Happy Birthday

The nights have always been about you.

I spent them thinking about how well you treated me and how you did me wrong. I spent them thinking about the clues that could lead me to your reasons, the ones you never did elaborate. I spent them thinking about what is it really with you that I cannot seem to let go that easy.

My mind worked the problem and I find myself getting to know you all over again.

At times, you seem ordinary. At other times, you seem rather ethereal. Whenever you’re silent, it’s as if there’s something that’s inside of you that I’m not made to reach, not good enough to bring about. I get that feeling that you’ve wandered here for a long time and that you dwelt in private places I haven’t ever been or even dreamed of.

You struck me as someone with drifting kinds of thought, a wistful sense of the tragic combined with intense physical and intellectual power. I felt like some sort of slow whenever I’m with you. Or, maybe I’m just not used to being with someone whose mind works as fast as yours.

You frighten me even though you were gentle with me. And if I didn’t fight to control myself with you – if I didn’t suppress the growing feeling I have for you – I might have totally lost my center and never come back.

I know you are acutely aware of what I’m talking about. I know that you haven’t quite got over it. For in all those times you talked about the love of your life when we were still together, I knew that something’s going wrong with you… or that something, which used to mean everything to you, is still bothering you.

I don’t know why exactly, though, but I would have loved you until you forget. I would have loved you until you remember how to live as though for the first time. And I don’t know why exactly, despite what everyone told me, my heart so wanted to stay.

I don’t know if you care about me at all now like the moth above the sink. But I just want you to know that I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry if you don’t think I’m up for the task of fixing things for you. I’m so sorry for trying to catch your lost heart when it was actually only mine that needs catching.

I'm also sorry if I took more things from you than I should have left you. I didn’t mean to cause you trouble nor take advantage of you. The things we argued about are gradually adding up now, which makes me feel more sorry because now I realized, I didn’t know how to love at all.

But, thank you. Thank you for giving this a chance once. Thank you for letting me in close enough to get to know you. Being with you had me got to know myself, too. And now I know why I would always let you go… because your soul is restless and your heart needs to wander.

So goodbye and take care. I hope you find what you are looking for. And I hope that it wont take you far and long enough to hold it, keep it, and finally make you complete. Believe me when I say I really do.

And just like what I told you, this night’s also about you… when I finally commit myself to let go of the pain along with you. Ang I promise this night is going to be the last time it would be about you because there is life I have to live the best way possible like you.

Again, thanks for a wonderful summer. It was 12 weekends well-spent.

Back Sliding

My cathartic tendency is definitely on a haywire.

This used to be my turf, you know, my forte: exorcising the demons in me, writing about what the experts prescribed as stages of shock, denial, humiliation, bitterness, bargaining, self-induced misery (or self-pity) and the ever-elusive enlightenment….

I just don’t know what to say. And even if I do, I have so many things to say that I don’t know where to begin and how to say it. I guess this just me being clueless and jaded at the same time.

All I know is that there are two things I don't know of and would definitely like to understand. I rather leave the rest behind... at least, just for a time until I get on a safer distance.

I still haven’t figured out where in these therapy-defined stages I am standing on after you-know-what happened. For me to get a piece of peace of mind, I want to find out if post mortem is just around the corner or is still far across the block.

In the first few weeks, I found myself bizarrely coping. I don't know what had gotten into me but for some miraculous reasons, I was able to consider this as necessary and appropriate. I mean, I was able to laugh a lot, talk a lot, write a lot, go out a lot as if nothing ever happened.

But I cry too, sometimes - whenever the night finds me alone and finally undistracted - for the sake of crying, of letting what's in out and done or over with. Most of the times, I can't make the tears fall. Sometimes, I can't keep them from falling.

In those unholy hours, I arrive at the acceptance of my limits - in terms of my maturity; my capacity to feel the right feelings (the music and poetry feeling of falling in love) or let others feel it; and my willingness to surrender to such sweet urges.

