R E V I S I T

I sit alone in a restaurant, it feels weird after a year or so of never sitting alone. Nothing's wrong, I'm just really hungry. So I sit alone, and look through my phone until I stumble upon a memory I never thought I'd ever see out of that proverbial rug I stuffed it under two years ago.

Golden flecks from brown eyes I know I'll never see again assail my thoughts as I struggle to finish reading whatever idiotic little puff piece I wrote about some douche (he wasn't, really, it's just easier to think of him that way) I used to pine for when I was twenty years old. Stupid girl.

You write it down, and write it down again.

Did I not understand, that the thing about writing things down is that you can't take the ink back?

So I carry on reading about how he used perfect grammar and understood the importance of commas, how he liked The 1975, how he always said goodnight when he could have left the conversation hanging like SOME guys I used to like. I read about how after months of absolute gray existence, I felt life trickle back into my veins.

Oh, how stupid. I didn't want love, I just wanted a good time.

Burn it, bury it, hide it.

Some guys just aren't worth it, but he was nice enough to be. Polite, smart, and wonderfully not arrogant. He wouldn't rub his car knowledge in your face, or make you feel inferior. I understand now, he was a breath of fresh air, a primer for what I would find after. A sort of crash course on how to handle the nice guy, because I found one.

I read about how I'll remember that he never liked travelling in the rain every time the sky darkens and lets forth its weight in water. But I don't anymore, the rain is just rain to me, now. Poetic, wonderful, addictive melancholia, but just the rain, all the same.

 His story's covered by others now, under the rug I keep in my brain. 

So over a meal of Korean fried chicken and spicy ramen where I struggle with my chopsticks, I decide to use my fork, and to clean out the rug in my mind. I have no time for this, and I have better, brighter, happier stories to tell now.

The Eulogies I Never Got to Say, Part 1: Nana

It has been seventeen years since you succumbed to bone cancer, and my heart still breaks every time I think about it. It's been seventeen years and I haven't gotten closure yet. I still haven't recovered form the loss of your light.

To most people, you were the caretaker of my mother and her sisters, and then you took care of their grandparents, my great grand parents. To others, you were a cook, whose food still stirs up pleasant memories of college until now. To a few, you were a friend, a sister, a guiding force. To me, you were, quite simply, Nana: one of the pillars a lonely little girl had to lean upon.

I was so young when you died. All I could do was cry at your bedside as you suffered through your sickness, and cry some more when you didn't wake up that morning. I wasn't able to attend your funeral. They took you back to your family home.

I remember your voice, a bit raspy from all the cigarettes that eventually killed you. I remember your always short hair, black tinged with gray by the time you were sick. I remember your face, wrinkled after 32 years of caring for children who weren't yours. I recall your laughs over a card game, or something someone said or did. I remember, most of all, you cooking in that old bamboo and nipa kitchen that was separated from the old house. I remember the cement sink, and the wood fires. I remember all this with such clarity because if I wasn't in front of the TV, I was in your kitchen bothering you about something while you cooked. I always liked watching you cook. It always seemed like magic to me. One minute there's uncooked fish on the table next to a few cut spices, the next minute, dinner's ready.

To me, you were warmth, and childhood happiness eating chocolate ice candy. No one makes ice candy like you did. You were there before I was born, and every day since, until that summer when I never saw you again. I wish I knew what it meant when you got sick. You never got sick before, I thought you'd get up one day and start getting ready to go to the market at 4 am like you usually did. I'm sorry. I never got to tell you things that I should have, and it seems unfair to have to say them now that you've been gone for so long. But I know you're watching over us like you always did.

I still don't know how to cook your Bangus Steak, Nana. But I'm trying.

Drums and Blood

The drumbeat sounds like bullets fired from a gun held by someone who should never have it. 
It sounds like disappointment and regret, and all your childhood fears of never being perfect.
They pierce through you, and you feel the blood flow, but not from the bullet wounds in your head. 
The stream of red flows down your arm, and you watch as rivulets of your life source flows from the gash you've made on your arm and onto the purple bed sheet, making black dots in the process.
You watch in morbid fascination as you take your switch blade, and run it lightly across your arm again, watching the line turn white, then pink, and then finally red, and blood spurts from the wound like an underground spring.
The droplets of black turn into a puddle, and you know this will stain.
You ask yourself why you've done this. It's simple.
You felt like there was too much blood in your veins, pumping through your brain.
You could hear the whoosh and slush of it as it rushed through your skull, it made too much noise. 
It sounded too much like the world outside.
The red river has gotten thicker but flows slower now, more languidly, and you stare at it as your head finally lightens, and realize you need to sleep.
You don't know if the drumbeats will be able to wake you up this time.

