from a lesioned prefrontal

I remember very vividly opening the envelope containing the results of the NMAT that I took. I remember very vividly the heart beats fit for a non-athlete just finishing a 5-km run. I remember the cold clammy hands of a sickly person. I remember the giddy feeling of a high school girl who just got asked out to prom. I remember everything I felt at that moment. And I remember feeling a mixture of an evolving scream and confusion forming deep within the sulci and fissures of my cerebral cortex.

Getting a 99+ was not like winning the lottery to me. Neither was it like receiving a new laptop or cell phone. It was more like getting asked out for the very first time.

The first time started like a dream. It started with a series of text messages that followed a friendship that was unconventional but real. He was the cool guy, I was the funny girl. He was the musician, I was the singer. He was the poet, I was the artiste. It seemed perfect. It could happen. It had promise.

Messages began to come and go. Worlds collided, merged, and melted. Universes joined at several different points. Minds started whispering, ears started listening, hearts just thought of functioning. Then the message.

"Gusto mong lumabas tayo bukas? Meet tayo."

An unrestrained, inexperienced, giddy teenaged hypothalamus started releasing hormones causing an untrained firing of neurons in the limbic system and the cortex. Giggles started forming, but then were quickly stifled. Levator anguli oris contracts, along with a partial contraction of orbicularis oculi. A smile slowly starts playing on the angles of my mouth and eyes, but is fought with all summonable willpower.

But then, a force more susbtantial than willpower arrests the smile and the giggles.

Confusion creeps in and suggests an array of motives, excuses, and outcomes which quickly overtake and overcome the neuronal firing earlier described.

So how did this end up? Well, after a day of confusion, an excuse was formulated conveniently and no date occurred. No date occurred, nor will one ever will, with the almost-perfect guy.

So the first time I got asked out, things started happily, then slowly progressed to become weird, jumping straight to confused, and ending up with an outcome totally different from what was initially thought of.

The 99+ moment was no different. What started as a happy giddy moment slowly mutated into a confused unstable state that turned out being insufficient to get me what I had dreamed of.

But got me into something, I guess, better than what I had hoped for.