And I deep-sighed at these realizations.

I took deep breaths of fresh air to come up with a conclusion that I still do not regret this. That was all I have, all that I got, all there is of me to offer a month ago. It's not my fault he's wanting and looking for something more.

And I sincerely think it's not his fault neither. I don't want to go looking for reasons to blame him even if I wanted to - even if I can - to make things easier. I still find this necessary and appropriate. In retrospect, it seemed rather inevitable. It could not have been in any other way.

Quoting him, love is not wanting... nor is it expecting. Talking about in the purest sense (not that I'm an expert at this), I've come to know that love is just loving no matter what. It pays attention to details but it doesn't seem to mind what's overflowing and what's lacking. Love appreciates. And yes, it is patient.

But when we gamble to win love, to feel love - rather than to love just for the sake loving - we give love on a pretense that we can get some of it back... like a trade of trust for assurance, or elation for euphoria. Expecting ourselves to be loved the way wanted to be loved is a case of what Ramon Francisco always tell me "that's normal, part of human nature".

So, blaming is not an option. Being sulky or feeling bitter about it will take me nowhere because I figured this is the limitation of human relationship, which makes love a matter of convenience and comfort. Perhaps, we mistook being in a relationship for love.

That's why I deep-sigh again.

If thinking too much is a sin... then I'm already dead. Because I can't stop wondering about the what-ifs. I want to prove ourselves wrong. I just don't have the creative juices needed to exhibit this art of giving up unless I'm feeling really lazy. But I wasn't and still not. Not about this.

I thought that it wouldn't hurt to at least try and extend the boundaries of our relationship farther. After all, we can't go back. And we've gone this far. Well, at least I think this is far enough not to go back as it is still near enough to stop. I have a vague sense that it all could be handled somehow.

But it couldn't. He wouldn't.

And I deep sighed some more... because this is where the pain or sadness or both begins. And I'm torn between constrained choices. My self-righteous conscience keeps breathing down my neck, nagging that this is far from lost though I can't detect where this spasm of hope is coming from.

The other one argues that hope can be misplaced. That in itself still scares the shit out of this chicken. That maybe – just maybe – this falls in the category that doesn’t need to undergo catharsis at all… because no matter how many theoretical realizations I can conjure up, I am after all just a lady - in spite efforts of keeping grace under pressure - finding herself on a back slide of things that were, things that are, and things that might could have been.

Analyses and assessments tend to dethread the fabric of chemistry, one-time connections, or dreams that are meant to stay whole. To my standards, what we had at the time we’re hitting off the charts was a dream incarnate. And we are meant to be whole – whole yet apart like two button holes on a white polo shirt.

...like a dream that just didn’t work, but I'm still glad that I had them. That is to say in the least.

Dear You

Forever can last three months and a day.

Good for you, you figured that out. I can honestly say it was not your fault the realization dawned on you first. But too bad, it all came to me as a blow.

And after days of incessant taking punches from reality, of letting your foreign reasoning cut parts of my skin, of eliminating menacing possibilities it brought up, I’ve thought of reasons to fill in the space I suddenly realized existing between us.

Maybe, you’re right: That the commission of wrongs or sins is not the only valid bones of contention to reason an end to a relationship that is not working. It is not always the presence of distractions that destroy something wonderful.

Sometimes, it is the mere absence of a single ingredient that makes it all complete. Like that some bright spark or deep connection you have been looking for probably since the love of your life ended.

Inasmuch as it is shameful to realize that we don’t have it, the plain and simple sadness over our failure to share it is drilling holes in my heart. And because you pointed that they’re not there, I suddenly, regrettably, feel what you probably felt.

I should have thanked you for making me see what’s wrong. I’m sincerely convinced that I am still lucky – despite the pain, the shame, and the shock – because you somehow managed to find a jolt of courage to let me know and control a still inexistent damage, which I have to note may or may never ever come.

