Too Much To Ask

A week ago on my way home from work, I got colored pens, a small illustration board, and a cutter. I didn't need the first two.

I got home, undressed, got on the bed, bared the blade as far as it would go, and--as casually as one would initiate a suicide attempt--I let the sharp edge touch my left wrist. Everything was still, and silent, and burning. I was maestro, and bow, and string, all at the same time. I was flesh. I was metaphor. I never moved.

Exhaling--I didn't notice until then I was holding my breath--I let the blade drop and I got one of the colored pens and the illustration board. On one corner of the board I wrote, 'Thank you. I'm sorry.' I put it aside.

I picked the blade up and let myself relax. A single note, soft and distant, floated somewhere in my head. Pressing the point against my left wrist, I pushed. Slowly. I angled it down. Slowly.

A symphony, gaining volume in my mind. A bullet train, approaching. Clouds, parting. Sunlight. Lightning. Water. Rain. And then--pain. Singing, stinging pain. No metaphors here. I was sweating, and I was terribly, terribly frustrated. I cursed, and hurled the cutter to the wall.

Why must that stop me? One last dam bursting, one last door to go through! Anger. Yes, that should be enough to dull steel on flesh, flesh breaking. I picked up the blade, sat on the bed, held my breath, and pushed--sharp edge on soft flesh. I pushed, and I let it glide. A symphony, getting louder. Strings, breaking. Someone, screaming. The blade made a weak, hollow clatter on the old wooden floor. I sobbed into my pillow.

'Bakit hindi mo ako masagot?' I asked him. 'Why can't you give me an answer?' It was Christmas, I think. Or it could have been New Year's. Anyway, it was the holiday season, and we were having dinner at this fancy Korean restaurant in Eastwood. I told him I didn't eat seafood because I didn't like having to put too much effort breaking a crab's shell apart just to get meat barely enough for a few nibbles, or picking my way through fish bones, or spending time removing a shrimp's head and tail. He did all of that, unceremoniously tossing the respective meat onto my plate, looking plainly content--or smug. I nibbled everything anyway. 'Isn't it easy being with me? Didn't you say you're happy spending time with me? We've been seeing each other for a year, what's stopping you from deciding--finally--THIS is the guy I want to spend the rest of my life with?' I gestured grandly, hoping it would come off as a joke, but we both knew it was a serious question.

His attention was on the crab. 'Lahat na siguro ng pwede kong magustuhan sa karelasyon, nasa'yo,' he said. 'Everything I could have wanted in a relationship.' Something cracked. I winced. 'But there is something about you... I can't understand.'

The pause was quite noticeable, but I considered his words. I considered his words were stupid. 'Alright,' I said, nodding. 'Alright. That's fair.' Spectacularly stupid. 'More crab, please.' It would be months before I realize what he said was spot on. There is something not easily understood here.

My plane just landed on Manila. I spent three days in Iloilo, reading and doing little else. I met someone nice--beautiful and smart. I was big enough to admit it wouldn't go farther than dinner and coffee and the smallest of small talks, yet still I allowed myself to be affected in the deepest, most profound ways. Needless to say my spirit was shaken--as it has been similarly shaken many, many times before. For an evening, I thought maybe if a person as beautiful would like someone like me, then maybe I could be beautiful too. Until a familiar, irrevocable force slams into my chest, hurling me back into my place. There is nothing beautiful about me, nor the world I am living in.

I was at work. I was taking calls. I was digging my fingernails into my palms, hoping the minutes would go faster, hoping the phones would cease their infernal beeping. 'Follow your dreams,' the voices in my head kept singing, 'Follow your heart.' I have none. I have none. Beep. Beep. I looked out the window and imagined what it would be like hitting the pavement if I jumped off from the top of the building. I laughed, and the person on the other line laughed with me.

I was sobbing into my pillow. My room was humid. I could hear birds in the distance and nothing else. Steam, maybe, from the wall of the house opposite my room, white-hot and grime-thick with the Third World afternoon sunlight. I managed to lift my left wrist enough to see what I was able to do. A couple of weak scratches, a few shallow, hesitant gashes. I sobbed even harder. 'There is something about you I can't understand,' said a voice in my head, planets away. 'I can't understand it either!' I shouted back. 'Where are you?! What do you want from me?! Why am I here?!' I was beating at my pillow over and over again. Why is dying painlessly too much to ask? What am I doing all this for? Why does the burning never stop?

Far, Far Away

There is a howling in my chest that wants to be heard. Every second it is there--an obsidian fire, varying in power and volume, but always, constantly awake, always, constantly there.

I have just spent the last three days in Iloilo, my first real trip by myself, my first real flight. I suppose in a way one can say the trip went as expected. Most of my time here was spent reading and sampling good food from new, untried places--even if it is far from the local cuisine.

I met someone, too. Beautiful and smart and possessing of more enviable traits most youths ever have a right to. Wanting him came easily enough, of course, but I have lived through enough stories woven from similar threads to know how the pattern would take shape. At any rate, what I have been given should be enough--should be more than what someone like me deserves, surely.

There are times when I want it known. When I would want nothing else than a visible manifestation of my pain to take shape right before my eyes. This howling swimming from inside me thrashes about my blood like silverpike caught in a barbed net. Nothing else would please me more than seeing this wild, flailing thing in front of me, gutted and bloodied and drained of life. What would that leave me with, I wonder? What would I find inside myself when all the bad things have been drained out?

My flight isn't until four more hours. I will leave Iloilo with much the same awe and incredible, incredible sadness as I did Baguio six years ago.

I will go back to the life I have been living with everyone who claims to know my name, my face none the wiser. Everyone will see a smiling face, 'Oh yes, I enjoyed my trip very, very much. The flight was comfortable enough. The food was good. The people were nice.' I might make mention of the person I met to close friends, but they will never know I'd fallen in love with him--him, little better than a complete stranger, after seeing each other for a few hurried hours.

Love, I'd come to realize, is free for me to give to whomever I choose, however much I choose, and take back when necessary--or refused.

More and more voices in my head ask 'Is this worth anything?' More and more voices take up space in the mad, mad chorus in my head, in concert with the howling. 'Is this worth anything? Is this worth the crushing pain? The growing space between islands of sanity?' And then I see something beautiful--heartbreakingly beautiful--and I say 'Yes', and I weep.

Still

I stopped writing because you left. You. You, the one I called gravity, the one I called love. The dragons went silent when you left. There were no more lightnings, no more storms. Nameless creatures that travel through folds of shadow took wing and disappeared into unknowable dimensions. You left, you took everything, I place all blame on you.

I am ruined--as grief ruins spirit, as wind wears away stone--yet it is still you who I want. I want only to write stories of you. I want only to write stories for you. Everything else is hollow, without depth, and terribly, utterly grey.

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?