Words Break My Bones

“Keep your hands up, Rein! Always keep your hands up! Or else you’ll get knocked out!”

Training is truly an arduous task. Sometimes I get bruises in my face. This comes from boxing occasionally, just so I can have some form of excercise every now and then. Every punch that lands on the middle area of my face is enough to send me to the stars. No matter how strong I think my bones are, I will definitely be in pain as knuckles come into contact with my face. The only way to not feel this pain is to carefully elude my opponent’s swings and jabs. Only through practice could one attain the limberness that’ll enable swift dodging of an assailant’s strikes. In time, I know the pain would be less since I would be able to avoid most punches. However, even before I started boxing, there has been a kind of pain that cuts through my bones, a pain that not even time could make me avoid. This is the bone crushing agony of being backstabbed. Backstabbing is inevitable. The nicest of people do this, even subconsciously. Perhaps there is a normal person in this world that exists that hasn’t spoken ill of anyone yet. I haven’t seen one, though, making me conclude that backstabbing is something everyone does.

When I first entered first year, my mind was innocent. I came from a world purely of love, affection, kindness, and nothing else. I was the type to be easily bullied, what with my stick-thin built and nerdy appearance. Indeed, I was made fun of, but I just kept quiet. As the school year progressed, the world I knew changed bit by bit. Burdened by work, my classmates and I slowly started to dislike some of our teachers. One particular teacher gave us a hundred page coverage for a history long test on a Tuesday. This history book was written in Filipino, making it twice as complicated. We pleaded for him to give this on another day since it was also our first math long test on the same day. We bugged him in the teacher’s lounge during recess and lunch. He still wouldn’t move the test. Dismissal was our last chance to make him change his mind, but that didn’t go too well either. One of my most admired classmates was this guy who never teased anyone yet. I liked the way he carried himself, as if he had no problems in the world, and he was always just smiling or laughing with his closer friends. He suddenly told me a few days after our Tuesday test that he had made a blog. When I checked his blog, it was a blog full of backbiting dedicated to certain teachers and classmates. I was really shocked. How could such a nice guy create something like this?

My highschool life continued. I was learning about the world in general. I asked myself questions like, “Why does it seem there is more evil in the world than good?”. I was also trying to just keep up with all the bad things I was learning. My classmate’s blog had more entries now, and I felt guilty that I was amused by these insults of his. I was in third year when I first felt the need to backstab. I had a classmate, almost all might say, was perfect. He was good-looking, talented and very friendly to everyone. He had high grades, and teachers loved him. He was very school-oriented. One day, however, my notion about him changed dramatically. I was on Google, trying to search my name. I wondered if it would appear in someone’s blog. I also searched some of my best friends’ names just for fun. There were a list of results, one of them being Mr. Perfect’s “secret” blog. What struck me first was his entry about one of my best friends. He said he wanted to punch my best friend, just because one of his girl crushes chose my friend over him at a party. Further reading his past entries, I’ve learned that he is the most arrogant being that has ever made a blog. “Yeah, I know, I’m good-looking.” was a phrase I saw, and I just went ballistic. There were more of that phrase, although using different words, in different entries. In school, Mr. Perfect was so humble, openingly admitting to people that he is not handsome. I guess his hidden blog proves how much of a liar he is. I came to a realization that this blog of his is much worse than my other classmate’s backstab blog. I came up with my own idea that “inside arrogance” exists. I shared this thought with some of my closest friends and felt bad because finally, I’ve started backstabbing.

Fourth year suddenly came so quickly. The beautiful world I once knew became a more unpleasant one to live in. I tried my best not to backstab anyone, but it seemed the more time passed, the more difficult it was for me to control my mind’s dark emotions. It’s as if there was more hate for me the older I got. Again, I searched for my name in Google one day because I was dying of boredom. My name appeared in an entry entitled “To Kill List”. Honestly, I don’t know what I did wrong to that person who wrote that blog. My whole barkada treated him nicely back in second year. As a matter of fact, he wanted to join our group, and we accepted him. It was just sad that we had different interests, and that led him to move away from us. I was so shocked, though, to see my name and my best friends’ names on a “To Kill” list. Upon seeing this, my bad side truly opened up. I started backstabbing that classmate of mine like there was no tomorrow.

Training to be a fighter is undoubtedly hard. This difficulty increases exponentially, especially when your trainer really beats you up during practice. I’d choose getting beaten up any day rather than knowing I’ve been backstabbed, though. At least in training, or in an actual fight, I’ll know what hit me and I can practice to be better in the future. Being backstabbed is just too painful. The words I’ve seen in the blog I found truly broke me. Right now, I won’t go washing my hands and say I don’t backstab. I have actually become worse, although I pray to God most of the time to try to overcome this habit of backstabbing. It’s as if my life is becoming a reverse butterfly. Instead of being a caterpillar turning into a lively insect that would be admired by a lot, I’ve become the reverse of this, a creature hated that nobody wants to touch. I have turned into a backstabber, even though I tried my best not to. Backstabbing is certainly inevitable.

~ by thekismet on February 25, 2008.