An open letter to all ‘Bobbies’

Never the favorite, always forgotten.

You are the best in everything, and yet, you are still number 2, option B, and the backup. The world continues to spin, and it does not wait for you. Yet your own world rotates endlessly, without breathing time, because you always need to catch up for the time lost, even if all you ever did was climb to the pinnacle.

I watched “Four Sisters and A Wedding” at least seven times. With each rewatch, I always felt the emotional pull from Bobbie’s character, portrayed by Bea Alonzo. With each rewatch from a new disposition, the more I felt like a “Bobbie.”

Truthfully, I did not feel like I was a “Bobbie” in my early watches. She was not even my favorite character. I saw her as uptight, too laser-focused, and even prideful to some extent. In my head: “Why would I want to be like Bobbie?” when I could be like Teddy, who was a ray of sunshine and a responsible eldest sister; Alex, who was adventurous and had a fighting spirit; or Gabbie, who was caring and thoughtful as if she were a mother, too? But Bobbie begged to differ: she may be intelligent, but she was distant and cold. At times, I think, how lonely it must be up there.

The more I grew up, however, the more I understood Bobbie—and slowly felt her character seep through mine.

I was in junior high school when I first realized that I was on autopilot for all that I did in school. I was praised for what I could deliver, and for every second I thought I lived to love the person I was being recognized for, the more I realized I was becoming no one.

I would go hours on end studying, grinding for exams and projects, knowing full well that it was the only thing I could do right—rather, the only thing I could do. I would immerse myself in the rigor and pressure of the things I did, not because I was passionate about them, but because I had to. This self-acclaimed obligation found its way to penetrate my whole system, as if I had gone through a whole system reboot, following the same programming for what I call “success.” And so, for years, I reused the same formula, again and again, to see the same results. Grind. Deliver. Succeed. Plan. Repeat. Until it suddenly occurred to me that I cannot rely on myself to do the same things over and over again. That getting my name called upon did not give me even a split-second of joy that it used to.

The more I reached the peak, the farther away I felt from those who reached their hands to me. It was true: the summit is lonely, dark, and cold.

But that was on me, because I never looked back when I did. The honor presented itself with so much light that it blinded me from who I was destined to become. Just when I thought I was building myself with every new win, I was only really tearing myself down, and every time I looked in the mirror, I could not recognize myself anymore. I was not becoming me, nor was I Bobbie in the making; I was becoming no one but my accolades. I was shaped and defined by the number of bullet points in my curriculum vitae, by the thickness of my certificates stacked together, and by the weight of the medals around my neck that soon suffocated me.

I would argue that the Bobbies of today are the overachievers, who feel that all they have to do in this lifetime is to keep on winning. That in every achievement, the thought in mind was never to bask in a momentary victory, but to strategically plan for the next win. From then, piles and stacks of honor are before them, medals of gold around their necks that shone as bright as their names, but never the sweet, warm resonance of a voice that speaks: “Congratulations, anak. I am most proud of you. I love you.”

Maybe, a sincere remark is enough to topple Bobbie’s tower—a sounding reassurance that we are seen and appreciated, whether we are stripped or showered with honor. Because for me, and likely for other overachievers, it was the sole thing that could overpower the echo of a temporary success.

That a heart too frozen in the sheer cold of glory could melt at the sight of unwavering love, from the people she offers all this toil to: her family. For hearts that stay as cold as ice never started as that in the first place. They once burned brightly, passionately, and genuinely.

To all the Bobbies reading this: May you find the courage to fail—with grace.

That such grace reminds you that you are not a mere dust in the wind, but the wind itself striving to blow against the current.