March 29, Friday
I woke to a sultry Tuesday morning. My head pounded as I reached for my glasses. Sleep has been an evasive, malevolent spirit –teasing, yet, without fail, comes in the most delicate of lashes and only with the sun's ascent. It has been days since I last saw her, a glimpse as brief as any other earnest gaze. My days have been a passing arrangement of the most unsatisfying meals and the shallowest of slumber. I miss her...
I am one who does not feel. Countless of times have I been mocked, seen as a being not fit to be called human. “Heartless”, “cold”, I hear them say; but only now has the mockery seem to tear through an armour I thought to be indestructible. I had hoped for their words to be true. To not be human is strength, or so I have been made to believe. To be human is a weakness, for men are governed by a horrid appetite for feeling, emotion, pain. When or from where I have acquired such precepts, I cannot recall, but it seems as though they have been defeated by a new and much painful truth. I am alive as any human can be; this throbbing heart tells me so.
I miss her! I miss her... So much that I might explode. She fills my head like a depthless cup and there is nothing I can do. It hurts how hard it is to deny this desire so ardent, one that I have persistently shunned. "This is not my heart!" I repeated to myself, then again I am but a hypocrite. So violently have I condemned even the slightest inkling of homosexuality and without reserve I expressed an abhorrence so disgusting that it could only be suspected as fear. Yet here I am staring blankly at the road to school as I emerge from thoughts of us, together and in love.
I could feel the heat seeping its talons forcefully into every layer of me, sharpened even more by this damned, bleeding from under my skirt. A wave of pain struck my head, defeating my balance and I knew for sure that the day ahead will not be without adversity.
The campus was unusually quiet. On the foregrounds of the almost muted music playing through the earphones were the sibilant whispers of a few, the markedly irritating laughter -reduced, but not to a tolerable scale. And there she was... Waiting for me like she always did, in the same wondrous manner, blowing her bangs in the most adorable way. Sure enough she would be surrounded by the equally popular girls, those whose eyes would travel from one’s innocent feet all the way to the crown of the head. I pity them. All their strained refinement combined will never stand a chance to her grace. Yet they are drawn to her like moths to a flame. She smiled and all of a sudden her hand was up and waving and I felt my mouth form the most awkward of grins. She must have noticed me staring, for the hundredth time I'd bet. I just hope she's used to it by now. I waved back and hastened towards where she sat, as her other friends bid their goodbyes and stood up to press their cheeks to hers.
"Louise! It has been forever! What have you been up to? I'm starting to think you're avoiding me." She said with a pout.
"I've been writing. I barely even sleep." I said as I settled my bag on the table.
"Barely? I thought you never sleep." She said laughing at me with her beautiful mouth.
"Anyway, I have to leave now. I have a thing so..." You always do.
"Right. See you." She giggled and left with a smile. She'd never smile like that for me, though.
Soon enough, the bell rang. I sat at the back of the classroom and opened my bag to look for a book to read while I wait for the professor. I saw a doodle I have been holding onto for almost six years now, folded carelessly inside my planner. A nude woman drew in pen. Her body was made of uneven strokes and her face made of billows, soft, fickle and black, almost a malevolent tree. It was drawn by a friend I met a few times at a public library, brilliant and kind, but a reserved loner nonetheless. He would draw everything he saw though I have no idea where he could have seen a naked girl. I found it queer to find an artist at a public library. Shouldn't they be somewhere in the mountains or at the park at least? But I felt sad when I couldn’t find him one Saturday and all the ones after that. I’ve hoped since then to see him again. I have always been curious about the thoughts that spun his indecipherable brain. I never even got to ask him why he draws in a public library or why he’s always smiling when I looked at him from the corner of my eye, or what his drawings meant. We rarely spoke to each other, always just exchanges of jests about the most random of things, never about anything deep or personal. The closest I felt to him were the silent moments of understanding solace within the hushed boundaries of the shelves that smelled of time and dust, just talking about books, art and music, anything we found interesting. I found the doodle in one of the books he recommended one day and have held onto it ever since. I've never thought of throwing it. Until now. It's sick; I don't even remember why I kept it in the first place. I'm not sure whether I should be happy or depressed about the fact that without knowing it, humans are stripped off of their attachment to things and they eventually learn to let go. What may be important now may not be important tomorrow. Humans love and love and love but that attachment eventually fades as new things come and as a new understanding replaces them. We forget. At least I do. Should I fight against time and everything that comes with it? Will I be accused of greed for trying to keep and remember or to ask for love that lasts, for love that's irreplaceable, even infinite? Then again, maybe I should just stick to the order of things. Maybe it’s the universe conspiring with time against getting too absorbed and occupied or maybe I’m convincing myself I’ll get over her soon. It’s better this way, I guess. The professor arrived then and he presented a lecture on research methods.
Class ended in a tick. A whiff of what smelled like rain surprised me as I packed my belongings. I reached the train before the rain poured hysterically. Yet another day of mediocrity has ended and it relieved me.
