The Strangeness of Absence

It isn't that I refuse to feel. It's not that. I don't resist it. I believe I am ready to welcome it, wholeheartedly, like rain after summer. I am ready to welcome it gladly. Every day I wake up and rush to the front door wishing that it would dust its feet on the mat outside and knock, finally, after so long. I want to. I long to. I am mad for it. I am mad like the torrential fire that ravages the forest.

Or so I'd like to think. Maybe I'm not as mad as I think I am. Maybe I am only as mad as the soft dying glow of the spent bonfire. The heart, perhaps, burns only like solid ice. A chunk of cold ice---only frostbite, mistaken for flame. Perhaps, perhaps. I've forgotten already.

This is youth. I see it gallop like a wild horse, away. The rushing river has reached the lake. On the horizon I see the sun as it bids goodbye, leaving this sky for another's. There was something lost; but it came too quietly, this passing. I hardly even noticed it leave. Had everything come abruptly the pain perhaps would've been too unbearable, but the feeling wanes like the aftermath of a storm in the last few hours of its life. I only remember, and what I remember I pine for, but perhaps it's too late. 

Two Years

Traveling along the same route I have grown familiar with two years ago, I asked myself -- while the van trudged on the asphalt road -- if two years had really been that long. 2008 was like another lifetime altogether -- a lifetime built on escaping from a heartbreak that threatened to lead me to the brink of utter self-destruction. Two years ago was founded on vignettes of airports,  hallways, jeepney rides, trolleys, nights inside a room alone, reading by myself, silence at six AM waiting for no one, tricycle rides at nine AM, provincial lights, laughing as an ache rent one's heart, uncertainties, facades, waiting for messages that never came, longing for greetings that never arrived, failures, frustrations, a sad return, and more goodbyes.

Two years ago I promised myself it will be you, always, forever. Two years ago in the darkness of the night I told myself that this was what I wanted. That was two years ago -- two years ago when I foolishly believed that faith indeed moved mountains, that someone heard my pleas. I say foolish now because I know that there is no one out there dispensing favors for miserable mortals. There is no salvation apart from the one that we ourselves craft for ourselves. And I had to learn that lesson the hard way. 

From one heartache to another I hopped. And along the way I discovered that somewhere along the way I lost heart. Or maybe, just maybe, I grew up. Maybe disillusionment is truly an unavoidable circumstance. You earn your pragmatism with every experience you gain. 

Only the sheltered will live in their candy clouds and rainbow castles -- never harboring shattered dreams in their heart. But I refused to be sheltered. I still refuse to be. Two years ago I might have believed that there is happiness awaiting in the end of it all, you waiting at the corner of this madness, ready to take my offer, willing to hold my outstretched hand. I was a fool. But you see, I've learned. Pain somehow does that -- force you to learn the lessons of self-preservation. I snapped along the way. I got fed up. I snapped. All the drama -- enough. Yes, I think that was what I said: ENOUGH. I didn't deserve this. I was my own hero, I was my own messiah, I am my own martyr. I am the dashing prince out to rescue myself from my dragons, I do not need to save anyone but myself. In the end, I had the power.

Who would have imagined that who I am now is starkly different from who I was two years ago? Maybe not on the outside, but I know that deep inside me, there are avenues and paths in my heart that have become cul-de-sacs. 

And who would have imagined that, two years after all the hurt, all the dreams I've now given up will come back to me?

The Things I Notice During Workdays

There's a container van down our building that plays this kind of music during the afternoon. LOL.

I'm Gonna Be A Great Dancer

If I continue to believe we're all staying afloat in this ocean of circumstance, I have very good reasons to do so.

Right now my head hurts. It's such a quiet night apart from the random tricycle outside the village cruising at this hour. I'm thinking about how long and far I've gone, but I'm not sure if I'm gauging it properly. I guess at 24 I really should know more, but then I'm still besieged with the same nostalgia and the perpetual human discontentment with life.

To be clear, life isn't all that sad or bad. It's just that, I still don't get it. But then again I suppose nobody really gets what life means, so in a way (if being a part of the herd is any consolation at all) I guess it's ok. I shouldn't be entertaining thoughts about the meaning of life at 11:29 P.M. because the night has a way to make it more -- well -- dramatic. Which really isn't the best way to get things going.

Because -- you know -- once emotions get the best of you you get all f**ked up (pardon the word). You start wondering what the hell you're doing stuck in a job when you could be somewhere else. You begin to think if you're wasting your life waking up every morning doing the same things over and over. You get irked by the fact that life is a constant uphill climb to that cliff where the final Spartan kick from the back pushes you to your miserable death. You then suddenly fear for the future and you grow wary of your mortality.

Humanity is circumstantial. And so is everything else. Lives crisscross and intertwine and then separate. Somehow along the way there's always a fork in the road where everybody says goodbye to the people they've grown attached to. Much as I hate it, inevitably, everyone has to bid farewell and it isn't always a Mary Poppins over the rainbow magical exit. Nostalgia and separation anxiety are like fierce lions that rip you apart to shreds, gnawing at your heart.

Do you feel any better about it? No. But you have memories to hang on to, nonetheless. Eventually you'll go on, meet other friends, be happy, then yet again say goodbye. It's a cycle. And the key to self-preservation is to learn that in the end it's only you. Call it selfishness; I call it survival. That's how things are -- learn to deal. Learn to get the most out of everything. Learn to enjoy life as it comes along. The random things. The silly things. The stupid things. Every little happy moment should be seized while they last. They're only good for that particular point in time. Temporary highs have very short shelf lives that's why you should indulge in them while they last.

Life isn't always the best. And it takes a certain degree of insanity to go through it. There are no winners: just people who've learned to dance until the beat stops. So as the song goes, kudos to those who see through the sickness.

(Thank you to the people who've danced and who continue to dance with me -- a special shout-out to Master Che Caparas. You just wait, I'm gonna be a great dancer!)