MY PERSONAL WORLD WAR

UNEDITED SAMPLE LITERARY ARTICLE
By Zatia Denise Danao Gammad
IV - Madame Marie Curie


Having the world in gun-metal gray makes fate pull its trigger on me anytime. It is like for every crunch of gravel that penetrates through my ears, fatality resonates and relays the message that I would no longer stand on both feet to live, rather on bended knees. I have to be equipped with a fiercely metallic courage and an assembled determination to make defeat depart from destiny. But, for every cautious glance I make, I end up faltering faced-down on my swept instincts. Of all the bullets I returned to even retain the identity I was trying to reconstruct, none of them successfully fractured the stone cold armors of once fragile minds. Out of adversity, a continuous fusillade of deadly fire aimed at my strongest and weakest point. I was one of the best soldiers who battled independently under the conflagrations of pressure, the debauchery of deception, and the inevitability of denial. Yet, I am here with a mud-smeared face and a besmirched reputation. I have failed myself three heart-ripping times.

In military time, there are only digital hours tracing every fraction of spent seconds, not transitions of dusking days. The presence of warm mornings and cool nights could not run through my consciousness, just the fading hours. The battles that I have undergone made time as the choking deadline. It did not act as an abundant extension. That is why I have first failed. I was not able to feel the tinge of change, of how my gun-metal gray world can turn into a cadmium orange paradise or a cerulean blue escapade in a day. I was only familiar of fulfilling my duties before the nick of time.

I was blind upon seeing the advantage of changing weapons for every fight, of adjusting to new attacks in every period. I had just one rusting yet polished weapon. And it was my intellect that passed through the micro-netted misery and delight of life. It was buffed to aluminum perfection. It was knowledge that helped me survive any obstacle. But I did not witness its hidden deterioration as I held it in my unwavering hands. It compellingly battled with me. And I no longer recognized the numerous options offered. It was an impending suicidal decision. It was my second failure.

I saw the unbearable consequence of intellect as the only weapon, for I have entered a battle that affection was the next defense. Intellect turned into a futile possession. It cannot even prick a delicate finger of an unarmed warrior in there. It was my first time to grasp on the frail beauty of affection. And there I started to constantly fail. It was the last and most excruciating failure. As I learned to manipulate its mysterious trigger, I end up hitting myself intensely. It needed not to beat time; rather, it needed to fly with it. It did not trace the past hours; rather, it traced the incessant transitions of dawning days. It was needed by every living soldier too. It was said to be forever clung on to us like a pendant - a pendant that once meant nothing to me.

However, I am indeed here with a mud-smeared face and a besmirched reputation. It is mud-smeared for I foolishly tripped on the simplicity of feeling. It is besmirched for the once known soldier was defeated by an embrace. In spite of everything I know from the battles I underwent, I was deliberately destined to be defeated. I was in a world of gun-metal gray where I was strong yet alone. And it is only that said pendant which can reconstruct the identity I have mistakenly created.