Oh, December!

It’s December once again. Amazing, still it seems.

I’ll be 29 in a few weeks and looking back, I smile to see that through the years, I have pigeon-holed several of my life’s tales and epics like I have lived for over a century. And then I stare in wonder to know how big words have little names.

child * dream * love * death * doubt * light * faith * fear * doom * law * life * war * one * wrath * choice * thirst * friend * peace * self * lie * birth * fate * first * cheat * bliss * luck * warmth * debt * ego * hope * fire * vow * whole * feign * safe * torn * ex * risk * hurt * smile * cure * far * grudge * trust * pure * joy * shock * end

It’s December once again. Amazing, still it seems.

Cheers! To life, death and everything in between…to happiness and the pursuit thereof.

The Blaire in Me

Only a masochist can love such a narcissist.

-Blaire Waldorf, Gossip Girl

 PAIN truly is addictive. Love…well, that’s part of the entire hallucination.

-G Bravo, Signing Off

April Fools Day

If being upset, agitated, angry and furious could clone a human person every minute, then my April Fools Day early evening hysteria could have populated an entire island the size of Mactan.

UGH!!!

Crazy. Beautiful. Everything.

This was posted in 2007 at a secret blog only few people could view. This was written as an upshot of the helpless longing I once drowned myself in, the secret I used to keep, the lie I perfectly told, the love I knew I will always have and the life I have always wanted. It’s time to have it known. It’s just about time.

FAITH 

You had once adored her, loved her, lived for her.

Then she was gone.

Yet you had once felt your soul scream her name in your sleep and you had once been appeased by the memory of her voice.

Yet she was gone.

She glided into another reality of which you were not ready to accept.

In your heart, however, you still feel her hands touch you, her arms around you, her mouth on yours or somewhere near lip-synching your favorite tune. 

Yet she’s nowhere to be found.
And even when others convince you of a better being destined for you, at the back of your head it is still her name your soul could scream. It is still her voice that could lull you to sleep. It is still her smile that could pale even the brightest star.
Deep inside you, you have believed that no matter how the future unfolds before your eyes, the show will end with her closing the curtains and being enveloped in your arms.

And perhaps you will always believe in that as you have tolerance of the poignant circumstances and stagnant tricks life has played for you.

It’s FAITH.
You still have that strong conviction that one day, everything will fall back into place.

Today, surreal as it seems, it all has fallen into place.

Months ago, I was confronted by an epiphany that a choice has to be made—The unwinding yet safe road that ensures complete refuge from the judgmental eyes of the hypocrites OR the road less traveled that would subject me to eventual judgment yet would lead me to the very taste of freedom that I can only imagine?

And I did. I made a choice.

For people to understand, accept and celebrate this path I have taken is not something I expect. I guess I can only hope for it or just not care whatsoever. I have always been a free spirit and now is not the time to feel that I need to seek approval. Despite all the turmoil, troubled thoughts and crazy unsolicited feedbacks, I AM HAPPY.

Thank you…heaven truly does exist.

I know you too well.

(more than you think I do.)

And years from now, I shall still be happy knowing that you aren’t.

What’s Painfully Funny

Sometimes the truth comes into view like a neon sign that it wouldn’t take a high-level IQ to interpret or analyze its totality. Yet sometimes, we shut our eyes when confronted by the truth because we are not prepared to shock ourselves with the fact that we are the one who was doomed to be dejado in the end.

We shut our eyes until tears fall down streaming and we wait. We hold our breaths and we wait. Then we long and we obsess until we actually ache to hear a perfect lie we can pretend to believe. Only then we can exhale and be at peace even if it’s for just plain pretense.

It’s painfully funny, isn’t it? Because the worst thing about being lied to is knowing that you are not worth the truth.

Just a Statement

I have come into terms with myself, gotten face to face with the shadows of my past and discovered that no man will ever be good enough for me.  

Revisiting Manila

(27 September – 4 October)

It took awhile to post something about my Manila trip. Maybe because there were too many things to say yet no words to say them with.

Let me just begin with the word AMAZE.

I was amazed at how I regretted leaving the world that was once mine and how I did not regret leaving the world that, I then realized, never actually belonged to me. Like the others, I was just a visitor. I was amazed at how much I miss being in that law school, no matter how depressing it looks from the outside. I was amazed at how people missed me back, how they tell me it was never the same when I left. I was amazed at how I believed them.

I was amazed at how things changed, how people changed, how circumstances changed and how friendships changed. I was amazed at the new picture, how I was cropped and how others were pasted there during my absence.

