Despicable Me, and Other Things

If I'm not mistaken, I performed terribly at our oral midterm exams in Family Law. I badly needed to get a high grade in that exam, knowing how poorly I do during recitations. I get to finish the cases, I understand the concepts quite fine, but when I get called and this professor calls on me...I melt. There's something about her apathetic gaze and mindless frown, her high-pitched disagreement and her palpable exhaustion that destabilizes me.

I knew the midterm exam was my only hope of ever passing her subject. So I studied. So hard--at least by my standards. Back in my undergrad, I wouldn't study as hard. But for this exam, I studied way before the exam--around 3 days before the actual orals. I memorized around 80 provisions, made sure I knew the details of around 100 cases. And yet, when I got my set of questions, some of them I couldn't even recall studying.

This is pathetic. Back in my undergrad days, I was the top hound. I would be late 40 mins after the exam had started and still get the highest grade. I didn't even have to study all that hard.

This is different. This is too hard.

So, as expected of someone like me, I broke down. In the MRT. In the bus. I can only imagine how pathetic I looked, but what my parents and my classmates told me just hit home. My mom, she told me she knew why I wanted to be a lawyer: I wanted to help the people. My closest friends knew how hard I studied for the exam--I literally devoured Filipino marriages. And me? I just felt that I had to release all of it, get the depression out of my system. So I grieved.

That thing they said about how it's okay to fail than to never have tried at all? I think it's pure bullshit. There's something so hurtful about trying so hard...and falling flat on your face. I just can't wrap my head around the fact that, from where I stand, I can't hit this thing spot on.

Don't get me wrong. I get tired of ranting as well. Too tired that, sometimes, I find myself sleeping at the worst moments. But that's another story.

Through it all, I know that I wouldn't quit--unless they kicked me out. I wouldn't quit because I'm not about to run away from my dream. I can't quit simply because I think I can't. I don't know when I'll stop standing up whenever I fail, but I guess that's the essence of learning: failing and failing...and failing. Which means I've learned far too much by now!

In other news, my boyfriend and I had a date today. To be honest, I was more excited about getting a haircut than watching a movie with him.

He doesn't understand why I won't let him in. Why I won't run to him whenever I'm weak and just want to break down. Why I won't let him be my crying shoulder. That's the reason why I we've been fighting for days now. He thinks I've built walls around myself. In a way, I concur.

That's one thing he still doesn't understand about me. I'm just too proud to cry to someone, anyone. I'd complain and surely, I'd whine. But cry on someone on purpose? For the intention of being comforted? I don't think so..

At the end of the day though, I had one, an ugly haircut, and two, a surprisingly good time with the boyfriend. We watched Despicable Me. While he liked it a lot, I thought it was a bit cliche and that the hype about Agnes was too overplayed for me to enjoy it like everybody else. Overall? It was a nice no-brainer movie that wasn't quite capable of pulling off the same emotions Dreamworks is able to get from me.

I realize that I love him. I still do. There are times that I think it's slipping away. When I saw him walking away under the rain. When he held my hand too tightly, until it was getting strained. Or when he told me how he disrespected his parents. But there are more times when I genuinely feel, deep inside me without being able to express it, that I love him and that I see myself at the end of the line with him.

But these are all thoughts. Without action, aren't they useless?