Sunday, September 26, 2004

Breakup, Makeup, Shakeup


Breakup, Makeup, Shakeup It was an old lover’s birthday a few days ago. Closure came earlier this year, and since then we have never exchange any more words after trading “I’m sorry’s” and “I loved you” those many months ago. Four days ago, I broke the mutually imposed ice blue curtain of civility and sent her a short but somewhat evocative greeting through Friendster. I didn’t realize the ramifications of such a move and for the next four days, we have exchanged brief messages that I now realized is slowly intensifying the closure that I so badly wanted since we broke up. Short messages as they were, I started to find out what’s going on in her life and vice versa. No, it does not prick my heart anymore as it used to whenever I see the picture of her and her new love (my replacement) on her profile. I held back from slinging sarcastic one-liners and I managed to write replies conveying some semblance of warmth and friendliness. Amazingly, the constricting pain that has been lashing my heart for quite some time is gone now. This is my closure, and I accept the finality of it.

But dear friends, first let me tell you how it was.

When this love affair ended, I was broken, completely. My whole being shut down, and even if my friends were telling me how brave I was for not succumbing to pain, I knew that there was something wrong. Looking back, I’d rather had myself wallowed for a while instead of trying to move on immediately, without feeling anything. For me, that’s worse than being broken. Because when you’ve stopped feeling anything, it means that you’re all used up and it’s going to be harder to recover from that. When you’re used up, there’s nothing to fix, there’s naught but space. And how could one fill such a vast space like an empty heart?

Alcohol can only do so much.

Because love is self-annihilation, it does not really matter if your relationship with someone ran a total of 10 years, or 8 months, or 10 days. When you’re in love, you cease to be yourself and you tend to love selfLESSly.

When you caress your lovers at night, kiss them in the morning as they saunter off to work, or even when your tongues lash at each other during moments of anger there is always an exchange of essence and somehow these things would bind you to that person, making you one and integrated that it would be hard to distinguish the one from the other, thus obliterating any veneer of self-existence.

It dawned on me that it’s perfectly all right to be broken.

We are pieces of puzzles, like that old love song says. You put them together and some would not fit, but some would. Sometimes puzzles get scattered all over as turbulent relationships do and the broken pieces had to be refitted once again. And it’s okay. Because you have absorbed so much from that person, when you separate, you have to break so that you can shake off any lasting imprint of that person from your being that will make moving on harder for you.

I have been the letters inside the Boggle Case. I’ve been shook up, turned upside down, and rattled so badly that I thought I might never be the sam(n?)e again.

Recently, I’ve started feeling again. It was just a warm feeling at the tip of my toes. The merest of shivers but that was enough. Slowly, I am freeing myself of this atrophy that has been keeping me from breathing. I am not so dead inside anymore.

Ladies and Gentlemen, congratulate me, I’m out of the coffin.

Friday, September 24, 2004


The Bang Bus Gang!!! (actually lahat sila nagyoyosi pwera lang ako)

(me, james and anne, gette and mumsy)

Thursday, September 23, 2004


This is Arnold...I think he's cute, see? I will get him drunk, one day!!! Bwahahahahaha!



My Wacky Co-Workers!!!!

(Jaja/Arnold/Anne/Engel/Arman/Gette/Greg)



Saturday, September 18, 2004

The Grand Design



"I will never be one of those soulless, corporate robots working the 9 to 5 job"

I believe that these were the exact words I uttered to my dear friend Ailil while we were on the research stage of our thesis earlier this year, prior to graduation. During that time I never saw myself working beyond the classroom or even 5 meters away from my PC where I write most of my works.

Lat Monday, my first day on the job as a CSR at ePLDT Parlance, I looked at myself at the washroom's wall to wall mirror, and I believe that I felt the same thing Jhamie did when she started working at Nucleuss. I cannot believe that the person on the reflection was I because I was wearing this white long sleeved polo and black slacks and a pair of black pumps to match. It was like seeing Joi wearing a football shirt. The reflection was a far cry from the girl a few weeks ago that used to walk down the Mega Strip wearing shorts and flip-flops. Heck, I hang out at Starbucks wearing old and torn jeans and it was not because I liked to challenge the dress code. It is just the way I am but now I am actually working in an establishment where we are required to don office attire, Monday to Thursday. Weird City.

What some people would do to earn the big bucks.

It's not as if my job is really THAT horrible.

My training is a combination of Speech Class 1 and 2 from high school and America 101. Hell in two days I have managed to commit to memory the 50 States and their postal codes than the names of the senators in the Philippine Senate. What a hoot.

My officemates aren't that bad either. In fact they're great.

I was griping to Ailil last week that I was so bummed at now being included in the shift that Meann and the rest were on. I kinda ended up eating my own words, as usual.

But the sight of this girl who looked a lot like Jennifer Aniston changed my mind. Ha ha, just kidding but it was part of it, yeah.

Our trainer is a real live DJ and naturally he has a great voice but he's only 23. He has this Jude law thing going on. He's
nice although I was late yesterday and opened the fire exit even though it was forbidden. Ick. What a way to end my week. I almost got a memo form that.

I have an officemate that everyone calls mumsy because she's
the oldest, like 41 and she's like the mother in our group because she's so sweet and she treats us like we are her kids. There's
this guy Arnold who talks and acts like Speedy Gonzales, really funny. There's
Gette who looks a lot like Angelina Jolie (whatta babe, Ailil!), and stands 5'10. There's
Greg who is gay and a cross between Jigs from 3LIT and Gil from 4LIT. Man, I cannot help but laugh every time he opens his mouth. He's hilarious. There's manly Arman and childish Engel. Anne, a guidance councilor from the International School and she sucks at geography, like me. LOL. The bonding that we share is lot like the bonding that my Freefall buddies and me used to do.

