I have written you letters, countless of them. If only you had persevered to look, you would have found them quite easily. They are now creased and stained with time, these muted lovelies whose souls are reverberated by the deafening magnitude of their faith.
Then perhaps, there will never be the need for these endless questions. And just as well, we wouldn't have the need to dodge answers like bullets.
What do you call that stage, where honesty in black and white is fiction and white lies are brutal as deceit is kind?
I have written you lines to songs I had hoped you'd write the music to. But I guess your chords are as broken as the messy smudge of ink that refuses to come off from my skin.
And you used to write me, I know. You used to tell me of your dreams and hopes and I would know where your sighs were by just tracing my fingertips along the imprints of your pen. You used to know my dreams, too.
But now we're here, tragically trying to forge a friendship that deserves a spit in the eyes and yet, ironically, we persevere. And I don't know why.
I am tired. Physically and emotionally. I can feel my awareness to things around me go numb and I don't like being indifferent and unavailable to people who really need me during times when I am undoubtedly needed.
I cannot remember how we got to where we are but as hard as I try to recall, I can never recollect the time where we became such chums...and I still don't think we are.
Indulge me in my selfishness.
I don't really care about your petty whines about how you messed up your college life by wasting your parents' hard-earned money. I don't care how many parties you've crashed nor how many times you used to bar-hop every Fridays. I just don't. So please keep your distance. You are breathing my air.
Indulge me in my selfishness.
I am tired of pretending like I feel sorry for you because in my own rotten and selfish world, I am cruel and vile enough to harbor a smile every time you tell me he broke your heart. Yes, I am not your friend. I cannot stress that enough for you. You never deserved him, in the first place. A couple of weeks in bed together doesn't come close to the number of years I have to bleed for him because of stupid girls like you. Can't you tell the detachment in my voice or trace the nonchalance in my words? We just happened to love the same boy. But I am not your friend.
Indulge me in my selfishness.
Why must you think that everything's about you? Perhaps, I should have been heartless in the crudest way I know. If I tell you that you were never part of the grand design, that you just happened to be there and was hitched due to the convenience you provide, would you then leave me alone? If I tell you and let you read everything he's said about you, how ironically little you mean to him, just a frill or a snag in a rather smooth silk of his life (that you have now completely ruined single-handedly), would you then wake up and see that I was never your friend?
Indulge me in my selfishness.
I can never be the same person for you both. If I am an ethereal being, bursting with iridescent charms for him, just as so, I am the extreme monster for you. So why am I not telling these to your face?
Indulge me in my selfishness.
I am dead-tired of people like you. If I believed in reincarnation, I doubt I'd still want to have anything to do with you in my next life. I don't even hate you. Read my lips: I - JUST - DON'T - CARE.
So please, please. Indulge me in my selfishness.
Sometimes, we have to lose the people we love most in order for us to realize how much they mean to us.
this life
these stolen breaths
they are hardly mine
these thoughts
for though I hold them
they will forever elude me
they look up to different masters
they owe their allegiance
to every fractured beat
of this trivial heart
and it's not even mine
these dreams
I nurse and woo them
coveted from somebody else's skies
i have nothing
but hopes and longings
and half sighs
to show to them
them
them who will never understand
how it is to be
constantly seeing life
through rose-stained glasses
and to touch walls that bleed
to be envious of one's own reflection
and to understand why
true love is jealous
and see exhilarating beauty
through every staggering blow
of pain
but they will never understand
and sometimes
I don't as well
times like today
when things seem so futile
and hope is impossibly so
so so fragile
and you fear
that a mere breath
or a soft whisper of the heart
will blow everything away
and you lose again
and you fall again
where will you find another foothold
where will you find another dream to nurse
these tears
they have etched a path of their own
dried and broken on my cheeks
do you sometimes wonder
if tears have tears as well
do they also cry
with reasons, perhaps
more valid than our own
for they are birthed in pain
(rarely for joy)
tell me
think about it
forgotten tears
everybody else didn't see
so wrapped up in their own demise
selfish and lost
I have but scars to show you
come closely and look here
this is where my wings were clipped
and these from the fall I took
these here,
oh, you should know
i've lost count of the number and times
I have willingly given my heart away
but isn't is amazing
how love cannot be depleted
So yes,
I have but scars to show for my pain
and some wounds
that are healing yet
they still bleed
every now and then
but I wish I could show you
the dying soul within
---------
So I was complaining to my Mom last Saturday morning about this odd pain on the lower abdominal section on the left side of my tummy...a bit near my hip bone. I was hiccuping before that so I thought that maybe it was just gas. My mom gave me several cups of hot tea and I started feeling better. We were convinced that it was just gas.
