Changes

Some people skip through life; some people are dragged through it. I sometimes wonder when I was a kid, wether we are moving through time or time is moving through us. My brilliant friend whom I met when I was thirteen says that light, unlike anything else, in the universe, is not affected by time. Light, he says, exists outside of time. He tells me it has something to do with how fast it travels and that it is eternal, but in fact, it is still a mystery to physicists.

I don't really know why am I surprised with that high intelligent quotient of his, when it was already discussed to my science teachers before. Perhaps it was because my science teacher before did much to help us memorize the Periodic Table of Elements and little to teach us how those elements works and relate to each other, or perhaps they did discuss it and I wasn't listening.

After what happened to the work office of my Mom, I realized that religion might be able to hose things down, get me back to normal so I could have fun without feeling guilty or something. I just didn't want to have to think about this guilt crap anymore. However, this thing, to me, is still doubtable when it comes to being an Adult. To me, Adult was more of an idea. It was something like a slot machine, a set of spinning images that doled out rewards based on behavior and, perhaps, chance.

The Slot-machine Adult provided a relief for the pinging guilt and a sense of hope that my life would get organized towards a purpose. I was too dumb to test the merit of the slot machine idea. I simply began to pray for forgiveness, thinking that the same pictures might appear and the light atop the machine would flash, spilling shiny tokens of good fate. If something nice happen to me, I thought it was the Slot-machine Adult whom I kept on doing good, and if something nice didn't, I went back to the slot-machine, knelt down a prayer, and pulled the lever a few more times. I liked this Adult thing very much because you hardly had to talk to it and it never talked back. But the fun never lasts. This is how I look Adult thing it was, where, in fact, it was silly as it sounds, but it do still have the concepts of being how you play the slot-machine adult very well.

As the school year almost come to an end, I keep on recalling those moments that me and my brother did when we were still a full house family, where in, right now, it's not already. The sound of the chalk clattering on the black board, the fun of watching your classmates making fun with each other, how deadlines actually broke your mental states that some of it you can't almost do, how grievously writing notes in your notebook to get the requirements where your hands might get strain and give up on writing the same as what you saw on the board, and the pain of trying to understand and memorize topics that you're not interested with, but you're forced, in order to pass that crappy quarterly exams.

It was a real fun, yet I decided to stop, for good. I know with our current situation by that time, my Mother cannot afford to sent us to school. Payments was there, payments were here, and I don't want it, I don't want to see my Mom suffering again. If I could just realized back then and take some of her burdens, by that time, she would be somehow, feel in ease temporarily. That was a different sort of guilt from anything I had previously experienced. It was a heavy guilt, not the sort of guilt that I could do anything about. It was a haunting feeling, the sort of sensation you get when you wonder whether you are two people, the other of which does things you can't explain, bad and terrible things.

The guilt was so heavy that I feel out of bed onto my knees and begged, not to a slot machine that I wanted to keep on pulling good chances towards of becoming a congenial adult, but this time, to a living, feeling God, to stop the pain. He wouldn't probably hear my prayers because I once doubted him as a Father, but what else should I do, the only person that I can crawl for forgiveness by that time was only my mother, where in fact, I can't, since I already fed up a lot to her, and that I wanted to change so bad.

I crawled out of my room and into the hallway where my mother sit and rest, laying on my elbows and face for an hour or so, going sometimes into sleep, before finally the burden lifted and I was able to return to my room.

It was already the time for a new life, the school year ends and my batches will move forward to the next year level of being a high school students, unlike me, who stepped out a bit because of a coward me who can't accept reality. But I am very grateful that I hold back for a year, I met the most galling but tickled kind of friends, intimidating yet salutary professors, dreadful but auspicious experience outputs, and a beautiful agony of memories with my classmates and friends.

If God would give me the answers that I once was asked to him, he would probably gave me many tribulation for what I've think about him back then, but it's not, I throw him rocks, he throw me breads instead, I once were pleased and thankful to my Mom for introducing me the God as a Father, that forgives and accept you no matter how cruel you are, and what you have been doing in your entire life, that will refine you by your mistakes. Even though my living father couldn't do it, but i knew I was already a part of God's family, and I'm proud of it, and that helps me to start again, to think through life again, to adore again.