On second thought

We spent the day discreetly (or perhaps not so discreetly) making origami flowers for a fund-raising activity for the class. I remember when I was little and origami was a regular part of life, along with white shoes (for inside the classroom) and black shoes (for outside), songs in Nihongo, and learning to drink tea and make sukiyaki. I studied in a school run by Japanese nuns, and aside from learning how to read and write in Japanese, we learned to make paper cranes and were given colorful squares of paper as a reward for jobs well done. I was never much good at art that needed to be made by hand. I'd get the creases wrong and would often have to start again, to the consternation of my favorite nun, Sr Monica.

And even when I got it right after a laborious stretch of time (and repeated gentle instructions from the presiding sister), there were still marks on the paper where there weren't supposed to be any. I could never erase them, like indelible marks on my saggy paper cranes.

They're kind of like mistakes that way.

I wrote that last entry (and how come we can't say "I wrote the below" as a reverse to "I wrote the above"? I digress) before I had any idea of the proceedings that went into revoking the title. Before finding them out, I was okay; after that, it was as though someone tugged the rug out from under my feet and I was left gasping and reeling, unable to believe the sheer amount of (I'm sorry.) stupidity that is responsible for hurting the feelings of about 300 people.

I feel like I should just write about it and I'll feel better afterwards, and then be able to work, so here I go.

If maturity were graded and if the last week was a test, I would be in the bottom half of the class--probably even rock bottom of 160 or so students. I don't know anyone who has handled the disappointment as badly as I have. Not disappointment in our final loss, but extreme dissatisfaction with the way things were handled. I should have handled things with more humility. I don't understand why I felt so angry, and for such a long time, because had we lost on TRP night itself, I would have mourned for a few hours and then moved on. I could never begrudge anything of 2013, the upper batch and the final winning class for TRP 2010, because I have a handful of friends there--among them, friends I know I will have for life. It also isn't knowing that our song was better, because it wasn't; I mean of course I liked it more, having gone through each step of the "Detox" we described in our song's lyrics with as much gusto as the next person, but it wasn't necessarily better. In terms of performance, I have to give the thumbs up to 2013 as well, because theirs was cleaner than ours. My attachment to our song is a strictly sentimental one, and were I one of the judges needing to exercise a professional eye (or ear), I know it'd have been a toss-up for me too.

So why does it hurt so much? Is it because I've wanted to win TRP since I wanted to be in UPCM which is, en effet, forever? I keep joking with anyone who will listen that I am not, I will never ever ever, return the TRP trophy, which is sitting in the same position now as it was that night--previously a sign of victory and a source of fond memories, now like a gaping wound my roommate and I can hardly look at.

The truth is that at this moment I want to go up to our unit, pluck the trophy from the kitchen counter, whisk it downstairs, and plonk it in the middle of the MSS tambayan, no questions asked, because it hurts to look at it. Unlike some of my classmates who adamantly maintain that we are still the winners--as of course they have every right to feel--I could never believe in it myself, and the trophy, with that sad, gaudy piece of Christmas tinsel wrapped around it, is just a nasty reminder.

Bad events have a way of bringing out the best and the worst in people. The best, in some classmates who unexpectedly maintained their cool and kept a level head throughout the whole thing; congratulations to you, because you are better men and women than me. The worst, in me--and in a select few (some of them my very own classmates) who treat 2014's anger, which is very much deserved, with disdain. And the thing is, it's all right. We all have the right to feel the way we feel about things. Class 2013 has the right to celebrate, and the right to post celebratory status messages on facebook--a right taken from them for a few sad days--and class 2014 has the right to moan about the unfairness of the world. Everyone has the right to be angry for a few days, and then to be forgiven afterwards.

It's just--I expected better of myself.

That is all.