void

tired. the past few days have somehow drained the life outta me. at least for the moment. i know i'll get over this tomorrow.

you get that feeling, after laboring and worrying over one and the same thing for several days. when it's done, you feel like something huge and massive has been pulled out from you. but it's not a positive feeling, when it should be. you feel empty. emptied out, disemboweled.

now it's over, now i can move on with my life. today i delivered my baby in front of half a dozen bigwig critics. i had thought i would be proud. all that passion couldn't go wrong. but somehow a moment came when it dawned on me. they wouldn't care. they wouldn't factor in the sleepless nights, the money i spent, the effort i put in. they would only judge the finished product. just like a movie audience.

that's what they are, first and foremost. today, they were my target market. and i had tried to adjust according to what i had thought were their standards. but today something was pulled out of me, and it was fried under the glare of HMIs. it hurt. because i think there were valid points there. because somehow it made me question myself. because i'd thought for the longest time that i knew what i'd been doing.

it was giving birth. and then witnessing your baby being judged. i'd gone through that same scenario dozens of times before. in different versions, with varying results. and yet this affected me, somehow. when normally i'd just dismiss it.

before i left the delivery room what i got was polite applause. an A-for-effort kind of thing. thanks for delivering your baby, but we were expecting something else.

i left the room, and that was when i started feeling the void. 45 minutes was what it was all for. i went to meet someone, and one question was all it took, "kumusta?". one question and a few minutes, and i was crying. sh--t, i think i messed it up. the void was growing and the memory was fresh. i was comforted, i was hugged; that's what dearly beloveds are for, but no matter how they try to empathize and sympathize you know it wouldn't fill the void. the void was left by something that was nurtured by a different kind of passion that you couldn't give to anything or anyone else.

soon i met a couple of friends who went through the same kind of labor, and then i realized that maybe it wasn't as bad as i'd thought. that maybe i'd overreacted. it made me feel better, but the void is still here. the questions still unanswered. and for some reason, i feel bad enough to want to get drunk.

i don't know why. maybe it's just the night. maybe it's PMS. or maybe i need to do some self-assessment again.