TWIN PARADOX Poem by Shane Villena

TWIN PARADOX

Poem by Shane Villena

Clock out at exactly 7 in the morning, Whilst the half of me remained tuck beneath.

Early up sticks with coffee breath smiles, Together with clockwork within four-cornered room.

Zenith and vibrant petals have shown warm greetings, Celestial view of roots and cold breeze.

Sweet high-fives and goodbyes the last time, And welcome the first time of poking hatching eggs.

Rosy hope of future, Pallid thought of present.

5 miles away from home, 8 kilometers behind.

Free and off beaten the path concurrently.

There are days we run through our youthful minds, And days where we remain to our nostalgic clouds.

LOG

Non-Fiction by Jerome Edver Sanchez Illustration by Blesselle Ramirez

Day 1:

Said farewell to classmates and friends as school announces a temporary vacation.

Day 2:

Playing League of Legends with friends and family while enjoying the break.

Day 7:

The break is stil lnot over yet. Longer vacation, hurray!

Day 14:

School officially announces the cancellation of class and the end of the school year. What does this imply?

Day 21:

Picked up a new hobby-vector art creation. Seems hard but satisfying.

Day 25:

Created a shoddy vector art of a dear friend. Posted it and it seems to have become a topic for my previous classmates’ gossips

Day 39:

Playing LoL is no longer fun. Transitioned to reading manga instead.

Day 53:

Creating vector art is no longer fun. No transition available. Emptiness begins to form inside.

Day 67:

Tried forcing self to play LoL and have fun. Did not work and only reinforced the emptiness. Tried to find comfort on a game I found on Android. Found a lot of people to talk to. Emptiness subsides.

Day 80:

Stopped actively chatting previous classmates to spark conversations with. Will they hate me? Probably not.

Day 82:

Yep, nothing’s changed. Some friends reached out to me to converse with. Obliged them with small and long talks about any topic we could think of. Pretty proud that I know a lot of generally useless information.

Day 85:

Began making friends in the new game. People are really nice here. A lot of them said they were depressed they couldn’t hang out with their classmates and fellow teachers.

Day 90:

I became a co-master of the guild I was in. Hurray for me. We created a discord server to hang out with each other. Began recruiting more into the guild so we could have more people to talk to. I talk with them a lot and sometimes give advice or simply be there for them.

Day 100:

Almost everyone in the guild calls me either senpai or sensei, despite repeatedly telling them to not do so. I am honored, embarrassed, and feel like I should probably bully them IRL so I can breakeven.

Day 103:

I couldn’t find any more interesting manga to read. Might as well just read Black Clover as it seems to be the hype manga.

Day 120:

Dad experiences health issues. Not COVID. Hope he gets better soon.

Day 125:

Dad’s health worsens. No longer able to work. No longer able to eat normally.

Day 126:

We went to the doctor. The illness requires a large sum of money to treat. We don’t have much.

Day 128:

Dad goes through treatment anyways. Doctor prescribes medicine that costs 4 digits of money per 15 days. Dad still cannot work due to condition. Dad is in severe pain from time to time.

Day 140:

No more internet to save money, also turned off the fans. Not like I’ll need it anyways. Also, stopped using gadgets as often.

Day 141:

Instantly remembers that I have a guild to take care of. I buy load using the money I saved up in order to talk with friends.

Day 145:

Previous plan is unsustainable. We need money to pay for medicine. Gave my savings. Loaded 50 pesos to officially announce my departure from the game. Opened the game to clean up all the items. Might as well make it clean if I’ll ever be able to play again. Opened Discord to announce my very long leave. ”Hey guys ^_________^”. Lobby erupts with people that greetedme and we started talking non-stop. Couldn’t say goodbye. I don’t know what I’d do without them now that I thought about it.

Day 146:

Dad’s condition worsens. I’ve become a caretaker of sorts now. I look at my promo balance and realize that I only have a few MB of data remaining. I took a deep breath. Sat on a chair not doing anything as I pondered and let thoughts drift. ”If there is an all-powerful god out there, then it is a most evil and repugnant being for allowing connections to be severed”. I took a deep breath and opened Discord and was about to press call but remembered I only have a few MB left. After a

few moments, I wrote, though hesitantly. ”...Goodbye my friends whom I’ve never met and probably never will. I don’t know when I’ll comeback-if I’ll even come back at all. Keep chasing and keep dreaming! -the guild’s senpai”. I ended on a slightly cringey note. Perhaps it’ll make it less sad. I don’t know. I pressed send and turned off my data. Sometimes, I feel a bit better knowing that due to already experiencing debilitating stress before, I’ve grown numb to sadness for the most part.

