Finally, the first week of summer was over before i knew it. It went on much better than i had expected! I was able to meet new friends, and had a lot of fun doing it. College beats high school big time!!! I can tell that this is going to be a GREAT year! I just hope that its the same for everyone else.
A SIMPLE STORY
By
Jon Derek Tan
(A personal essay in the form of a story by Jon Derek Tan)
Throughout mankind’s history, many great stories have been written. These stories may come in the form of tragedy, comedy, or even a mix of both. Such stories have become so fascinating, so captivating and so inspiring to the point that the readers might wish that their lives would be as beautiful and as meaningful as the stories they read. I find this rather ironic because these people do have beautiful stories, beautiful lives, because of their joys and sorrows. Each and every life is a magnificent story in its own respect, for there are no two stories that are alike. These lives, these stories are written by an unknown author, a divine author who I believe is God. It is by His hands that new lives are created, and it is also by His hands that they are ended. I believe that my story has just begun and that the Good Author has completed the first three chapters of my life while he continues to write the fourth. If these chapters had titles, I think that they would be named “The Unexpected”, “The Desolate”, and “The Reborn”.
Chapter 1: The Unexpected
Some people have never known the coldness of life, while others have never known its warmth. I am one of the fortunate few who have experienced both life’s coldness and warmth. Welcome to my life. I am Jon Derek Tan, born on the fifth of July in the year 1987. As a young child, I grew up with only my mother, Elisa C. Tan, because my father was already married when he met my mom. Even though she had to take care of me alone, my mother raised me with all the love she could give, and I am eternally grateful to her for doing so. During those tender years, life was good. I was provided with food, clothes, a home and a good education in
Xavier School . I practically had nothing to worry about because I knew that my mother was always there for me. She would tutor me every night if I did not understand a lesson in school, she would comfort me when I came home in tears because of bullies, and she always wanted to make me happy. I was happy, but unfortunately, my mother’s life was ended after eleven years of taking care of me. It all began after the first two weeks of summer vacation in the year 1998.
We had just returned from our two-week trip to
Boracay Beach . A few days after our trip, my mother started noticing some black marks on her arms, but she thought they were just bruises. Later on, they became more and more evident so she went to the doctor for a check-up. She was diagnosed with leukemia, the cancer of the blood, and had to stay in the hospital for treatment. When she learned of this she made sure that I was the first person other than her to know this, and that she would have to stay in the hospital to get better. She was still in the hospital even when I had entered the fifth grade, but whenever I visited her, she would always tell me that no matter what, I should always believe and love God with all my heart. She told me that God would give me anything as long as I prayed for it and if He saw that it would be good for me, so every single day and night ever since my mother left for the hospital, I prayed to Him. I prayed to Him, asking Him to cure my mother from her ailment. I thought that He would answer my prayer, because I believed in what she told me about God. Unfortunately, on
July 27, 1998 , three months after she left for the hospital, she died. God took her away to His kingdom, leaving me, an 11 year old child, to be disillusioned by life’s ruthlessness.
Chapter 2: The Desolate
For me, everything was a blur during the first three weeks after my mother’s death. During her funeral service I was dumbfounded. Throughout the whole week I sat unwaveringly in a corner, only staring at the coffin which contained my mother, paying no attention to those people who came to grieve for her, for I was lost in my own little world. Several questions ran through my mind, each and every one of them disappearing as new questions came and left, but among all these questions, only one of them lingered, only one of them kept on coming back. It was the question “Why? Why did God allow this to happen?” This question tormented me for four long years; this question sustained me for those four years.
During that time, I was filled with emptiness, but nobody knew it. That was because eventually, after my mother’s body was cremated and buried, I began to smile and laugh again, and people were happy to see that I have finally returned to my carefree childhood life, but I never did return. I never wanted to return to a life full of false truths and empty beliefs. I was free from such a life, whether I liked it or not. I merely deceived them; I wore a mask, a mask that I have fashioned with memories from my childhood. Why did I choose to wear a mask? Why do I let myself be tormented by memories that have long gone? Why do I deceive them? Is it because I did not want their pity? Is it because I did not want them to remind me of my mother? Maybe so, but I am not so sure if these were the reasons for my daily facade.
