My Undying

My Undying

IT WAS A POINT in my past where I shouldn’t be wallowing in anymore, what with all the excruciating pains it has caused me - vows that were made and eventually broken, friendships that were lost and never been fully restored and precious ideals that were almost deserted. I guess I needed to seek the path back to my old life to be able to fully comprehend why I am here and who I am. Heck, God knows mine was a journey with perils of losing the part of me which you and I love the most. I was an Anakin on the verge of morphing into a Darth Vader, perhaps, even worse. It was everything but easy, and now, as I continue to immerse myself in the subtleties and stupidities of the everyday world, the best and worst of me is yet to come.

I posted this as a note on Facebook more than a month ago. For my acquaintances, these words are quite mystifying but for those who have the slightest idea of my past agonies, these are but understatements. As my mind drifts back to the chain of events that has profoundly changed my life, I cannot not feel wistful.

It has been four years since I suffered one of the most devastating maelstroms of my life. It happened on a clear day on a beach on the twentieth of May. The cheerful weather was a sardonic irony of the boiling tension between us, like a volcano that has been filled with the wrath of the underworld, a looming pandemonium which guarantees to liquefy the solidarity which we have taken so much pain, time and effort to build. If I had known what would happen and how I would be shattered that day, I would have chosen to be in isolation rather than be in that attempt for reconciliation, which have turned into an outright and bitter separation.

Hell, we screwed up like the hypocrites we have become! Perhaps we did deserve such torment or maybe we were just victims of our pride, our temperament and our youth. Could hypocrites be really victims? Or is there no need for euphemism as it was just plain hypocrisy on our part, nothing less. One thing is certain though - it was tragic. It was tragic how two people, whose lives, minds and character are so intertwined, have managed to use words to lacerate each other as effectively as stabbing with poisoned knives. The absence of blood in a fight doesn’t make it less damaging after all, a disproof to the cliché “Sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt you.” Yeah right! Words may not hurt you, but it can make you feel dead, which is worse than being dead because it makes you nothing more than a cold stone – unmoving, unfeeling and withering, until the forces of the earth pulverized it and sent it back to join the soil, forever indistinguishable, eternally bound to be trampled on by passersby.

I guess it is best to reveal how I got acquainted with her in the first place, which reminds me how agonizing it is to inscribe these poignant memoirs of mine. Here I am, after a bottle of beer, which was supposed to sedate wounds that have never quite healed and have been reopened in the process of this script and still, I find myself sighing after every sentence. If only my monitor has hands, it would have strangled me for my unintentional and brutal way of bombarding it with constant and hanging suspense.

Dear me, did I say I would declare how I met her?
Okay, enough introductions then.
And now, to the start of the story.

Elated, I was greeted by arched hallways and ancient architecture which complements the eon of my new college school, Universidad de Santa Isabel. The excitement I felt was a mark of my enthusiasm to see the world again after years of being out of school and ages of hibernating. I wasn’t really expecting to see familiar faces since I have never set foot on this university. So you can imagine my relief when I found out that at least a quarter of my classmates were my acquaintances back in my highschool years at the Ateneo. . I was early, so I killed a couple of minutes chatting with them, mostly about our mischief in secondary years.

When the bell rang, a petite, brunette and shoulder length haired girl strut her way in front of me and settled in the seat directly ahead of mine. Striking hair, I thought and behold she glanced in my direction and waved. I was dumbstruck, feeling like my mouth have just been sealed with an adhesive tape. But before I could utter a word or wave back at least, my seatmate, Mitch, said “Oi” to her in response. And that was how I made the acquaintance of my little princess (go ahead laugh at the term of endearment), I will imply later, why I preferred to give her that title, which, shaking out all cliché and mushiness, really are such precious words for me.

In the next few days of our class (block section), she would sit with Mitch and talk to her within the brief minutes before our class periods. The next weeks, I was already included in their chitchats and would have a sense of frustration with the seating arrangement when our class starts and she would have to return to her seat.

