by Tiffany Louise L. Neri

Now I fully understand how difficult pressure is. It is like a waterfall thrashing on my back.  It is like the times when I jump in the water and go down too deep.  While I slowly start floating back up, I always run out of air and my lungs start to burn.  It suffocates me.  I have so much to do in so little time and it peeves me so.

I am so very cross with school.  Requirements, homework—everything is smothering me.  I am desperately struggling to get some air back in my lungs.  I am struggling in the water so deep, so far from my want—my need.  Why is everything so difficult, so pugnacious with my life?

But once I think about it, my problems deserve a manic guffaw or two.  I mean, what problems? So what about school?  It is not like Noah’s burden to make an ark while everyone thought he was crazy.  I do not need to lead an oppressed group of slaves out of Egypt like Moses.  And God definitely did not send me to save mankind, spread His will and die for sinners all in the same lifetime.  My burden is a selfish one.  If I fall, I fall alone and if I succeed, the glory is mine.  What is my burden that it cannot be compared to theirs?
Actually, as I think more about the times when I fall too deep into the water, I realize that I was only focusing on the bad, and not the good.  I was always expressing how I felt so suffocated.  Desperate and all but not once, not once, did I mention always ending up breaking into the surface and finally taking that gasp of air and pressure. It suffocates us all.

(Tiffany, 13, is on her sophomore year at the Sacred Heart School Hijas de Jesus.)