I am braver now

     It's been almost a month since my last post.  Apparently, school has once again took over my entire life that blogging seemed to have been out of reach but I'm glad I have time now. 

    Semestral break came in a week ago but I can't believe I wrote a post just today. The coming of my tireless and sugar-driven 2 year old nephew who storms into my room without permission should take half of the blame. But then again, a child is a child or should I say, a high-powered child is a high-powered child and we can't do anything about it but to let them be. Unless, we lock them up inside a highly-secured facility with contraptions that can suck the fun out of a child's body. 

      Anyway, let me tell you, it was a rocky semester for me and by rocky I mean, there were really a lot of stumbles that happened to me but of course, I didn't stay on the ground for long. One bad thing about falling is you taste how bitter the ground is but the good thing about having dirt rub against your tongue is the fact that it makes you want to avoid the reason why you fell in the first place once you get back up. Or, you may have just learned that the next time you fall, just don't open your mouth.  

     As you go further in life, the deeper you know yourself and you become more confident in the decisions you make in life regardless of how wrong or right your decision may seem. 

    Remember that day when you were a child, the very first time you slid down on a slide. Probably the one in a playground or the one in the public swimming pool. There were a lot of things going on inside your head or in your stomach. You were thinking of possible consequences of what might happen once you slide down. If you were around three to four years old, you might not be thinking of possible effects of your action that you might regret in the future, but somewhere in the corner of that particular situation, you knew that you felt fear; fear was so close to your face you thought you could touch it. 

     Despite the army of fear trying to take over your whole body, you closed your eyes and still slid down. By the moment you touched the ground, the fear that was once trying to boss you around on top of that slide, somehow found its way out of you. All of a sudden, excitement stung you in the butt and you wanted to do it again. You decided to do it over and over again. You decided to climb up the slide without apprehensions. You decided to slide down without knowing that you wiped out all the dirt off the slide. You decided to slide down fearless of how your Mom will react once she saw your filthy white shorts.  You decided to slide down without your slippers on and forgetting how much your Mom hates it when you play barefoot. 

     Every day we make decisions in our lives whether you're a kid, a teenager, a young adult or an adult. Sometimes, we stink at making good decisions and sometimes we're not.

    What I've learned about myself from this past semester is that I have become more courageous making decisions for myself. I used to have fear behind every decision I make. I used to have so many apprehensions. I used to fear going down that slide. For some reason, I have more courage now. At the back of my mind, consequences are waiting on the other end  that used to scare me but I am less worried now as compared to who I was before. I still made some bad calls and I felt bad about them but not as bad as before. 

      I felt I have grown so much, not just physically but emotionally, mentally and spiritually and I feel great because of that. It just goes to show how ready I am of facing whatever awaits me in the future. I may not be the best decision-maker in the world and my decisions may still cause me to fall on the ground with my mouth open and once again, taste how bitter the ground is but it doesn't mean I can't decide to get back up and continue moving forward.

       It's my life and it's my call.

The Telephone

The rain was soaking up the dried up land that one breezy morning.

I was convinced that I needed more time to stay on my bed based on how slow it took for me to put on my slippers. I decided to sit, hoping it would shake off the heaviness in my head. My eyes were still closed and the infinite darkness that appeared to be so hypnotizing intensified my craving for more sleep. I was ready to fall back any time but I guess, the thought of school responsibilities might have hindered me to be cozy with my pillow again.

Sometimes, I just don't understand my decision-making skills. I choose to stay up until midnight and enjoy late night television shows, regret the decision the morning after and promise myself not do it again. The next thing I know, I find myself munching a snack I found in the fridge at 10 in the evening while watching the Ellen DeGeneres Show in my room.  

Anyway, going back to that day, I realized that the faster the rain drops fell, the slower my movements became. I forced my body to get up and lazily motioned my way to my bedroom door. 

Even turning the door knob seemed so difficult that time. 

I made my way to the kitchen table to make myself a hot cup of coffee. There was my mom, who probably woke up an hour earlier than me (as usual).

Morning conversations with my mom usually starts by my initiative to ask the time she slept and the the time she woke up or whether Dad's going to go to work or not and that's probably it.

Sometimes she would talk about my youngest sister or our friendly neighbor or anything she thought of discussing about. Other times, it's just a silent morning for the next couple of hours.

However, the silence that I assumed would blanket the rest of my morning disappeared.

I was sitting by the window in the dining table, staring at the farthest distance my eyes could take me when our home phone suddenly made a loud beep accompanied by a scratching sound. The sound interfering the beep was similar to an old school radio when you try to change station. And there's one more thing, while the phone was irregularly beeping, which it doesn't normally do, the red light was turned on. 

What made things more far-out is that the red light only turns on when somebody's using the phone and clearly, nobody was using the phone at that time.

I looked at our phone right away baffled by the perplexing tone coming from it. Somehow, it reminded me of the recorder paranormal experts use when they try to communicate with unseen ghosts.  The sound lasted for a few seconds before it gave way to a creepy kind of silence that masked not only our house but also both my Mom and I's faces.

We both looked at each other in the eyes trying to put the puzzle pieces together. I knew what my Mom was thinking however, I didn't want to jump to conclusions right away and still tried to make logical judgement as to what might have caused the phone to make such a scary sound.

First of all, it wasn't an incoming call because if it was then it would've made a ringing sound instead (of course). Mom added that if it was a call then it shouldn't have produced any sound since the phone was on mute. 

I tried calling the phone using my Mom's cell phone and indeed, it didn't make a sound. I checked the bottom side of the phone where the mute switch is located and that made me more convinced that something out of the norm just happened. The phone was really on mute.

There are two ways to turn the red light of the phone on, either you lift the handset up or you press the loudspeaker button. 

Nobody was there to lift it up or else my Mom and I would've seen it. On the same note, nobody was there to press the loud speaker button. My dad and my youngest sister were still asleep at that time.

I was thinking, maybe, the telephone company was just trying to pull a prank. With that thought in mind, it made me think that maybe, they have a way of making weird phone noises or switching the red light of the phone on without having to lift the handset or pressing the loudspeaker button that will make people think that it's the cause of some sort of paranormal entity.

Or maybe, just maybe, there was really something who played with the phone.

I guess, I'll never know unless someone can enlighten me and explain how that strange incident happened.

I do believe in ghosts and I also believe they roam around in the world of the living despite the fact that I haven't actually seen one. 

Nevertheless, I do want to stick with possible logical or scientific explanations to these kinds of incidents.

For now, I am still floating around the universe with these questions in mind.

How did the phone make that long and loud beep with a scratching sound? 

How did the red light turn on without the handset being lifted up or the loudspeaker button being pressed?