Saturday, July 30, 2016

unsent letter #0913

Dear You,

I'm not sure how many times someone wrote you a letter on a random blog. And I hope it is as frequent enough so you can tame whatever thunder it is in my chest right now. I hope it is as frequent enough because I do not know how to handle myself right now the moment the sunlight seeped through my window.

There's a different kind of pain in my left wrist. When I would rotate it, it gives off a certain kind of mild discomfort. And a certain kind of addiction. An addicting pain, if I must say, that if I forget its feeling, I'd rotate my wrist again and welcome the sedating anguish it brings. Sometimes, I would want to feel a controlled level of pain to know that I'm alive.

At this hour yesterday, all my senses are heightened. Notwithstanding the film before us, I was searching for you through the dark. But I wasn't looking at you. If I must say in the creepiest way you can think about me, I was figuring you out through the blindness. I was listening if you were breathing. I was catching the air around you, searching for your scent that mixes with popcorn in the air. (You see, I have always believed that the sense of smell brings the most nostalgic memories of all the senses.) And I was at the edge of my existence whenever you'd shuffle your feet, as if two more layers of myself need to restrain me. I don't know why. Or maybe I do? Ask my wrist.

You see, it took me months to be there before you. For the longest time I taught myself to make amends with the man who I really am, the man I am afraid of. The same man who held hostage my heart and the only bargain that I have to do to get it back is to promise him that I will take care of myself, of my heart, this time. That I will keep it behind high walls and just allow it to spend a quiet time on its own.

But yesterday afternoon, my walls were breached. Every piece of brick is giving away. The fault line that is my chest starts to move: as you breath, as you chuckle, as you shuffle your feet, as your scent descends, as I see some of your wounds throughout the afternoon. You see, it is hard to leave a man in peace when the war is something in him. And I cannot demand any apology from you. I brought it upon myself. Or maybe, I wasn't too strong for myself. I could have pacified myself for the stir you bring in me but I cannot blame you for starting the silent wars in me over something as natural as the way you exhale. It is no one's but my fault. I wasn't too strong for you.

So allow me to pine in the most gentleman of way. To begin myself with a prayer each morning, asking God to shut down my inner eyes. Because my memory searches for you in the orbit of your absence. The way you smiled. The way you looked far off as if gazing at a lingering thought that appears 50 feet away from you. The way your face caught the yellow somber light of the cafe. Or how honest you are as you tell me about the wounds of your heart.

I could only hold back myself for far too long. I could only keep my pretensions at bay. When you asked, "Ihahatid mo ko?" God knows that I would want to even there right before your doorstep, even if it takes me past midnight. But my angel was alarmed that I could be heading off to a ravine that I cannot climb out of. So I'd rather said I'll just walk straight ahead and find my way back home. You should have seen how a legion of God's army saved me from a portentous crash. So I went on to choose what's right over what's happy. I always do. And you know what? It sucks most time.

You do not owe me an apology. I owe myself one. I owe myself for being too overconfident enough about my feelings, about my gilded lies, about my cocky idea of self-preservation but allowing myself to be a bait for the trap. For an ISTJ, I was overwhelmed by you and so my Thinking flew right off the window only to find myself drowning with so much emotions in my chest I don't even know how to stay afloat.

A while ago, as I lay in bed, drenched in a late morning thought,  I asked myself, why does it rain? And for some goddam reason, I thought, maybe because the sky has taken so much water and magnificence out of the sea, that all it wants is to embrace the vast blue, but his reach couldn't hug him; and for that failure, he weeps; it rains.

The sky is dark. Probably it will rain again. Maybe the sky just wanted to be thankful for seeing so much beauty from the sea, it doesn't know how to pay back because it is afraid of himself. It made a pact with the universe not to dip itself too close to the sea lest the cosmos would turn topsy turvy. So he allows it to rain. To remind himself of his beautiful hurt. Like the pain in my wrist whenever I'd rotate it: a pain that resembles my defeat whenever I'd remember how you smile, how you smelled like, how everything in you was too much for myself.

So you see, should we meet again, and see me rotating my wrist, humor me. Do not ask. Do not point it out. Act as if you saw nothing. I just want to make sure that I'm alive, that I know how pain feels like and how remembering you when you're gone, when some Friday night is over once again, should be as natural as the rain pouring.

Drenched,
Me

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

the man

Be afraid of the man who you really are. The one that lurks in the crevices of this city at broad daylight. He who waylays past the corner of the street waiting to ambush you with the truth you hide so well. Be afraid of him whenever you go out with your friends on a Saturday night. Whenever you're asked about the matters of your heart, you scoff. A scoff that laments the history of your jaded heart. A scoff punctuated by a manufactured strength, a strength, or a pretense which prophesies to the world that you need no loving arms to caress you or to listen at your whims before he doze off to sleep.

But that man who you really are, the man that peeled himself off of you, oh he, he laughs at you with derision. "Are you kidding me?" He knows you melt whenever you receive a random message from a boy. He knows you trail off with wishful thinking. He knows and has observed how you bleed with pride. He knows your truth. He knows that for every scrub of soap you do when you take your morning bath, you cannot wash off your desire from your skin. The man who you really are knows how many lies got stuck in your throat, how you reel in surprise whenever he doffs his hat to greet you on a random night through an attractive face, how many songs you still want to believe that underpins love as your prime virtue, how you pine for a name, how bad you want for Pandora's box to finally open itself wide and find love with his strong hands receiving you.

Be afraid of the man who you really are. The tall, lanky man that trips you whenever you feel like everything is falling in place. He who tucks you in at night with a blanket of thoughts. The things that you repress hence the things that you dream about. He who has bloodshot eyes and grating voice. He who taunts at all your bedtime prayers, saying, "But by Jove, I am your final honesty alight in the dark." Be afraid of him. For only you know him. And he knows you. And your lifetime familiarity has bred loving contempt between the two of you, especially when you and him meet eye to eye before the mirror.

Be afraid of him. No one else but him. No one else.

And for all this pretense, I am, and always been, afraid of him.