By age, I was a child, but by heart, I was no longer one. I had to grow up without a parent now, so I had to be mature. It was hard, but I tried anyway. I no longer believed that God loved his children, I only believed that he was cruel, that he caused this pain that lingers in me for his own entertainment. I hated him. I hated all His teachings, all His promises, and all His lies!!! Ever since that time I no longer attended mass nor did I ever pray to him for anything. If I ever wanted something, I would work hard for it and if I failed, I would seek the help of others, but I would never ask for God’s help. I hated Him that much. He was the one who caused this. He was the one who had planted this seed of everlasting loneliness within me. He had already done His damage in my life; the only thing I could do was to prevent further suffering from happening to me. That is why I never prayed to him ever again.
I was alone, with no one to watch over me. I was left to grow up without the love of even just one parent. I was left to become desolate. I thought I would never change, that I would never open my arms, open my heart, to God ever again, but I was wrong. Something changed me. Something sparked the change, or rather the renewal, of my faith and it happened during the second semester of my first year in high school.
Chapter 3: The Reborn
It all began inconspicuously. By the time I had realized this, the change had already begun. It happened on a Friday night after school. I was waiting for my Guardian, the stepsister of my mom who was chosen to take care of me, to pick me up. It was already around
5:30pm , but she told me that she was at a meeting and that she would only be able to pick me up at around
7:00pm , so I walked around campus in order to kill some time.
Then I saw it. I saw a flyer posted in the high school bulletin board which caught my attention. It was a flyer of the Stage FX, the theatre club of
Xavier High School , and it said that the club was holding auditions for West Side Story on that very same day and hour that I was reading it and would end at exactly
7:00pm . “What a coincidence.” I was surprised that these words came from my mouth, but I was more surprised by what I had said. A coincidence… What could that have meant when I said that? I merely shrugged my shoulders and resumed roaming around, but strangely, I found myself returning to that same poster several times.
As I was walking away from that poster for the fifth time, I felt something was nagging at me in the back of my head. I ignored it, but it kept on doing so to the point that I went to the auditions of the club out of curiosity. I decided to audition as another way to kill the time but before I knew it, after all that dancing, singing and acting, I was accepted. I was greatly surprised, for I have never auditioned for a play nor have I ever had experience in such a thing and yet there I was, being given an orientation on what the play was going to be about.
After the orientation, as I was on my way home, I felt something I have never felt before. It was as if I were a child again, with a whole new world to explore, the feeling was exhilarating. During that short yet memorable semester, I attended every rehearsal with complete enthusiasm and genuine interest. I met different people, and befriended them but most of all, I met “her”, a student from
ICA (Immaculate Conception Academy) who was in the same year that I was, and surprisingly, had a similar experience like mine, so we became close friends almost immediately. I was amazed by her. In a way, she was exactly like me and at the same time, she was not. She had similar experiences like mine and yet she is different from me. I think what made her so different from me was because somehow, I felt a positive aura that emanates from her which seems to be a source of optimism and love for others, while I felt that I had a negative aura that is a source of pessimism and silent loathing for others.
Because of this, I could not bring myself to hate her at all. From her I felt something that I believed was denied from me for a long, long time. I felt love. People say that this type of person never existed, but there she was, a person who was able to make years of hurt and loneliness seem like fragments of distant dreams, she was a person who was able to comfort me even when she did not know it. I fell for her instantly, but I knew that she was not meant for me, for her love was already won by another, but I fell for her nonetheless. Since I will never become her boyfriend, I decided to become like a brother to her, for I wanted so much to be a part of her life, even if I would not be her special one.
Unfortunately, I made one of the greatest mistakes in my life. I told her that I loved her, even when I knew that she had a boyfriend. Startlingly, she surprised me more than I surprised her, for instead of pushing me away, she told me that she did love her boyfriend, but she was developing feelings for me as well, and she was being torn apart by it. She told me that I should not have confessed to her, for now she feels more for me than she ever did before. It wounded my heart to see her this way, so for the first time after four years, I did something for someone else other than myself. I did something out of love. I told her to forget about me and to be happy with her boyfriend. As much as I wanted to be with her, I wanted her to be happy, even if it means writing me out of her life. I had set her free. I know that such feelings would be considered by others as immature in the sense that we were only teenagers with raging hormones and such, but I believe that what I felt for her was genuine.
There was only one time when I saw her after the show; it was during the second week of my second year in high school. I did not know why, but one day, I felt an urge to walk down the street where I used to walk with her after rehearsals during the first year. As I walked down that street, remembering the good times I have had with her, I suddenly remembered the questions that I had constantly asked myself during my association with her. What was it that made her so different from me when she had similar experiences like mine? How was she able to stand up once more stronger than ever when she has suffered like me? I realized that it was because she believed. It was because she believed in herself and in God while I have not.