Which reminds me, Freefall, wherever the hell you guys are, we HAVE GOT TO GET TOGETHER, GOT THAT?

Did I mention that my shift is from 2pm to 10pm? Perfect for gimmicks.


The thing is, I was so ready to write-off this job as something like even the most nitwit person can do, a no-brainer kind of stuff but I ended up learning so much and I am having a blast too.

And I AM, after all, earning the big bucks. Who am I to complain?


Monday, September 13, 2004

Apologies For My Silence

For those who had been trying to contact a seemingly dead entity for the past few days, I apologize. I have just been in a weird funk lately and I seem to have no energy left for other things except for trying to stay stationary and playing dead. It was so nice to just lie still and be motionless for hours after moving all over the place for so long. I have finally watched all the movies that I wanted to see for the longest time but could not because I have been so busy doing stuff for other people. I have finally fulfilled my promise to my nephews and took them out two days ago. I am now flat-broke, but who cares? I am gonna start working later and I'll be *,000 bucks richer for it in fifteen days.

Let me just go back to bed for a few more hours. After that, I am going out in the real world.

Monday, September 06, 2004

Drought


So this is what dying of thirst meant. Even with the faucet turned on, and despite the rivulets of water spouting from it, enough to satiate one’s need to alleviate the caustic pain of accidentally swallowing boiling milk or a shot of pure Johnnie Walker[1] or cooling down a deprived and parched throat surviving on stale saliva, there is still the unquenched parchness of something more than my throat.

No, that is not the thirst that I am talking about, but I wish it were. The kind of thirst that can be quenched by a swig of San Miguel Strong Ice (always the beer of my choice), or a glass of freshly squeezed lemon juice or maybe even my tongue slipped out of my mouth to taste the first few drops of the rain as they fall.

I wished that this thirst could easily be slaked just like that. A can of cherry cola that stings the throat or the alcohol laced with the chocolate-y sweetness of Bailey’s[2] that, when allowed to permeate the slumbering senses, could induce sexual yearnings. I had hoped that the tears that used to stream out of my ducts would be enough as they splashed on my cheek, slides down to my corner of my mouth, pain tasting salty pain.

I wish that a space on the bed would be filled up to accommodate this craving. The dent on the rumpled sheets is noticeable now more than ever. How long has it been since it was warmed by flesh? How long since the bed springs creaked not just for a mere fraction of 24 hours in a rented room.

Some nights I would just wake up and mutter at the emptiness. These are the days when a cretin friend starts to look attractive or days when I consider answering those ‘wanted: pen pals’ regardless of their age and I get scared.

The pang for companionship never ceases instead it settles into my gut and it is nothing like an antacid can cure. I can tuck it inside my newly washed linen sheets and keep it in my drawer, but for how long? Soon someone would spread it open and even the folds would not be enough to keep it.

I used to wake up from nightmarish dreams and scream then a hand would snake out form under the covers, patting me on the back or cradling me into the crook of her arms, while murmuring some comforting gibberish and incantations of reassurance. I have never felt so copious during those times.

I should’ve known that after the abundance, famine and drought would follow. Now it makes biblical sense. Seven years of superfluity, to prepare for the next seven years of wanting.

I should not have wasted the plethora of love you had given me, I wish I had the prudence to have them stored like grains of wheat on granaries for these years that follow, like what Joseph the Dreamer did. I would have had something to survive on now that I am on my second year of drought. But it has run out, just like everything, everyone else. Damn hindsight.

Five years left. Five years. By then, I would have had drank about a tank of beer but the thirst will linger at the base of my throat. Mixing with the alcohols’ bitterness is the sour bile that had settled there a year and a half ago. That does not sound too bad. At all.

Here. I’ll drink to that.

---

Endnotes:
Why is it so hard to write when one is happy?
[1] A popular brand of scotch, sold in different flavors.
[2] The original Irish Cream

Friday, September 03, 2004

Mea Culpa


I blame no one. I blame myself for this emptiness that swirls in core of my being. I blame myself because I am bleeding but I do not feel it. I blame myself because if someone performed CPR on me, blood would gush out of my already punctured lungs. That is how dead I am. But I do not know it yet.

Let me divide my life into two. The past seven years that I breathed and lived and swallowed you and the upcoming years where I would attempt to exhale, kill, and regurgitate every dent of memory you left in my brain and my empty heart.

How did I arrive at this moment? Staring at the endless stretch of road before me. With no one by my side. I squint but I do not see the end. There is dust everywhere. I choke. It stung my eye.

I should not have left you when I did and I should have let you go when I did not.

Do you realize that since you left I have been living in monotony?

I wake up, fold the sheets, eat my breakfast, then lunch and dinner where every bit of food I ingest float harmlessly inside my body because my organs have already started dying one by one.


One would peer into my eyes and see nothing but space. But space is good. At least if some people returned what they got or borrowed from me, I have somewhere to place it to.

The only organ functioning in my body right now is my vagina, but for how long? What will be left of me then when I have lost my ability to come?

Will I be a walking corpse, all skin and bones with no vital organs?

Still I do not blame you.

It pains to admit how afraid I am to feel again.

My heart is on its last artery. When you left you cleaned out every ventricle, vein and chamber I am afraid there is nothing left for me to give. Not even for myself.

Broken. You left me broken. Scattered. Dismantled.

But I still have my legs. I could still stand.

The road is still before me. I could still walk.

How could I have forgotten? I have always been stronger than you. You, who have always needed to have someone at your side. I have managed to survive for so long without actually living. Live.

That is not such a bad idea. As soon as I am able to close my wounds, I would live.

I blame myself for not giving you strength, for you to survive the upcoming years without me.