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I write this down with tears flowing from my eyes.

For all these years I really wanted to be in a particular company. Maybe I was not ready to accept it but all along my heart pounded for one company. I believe this is one of the best IT companies in the country. I respect how well they manage their people and the culture of excellence that they practice. If I wanted to be one of the best IT engineers, I would be getting my training from your company.

It was Saturday last week when of all of these started. I received a phone call that I have a chance to get into this company. With just 4 hours to get myself ready, make an application letter and resume, I barely made it to the testing center as the site is located in the opposite side of the city with reference to my home. That time, I knew it will be hard and that time I was happiest.

I endured the very time-pressured exam and became very happy to be one step closer to my goal. I received a text message 1 day later confirming that I passed the exams and that I am scheduled for an interview on Wednesday (today) along with 2 requirements to submit. The day after, I rushed to my school only to find out that my TOR isn't finished yet and I have to email it that day. I went to the college secretary and pleaded if there's a way I could get a TCG as a crude substition for the TOR for the interview. What's bad is it is currently the pre-registration period for our school and the computer system for the pre-registration bogged down. IT was impossible for me to get the TCG. I waited and waited, each 5 minutes that ate bem would spend to make my TCG seemed like a gasp of free air from a closed damp room. I was asking for the impossible, what normally should take 3 working days, I am pleading to be finished in hours in a very tight schedule. Ate bem did not take her lunch for me, just to finish my TCG and I got very guilty and I was thankful that by the afternoon it was done. Just in time I could report to work and barely make it in time to be with atty sam in our 3 pm appointment. Luckily, I still got considered even when I submitted my requirements late in a very tiring day.

Interview day came... Everything was okay until the interviewer repeatedly pointed out my grade in some subjects. I shrank and I was humbled. Though I tried my very best to smile and be positive in the interview. Everything else was okay, my work experience, my capabilities as a person and as a programmer. The interviewers confirmed my number and noted that I would just wait for the results.

I went home. I really did not want to look at my cellphone until morning. And I still wanted to be in the company. Then a fellow applicant texted me if I was home already. I said no, and asked if the results already came up. My co-applicant said that the company just called and said it was good news. I stopped. Even if I did not want to, I pressed a key in my phone to activate the light. But there was no unread message, no missed call. At that moment, I had my game face on, I was in the motorcycle going home. The best game face cannot hold back the tears as they slowly flowed down my cheek. I failed.

Eversince that day, I wished I did not meet you. I struggled during those days when we had fights. Eversince that day I thought, what if I hadn't joined that organization? When I had to be absent to design the backdrop for that frickin stage. When I had to be absent to go downtown to meet with people to help in our projects and activities or to return to school late for my classes. If these things did not happen, maybe I will not have time to work for an outsourcing job at graveyard shift while I was still at school. It really hurts. Eversince those days, I worked very hard to correct those mistakes that I had done in the past. And yet, here I am, with my dream slashed and diced because the issue of my past was brought back again and now capitalized. It makes me weak to feel that all I worked hard for to swivel down at an instant, overshadowed by a thing in the past I wanted to bury a long time ago. No matter how I worked hard to build credentials, it hurts me that all they saw was that dark part of myself.

You were my dream. You are my dream. And I stand here with nothing as I watch you fly away. I believed I worked hard enough to redeem myself but it was all in my mind. I guess some simple mistakes would haunt you forever and no matter how hard you try to cover them up with achievements, people will always see the dark spot. I was living the life where I was one of the best in the past, but eversince that happened, I wanted to redeem myself, to my parents (as I overhear my mom just this moment saying I cannot do it anymore), and to myself.

I... cannot say any more. I want to rewind everything and do things right this time around. But I just can't.. I failed myself again. No acts of redemption can heal the pain of falling down. When it seems life is finally getting me somewhere, again, the past causes me to fall again. I am tired. Maybe I should stop redeeming myself for a while. Coz I'm just tired. Really really tired. Maybe, just maybe, tomorrow, I wake up 4 years back...

I write this down with tears still flowing from my eyes...