I went on with my day feeling okay. I re-potted several of my bonsai plants and transferred some of the carnation seedlings I've sown two weeks ago. Hadn't had the slightest discomfort all throughout the day.
Sunday morning, around 1:55, I woke up to a massive attack of excruciating pain. I was doubling over and my toes curled into tight balls as I was trying to find ways to wait till the pain subsides. But it didn't. I felt like they came in waves. It got so bad after 10 minutes that I started gasping for breaths because the pain was making it hard for me to breathe.
I was rushed to the ER. (Let's skip the other disgusting stuffs)
I was injected with something and I recall the kind nurse telling me that it's to stop me from nauseating. Then after some procedures, urine sample and blood samples later, I was given a pain reliever and an antibiotic and was told to rest, go back to sleep if I can. Since the pain subsided gradually, I started relaxing and drifting off to sleep.
I was semi-conscious...I was looking out for anybody to go near my bedside so I could ask what was wrong with me. I feared that I had an appendicitis but I was assured that it wasn't so that was out of my worry then.
I think it was around 5am when I felt a commotion and everybody else seemed anxious. There's that tight and thick electrical current in the air and you get the feeling that a bit of added stress and everyone would just snap. All the doctors there were interns and you can tell they were anxious, too.
I saw a white baby boy on the bed and he was in a way, next to me. If I reached hard enough, I would have been able to touch his curled fingers. He was a handsome boy. He's got foreign blood in him, I could tell. But I didn't see someone with him looking like his mother or any white guy indicating to be his father around. There was only an old lady - the Lola.
Then a couple of minutes later, everything went quiet and everyone else started walking away from the bed. Then the Lola crumbled down beside the bed, her face buried in her wrinkly hands and her small shoulders trembled like an inner earthquake was shaking her being. Something's not right.
I realized, then. The baby passed away. It was the first time I saw someone die in front of me...and it had to be a baby. A stranger, but a baby nonetheless. It was so heartbreaking. He didn't seem dead. He looked like he was sleeping. But I knew that he's passed on.
I couldn't bear to be so close to him. I had to leave. I called on to the nurse and asked her to call my mom. I wanted to go home. I don't want to see them cover his tiny body. I overheard that his mom was in Kuwait and that his father was a Briton.
I wonder why both his parents were away. I wondered if things could have been different had one or both of his parents were with him that day. I didn't want to think about the anguish the mother would feel once she finds out about the shattering truth. I wonder how the Lola would explain to the parents why and what went wrong.
What went wrong?
I am all over
scattered like dead leaves
anchored to the dance of the wind
emotions
here
strewn about like the lazy whispers of the breeze
thoughts cluttered all about
like mists on a chilly montain face
my days and years
all etched in fragments of words
hours by characters
perhaps
even weeks by entries
...unfinished
djf (08/11/06)
01:15pm
i have been wallowing in a mess of pages scattered all over with unfinished scribbles and blotted inks all over them, some with folded corners or have been torn off from an old notebook with time-stained pages and faithful, steady grade-school lines.
I have so much I want to say but cannot find the words to say them right. I know what I see and how I feel but everything else is just a random blur.
Everybody else is thinking what I feel, feeling what I think. She just stole my line. He knows exactly what I mean. What is this? I stare at them and they lose all magnificence and suddenly, they're all just the same regurgitated attempts at defining the intangible.
