Just when I thought I could no longer smile

March 2 2008 9:07 pm

---TC Called Joey, asking how I was. That made me melt down and just cried. Joey says I need to cry. I apologized for not being strong enough. Thanks Elena. Thanks.

---I’m glad you had a good cry. I wasn’t sure how you’d take my telling tc. I needed to tell someone. I’m sorry.

---It’s all right.

My left wrist stinging and glaring,

despairing over what the stinging and glaring means--- I’m down, down, down in hell and the gates are once more open and all the demons will come out of my wrist--- hating grief, hating the anger in my grief, hating that the anger comes out as angry words that hurt and destroy love, hating how I descend to beyond hurt through a fixation on a stinging and glaring wrist which we all thought had been cured, hating how I’m easily reduced to tears, hating how it is once more necessary to pull myself free from those who do not understand how this journey to hell and out would go, hating how I only feel this sadness, the anger deserting me,

I struggled to smile.

Then:

“Hi po gud eve, mam ace po 2, hehe knuha ko un # m ky sir pao, mam d kc ko nkpgsalamat dati, un tnuro mu sa English epektib, regular ne me sa isang co. sa ortigas lhat tlga nung tnuro m sakto sa interview, slmats tlga mam…ingatz kau plge”

I replied:

Hi Ace! Wow! I’m so happy for you! Yay! I’m glad what I taught helped but you were the one in the interview. Galing! So proud of you!ü I hope I get to see you soon&you can tell me all about your job and life!ü

“yup tnx tlga mam…lam ko mdmi p u mtu2lungan, people like u are the ones who make people grow up and change, gudluck po sa inyo…slmat ng mdami ulit…ingatz”

I said:

Aww, thanks Ace. Thanks, that made me smile, makes me want to go back to teaching: students like you. Thank you!ü

“Hehe taas noo tkga ko sau mam kht c sir pao gnun dn, kau un isa sa mga tao na my ka2yahan mgbago ng isang tao, ko2nti lng kau mam…Kya slmat nkilala ko kau…tc”

His language didn’t make me wince or berate him with corrections.

After all, the English in his second message was perfect.

That says it all.

He used to have awful syntax in written and oral English.

He used to just concentrate on gaming instead of on his academics.

He had thought his life wasn’t going anywhere.

But he has learned.

And I’m reminded by all those messages that my students sent me, when they got jobs, when they have achieved something---

This made me smile

(but I found myself almost crying again).