Surpassing Those Rough Pages

IX

Since I was a kid, I always dreamed of becoming a civil engineer, just like my father. I always admire him for building unique designs of houses, buildings, and skyscrapers that could last for decades. 
 
But as I grew up, my life also moved from chapter to chapter. There were some boring, exciting, sad pages, and especially most of the pages that I have were those rough pages. 
 
As if I were only born to suffer in this lifetime.
 
As time passed, the sparks in my eyes slowly dimmed until I noticed him.
 
I’ve met him since seventh grade. We were classmates. But I only noticed him when we’re in our last year of junior high. 
 
I could still remember the day that I started noticing him. It was still vivid in my mind, and what I felt that day was still the same feeling I have when I try to remember it.

I was sitting on my armchair at the back of our classroom beside the window to feel the cool breeze while watching the sunlight kiss the benches and leaves of the trees outside. It was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon, but our music teacher was still busy discussing our lesson about some guitar stuff. I am starving, and I am not in the mood to learn, so I tried to distract myself from the view. But the calming and magnificent sound of the guitar with the deep yet soothing voice of the gray-eyed boy in front suddenly caught my attention. Aside from his mesmerizing aura that made my heart beat faster than the normal rate, he was singing my favorite song! ‘Tears in Heaven’ by Eric Clapton! I bit my lower lip when he did some plucking on the guitar, giving us the exact melody of the song. I could feel the electricity flowing down my spine. I stared at him with awe, and the people around us became blurred from my vision. And when his gray eyes met mine while he was singing the chorus, I instantly covered my mouth to stop myself from shrieking!

And that’s how I noticed Sean Louienzo Martin.
 
He loves reading books, so I tried reading one, but it turns out that we liked the opposite kinds of books. He was for academics, science, and math stuff like that. While me? I was drowning in novels and poems.
 
And I don’t know if being in love with words was a good idea, though. Because every time I saw him, or we would have a slight interaction, or even just him explaining something from the class or to me, my mind was already imagining a scene in a story where he was the main character and I was his unnoticed lover.
 
One evening, when my mind was so full of words and imaginations for a story where Sean was the main character, I finally gave up. I got up from my bed, grabbed my pen and notebook from the study table, and then started bleeding the words that had been stuck in my head for a long time. And in that evening, I realized that I wasn’t only in love with Sean but also with crafting words that turn into sentences, then paragraphs, and lastly, a novel.
 
The sparks in my eyes, which were slowly dimming, came back to life as if my eyes were like the eyes of a child who was full of hope and dreams in life.

At the age of sixteen, I started living again.
 
I realized that I wanted to become a writer. To finish a novel and to have a physical copy of my own novel.
 
But while the chapters of my life are moving forward, even though I have Sean by my side, with those rough pages that I encounter who keep pulling me in the dark, I sometimes wish to be gone forever.
 
But instead of making my wrist bleed, it was my pen that was bleeding the words that made my heart cry out the most.

“Bakit gising ka pa?” paos ang boses kong tanong kay Sean nang maalimpungatan ako sa gitna ng mahimbing kong pagtulog.

Napatingin ako sa wall clock. Alas-onse na ng gabi. Nakaupo siya sa sofa habang nasa hita niya ang laptop ko at mukhang abala sa kan’yang binabasa.

Agad siyang nag-angat ng tingin sa akin bago muling binalik sa laptop at sa akin ulit. Tumagal ang titig niya sa akin, nagtaas ako ng isang kilay bilang pagtatanong dahil nababasa ko sa kan’yang mga mata na marami siyang gustong itanong sa akin.