Today, the 19th of August. A decade and two years ago.

Author's note: Re-reading this, I initially thought this post ought to go into the "Suitcase of Memories" tab, being dated so long ago. But the feelings are current, and are reflective of present circumstance, hence its publishing in here.  Also, been contemplating of removing that other blog altogether, anyway. Thank you.

ITHINK WE are getting broken up, Shane and I. I dunno. We've been fighting. And it also has been a very long "time out". And then there is the matter of her husband, coming back into the picture. Yes, this one. And yes, you read that correctly. Husband.

That's okay. Prior to whatever we're going through recently, we had these amazing 7 months or so together (I have some difficulty figuring this out. We've known each other since Grade School, you see. In the other university I attended, we were practically inseperable. We only began seeing each other seriously (at least in THAT sense) lately. Hence the 7-months counting. But for me, it really feels like more than that. Like half an eternity. Half my life.).

We fought, and we bickered, yes, true. But we also loved and cared and nurtured, first.

We laughed. I remember this wonderful evening of love and conversation and siopao and siomai and the sudden rains and the 4 hours or so of free time we had (We have the craziest of schedules, you see. Had it not been for my skipping a class, we would not have met. For when my work and classes ends, her work begins. And vice-versa.). We were in the apartment (Yes, the one we said we'd build our dreams on. Silly, everything seems now.). We laid in the cot and we hugged, and after some small talk I broached our recent... misunderstanding. I apologized for... everything.

She falls silent and buries her head into my chest. No words. "Please.... don't. I want to remember us as happy. The end, it's... inevitable."

I understand.  But a thousand knives cut into me. "Okay."

And instead I feel the evening coming into day.

"We need curtains," I say. My head was screaming for me to say other things. Will we keep this apartment? Should I move out, now? What will happen to us? When will you be coming back to him? Will we ever talk about us, or at least try, in the very least, to salvage things? Do I get to have a say, in all of these?

"Yes." she replies.

And this is how hurt reduced us. There are so many things to say and speak of, yet we do not say anything, anymore. It's scary, I think.

I know, these string of words and thoughts might not make any sense to any of you. But they do, to me. Strange and funny, this.




WE DO EVERYTHING in half-silences. Drink, eat, hold each other. In my version of it, there is so much fear in me. Already. Any more and I would break her to pieces. Or maybe it is I who is falling apart.

I look at the stack of books (for we haven't a proper bookshelf, yet. Seven months in and we still haven't redecorated properly. And now, chances of that is slim to none.). Hers. Mine. Ours. I see her shoes, right next to mine.

Later, I visit the bathroom. The soap she uses. The shampoo. My grooming stuff mixed in with hers. A bottle of shaving foam. This conditioner. Inexplicably, these things and images they brought to me cause too much sorrow. In my head it's probably because they speak to me of things I cannot anymore have, or aren't allowed to share in, anymore.

I should move out. It is just too much to bear, this image of false togetherness.

"We live in borrowed time, this generation," I told my assistant once, a long time ago. Everything is borrowed. Lives, loves, even heartache and joys. Nothing belongs to us. Not our names, the job we hold on to, the desk we have at work. Even our children. Even the days we run back and forth to.
 I smile still. However the heart, I think, is falling to pieces. I can almost feel it beginning to fade, like a song coming to an end. I can swear I can feel it's coming to coldness. I can almost feel it falling into a really dark and strange abyss.
But I am happy. Yes, true, there are tears, predictably (Nobody likes it, I believe, when relationships come to an end. Or, as maybe observant people are putting it -- changing form.), and I can feel the hurting and the grieving and the pain that's hovering over us, like a dark cloud, like the beginnings of soft rains.

I am happy. That I was allowed this seven months of bliss is an amazing miracle in itself. Especially so because nearly everything - and everyone - is so against it.

It hurts, though, to realize that one could possibly hurt the one one loves -- and worst of all, mean it. And then there is the matter of Shane not really belonging with me. Of her still choosing him.

In a former life, I used to associate darkness and ill feelings with snow. You know, the type that falls ever so softly, and silently. Like the cries we cry inside of us, or the screams we do not let out. It falls slowly, blanketing everything, leaving no trace of what used to be there.

Until it stops. The snow, man.




IT'S STRANGE, these feelings in me, now. This morning as I woke up in the new apartment I had this feeling of living someone else's life. Like a false person. I question my memories. I question the sun, and this likeness of day.

I looked in the bathroom mirror and saw somebody else there.

I sob softly as I hit the shower. I allowed myself the indulgence, thinking it might do me some good. I remember her skin, instead. It wasn't until a bit later when I realized I had singed myself.

Hours later, and at the office, I have this strange urge to stop everything and command things to fall still. I do not know where this feeling is coming from, nor can I source to what ends this strange wish in me want to accomplish.

When I took to coffee, I still searched in myself the want to grieve. Strange, I thought, that it doesn't come. I smile, and dress for work.

I smile still. However the heart, I think, is falling to pieces. I can almost feel it beginning to fade, like a song coming to an end. I can swear I can feel it's coming to coldness. I can almost feel it falling into a really dark and strange abyss.

We do the strangest things, us who belong to this generation. We push when instead we should be pulling. We hate when we should love. We cry when we are happy.

How mad we had all become.



_______________________

Listening to:  Save Me a Dream by Raymond Lauchenco