Tina had me spot on and Adele profoundly sees through me. Elton took the words right out of my mouth and Eric, well, he is such a tease. Dancing around my emotions like he do and yes, he mouths them like as if he's reading them from my pain. Dan strums the heart-strings I am too much of a mute to breathe and Lisa, oh, Lisa! If I could be a fraction as good as her at saying what I feel, then perhaps I'll die with a smile on my face. Norah, she sings these odes my soul has been choking to say.
I move from one play list to another gasping at each song, thinking, "Oh, I know! I know, I know, I know, right?"
On certain nights, I'd tell Frank, "I'll sing you that song." And on another one, I'd tell him again that. And on some songs, I could swear Elton had me in mind when he wrote Your Song.
I feel like the flood of emotions that are drowning me are bits and pieces of songs that everybody from one time or another have claimed to be theirs.
So unoriginal yet, so damn real.
She can't tell me that all of the love songs have been written,
'cause she's never been in love with you before.
Your skin smells lovely like sandalwood.
Your hair falls soft like animals.
I'm tryin' to keep cool, but everyone likes you.
I want to kiss the back of your neck,
The top of your spine where your hair hits,
And gnaw on your fingertips and fall asleep,
I'll talk you to sleep.
But I'll be the one, I will have chosen.
I'm tryin' to keep cool, but everyone here likes you
I'm not the only one.
Your skin smells lovely like sandalwood.
Your hair falls soft like animals,
And nothing else matters to me.
She can't tell me that all of the love songs have been written,
'cause she's never been in love with you before,
In love with you before.
Your hand,
So hot,
Burns a hole in
My hand.
I wanted to show you.
I had a brush with a mad man yesterday. Okay, so maybe he wasn't really mad at all. He didn't have any foam in his mouth nor was he rabid like a dog. He was American and he was sly. He scared me, too.
I have had several unpleasant experiences with American guys who are here as tourist before. I have had two who stalked me when I was in college and it was scary. I had to report them both to the police. I had another stalker who loved to text and call me at ungodly hours. He'd just breathe heavily on the other side of the line not saying anything. Other times, he'd send me text messages saying he loved what I wore that day or that he thought I was very pretty today. I was living alone in a huge apartment that time, the house having 6 rooms. My mom got so worried that she had to send my dad to stay and baby sit me for an entire semester.
I have quite forgotten the feeling of alarm now when yesterday's episode happened. The terror and panic came rushing back in and until now, I feel unsettled even when I am now constantly surrounded by my family.
I bumped into my high school classmate's dad who is a Missionary/Pastor and we chatted for a bit. Then we said our goodbyes and went on our different ways. He went to pay some bills and I went inside the grocery store to buy stuffs.
Fifteen minutes later, we bumped into each other again inside the supermarket and he said my "white" friend asked him for my number. "Who?" I asked. He said a tall white guy approached him after we parted earlier and asked him for my mobile number, saying that we're friends and that he lost the number I gave him. Since my friend's Dad didn't have my number (good thing, too and I don't think he'd really give it to a stranger), he told the guy sorry and that he should go. He described the guy to me and I said I don't know anybody who fits that description. Not to mention that he's a white guy. So we both just laughed it off and said goodbye again.
About fifteen minutes after that second encounter, we bumped into each other again outside the grocery section. He was on his way to meet up with his wife and I was retrieving a couple of Acacia seedlings as bonsai materials, headed for home. We stopped and chatted again for a bit, laughing and sending our well wishes to our families when he stopped and said, "Look! There, that guy with the white shirt, that's him!" He probably saw the confusion on my face because he said, "Be careful, okay?" I thanked him and told him not to worry that it might just be a confusion. We parted ways again.
Walking slowly to the South back door of the mall to wait for the cab I called to pick me up, I heard footsteps, like someone's running behind me. I looked back and true enough, I saw the same guy my friend's dad pointed to me just a while back. He was grinning and he actually looked very friendly and it was obvious he was looking at me. I shifted my weight from one foot to another, getting a bit anxious and when he reached my side. I thought it was just a mix-up so I didn't freak out although I can feel an alarming feeling slowly creeping up inside me. Instincts, maybe?
