If Only

You are at a relatively comfortable position in life. It could be this blanket, air-conditioning and these pillows, for all you know. You are bored, or just fed up with routine work and are taking a break. Might as well clean up some stuff in your vicinity, as mom has been demanding..

Time elapses. Your hands end up holding a torn piece of paper. On it are some indecipherable set of equations, it looks like your handwriting. You figure out it is merely a slightly-yellowed old page that has gathered dust since your schoolboy days, but curiosity is now piqued. You start sifting through all those physics, chemistry, mathematics and information technology books which haven’t been touched since ages..

..and wonder for at least a couple of hours how the hell did you ever pass those subjects. Not because they appear particularly tough — in fact, now in retrospect they seem hilariously simple. You almost wish to reattempt those papers just to prove a useless point..

But you can barely remember ever having written or memorized so much, even though it was only a few years ago. Well hey, there is the visual proof. Maybe a proper attempt was never really made. However, surely it didn’t feel like that back then? The struggle is still quite fresh in memory..

Was the teaching style just pathetic? No doubt. Or a strange concoction of teenage hormones mixed with whatever other shit you were doing? Quite possible. Numerous tuition classes, question papers, photocopied notes..

..become simultaneously amazed and ashamed by the marks that you still managed to get. Amid the ruins of a fallen genius was a retard who kept fighting to not let things deteriorate beyond the point of repair!

Finally, you see all the college work of the first two years. It is taking up so much space in your cabinet. Wait, did you really do all this?! Come on, how is it even possible when you look at your abysmal attendance and half-hearted work? And in that case..

What could have happened had you really given it your all?!