Day 148:

Gave my dogs a bath and left my phone with it’s data on to receive any news from the GC before the data expires. After the dogs’ bath, I saw the data has expired and I looked at Messenger and saw nothing of importance.

Day 160:

Dad’s condition is seemingly not getting any better. Moments of severe pain increases. I hear him nearly cry due to the pain at night. We’re purely relying on mom to be able to pay the bills and for medicine. Crushing realization that I’m not doing anything to help nor can I do anything to help. Feeling of emptiness takes over most days.

Day 170:

Got mom to give me load. I feel ashamed to accept it, but I must swallow my pride to check for updates. Found out that PnC will finally be screening and confirming their students. Prepared the requirements.

Day 171:

Didn’t know what to do with extra data. Watched YouTube videos to take the edge off for awhile. Needed something to listen to in 144p to save data. Got into stand-up comedy pretty quickly. Gabriel Iglesias became my favorite.

Day 175:

Gabriel Iglesias was quickly replaced with Ricky Gervais and George Carlin. Gave me courage to come out as an atheist to primarily Christian friends and family. Accidentally opened Discord while backing up files on Google Drive. Nearly broke down crying seeing 12messages saying good bye and thank you to me. Read them all, trying my best not to cry. Failed miserably...

Day 180:

Passing requirements in PnC with some acquaintances that I managed to wrangle up. I hate going alone.

Day 200:

Finished up all the necessary requirements and waiting for the start of classes

Day 205:

Christmas arrives early as we get donations from friends and family. Managed to get enough load that’ll be sufficient until the end of the year. I hate Globe’s below poor service but thank whatever god is out there that the load you put into Globe Prepaid won’t expire for along time if you don’t use it.

Day 230:

I’d rather not call these professors ’teachers’. A lot of them feel like Indian YouTubers ”Okeh please watch this video” they chat as they post tons of links and assignments but not really teach.

Day 235:

We get introduced to Sir Pong, a professor I’d willingly call a teacher. Actually checked upon student’s progress. Faith in professors restored.

Day 240:

Dad finally feels less and less pain. Due to the forgiving workplace, dad gets reintegrated back into his job. Workplace is glad and ecstatic to have him back.

Day 255:

Got close with a bunch of interesting fellows. We create a gc to hangout in. I have enough load to play the game again, I’m thinking of downloading it again. I’ll try it next time.

Day 256:

The amount of activities the professors are sending are reaching a point of such density as to create a black hole. Good thing I haven’t downloaded anything yet... there’s not even enough time to sleep 6 hours a day anymore. What’s worse is that there’s no lessons being ”taught”. It’s mostly Youtube links and PDFs and at best, we’ll have a meeting, but to make things interesting, they’ve decided to never say when they’ll have a meeting. It’s like a guessing game of if students should load or not and when. If you’re wrong and load when there’s no meeting, you’ve wasted money. If you didn’t load and there’s a meeting, it’s ”100% the students fault”. If you load and there’s a meeting then you best pray to your gods that the signal doesn’t decide to act up. Though the latter is pretty much no one’s fault, it’s a big risk to load and not to load.

Day 270:

Ah yes, the prayers of the world came true and there’s finally an E.O. to reduce the amount of activities. Finally, some breathing room. Those 2 weeks were more hectic than the last 2 days before a thesis defense. I wish I could laugh at that wholeheartedly but it was more traumatic than it was fun.

Day 275:

A professor is blatantly breaking the rules of the E.O. and gave out five activities. I want to berate the professor but I’m also too cowardly to do so. I only hope that one of my classmates will do it.

Day 276:

Dreams come true. A student decided to PM the professor about the extra activities. Sadly, the claims fell on deaf ears as the professor counter-claimed, amidst the evidence that the activities were assigned within the period stated by the E.O., and implied that we could do one or two of the activities during the academic break. Yes, yes because clearly the academic break is to be used to do things for academic purposes. Next time, I’d suggest making another break and naming it ”schoolbreak” and then have everyone attend school during it’s duration.

Day 295: Currently enjoying the academic break as much as I can, ignoring the looming threat of the activities assigned by a professor. I can finally take a deep breath and relax. This was too hectic of a start to a school year, but it looks possible. Finally, had enough time to learn a new hobby. Hopefully, this one will last. It looks like there are no breaks. But simply, ”labeled days with no meetings” as I’ll spend the few remaining days prepping for there sumption of classes.

Day 390:

Finally, downloaded the game again. Almost everyone was gone. Remaining members left the guild and found others. The last chat in the guild was ”Wemissyou*****-sama” from the guild master before passing me the ownership of the dead guild. Despite not having any active members, I announced my return to the dead guild chat before officially disbanding the guild.

Made with help of a good friend.

Daybird