It was when Mitch was absent for the first time that we had the chance to talk a little longer than we used to. Ah, that blessed day. I was about thirty minutes early, which was unusual, what with my excessive lateness in high school. She arrived five minutes after I did, well there’s nothing odd about that, as she was always prompt, prim and proper. What caught my attention however is the “little” white book in her hand.

Do you like it?” I asked.

“Nope, I love it!” she exclaimed.

From that moment on we became good friends, the best of friends and you know the rest.

I do want to emphasize that I tried to steer clear of us being more than friends, not because I wanted to, but because I thought I have to. You see, I promised myself, more than anybody else, that I would not get anyone or anything divide my attention on my studies, after all the mess I have made in my academic life – incurring enough AFs (absences leading to failure) to make even the most kind hearted dean or department chair frown.

But I guess it was hard, if not impossible, not to adore this girl, with her jet black hair, rich sensuous lips, narrow waist, big, round, brown eyes and curious baby blue dental braces. What even drew me closer to her was the seeming balance of her desire to speak and her admirable patience to listen. But what struck me the most was how in many ways she is – like me.

She is, as Antoine de Saint Exupery said in his beloved fable, “The Little Prince”, “someone whom I could really talk to.” God knows how hard it is to find someone who knows what you’re trying to say before you even finish deciphering it or how you feel even without putting it into words. It seemed our cerebral channel is of the same wavelength, until we caused too much fatigue on our cardiac muscles and lost control of our emotions - the sweet and sometimes wild emotions that have enabled us to tame each other’s restless and aloof spirit.

So here I am now, writing all this down, plunging back into my first experience of figurative hemophilia, finally unveiling one of the most momentous episode of my existence and hoping that it would somehow answer people’s queries about my solemnity and sometimes utter grimness. As I always say “I am serious most of the time, funny sometimes and pensive all of the time”. I just wish that people will finally understand why I am not so fond of surface talks and the accustomed Pinoy manner of “hear me I am so funny” stories anymore. It is not that I find humor a waste of time; it is just that I do wish that people will be sensitive to others’ hardships. After all, life is not all about hearing hilarious antics, in great part, it is about listening to the troubles of wounded hearts and easing the weariness of battered souls. So long as we think that there is nothing more admirable than one’s loud and unquenchable cheerfulness, even if it is nothing more than a bravado, we would fail unceasingly to perceive solace in sorrow, humility in loneliness, endurance in suffering and wisdom in failure, that are almost always present in the quietness of a thoughtful being.

This has been my account of a tragedy, of a loss so agonizing that it caused me the wavering of my faith in everything good, in people and worst of all, in Him. I was broken. The bereavement I had was so grave that I grieved for it, that I was driven to walk away from everything and everyone that I hold dear, trekking for three consecutive days under the sun, rain and stars, armed with only a score of pesos, an umbrella and a shabby and thin jacket against the inclement weather of December. Out of the goodness of strangers who fed and gave me enough money to be able to come back home, I did survive to tell this tale.

Now, my wounds are starting to heal and I must say that it was all worth it, for my life roadmap was enriched with every stopover, dead end, U-turn, detour and refueling station I encountered. The emotional roller coaster ride made me puke and faint. I was bruised, scratched, scarred and scathed but I also learned to deal with them (much later). If there is one thing I could asks for, it is that my would-be readers will not take these revelations lightly. This was a hellish torment for me, disclosing all these details. Four years proved too short a time to mend hurts that run too deeply. But I do hope that this story, my story – of agony, mirth, folly and glory will remind me, as well as others, of the individual that has to stand firm, of the soul that needs constant pruning, of the being who has to remain afloat no matter how unfathomably immersed he is in misery, of succor that is unending, of resilience that is unrelenting and of hope, that is and will always be, undying.


(Note: This is a Confessional Feature Article I have submitted for my Finals Portfolio in Feature Writing Class)