Rebrand Turned Dream Metamorphosis

     I spent the majority of my teenage years believing that I have to abandon my dreams, yet I rebranded it as many times as I could to somehow keep it alive while I still wanted to lay my exhausted body under the safety of my all-embracing blanket. It was warmer, kinder, and more motherly than my mother ever could. It didn’t say anything, it saw everything. The way I slammed my newly bought color pencils and notebooks on its cottony surface, the way I rolled around as I read my own diary, the way I sat silently as I studied my math lessons, the way I’d lie face down as I cried after they’d berate me at the dinner table. It knew my favorite brand of crayons, my favorite color that none of my clothes have, and my favorite things to do behind my family’s back. It memorized the movements of my face muscles whenever my mom walked in, recognized the difference between my sickness, my anger, my discontent, and it remembers the many voices that came and went just as well as mine. It even knew my phone’s search history—GOBELINS Paris, New York School of Visual Arts, how to get a scholarship for art school, how to become a good artist—art was all I ever did, art was I ever talked and cried about. I wanted to be an artist ever so ardently, to be creative, as it was my calling, my heart’s loudest desire, and it absurdly felt like a crime.

It is reality, I knew that well, but having your ambitions almost completely shattered in a casual conversation at the dinner table should not even be a memory from when I was only thirteen, unfortunately it is a canon event for most creatives. “You won’t make it in life if you keep that childish dream of yours.” It kept pestering my head whenever I rode to my dilapidated, small town high school, my mom’s words clung as did the mud all over my skirt and my polished shoes. Easy to wash, to forget, but it’d be there again the next day as long as the path remained filthy. Monday to Friday, the same routine for more than half a decade riding my cousin’s motorcycle to school, getting drenched in all sorts of earthen sordidness on the same uncemented road and all I thought throughout those years was how I was going to make it out without putting all my hidden drawing books on fire. 

Eventually, I came up with “rebrands” to, at the very least, protect myself from the unrelenting world of capitalists. For years I didn’t use the word “artist” around my family, or my relatives, or the adults around me in general. Whenever they asked me about my ambitions, I would say “I will take up an English Literature degree” or “I might teach” or even “I want to get out of the country to find work there” which always brought about a sense of relief to them. The only people who knew of my truest desires were my friends who occasionally indulged themselves in my non-academic scribbles and artworks.

Right after graduating senior high school, I knew I had to commit to the rebrand I have been telling people. Since an average provincial girl could never afford a trip to Europe, nor could she afford local art schools, I lost the heart to pursue art and chose to be practical instead. Despite having absolutely no energy to take up a degree, I took two admission tests for two of the top universities in Mindanao, not taking it too seriously and secretly hoping to not pass both of them. Unfortunately I did. Both also offered English Language degrees—a punch to the stomach, a brick to the face, the rebrand had become reality. Turning the opportunity down would cost me my honor, so I picked the university whose English Language degree program had stellar accreditations and achievements, the farthest from my hometown. Unbeknownst to me, I would find myself renewed in Malaybalay.

My first year in college spoke for itself through the rugged cracks and wrinkles in my face, the state of my dorm, and my laptop which barely hung by a thread. Yet that very year completely reshaped me. It was during the first semester when I met my first favorite professor, who taught “Theories of Language and Language Acquisition” and the only college professor in that wretched campus who believed in my abilities. Her enthusiasm inspired many of us to go beyond what was required of us. She recommended books to read, recited poetries, and taught us how to enhance our essays, even when it was not part of the syllabus. In return, I participated just as enthusiastically in her class, completely unaware that I started hoarding books to “impress” her. Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Sun Tzu, I familiarized myself with different genres and flavors of literature, which ended up rekindling a hobby that I never knew would have existed. I reviewed my old DSPC write ups, reread the notes I took while I was training, and realized that even when I was not passionate about writing then, I had enough foundation. With these combined, I was able to get her full attention. My heart at that time barely contained its thrill upon hearing the words: “Come to my office.” 

It was an unfamiliar feeling to me for some reason, despite having written academic essays my whole life from elementary to high school. I knew then that it would be different. Having learned from her lessons, her personal comments and suggestions, she made me participate in writing contests for the whole year. Of course, I aimed for the win despite having won none. I had just begun truly writing, yet I could not feel the sting of defeat. I tried again and again, revised drafts over and over, repeatedly read my own outputs until I ran out of breath, my write-ups were nothing like I had written in high school. They were stories I never would have written in DSPC, stories I never would have the confidence to share with my strict English teacher, stories that my high school me never would have the strength to write. All these because of what she had told me on the first day. “You are going to be great.” These words stuck to me, but not like mud nor stain, it stuck to me as though it was the gentle breeze that followed me as I walked the campus. I still remember the softness of her voice, which awakened the sense of safety within me. She knew well I had just started, and that very start was going to lead me to places I may never know until I stand in it.

These realizations made me rethink my college life and decided that it was best for me to transfer to another university which offered a Creative Writing degree program, leading me to the place where I am now, University of the Philippines Mindanao. Even then, I still carry my old professor’s advice and her guidance with me. Her lessons still prove useful to my write-ups in class, and I remember some of her very important guides whenever I revise. When revising my outputs, what I usually do is to implement the comments first and do another round of revision for my works to fully encapsulate my vision of it even with the suggestions of others. For example, my final food essay had a balance of personal experiences that came not only from the past but also recent events, the food itself and the culture behind it as I read through the suggestions, unlike its draft, which in my opinion was quite lackluster. I then reread the essay after applying the suggestions and added some corrections and sentence rewriting to smoothen its flow. As for my flash fiction, which was heavily based on a traumatic event, I still applied the suggestions but retained its premise, such as removing a few elements that did not matter as much as the main point, and reworded sentences to emphasize its realism. 

Two years had already passed, and the writer that I am now is pale in comparison to the shiftless person I was before college. Coming home from Davao, with the weight of all my realizations that I continue to carry, I once again lie on the bed with the blanket that used to comfort me. This time though, I found myself happier than ever. I no longer had to hide my own dreams nor “rebrand” it, I finally slept without a heavy heart. My blanket, which once heard more of my anger, now embraces me in my most joyful moments. It no longer hears unsatisfied voices, but laughter and gossip. My blanket, which once comforted my exhausted adulthood, now embraces my triumphant adulthood.

The rebrand lost its essence. It was no longer a matter of practicality. I told myself: “If I cannot be an artist now, then I shall be a writer.” After all, it is not that different from visual arts, the creation of an entirely new realm within one’s mind and translating it into words is just as artistic. It was still my dream, just in a different form. I am still an artist, just in a different translation. 

As long as I create—whether to draw or to write—I  am ultimately an artist.