*verdad

I remember my life in its moments.

Through a staccato-ed montage of my favorite days.

My memories are made up of little snippets of the most beautiful things I see when I look at the wind and listen to the sky. For the past six months, during my long hiatus from this journal, they were all I had. I lived in those moments.

This journey began when my dreams for happiness were born in this journal, exploited only to be an instrument to save a dying heart, a burning soul. The words I wrote were the wind that set sail to the ship towards that happy shade of blue. Why ever did I begin this journey at all is a question I have now deemed irrelevant. My ship has dropped its anchor on the happiest shade of blue there can be, a magnum opus of all human experiences.

It is true. When we reach our destination, we realize how the journey matters more because we know what it meant. It was meant to lead us somewhere. As I stand on this new ground, I face a different puzzle. I struggle trying to discover whether I have drifted away from what I used to be or just from where I used to be. And so while I am where I am now, I keep looking back, not towards where I came from, but to the expedition that brought me here.

Look as far back with me in my staccato moments.

Salamin was only a vision once, a dream I had put off. Yet the journey I was on inspired me to revive my passion for the visual and performing arts. We shot the film for only three days followed by another two days of post production. It is a story that played with the philosophies behind family, friendship, love, betrayal and identity under the watchful eye of the society. Garnering ten out of eleven awards, it earned me some of my greater accolades in the past three years. Now, while the achievements sit somewhere on display like trophies, what I see looking back is the friendship that created this tour de force. The production staff was more than just a machine working to piece together a film. Sweat and tears and mental energy were put into this movie and wherever these elements of the labor of love met, we created a family.

(Watch Salamin’s trailer here.)

PRIME’s search for Mr. and Ms. BLP was a fundraising event organized by the four biggest universities in the Philippines; UST, ADMU, DLSU and UP. As a representative of the University of the Philippines, I did not battle against my contenders, I battled with my own demons. It was a competition to defeat my insecurities. It is both a joy and a pity to know how others believe in me more than I do. But being named Mr. BLP 2012 was something beyond me. I did not give my effort to win the title for myself but for the patients in PGH Ward 5 who suffered a multifold more than most of us. Many would say how events like this are but an exploitative agent that trivializes the worth of both sexes. However, dare I say, this ship sailed in its own way for a noble purpose. And with that purpose, I began to glide through my journey with a stronger oar.

(Read Career Avenue’s article on Prime: The Better Life Project here.)