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Rewriting Regrets.

I feel rather uninspired. I lament over how much better I have written in the past compared to how I write now. I question myself. I doubt my ability. I don't speak, but I expect them to know.

Of this misery, of me. So that they could tell me what they knew of a being I couldn't understand.

More than understand, know what to do with all this weight. Not a burden, not a joy. Just so much.

As I pondered over all this for years on end from the day I stopped publishing my works in fear of flaws. The curse of perfectionism has always followed me, but it changed from frustration at what I wrote to nothing left to be frustrated at. And somehow, I miss that frustration—to have something to criticize, something to love in the midst of all its flaws.

I think I have always known perfection wasn't the goal. My English teacher in grade 5 or so started the class off with a quote, "Perfection isn't attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence."

I caught nothing because I never chased. It was too risky, you see. The chase meant I had to leave behind things. How could one expect the daughter of a man who couldn't throw away old newspapers to chase after new paper?

I did run for a while, though. There was an attempt. After all, my goody-two-shoes self would never not follow what a teacher said. I wrote and published on Wattpad. It wasn't glorious; I didn't care then. I forgot the purpose—the purpose became to just write what I felt.

I wrote prose and poetry uncaring. My friends left encouraging comments. Slowly, it built up to a few hundred views thanks to the passage of time. And thanks to the passage of my thoughts, they disappeared.

Now I am back to square one, all because of the spark in the eyes of first-year students that I saw at the reading club.

I threw away the habit of reading, watching films, and engaging in art beyond little entertainment, like it took away something from me. Doing so took away from me what I didn't want to sacrifice.

My love for writing and the arts. The people and the passion. The political and the spiritual. The controversial and the ordinary.

Everything I got to explore, contemplate, and define in life, I flung away with some reasoning of academics—a flimsy, thin-veiled excuse to cover up the atrocity I had become at that point in time, according to myself.

After all, the mirror never judged. The mirror never had any eyes. I did. I had poor vision since the first grade. It must have translated to my heart and mind.

Regardless of this abstract reasoning, it is to say that I regret the decision I made.

And now I rewrite this regret. The years gone by have ached. I hope it stings so I can feel my love for this again.


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