The Promise We Couldn't Keep

10

TPWCK:
10

…………

EVERYONE had an embarrassing story to tell. Maybe a whole lot of us would never admit to it, or acknowledge that, yes, at least once in our life, we had our embarrassing moments, because we had this insane notion that we had to make people believe we were living our best life even though we were far from it, even though so few among the billions of us ever got to live our best life, and not without one-foot-on-the-grave hardships.

Or maybe this was just me. An isolated case.

I really doubted it, but there was that voice again, telling me in that very convincing way that people weren’t as embarrassing as I was. It was loud like always, even though it was alone and would never have to fight over another voice in my head to be heard because the voice that was kind and temperate rarely spoke up to me and was choosing this moment to act normal, but I was convinced that the loudest spoke the least truth, and it was the quietest that deserved ears.

Or at least I tried to be convinced of that.

I, like everyone else, had a penchant for listening to my inner critic. Or this too could also be an isolated case. I was seriously starting to hate ever learning those words.

My life, if not in constant violence from the people who should’ve been teaching me love, was full of embarrassing days.

As harmless as going to school on a Tuesday, wearing a tight PE t-shirt that had small holes under the armpits, black jogging pants that had a gaping hole on the crotch, and—instead of a pair of black rubber shoes to complete the prescribed PE uniform—a pair of ticktacks that had seen better days, and only remembering during the flag-raising ceremony I was barely able to attend on time that washdays were on Fridays and everyone was expected to wear their type-A uniform, noticing that I was the only one wearing type-B, so I got to be the oddest one out in a school of more than half a thousand students for the entire day.

Or it could be as deadly as playing tag by the road and then a speeding motorcycle overtakes a tricycle but there was a car up ahead so it had to turn sharply or they’d bump into each other, and what did you know, it was heading directly to you two, and you only had a moment to consider whether running to the way you came from or up ahead was the escape route, but in the moment of life and death there was always this short pause where the world would slow down and you would feel death before it happened, except before I could recover from that state of panic, a hand had grabbed my shoulder and pulled me sideways toward the canal, and then we were falling. We’d emerged safe from any immediate death, but sticky and cold, carrying the foul stench of sewer throughout the day.

The common thread in these memories was Fernan.

The boy who’d offered to exchange uniforms with me after we had our lunch, because he apparently found it a challenge to bask in the passive-negative spotlight.

The boy who’d pulled me to the canal with him, laughed with me despite our hearts throbbing from the near-death experience until we reached his home where we took turns bathing, then we’d talked all night about what we would’ve regretted most had we died then. We’d openness up old scars and shared dreams that night, while we carried the gross scent of the canal to our sleep.

Maybe I was recalling these memories because I missed being comfortably awkward with another person. With him, specifically.

The past months were definitely hard to cope without him, and there were too many things I was missing over his absence, and the embarrassing breakdown yesternight only magnified the gaping hole in my chest that I was trying so hard to repress.