Absolutely Nothing

Nothing has changed. Nothing has changed, because I allowed nothing to change. Why bother? 'Valar morghulis', as it is said in A Song of Ice and Fire. 'All men must die.' We bide our time, justify our actions, compromise, and do the best we can with what we are given. Death expects nothing from us, and I am perfectly content with doing/being absolutely nothing.

I should point out that, thinking this way, I expect less and less of people, too. And just as well. What does this world's people have to offer? More to the point, what does this world's people have to offer me?

So for the following year, I say again: Be nothing, do nothing, expect nothing.

Decay

My body feels very, very old. My throat is dry. My head feels hollow and cold and dank. Still the world turns, and threads are spun and unraveled and frayed, all in a whirling, neverending cycle. What good serves howling when the sound is not heard, when the air is thick and black and bitter as tar? How does one look away and live pretending the darkness is far away when every turn of the head reveals a shadow? Time--barbed and thorned and boiling--rubs against my skin with each movement. Every second is a jolt of pain, every sound a roaring blast through my head. When does it end? Completely, utterly, and truly end?

Blurring/Burning

I could be anywhere and it doesn't matter. I am not really where I am supposed to be. Everywhere--anytime--it feels as if I am shadowing myself from a step back.

Who is this person? What is his name? Why does he do the things he does, and those a certain way?

There are times barely noticeable when instead of the shadow, I find myself as the other--the person. Real as blood and guts, real as glass on skin. But despite the reality, the solidity, the binding laws of the known Universe, this shapeless, nameless force pulsing from somewhere within my flesh screams for the push and pull of unreality, of the limitless sky, of the void, of chaos bleak and riotous and infinite.

I am not supposed to be here. I am not supposed to be doing this. I am not supposed to be talking to you. I am not. I am not. I am not.

Eventually, however, I am forced back to being my own shadow: silent, gagged, and tethered to its organic master yet burning long, burning without sound--a cold and ancient fire. And it is this. Every particle of energy orbits this, my sun. What little is left, I leave for getting from one place to another.

Enough. No more. Everything needs to stop.

But the world does not stop. We fight. We dance. And sometimes one blurs into the other that the only thing that really matters is we keep moving. How? Why? What for? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You do not matter. Who you know, what you know, how you use what you know and who you know do not matter. Nothing matters. Everything is moot. We keep moving for as long as we can, as much as we can, in whatever way our instincts take us, until we die.

Hyperbole

I'm too tall. Everything is too bright, too noisy. My neck hurts. My sides hurt. It's too crowded. Stop talking. Why is everything so slow? I feel like throwing up. It's too hot. I'm not sure if I'm too angry or too sad. Who cares about clothes? Who cares what you think? Who cares what I think? I damage myself when I write. I damage myself when I see myself in the mirror. My lips are cracked. My nose is too big. I'm too tall. I'm too tall. I'm too tall.

Kaleidoscope

It's still here. I still feel its traces. A kaleidoscope of jagged shapes and dissonant colors floating in the space between my throat and my gut. They move as one, but I feel the turning of every sharp edge breaking tendon and tissue, lancing through every vein. Every piece is disjointed and disconnected, as if belonging to many different puzzles.

I try to walk but it feels like the rest of the world moves instead and I am always at the same spot held down by a magnetic force. I speak, but the sound does not come from my mouth, bouncing off the walls instead.

I couldn't stand the thought of being with another person. The thought of life pulsing at close proximity makes me want to vomit. 'How do you move like that?' I want to shout. 'How do you think that way? How can you ignore flesh and blood and decay when it is all around you? How can you think of fighting, when surrendering is so much easier?'

The Universe is very, very old. It is used up, crumbling, filled with patchwork and running on blistered feet. It is exhausted and my skin all but feels it. Sleep is what the Universe wants -- quiet, dark, cold, and lasting sleep.

The Cut Deepens

It was maddening almost to the breaking point, the way it was this evening. Life pulsed inside that little corner of the world, like living light trapped in a blackened glass bubble. It was sickening, when you are both light and blackened glass -- pushing and throbbing for escape, at the same time contracting and constricting to imprison.

At one table a young couple was stealing kisses when they think no one was looking. At another, four young professionals discuss business. At the table behind me, a middle-aged woman was quiet with intense concentration, eyes darting left to right as she lets words out onto her laptop screen. Life was singing in that quiet little corner in the city, sonorous like the rush of water in a deep, wide river flowing out into the ocean.

Everything terrified me. Everything, moving at the same time -- singing, flowing, squirming and writhing like the monsters of myth -- bore deep into flesh and bone and drew out a steady trickle of liquid fear, thick and grey and steaming. I wanted to howl from fear and grief. I wanted to howl until my soul came out through my mouth, vanishing into the damp night air.

What I wanted. What I wanted. What I wanted was to die, be forgotten, and never thought of as having ever existed, but -- as I'd always pondered year after year, day after day, second after excruciating second -- some unknown force stays my hand. Nameless it stays, though it has lodged itself in different parts of my body, and I am kept alive.

In the meantime, life keeps pulsing -- a steady, rhythmic beat. A distant, sonorous melody. A call. A call. A call.

Desolation

There is nothing left. I would write foolishly, 'I stand before an empty field,' when it would be more accurate to say that the empty field had always been within myself -- nearer and terrifyingly more personal. There is no wind, there are no leaves dead and dying. Old things break and crumble to dust under the skin of this old, old earth -- leaving no traces, allowing no histories. But what burns inside me if not fire? What wills me to move if not my own mind? This desolate vastness, this grey room, these white-paddded walls -- what binds everything together? What tethers me to this place? Why am I still here?

