Earphones

If I were an object in the lost and found station in the Student Discipline Office, I would be something that people use every day without seemingly recognizing its importance, an object people may not deem as valuable – preferably an earphone. I, personally, have never been to a lost-and-found station since my elementary years, and I am not quite sure if earphones are normally found in a storage room people only visit when they lose something (well, duh). But if I would be an object people lose, I would be something as simple as an earphone.

            No day can go by without me plugging my earphones and pressing play, blasting music loud enough to mute the noise of the metro. It’s a habitual thing I – and other people as well – do. Every time I wait for a friend along the hallway of Southgate before the clock strikes eight, every time I ride the train or jeepney home, every time I do my home works, every time I attempt to write, and even at this very moment I’m writing this very word, I have this device inserted in my ear to drown the world and to have good music blasted in my ear. There was that one dark period in my life, just last year, where my trusty ol’ Apple earphones (no earpods just yet) broke. And my broken Apple earphones broke my heart as well, and I could not function the same as before. I cannot watch a movie, I cannot listen to my playlist – this may be exaggeration, but that was one of the worst times of my life. There were awkward moments made even more awkward because I cannot pretend to be busy listening to music, or there were long periods of time in school I had nothing to do and I cannot even enjoy that time to sleep or read while listening to music or simply just ponder about life and how unfair it is with lonely music as my background. Had I only taken care of my earphones, I thought, things wouldn’t have been as worse. But then that’s exactly it, I may have regretted breaking that earphone,  but then there came a point in time it was replaced – because I could not bear the lack of an earphone any longer. And the broken earphone was just thrown away, never to be used again.

                I always refer to myself as that – something disposable. I may be always used, but then people don’t really notice my importance unless they lose me. (Or so I think. Or so I hope.) People are so used to having me around, always laughing and always making corny jokes and always trying to comfort people and always annoy them as well (in a good way), they don’t notice the fact that I’m here. I don’t speak for them; I speak for how I feel. Or maybe I speak for how I feel during my bad days, which are more often than the good ones. But nevertheless, I feel like people take me for granted, and they won’t notice my presence in their life until they lose me, or until we drift apart. “Nakakamiss ka rin pala, yang height mo at kakornihan mo!” They would probably say. But then, after some time, they will get used to not having me around, as quickly as they adapted to having  me always around, and they will find new people in their life, forgetting me, forgetting the old earphone that used to be there whenever they needed music, forgetting the old earphone that covered their being alone. I’m just that – an old earphone, probably left in a room or dropped in a hallway or lost in a crowd. They may attempt to find me, to get me back, but buying another one would save them the hassle. And there I’d be, sitting in a storage room along with other things that have been taken for granted, silently wishing, silently hoping, silently dreaming that maybe one day, somebody would go back and would appreciate who I am and what I can do.