In Retrospect.

Right now, there are two types of M-06ers: the jubilant and the secretly saddened. Needless to say, I fall under the latter portion. There's nobody but myself to blame for the situation, I guess. I've set myself up to be the latter portion from the very first day, when sitting in the front row, I hesitantly raised my hand to volunteer as beadle. She asked me to fetch her coffee, forcing me to leave the classroom and buy one Americano, two brown sugars, no cream. 

After that, there was no turning back.

People ask me a bunch of things about her:

a.) Do I have parental issues that manifest in my complete adoration of Miss Diaz?

b.) Am I masochistic?

While the first isn't true,  I guess, and the second is debatable, I really thank this woman for making me work and understand my limitations. Similarly, she is the reason I understand the depths of my passion for Literature: cheesy to say right now, but boundless.

And so, without further ado:

Diazpora: A Guide for (Mourning) M-06ers *

You wake up in the middle of the afternoon, realizing it's been weeks since you've let yourself sleep for more than ten minutes in the middle of the day. The sleep is refreshing, but-

There is a numbness you feel when you realize there are no papers to write, no inch-thick readings to pore over and no sunlight streaming/storm clouds hovering over B-102 (surprisingly reflective of Ma'am's mood and lipstick color of the day) to look forward to.

You drift off to sleep, only to jolt yourself awake ten minutes later (SHIII- I haven't finished my CRP) only to realize:

It's the numbness again.

Denial is evident in the stack of papers you've filled your desk with and the stack of books you've gathered under the pretense of "I need it for school" when secretly, you're thrilled at the thought of being an "honorary" Lit minor. You browse through your books and pick one out (Grief, Joan Didion says, strikes us most because it is always preceded by the ordinary.)

While you can't call this grief (There is no loss, is there? Merely the regaining of the "ordinary", the sense of normalcy after those ten months spent in a daze), there's a certain depth to the emptiness you deny feeling. (Breakups are sharp shards of glass; deaths are waves upon waves of loss while this- this is just the starkness of the unknown.)


Grief, Didion says, strikes us most because it is always preceded by the ordinary. You realize that what you are feeling is the reverse: what do you do when you've become so used to the extraordinary? When the extraordinary becomes your ordinary ( and then "rights" itself again)?

Being the true Diaz student that you are, you write. You write and you forget the expository techniques you've so recently learned. You look at what you've written and you laugh, knowing she would have a lot to criticize about your work (This is terrible; you've actually tried to be metafictive- it did not work; I told you; you must have a narrative framework).

You smile as you realize: it's never the writing skills you've completely imbibed; it's the raw emotion.

You guess it's not a loss, after all.


*Thank you, Jan Ong, for thinking up Diazpora.

(Disclaimer: While this is a sight better than the drivel I've been posting the past few months, this is in no way indicative of the quality of M-06 works.)