This

Why do I insist on this? Why do I believe that I do not deserve better? Because there is nothing more. Because there is nothing else. Because this, even if this is a lie, is mine. Because this is my lie, my pretense, and no matter how intangible, it is more than what a million, two million, countries and countries worth of people alive now can hope for.

This. This is mine. This purple butterfly bruise is mine. This humming, thrumming pain is mine. This madness, this turning away from light, from sound, from flesh and language and color is mine. I insist on this. I deserve this. There is nothing else.

Tonight

Tonight he came back. Tonight he said sorry, and some truths were disclosed. Tonight I told him I love him.

'Thank you,' he said.

Lines Crossed

'Umalis ka na.' So leave. Those were the last words I said to him yesterday. It looked like he wanted to. It looked like he was done using me.


The weekend was spent at Puerto Galera. He said he's never been to the beach before but despite this, most of his time was spent arguing with his aunt -- according to him, at least -- over text about the fact that he never asked for permission to go. I tried not to mind but as bull-headed as he can be, how can an argument stretch for a day and a half? It did stretch, however, from when we were still at the beach the day prior, to the following day when we were about to leave, even until the bus ride back to Manila.

He wanted to stop for pizza before heading home, so we walked over to Amici after getting off from the bus at Pasay Road. He was lagging as, yes, his god-fucking nose was still on his god-fucking phone. But there was nary a word from me until we got to the restaurant. If I was going to be angry with him, it's not going to be weak and half-assed; I wanted my anger to build up to something... more. We were waiting for our food to be served and as if on cue, he affected a startled look, and he said without taking his eyes off his mobile phone that his aunt was on her way to the boarding house and he had to leave immediately. Lies. A voice, dark and rasping, clawed at my mind. So leave.


'Sorry for disappointing you,' his message came not 10 minutes after he stepped out of the restaurant. I finished both of our drinks. 'I knew this would happen. If this is the last time, it will be very memorable. Take care.'

He was never very smart but I knew every word was a trap, if unwittingly set -- crude yet delicate. I never responded but then again I could never come up with anything less biting and less melodramatic than 'So you're done using me.' It's hard not to feel used getting back from a trip one paid for entirely, and then being left high and dry, yes?

So are you done using me? I highly doubt it. But we'll see.

Patterns

He came back. He left so many times that I lost count, but each time he came back. Sometimes he would storm off in a flurry of words unsaid, other times it would be me closing the door. Each time, however, it was him who would make his way back.

To be truly honest, we could never be more different. Our overlaps cover very little -- and even these were very tenuous -- there really is not much reason for us to be together. Which is why it wasn't much of a surprise when four days ago he told me, 'I'm not the one you're looking for. Good bye.' Well that was one of the smartest things he'd said, I thought quite honestly and with no small amount of spite. 'You're probably right,' I responded. 'Well then. Good day.'

This afternoon, he called. 'Sorry,' he said. We agreed to meet up for dinner. I echoed his words back to him the second we were face to face. 'You said you were not the one I was looking for.' His expression was unreadable. We started walking. Silence thickened our steps -- like floodwater up to our knees. Pasong Tamo was grey and cold and static.

The next words from me were probably a mistake I realize now. 'Am I the one you're looking for?' It was a flimsy, fraying thread flung into the dark, hoping he'd catch it, hoping he'd hold on to it more tightly this time. Please say yes, please say yes, please say yes... Heartbeat. 'Yes.'

It may not have been a lie but it was certainly weak, and the question was not at all fair. Regardless, the thread held, and I could feel torn cloth sewn back together. The flood stretched out in front of us, and familiar patterns were forming in the darkening sky. There was nothing else to do but walk onward.

Breaking

This string is stretched too tight, too far. I need to feel something break, hear the muted snapping of threads and the ripping of new cloth. I need something cut. I need something dead.


He came back shortly after he left, and for a time, all was as before. 'Happiness makes one so sure,' I remember reading somewhere. And foolish, though that was left unwritten.

Little by little, I heard it -- the familiar sounds of leaving. There are many things I have yet to find out about him, he said. There is great pain he does not want me taking on, he said. Words masked with kindness and selflessness became as immaterial to me as air and shadow, and all I could hear was 'No,' and all I could feel were his hands pushing me away.

I convinced myself I did not need to fully understand him -- that I simply needed to be there. And it was an act, a pretense I did not have the strength to sustain. I had the reckless impatience of youth, and my longing got the better of me. Three weeks after the last time we met, I presented my offer once again: 'Let me help you,' I said. 'You tell me there are many things I do not know about you yet. You tell me you carry this nameless, shapeless pain. Let us give name to it. Let me face it with you,' and again, 'Let me help you.' He had the same answer obscured in so many words, 'No.'


This morning I had a vision. I was in a place where someone had fallen to die though there was no body. It was a place of incomplete death. It is raining now, and the pillows are cold under my skin, the edge of my blanket is wet with ugly, ugly weeping. There is death in my chest but it is incomplete, and I am still burdened with life. Something needs to break. Something needs to die. Completely.

I Was Told On A Sunday

No long faces, no long looks, no deep conversations. I was told in a park covered with trees. I was told on a Sunday.

So Much To Say

So much, so much has happened during the past month -- throwing myself off into the rocky cliff that is the corporate world (yet again), least of all.


We met about three weeks ago and between then and now, words that have been as much another language to my mind -- to my skin -- started to make sense.

Everywhere with him was a dream. We spent Christmas and New Year's together. We had breakfast at the Salcedo Saturday Market with three old women sharing our table. We went to Baclaran. We went to Mall of Asia at 7am. He sang to me. He has a very beautiful singing voice. Here in my room, I finished reading Tehanu while he was asleep in my arms.

He is leaving this week.