i, super-ego

The prime motive of the id is self-survival, pursuing whatever necessary to accomplish that goal. The newborn child is regarded as being completely 'Id-ridden', in the sense that it is a mass of instinctive drives and impulses, and demands immediate satisfaction. It is an alimentary tract with no sense of responsibility at either end. It is without a sense of time; completely illogical; primarily sexual; infantile in its emotional development; will not take 'no' for an answer. The id doesn't care about reality, about the needs of anyone else, only its own satisfaction. When the id wants something, nothing else is important.

The super-ego is the faculty that seeks to police what it deems unacceptable desires; it represents all moral restrictions and is the "advocate of a striving towards perfection."

- Sigmund Freud on the divisions of the human psyche

It was Mayo who first called me the super-ego.

It all began with a group project for Filipino Journalism, and I was—fortunately or unfortunately—teamed up with Mayo and Kristel. Kristel, being the one who would, more often than not, sleep through the whole production process, was good-humoredly called the ID. The id would do whatever feels good at the time, sleeping for example, with no consideration for the gravity of the present scenario. On the opposite side of the ring, the one who would keep the wheels of the machine spinning, sometimes up to ungodly hours, was I, the SUPER-EGO. A perfectionist by nature, the super-ego would always rationalize and weigh circumstances, but would always end up going for the logical and the morally acceptable alternative. Mayo, on the other hand, would like to believe of herself as the mediator or the EGO, whose task is to find the balance between Kristel’s primitive impulses and my inflated sense of responsibility. It is due to this disparity of personalities that we probably developed a certain kind of rapport. In the end, we would always get good grades.

I wasn’t always like that, a super-ego. As a child I grew up with the word “delinquent” stamped upon my forehead. You should have seen the look on the adults’ eyes whenever I passed by them. They looked at me as if i'm a broken puzzle waiting to be solved. In a way, I deserved it, considering the seriousness of my offenses. But since I was really cunning, I could get away with almost anything.

Maturity came at a tender age for me. For me, maturity is when people leave you alone because they trust you enough to police your own actions. I realized the only way to keep their prying eyes away from me is to blend with the crowd and act like a normal 10-year-old child. And for a 10-year-old child, "normal" means a day without detention for major misdemeanors, bruises and scratches from enemies (a.k.a. sisters), and heated arguments with parents.

It was a peaceful and quiet life after. You barely get in trouble with elders once you start following the social order. People say if you do the right thing, you’ll never go wrong; they are right. The problem only arises when the world starts allowing little margin for mistakes.

I have learned that the more you widen your social circle, the less space you leave for personal movement. This is the reason I only keep a few important people in my life. Believe me, one boss, five family members, and one boyfriend can be a handful already, especially if everyone has a burning desire to assert their authority and rule your world. For the most part of my college life, I never had big dreams, and the only reason I wanted to do well in school was to get my dad to attend my graduation rites. All I wanted then was a normal life: a regular, boring job that pays the bills, long and lazy weekends with my family, and a decent man to spend the after-hours with. Instead, what I got after graduation was a career that required me to lead a fleet-footed life, stressful Sundays with career-driven family members, and a virtual boyfriend whom I can’t even expect to show up during emergencies. Still, I was grateful, and I knew I wouldn't want it any other way. So I developed a strategy to keep things from falling apart.

To maintain your life’s equilibrium, there are certain rules to follow. First, make sure everyone in your life is coexisting harmoniously. Second, keep them separated from each other to maintain enough breathing space. As you do this, try to keep a comfortable distance from everyone to make sure all their needs are easily attended to. Third, devise a workable schedule that accurately divides your attention among them. Fourth, don’t make sudden decisions or changes in the schedule without everyone’s approval. Fifth, forgetting about what you want is almost always inevitable. Sixth, if you’re having difficulty, don’t expect them to understand. As long as you keep your concentration, you won’t have any problem.

I’m not exactly sure what rule I broke, but when my life came tumbling down at the wink of an eye, I knew I did something terrible: I took a rest for a while. And now, I’m being punished. Now, those who are left are in a state of fury. Everyone is panicking. Everyone is asking questions. Everyone is expressing their opinions. To keep them pacified, the trick is to pretend that everything is under control. You have to assure them that even with the absence of the other, the machine is perfectly intact and their perfect lives can still be lived with ease.

Of course if you do this, you are given little time to recover. Recently, my dad gave me an 8pm curfew, which means, with intoxication out of the picture, I need to think of more creative ways to wallow in my sorrows. After all, sooner or later, I know I’ll have to stop relying on alcohol to get me through the night. It doesn’t get me anywhere anyway. When I wake up in the morning, when the smiling faces of my support group disappear, sadness creeps back in, reclaiming the empty spaces it once occupied, picking up where it left off. Sometimes though, I’m not even sure if it goes away in the first place.

I wish I can just be like everyone else, like those who can unabashedly say, “kung may gusto akong gawin, I just do it. I don’t let anyone stop me.” I wish I can be like him, someone who can easily turn a blind eye on responsibilities, on the people around him, on the people who care about him, on the efforts and sacrifices made for him, on the promises he made just to pursue something he enjoys doing. Until now, nobody has asked me what I really want. Sometimes I don’t even know what I want. Sometimes I feel I’m just a product of the circumstances, of everybody’s previous decisions. I’m really tired of doing the right thing, of always trying to be correct, of trying to uphold the frigging social order, of being the mechanism that keeps the whole damn thing running.

If I have the money, what I want right now is a one-way trip to the outer space, where I can watch the earth and the human follies with popcorn in hand. Really bad action-packed comedy films make me laugh sometimes (no offense to Jackie Chan fans). But more importantly, I want to understand the big picture, the mysterious “reason behind this” that everybody was talking about. But if this is too much to ask, I think I’d settle for Greece. I think it’s a lovely place considering the people there speak Greek and I don’t. Isn’t it nice to live in a place wherein you have no moral obligation to talk to people? I heard too they don’t smile a lot there so that definitely works to my advantage. Too bad I’m really broke.

I am not ok. Sooner or later, I’ll have to stop lying to everyone.