Fruitcake Sanctuary (GL)

Chapter Twenty One

Ate Vivi, I don't want to live.

Now listen, life is lovely, wonderful and amazing, but I can't live It. I can't even explain to you. I know how stupid it sounds...but if you knew how it Felt. To be alive, yes, alive, but not be able to live it since when our parents died. It's my fault.

That's the shit on me happens na para na lang akong isang batong nabubuhay... nakakulong sa isang bagay sa realidad, sa loob ng isang nabubuhay na bagay, isa lang akong bato.

Ate, do you know of such things, naririnig mo ba?? I wish, or think I wish, that I were dying of something for, then I could be brave, but to be not dying, and yet...and yet to be behind a shadow, watching everyone fit in where I can't...to talk behind a gray foggy shadow, to live but to not reach or to reach wrong...to do it all wrong... believe me, pwede po ba?...because what's wrong...I want to belong. I'm like a creature who ends up in the wrong world. I'm not a part. I'm not a member. I'm dark. And I love you Ate, I love you, I really do.. I want you to be happy...I love you...I'm sorry for making you sad and let you feel the hatred, And I'm sorry for being weak and ill...

I'm so sorry...

-- Cc

***

Suicide.

It’s a heavy word. It’s the kind of word that sits in your mouth like a jagged stone..hindi mo malunok, pero hindi mo rin mailuwa.

People treat it like a freak accident..a sudden slip on a metaphorical banana peel..when I know for sure that there is something wrong with the people commiting it and struggling with their hidden pain.

But holding Cece’s letter in my hands, I realize it’s more like a slow erosion. It’s the way the ocean eats a cliffside; wave by wave, salt by salt, until the ground simply forgets how to be solid.

Vivi handed me this paper earlier, her eyes tracing the floor as if she were passing me a live grenade. I don’t know why she gave it to me. Maybe she was tired of carrying the weight alone. Maybe she thought that by sharing the secret, the ghost of who Cece used to be would finally stop haunting the hallways of our present.

​I’ve read it four times now. My eyes are burning, and my chest feels like someone took a sledgehammer to a stained-glass window.

Hindi ko napigiling mapaiyak ng sobra ng mabasa ko to, I also felt her pain.

The pain that was broken inside her that need to be fix.

Hindi ko alam kung bakit naging ganito pala dati ang Cece na kasama ko ngayon, ang Cece na may nakaraan na kagaya nito, isang madilim na nakaraan.

Tinatanong ko mismo ang sarili ko, kung bakit nga ba niya nagawang takbohan ang realidad o ang katinuan at kapitan ang kamatayan dahil sa sakit, pagsisisi at kalungkutan?

Gusto kong bumalik sa nakaraan yun na kasama niya ako na nagawa niya kinaya ang lahat na kasama ako at yun sana...she never let broke herself, she never has to...because I was there with her...

When she suffered from that pain, that burden sadness.

When what people never understood that depression isn't a rainy day; it’s a leak in the basement of the soul that eventually floods the entire house.

Sure, there are things in their life that make theme feel alone, but nothing makes them feel more isolated and terrified than their own voice in the head telling them to ended everything, every pain they felt.

​It’s like a black fog living in her stomach, a silent squatter that pays its rent in sorrow. It consumes the light until all that’s left is the terrifying, rhythmic pulse of one's own heartbeat, sounding more like a countdown than a sign of life.