At that realization I was enlightened, and at the same time I was ashamed. I was wrong to have hated God for my mother’s death. I have suffered for so long because I did not want to let my mother go. I never asked Him for comfort, for guidance, for love. Instead, I pushed Him away and closed my heart from everyone, but through this girl, God sent an angel to me, and it was that angel who had planted a small seed of hope through an unnoticeable crack in my sealed heart. God has given me a second chance to change, a second chance to live, and for the first time ever since my mother’s death, as I walked down the street of sweet memories, I prayed.
I prayed to God saying that I was sorry, that I wanted to change, but I also asked Him why he had to reach me in such a heavy way. Why did He have me learn to love once more, only to lose the very object, the very center of that emotion? I remember the girl who helped me changed, I remembered her face, her sweet voice, her gentle smile and loving gaze… If only I could see her face once more… I prayed to Him, I prayed to Him for an sign, a sign that will show me that meeting that girl was no mere coincidence, and to my great surprise, as if God had heard my prayer and answered it, I saw her. I saw the girl who inspired this change in me. I saw the angel who showed me the way to return to the heart of the Good Author. I saw my angel as Tony saw his angel in West Side Story. I saw my Maria, walking down the street from the opposite side, and she saw me.
She was as surprised as I was, but we spoke to each other nevertheless. She told me that she was very happy with her boyfriend, and I could not have been any happier when I heard that. Our conversation, mainly about reminiscing the happy times and the sad times we had, was short, but sweet. Before we went on our opposite ways I told her “Thank you”, and although she did not understand why I said that, she smiled and wished me luck in my life.
As we walked past each other, I can not help but think of this particular symbolism. As she was walking to the direction from where I came from, she was moving forward in life, for she was complete. She knew who she was, and with every step that she takes towards the end of the street, God becomes closer to her life, to her heart, and as I walk towards the direction from where she came from, I am searching for myself, so that I can start over in life, and hopefully, I would be walking the same direction as she was. I want to become closer to God, but I know that it will take time for me to open my heart to Him, because there is still a lingering pain inside me. Although this wounds will never heal completely, I now know that I am not the only one who bears the pain. Perhaps someday, I will return to the path of the Good Author, or perhaps I will find a different path that leads to Him, nonetheless, I await that day to come before I can embrace the Lord completely, but for the time being, I shall seek to find myself once more.
After that day, I never saw her again, but I do think of her often, and I am thankful to have met her. I may not have changed all at once, but little by little, I am relearning more about who I am. One thing that I have learned about myself is that I am drawn to the arts. I remember that even as a child I loved to act, so that is why I have decided to choose theatre arts as a college course. During the summer vacations from first year to fourth, I have been enrolling in Trumpets Acting Playshop, which is some sort of “acting school” for those interested.
Through acting, I am able to expose myself to characters from different stories and through that, I can seek out the characters that have something in common with me, and when I do find such characters, I would try to see if he or she has any other traits that I might possess but have forgotten about them. Another reason for why I choose acting as a profession, is because by being exposed to different stories and plays, I would learn how to put my own stories and ideas into writing; I hope that my stories would be read and remembered by people, that people would be inspired with my stories, and that people who are experiencing what I have experienced would read them and know that they are never alone.
After I study theatre arts, I intend to enroll in creative writing as well. The final reason to why I choose theatre arts is because that through acting, I am able to meet people with different histories and reasons for joining. I am sure that these people also have problems in their lives. A few of my new friends in Trumpets do; because I am able to meet and befriend them, I am able help them with their personal problems, mainly by helping them realize how they can handle the problem emotionally, which has made me consider psychology as a possible profession as well.
All in all, I have come to love acting, writing, and helping others. They have become my life, my passion! Hopefully, I can use these to find myself and to reach out to people who are lost, like how I used to be. I wish to reach out to people and help the ones who have suffered like me, to move on in their lives and live. The third chapter of my life is coming to the end, while the Good Author begins to write the fourth. I am nearing the end of my stay in
Xavier School , and am now applying for college. Whatever comes my way will not cause me to lose faith in God ever again, for He has made Himself present to me through His own ways. Anything that would try to cause my faith to falter will only succeed in strengthening it. I will live on, honoring God, my mother, and my angel. I am Jon Derek Tan, born on the fifth of July in the year 1987. I am the son of Elisa C. Tan. This is my story, which continues to be written. Read on.
Hey there!!! Just wanna try out this Blog thing… anyways…. if anyone wants to know about my past, this is the place to find out. =)