But that was until you hid everything from me. You even tried to hide from me as if that would solve to all the problems you discovered forming. After understanding how the what is going wrong, you should not have run away from it – from me - like you did.

You should not have left me standing somewhere in the middle of this, clueless of that something you instantly realized and recently understood. Things could have been easier otherwise for the both of us since we are in this thing together – like it or not.

Sure, talking can’t fix something that does not need fixing when there’s nothing there to begin with. Of course, talking about it may never change the fact that this maybe it for us. But for me, it could have made all the difference.

It must have been so bad that you want an easy way out of this.

But you could have spared me the torturing paranoia of thinking about things I shouldn’t be thinking about if you knew hurting me with this is inevitable. The idea of turning a good relationship into goodbye is heart-wrenching in itself the least we can do about it is to end it right.

You should have faced me like it is supposed to be done. I’m sure that will give us more enlightenment rather than the urges we feel to defend our respective sides.

You should have also given me the chance to be there for you when you’re faced with the brilliant idea of breaking us apart.

You should have given me the opportunity to contribute something that can make or break us up because you’re not the only one dancing the tango. This is a partnership. You do not have the monopoly of power over us.

Most of all, you should not have deprived me of the chance to look for something in your eye or in your voice that can help me move on when you make the call and take it all again.

Don’t get me wrong. I just want it clear that I can never take the feelings you have - or don’t have for me - against you. Not loving a person the way we’re supposed to love them back, it isn’t such a crime. Remember that up to this point, I'm still in the process of validation. I am re-assessing whether I loved you, would love you, still loving you or whatever. We both don't know.

It’s just that your end failed to justify your means. I don’t deserve to be treated this way.

But just so you know, what we had – no matter how vague it all seems now, sitting neither here nor there – was working. I needed you and you were there. Maybe, you needed me and you never even know it because you were so busy looking for something missing.

You were so pre-occupied filling that emptiness in that all we had – as small as capital investment as they were - spilled over. You forgot why we entered this in the first place. You forgot our being together used to feel so wonderful.

You let it fade. And you ended it before we even get to the part that holds the depth perception we’re both looking for that can make us feel what we needed to feel. But I was there. I remember asking you what’s wrong but you just don’t want me there.

You did not even give me a chance to show you what my heart is made of or to see what yours has to offer. I was thinking of ellipses but you suddenly put an end to what could have been a rich and very meaningful sentence.

And the trust as well as the confidence in the promise I saw in us is something you can never call shallow. It was deep and well beyond the surface even I didn’t see it until now. And nurturing it can never be a waste of time.

For all its worth, I want you to know that I changed a whole life to make a room for us at least for the next couple of months before you leave for the States.

I thought that was what we had agreed upon. And because you said you wanted to keep things simple for me, I helped you try to keep everything light. I took things easily because I thought that was what you wanted in our bid to deal with your leaving issue, which rocked our world then hard.

I took my time, not even trying to make you fall for me, because I was looking forward to the opportunities to do so I thought we will share in the future. But you thought this is shallow and tolerating such would be a waste of time.

So, you're thinking about tomorrow. Well, I'm just living for the moment for I was aiming to make it last, because we’ve just seen this go too fast. Then again, if I was meant to be your lover, I wouldn’t find myself trying to change you. You would probably do it on your own. There’s just no way I can make you and I won’t egg you into something you won’t.

If you think this is the best things can work out for us, then so be it. No hard feelings. I'd like to think you're under repair.

Clairvoyant as I am, I kinda always knew ill end up as your ex-girlfriend, that you’ll end up as just another ex-boyfriend for someone else to take. And I don’t care how’s it gonna be because we just woke up on a morning when everything that used to be matter suddenly lost its importance.

I guess there are no happy endings… just the bittersweet ones. And if we just leave our few memories alone, I know the thought of us – no matter how abrupt and indecent our break up was – will remain addictively sweet and wonderful… for at the time, it really was.