I learned, within less than a month’s duration, that a relationship is not actually a white cartolina you can lay flat on the floor while you plan out what will happen next. It is rather a first time out-of-town drive. You travel on a highway, with blind curves and a lot of detours. You could tell if you’re about to get lost, but in the end, you will eventually be. Cause love is losing yourself. It’s a long drive you’d still continue to take, even if your legs ache from the clutching and braking, cause you are hoping you’d get there eventually.
Tell me, are we getting there? Or am I losing myself eventually?
Relationship. It’s not a song that has a chorus and you expect to sing the next exact lines. It is more like *cardiochuuchuu*. The one they use in the ICU when the patient’s about to lose his pulse. The one that electrifies and abruptly stops your heartbeat. I forgot what’s that called *laughs*. Well, when you are in love, or any strong feeling is inside of you, it’s like watching that digital screen with the lines and troughs go wild- mostly hoping it will survive. That both of your feelings will live. But no one could tell. When those crests and troughs stopped being them, all you can do is stare at the straight line. And the doctors would just say, “We’ve done everything we could. I’m sorry.”
Then I asked myself, “have we done everything? How could saying ‘sorry’ be enough?”
Lastly, not all relationships..well, remain as relationships. Some end up as a painful bond, a bond you can never get away with, although she obviously has detached herself from that long long time ago. Some are just a balanced experience that they would label as “a learning process”. Well, that’s bullshit. Cause I just couldn’t learn from pain. How could I if pain is the only choice I have cause I only choose to be with you.
*******
I got back to my diary and recalled what happened next. My life started on January 3.
*******
The plane just kissed Iloilo’s ground. I knew that because the sudden contact between the pavement and the wheels cancelled my near-to-dreaming state. The smell of the hominess of the place reminds me of my favorite childhood pillow I would never want to wash even if it grows moulds on it. As I walk along the beige-lined tunnel going to the airport, I glance at the other zombies with their black and gray Voyage bags and I can’t help but wonder if they had brains inside them. The delayed flights gave me a hard time in appreciating the palette of pink and lavender watermark up above. I still see the other folks as white people. My English and tagalog are still fresh. As fresh as my memories of her telling me that I should leave her alone. Maybe I’m crazy enough to courageously give her a diplomatic order to find something productive to do instead of staying up all night in the internet stalking guys and gals with tattoos. I grimace at the thought of that. But I pretend that I frown because of the bad flights.
I stretched my neck back, so that my head turns to face the heaven which is now a dominant purple.
“Great, back to hectic life. Back to reality,” I whispered to myself.
*************