I was amazed at how promises of an unending friendship turned out to be just a mere effort to pacify the tears before I left months ago. I was amazed by the flamboyant display of insensitivity, coldness and thoughtlessness from the man who once claimed I was his one great love. I was amazed at myself for having the sensibility of exchanging pleasantries to the woman who could possibly take my place.

I was amazed to realize that the distance and time I spent healing meant nothing when I visited Manila because, once again, the pain was revisited. I was amazed to fully understand that heartache is a necessary evil, that in order to experience true redemption one has to wallow in the depth of damnation.

Yet I was amazed at how little bitterness I harbored and how much grace I had shown. But hey, I am only human after all. Still, I get amazed at the magnitude of heartache I can nurse and endure without breaking any longer.

On Common Decency

A basic rule on common decency in human conduct is this:

If you can no longer make someone happy, don’t cause them grief. 

It’s that simple. Don’t spoil someone’s smile just because you’re not the reason for it. It’s selfish and cruel.

More

“There’s something to be said about a glass half full. About knowing when to say when. I think it’s a floating line—a barometer of need and desire. It’s entirely up to the individual and depends on what’s being poured. Sometimes all we want is a taste. Other times there’s no such thing as enough. The glass is bottomless and all we want is more.”

-DR. MEREDITH GREY, Grey’s Anatomy

Perhaps I am not supposed to be happy. Perhaps being thankful for what I have now doesn’t necessarily equate to joy. Perhaps gratitude is mere recognition of what I have for simply what it is. Perhaps I am thankful for the familiar things and for the things I will never know. But the truth is, at the end of the day, the fact that I am still hanging on is reason enough to believe that one day I will get to that state they all call bliss.

I may not fall in love again just yet, but that doesn’t mean butterflies had stopped flapping their wings in my stomach or fireworks had lost their promise. Just because I may not fall in love again soon doesn’t mean no one could ever take my breath away again. Because someone already has and someone is going to. And just because I may not fall in love again just yet doesn’t mean I had stopped wanting more.

Sometimes, nothing is truly enough because we long for a bottomless pit. We thirst for happy endings and all sorts of fairy tales. Deep down, we just don’t want more but we know we deserve more.

Along Came Magnus

  Heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson 

It’s been almost three months since my recent breakup and, until now, I still haven’t gone out on an official date. My friends wonder why. I guess I’m just not too eager to be out alone with a stranger and do the usual getting-to-know crap while eating. Or perhaps because I am not in a race to be in another relationship that I don’t really busy myself with dating. Not that I haven’t been around meeting new people, because I have, and quite a handful of them are seemingly nice and smart. It’s just that I feel more comfortable hanging out with a group because the guy, the target, wouldn’t notice if you have been sizing him up for the past hour or so. Being with a group also lessens the expectations and the pressure of being extra-nice, extra-agreeable or extra-attentive. Mind you, I hate the “best foot forward” picture. So when friends ask me out, I go. If they introduce me to someone, it’s fine. If not, it’s equally fine. Sometimes, booze makes better company than a blind date.

All is well in my own version of The Dating Scene. Steady. No hassles, nothing to get so finicky about. Then, along came Magnus.

He came into my life when I thought sadness was infinite. He wasn’t exactly the kind of person you’d fall in love with at the very first sight but certainly, he caught my eye. The night I met him, he wore a white shirt that screams “He’s an ass. Love me instead.” And I was wearing a Cebu novelty shirt that says, “I left my heart in Cebu” which kind of told everyone to just holler on us the entire evening. He’s good-natured, childlike in a sweet thoughtful way, has enthralling eyes and a rockstar element and, like me, he’s fascinated with the mafia culture.

Unknowingly, he effortlessly filled the void within me, bereft of all hope, like a potion finding its way to the deepest recesses of my being. He made me embrace once more what kind of beauty life has yet to offer. He revived one of my favorite things during my childhood, the art of telebabad. We could talk for hours and hours while sipping coffee on both ends, argue about Philippine politics and daydream about putting up a sand bar in the Bahamas. When I came down with the measles, I smiled the goofiest smile despite the recurring fever and the itch and the red spots. He regularly dropped by the house with chicken soup and Paracetamol, although sometimes, he couldn’t see me coz the fever could get really bad I couldn’t get out of bed. When I got better, he comes by for a few hours just to hang out, watch DVD, talk, smoke, listen to reggae.

