Blanking

It's like one of those sunless dusks when the jeepney's unabashed roar keeps piercing through everyone's ears.

Cars seem to mumble among themselves with all the beep beep here and there.

Long queues of colorful manly looking vehicles start at a white line where three languid lights (red, yellow and green) look down upon.

And everyone is either grumbling at her watch, tinkering with his cell phone or hushing her baby to sleep or nitpicking over how hopeless the Philippine economy is (because some time-slackening traffic offers them wonderful time to do so).

Or staring blankly at everything, unabashed, roaring and silent.

Giants Within Earshot

Monday mornings feel like standing at the edge of the diving board with your toes fifty feet above the placid pool. You know you have to jump. Before you have the nerve to admit the screaming giants in your head, your knees are shuddering as if they’ll shatter into shards any second. Perhaps it’s the height, or the depth of the pool or the possibility of dementia or death. Perhaps.

 
In reality, it’s the start of the working week. For the jobbers it’s back to their droopy desks and whining bosses. For the students, like me, it’s voluntarily getting into a 12-hour prison full of discussions, quizzes, violating animal rights of toads, trying to get your way from P(A|B) to the probability of doctors being sued due to malpractice and screwing your head tight until the impossibility for tertiary alcohols to go through S_N2 reactions settles comfortably in your piles of confusion. Those are merely among the giants screaming heights, depths, dementia and death in my head. Among the BIG stuff that pierce through my shuddering knees are rejection, rejection and have I mentioned rejection?

 
Yep, that’s the word honey. Rejection. The absence of acceptance and security of each second. The sensation you get when you forget how much loving there actually is in your life from family and friends. The action of hatred and judgment. The feeling of being lonesome simply because you elicit and solicit rejection. They’re all in the hub named Available: Entirely Ill Feelings. No matter how silly it is to even comprehend visiting the hub, some people (I for instance) are unthinkingly silly enough to keep visiting and visiting. Call it addiction, if plain stupidity is straight inappropriate.

 
One of my giants – the giants that scare me off from doing what I ought to and could do. The giants that scream in my head every Monday morning to entertain the fear from having my liberating 50-feet dive down to the placid waters waiting for me. Rejections. In plural form.

Sometimes I listen to them. At other times, I take my dive. And taking them have always encouraged me to take it again, every time.

 
No more giants. No rejection. No fear.

UpClose

        Conforming to a norm bothers me. Nervy of me, but honest at least. But I am not the kind of person who tries to be deviant. I’m the kind of person who tries to conform. Ironic.

        As a theory, I see myself brutally funny for a person. If in a film, I’d probably be that nerd who can’t bring herself to talk. Okay, not really. But I think it’d be effortless for me to be that nerd. I hope I don’t sound like someone who belongs to an asylum of unsorted minds. Not that I mind. I randomly spend quiet afternoons with old people and sometimes make silly faces with kids. Just like everyone else, I laugh till I cry and cry till I laugh. There are times when I choose to be secluded. And times when I give myself away too easily to people who mean the world to me.

        I love a few things. Music is one. It keeps me sane amidst a waging war inside my little nob. Words amaze me to no end. Playing with them is another thing I’d like to call a feat. Math is one thing that makes a lot of sense to me. I have two tiny Yorkshire Terriers and one dapper of a Dutch Hound (who has probably done it with half the dog population in my neighborhood). Japanese manga are among my guilty pleasures. For me, nothing beats the smell of sautéed garlic and halcyon days with friends.

        Random things, people and thoughts interest me. Fancying extremes are out of my league, though. They’re rather freaking than luring. But I did promise myself I have to try bungee jumping or sky diving before I die. And no, I’m not a contradiction.

        Real people are my kind of people. Those who are not afraid to get their hands dirty, who are willing to help, who I can be me with, and those who are not afraid to dance or sing out of tune - but I guess there’s really no qualifications for friendship. It only takes an amount of heart to beat my wits out of brains.

        I guess I’ve been blabbing too much for you to handle. Now, get off my face you stalker!

Stalled

How do you let go of someone who never even had the chance to say goodbye?

I was working on my organic chemistry problems about a quarter past 1 am earlier today. I had an exam to accomplish in a few hours. Not a single soul was alive except for a lunatic that was dancing in the middle of a mute night. That was I, with my headphones isolating me from the sleeping world. After a few minutes of headbangin' I found myself scribbling words that had nothing to do with hydroxylation or stereochemistry.

Soft tiny streams stroked down my face one after the other. My clueless nose started sniffing back fluids that tell of an unforgiving sadness. The kind that only time can measure.

The kind that reminds you how this life is beyond you. That loving cannot promise you a painless story. That death is real.

It's been two months since that longest weekend of my life. I thought I've had enough tears shed over it already. The memory of him lifelessly breathing through an intubator keeps me drifting to that hollow place where I cannot win. I keep stumbling at my knees every time I come to that point when it says "Let go".

He didn't even say goodbye. Until now I keep asking him to stay inside my memory. Every bit of memory that I can keep. Because that's the only way for me to keep him. And I don't think I can even start to face the truth of letting go.

hmmm.

Hey you,

I think the sky practically turned blue when you began to notice it.
You realized you like it blue. Perhaps it has known this forever.

Some girl will keep sending you hearts and kisses
wrapped in a handful of words and colors. And typos.

Naturally you will not mind. Because you’re cool like that.
This girl, she’ll keep insisting that you both become co-secret kids.

You will be forced into this. Because you’re really a secret kid too.
This girl, you’ll keep insisting she’s the bigger secret kid, though.

And she will not mind. Because she likes to send you hearts and kisses
wrapped in a handful of words and colors. And typos.

You will grow to like her. Because you will grow to like her.
Accidentally you become copycats of each other. Copycats.

Through a window by the phone and a handful of strange words.
You will grow to doze off on her. You become her King Dozer.

Somewhere right about now some cool guy was born. Most definitely, he must have made his mum and dad super happy because they heard him cry for life the moment he became part of the world. Twenty-two years after, I will fall in love with him. To that guy. For making my heart throb, sweeping me off my feet. And for dozing off on me. Have a great 22nd! We’re now finally even. Even numbers. LOL. Thanks for everything. And stay mine. ♥