He reached out his hand to me and said hi. He introduced himself, saying his name was Ryan Whats-his-name and that he was wondering if he could have my number and maybe call me up and we can go out and have some drinks or dinner together. I politely declined and said goodbye, trying hard to hold my composure. After about a few seconds, I half ran my way to a corner where the guards usually linger, trying my best not to look like a fool.
Maybe I over-reacted? I don't know. I did however strongly feel that I should be wary with him. Why was he so sly? Why did he talked to my friend's dad pretending to be my friend just so he could have my number? If he wanted it so bad, couldn't he just approach me and ask me? The fact that he tried deception alarmed me and I suddenly remembered the feeling of annoyance and helplessness and fear when I had those stalkers before. It isn't a petty thing, as well. Might sound like I'm over-reacting to some but if you have been through what I have, then you would take this seriously.
Similar thing happened with the other white guy before. First time I saw him was he was sitting on a table across from mine and we were having lunch. I felt like someone was staring at me (you can feel those things, in your gut, you can) and when I looked up, I saw him staring at me. When our eyes met, he smiled. I thought he was just being friendly so I just half-smiled and nod and continued eating, ignoring him. Moments later, he passed and stopped by my table and said, "You are very guapa" then walked away. I never thought more about it when the next day, I went back to the same place to eat lunch (I was a regular there) when people there told me that the guy came back and started asking for my name. That was disturbing. That afternoon, I saw him riding his mountain bike in front of my apartment and he smiled at me and called out, "Hey guapa!" He kept on doing that everyday for hours after that. He'd stop beside me when I'd wait for a cab and just look at me with this smile on his face. One time, I asked him what he wanted from me and he said nothing. He always call me guapa. I told him to stop following me and riding around my apartment and he said he can't. That's when I had to call the police. I had to move out and find a new apartment, too.
This bit's always perplexed me. I am in no way beautiful. I mean, seriously. And hello...I am FAT! Fat and plain. What is wrong with them? Why do I attract weirdos? My friend once joked to me about them, saying they were my "groupie". I have a bunch of white weirdos for a groupie.
Okay, I'm done ranting now.
I was talking with Frank earlier about writing and publishing stories or poems when he asked me,
"Am I a writer? Or do I need to get something published?"
I know I've asked myself that a lot of times when alone and wandering inside the caverns of my mind. I know I love to write and I know that writing is something that I will be doing until I inhale my last breath but what is the definition of a writer and who's got the authority to define such?
These days, when you'd call yourself a writer, people would expect you to be scribbling for your bread and butter or to have your print on a paper or a book.
But what if you just love to pen down every chaos that haunts you inside your head?
I consider myself to be a writer. I don't write for a living but I write. I write for my sanity. I write for my passions and for the many dreams I build with my hopes and faith. I write because I have this need to express what is lodged in my heart and because talking to my own self is considered to be dangerous and alarming (hahaha).
I write because I live and because I live, I bleed and where the naked eyes don't see the crimson birth of pain, there my pen bleeds in behalf of them.
----------
Why do we trust one another so little? I know there must be a reason, but still I sometimes think it's horrible that you find you can never really confide in people, even in those who are nearest to you.
-- Anne Frank
Sometimes, we get so complacent with everything good that is seemingly constant in our lives that we tend to forget their value and how lost we were before them. The same applies to the people in our lives. We love and we know that we too, are loved and we bathe in the bliss of knowing that true love is and should be forever.
And then something happens and it shatters our complacency and we are suddenly rattled and at a loss for anything that could stabilize our shaken foothold. That's when we realize that nothing is absolute except the time we have now and more over, life is indeed trivial.
Only in shattered dreams and broken lives do we really feel the weight of everything we hold dear. It's is only through threats of loss do we realize that indeed, change is inevitable.
Since we don't really have an absolute stake on anything more that what we have now, I think we owe it to the people we hold in highest regard to let them know that they are cherished. I know that one of the best feelings in the world is to be appreciated. I don't really believe that constantly saying "I love you" cheapens its value. Love is one of the rarest and most mysterious things in life that cannot be depleted nor be devalued. After all, these mere words can mean the world to someone and has been since time immemorial, the foundation of every dream and every hope worth dying for.