It’s been two weeks of telebabad, chicken soup, pills and Magnus and still I haven’t gone out on an official date with him. My friends wonder why. I, too, wondered why but lately, after assessing the heart I had lost, I somehow grasped the rationale of why I wasn’t ready to take this to the next step.  Of why I will never take this to the next step. Because it is a whirlwind taste of the cruelty yet basic truth of a world of touch-and-go. He is the dawn that will never venture into sunrise.

He’s leaving in two weeks and I have no more heart to give him. I never saw him as a potential rebound guy I found comfort with but I see him as a half-way house, a place where soldiers rest after a seemingly never-ending battle before returning home. Magnus, is my half-way house. Before entering another relationship, he gave me a place to assess myself, my heart and my will to carry on. He prepared me for the next big thing. Then next best thing. The next love story of my life.

We agreed that we are both journeymen. We cannot stay tied down together. We’re both meant for greater things. And hopefully one day, our different paths will bring us to the same direction.

For the night on the swing, for the blown up tire you let me change and for the songs you sang so beautifully. For the man that you are and for what you are bound to be. Cheers, Tiger!

Flabbergasted

LAST NIGHT:

One may call it a gift. Psychology calls it woman’s instinct. Personally, I think I was just born to solve jigsaw puzzles because I am so good in putting together a patchwork of incidents. Verification of any sort is not required since the so-called gift or instinct was heightened by song lyrics, a nearby coffee shop, a Japanese fastfood and the restaurant where we celebrated our second year anniversary. 

Indeed, he’s moving on. Congratulations! But please, go easy on the insensitivity. You weren’t built that way. 

THIS MORNING: 

I opened my dormant GMail account and viola! Blast from the past it is! The blue-eyed best mistake I have ever made resurfaced, recalling the escapade that transpired four years ago and sending inklings that might lead to yet another kismet.

In a span of less than 24-hours, I am struck with two different emotions from opposite polar regions! What exactly is going on? What are the stars trying to convey? Please Lord, help me understand. I do want to be a lawyer but I cannot deny the fact that I want to see the world. Why did you let me be confined in this little corner when there’s a vast horizon I must venture? 

I’M EXHAUSTED!!! PLEASE MAKE THIS STOP!!! 

Of Before Sunrise and Moving On.

When I finally realized that fairy tales don’t happen to girls like me…that the good guys really deserve more than what I could give…that hurting him now with full honesty is better than loving him with half-truths…I held my ground while I watched my world crumbled down before me. When it all sank in after a week, I tried redeeming myself and asked him to let me fix what I have broken. I laid down all the bargaining chips for just one chance to un-break his heart and make it right again. He won’t let me. He said he’s too hurt to go through it one more time. That letting go and moving on are more appealing options than mending what I shattered. 

I was completely shocked. It was the least of my expectations. Questions swarmed my mind for days. Questions like, am I not good enough to be fought for? Why does he love to embrace his pain more than he loves me? How do I survive in his world as just me? When and how soon can I let go and get over this melancholic state of nothingness? When can I stop crying in the shower?

One of my favorite movies crossed my mind. 

You know what’s the worst thing about somebody breaking up with you? Is when you remember how little you thought about the people you broke up with and you realize that is how little they’re thinking of you. You know, you’d like to think you’re both in all this pain but they’re just like “Hey, I’m glad you’re gone”. -JESSE, Before Sunrise (1995)

It just struck me. Two weeks ago, he sent me an SMS: “…alam ko nahihirapan din ikaw. Hindi na kita matangal sa buhay ko but we need to move on. Let’s just pray for each other, k?” Considering what had transpired for the past few weeks, isn’t that synonymous to “Hey, I’m just glad you’re gone.”? It was a slap in the face, a smack in the gut. It took years for me to understand that when you break someone’s heart, your heart shatters in increments when they refuse to let you fix it. Your heart explodes like debris when you realize that your unworthy of a second chance. You get dumb-founded and amazed to conceive of the hypothesis that the almost-four years of your lives together were regarded as a mere Pepsi commercial.

Well, I guess it’s time to do what The Penny Lane suggested. “Rebuild your world, G Bravo. Your OWN world. Remember how exciting it is.”

INDEED! They say the real emotional pain scientifically just lasts for 12 minutes and what you feel afterwards is self-inflicted. Perhaps that’s why I am exhausted of feeling all sort of that shit. I guess, I need to start feeling something else and remind myself why we broke up in the first place…start feeling glad that he’s gone too. Need I? Let it not be a mistake this time.

Whoever You Are

I hope one day you can live up to that one person he measures everyone against. Don’t ever think you’re better. You’re just different. Not extraordinary. Just plain different.

Thank you, Julia Roberts for that one-line punch.