The day I lost my voice

THE DAY it happened was no different from most.

The sun still emerged from the east, the white clouds rolled with the wind that blew to the west, and my eyes gazed up north, demonstrating how my thoughts were settling down south in my head.

I was in a coach in the LRT, feeding on the long sentences of José Saramago’s “Blindness” and listening to Panama’s “Magic” on a continuous loop to mentally shorten my morning commute.

I do not remember what day of the week it was, but it must have been a Monday because the LRT train that was travelling from Recto to Katipunan was filled with university students who were either half-asleep or buzzing about the weekend that got away too quickly, stealing a few moments of freedom in a humming train before seizing the rest of the week.

The day I lost my voice was the day I wanted to stop writing because I could not hit the notes in my head and find my own self in the things I ended up writing about at work and elsewhere outside my personal space. Losing my voice meant I was controlled by the need to live in other ways, ready to surrender the ambition to truthfully write and enjoy the creative struggle in the process.

On that same day, I recalled a memory that has fashioned my thoughts on writing and those who effortlessly pursue it for life. “If you do not write every day and not burst into pieces,” my fourth-grade teacher told me, “then you are not a writer.”

Her words stung like fire for two reasons: First, she directed it to me when she returned my homework (“How do you imagine yourself 15 years from now?”), and second, I obviously considered the statement to be true—that writers should be defined in a narrow category, where the genuine ones are not constrained by personal circumstances and are supposed to have a limitless drive to write just because they must.

When I was younger, I wanted to do a lot of things. Writing was never one of them.

In my early childhood, I wanted to become a policeman because I wanted to chase the bad guys who antagonized the masculine likes of Fernando Poe Jr. and Dante Varona on television. I also wanted to become an astronaut because outer space has its way of fooling children into thinking that the universe is as reachable as the science books in which it is discussed.

I chose to surrender these childhood aspirations at a time when my fear of violence and personal difficulty in understanding mathematics and the basic laws of physics drove me to be the chronicler of my own life, the people around me, and the pronounced relationship between the two.

The day I lost my voice, there were no storm clouds that hovered above my head, no terrifying background music to herald the bad feeling of not being able to write. There was only the realization of my need to acknowledge that a large part of my writing is essentially a product of the disillusionments of my youth and the necessities of my young adult life.

Nowadays, when people ask me what I do, I tell the truth but I leave a few details out: I help in writing about and pushing for the national space policy and agency of the government during the day and write my graduate research on the women and men of the Philippine Navy at night. In between, I edit a social science publication to appease my newly discovered interest in the academe.

I purposely spare other people from the specific parts of my everyday life: from learning the technicalities of astrophysics for public writing, simplifying the jargon of academics through images and stories on an online publication, to composing the gendered stories of military men and women on my trusty computer.

These are the things that I have come to enjoy along the way, where my sense of contentment is identical with my desire to write the things I find realistic and professional. After all, my daily grind involves a lot of writing, editing, and even more writing. I get paid to write, too.

But in my desire to pursue this craft, I occasionally feel out of touch with my own self, my inner voice, and yearn for a spot somewhere in which I can possibly speak louder, write more freely, and reveal other things.

On that day, the LRT coach I was in was still humming, the university students were alighting at different stations, and my headphones were still pumping the lush electronic sounds of Panama’s “Magic” for the nth time, singing to me: “The things that you chose/ Hold on to those thoughts again/ There’s nothing left but doubt/ Take me back to the place where I thought my heart was free.”

The day I lost my voice, I realized I was writing for other people, inevitably bridging their voices with my own. While I knew the importance of altruism in writing, in which you share a part of yourself with your readers, I had to come to terms with the fact that I was not spending enough time to write for myself along the way.

It was here that I finally saw the importance of the personal essays I wrote during my spare time, the pretentious works of fiction I created yet secretly despised, the verses of poetry that I never allowed anyone else to read, and, above all, the real meaning of writing for myself to find my voice again.

So I asked myself: Why would I think of losing my voice to a halfhearted memory from the fourth grade and quitting what I love to do? Why would I even make the choice to settle so willingly on the uncertainties of writing and the silence of my voice?

These were the questions I belatedly asked to make sense of what I really wanted to do with this craft. Answering them was far from easy because I knew I was still constrained by the demand to pay the monthly bills and by everyday life. On that day, however, I was able to find that source of motivation to just keep going in spite of everything else. Perhaps I was just some sort of fool for feeling strangely hopeful about it, or perhaps I was just fortunate to be under the influence of my morning commute, of my childhood aspirations, of José Saramago, and of Panama.

The day I lost my voice, I rediscovered my rightful place in the battle to win it back. I knew I had to continue conveying stories to others and to my own self, no matter what. I knew I just had to continue writing, hoping, and staying the course.

On that day, there was no trace of discouragement that left a bitter taste in my mouth. Instead, there was only an inexplicable feeling of comfort that reassured me I was moving forward on the right track, the LRT train mechanically humming, and the familiar voice on the public address system revealing that I had finally arrived at my destination.

John Patrick I. Allanegui, 24, edits Verstehen and works for the government. He is from Davao City.