All My Faults

I'm sorry if my sadness scares you, if it makes you angry and it makes me difficult to love.

I'm sorry if it's hard for you to see me lay it all out by your feet the darkness I use as a cloak and my tears that never cease.

I'm sorry if the rain clouds in my mind never seem to end, it's a perpetual battle for sunny days.

I'm sorry if I like the feeling of the rain so much, the way it drenches my emotions and weighs me down, it clouds my mind while the thunder and lightning flash behind my eyes. 

It's all I've ever known.

I'm sorry for the long moments of silence, if it makes you feel awkward, if it makes you worry. There's a war raging in my brain, it's been going on for eons.

Sometimes, I think I can hear the screams. 

I'm sorry if I don't smile as much as I used to, if my eyes are less alive. I just feel so dead inside. 

Sometimes, I wonder if there's still a soul stirring inside me, most days I don't feel my heart beating. 

I'm sorry if you don't want to hear what I have to say anymore, if my constant need for reassurance and a shoulder to cry on, for someone who understands annoys you.

I can't help it.

I have no one else.

I'm sorry.

Push

There are dark thoughts in my head, little tragedies that play back and forth like an overworn DVD disc, complete with glitches and scene jumps. There is a numbness in my brain, keeping it from feeling anything except emptiness. The words resonate and echo through it but they mean nothing, mere whisps of emotions long forgotten.
You see, I've staved off the darkness, I've grappled with it my whole life, for what is a girl to do in a world that does not want her? I've managed to keep it at bay for the longest time, but even the strongest of warriors falter.
So here it is, once again, this addictive sadness that creeps upon me like a fog, cool and familiar, it blankets around me like an old friend. It promises safety and painless surrender, it lulls me to sleep and makes me forget the trappings of my heart, the people I love, the people I need. It embraces me and shields me from the world that cares not for my voice, my presence, my existence. It tells me not to leave, not to fight it again.
I am tempted. The sweet surrender to the abyss and the emptiness, the numbness, the drag of crushing, weightless depression is sometimes too strong to resist. All I want is to push people away, make them unlove me, make them fear me, make them hate me. Because I need no one. All I need is me, and my perpetual rain cloud, and this numbing fog. I will be safe, I will be protected, I will be dead inside, but I will survive.

Hover

My fingers hover over the keyboard keys as I rack my brains for a train of thought that has not run for months. All that's been left in my head is red mist and buzzing noises that stop me from sleeping. I can barely see where I'm headed in my own head. I look for songs that might help me feel anything profound, anything new, anything familiar, ANYTHING except this red mist and this incessant buzz ruining my mood and my brain, and my trains. 
My fingers hover over the keyboard again, and again. This happens for days, months, even, and I still can't write a single lucid thought to get anything started. I fumble and stumble with "the"s and "a"s and "Once upon a time"s to the point where seeing a blank page on the computer makes me want to bawl my eyes out in mourning like I've lost the greatest love of my life, because I have. 

I lived for writing about heartbreaks and dark places in my mind. I became so used to loneliness that it became my salvation. I became so accustomed to being under the haze of depression and anger that it feels strange to not be surrounded by it anymore. I let fear permeate every single nook and cranny of my psyche that courage now seems more like a stranger than an old friend.
The words escape me. I want to write about everything, the way I feel, the sunshine this time, not the rain. I want to write about love and loving myself, and loving someone else, and someone loving me. I want to write about happiness and finally seeing the light at the end of this horrid tunnel that I've been traversing. But I don't know how. I don't have the words for this.
I never made a train of thought for happiness, it always seemed like a feeble dream conjured up by a supercalifragilistic mind. It makes my skin crawl, thinking of happiness, even if I already am surrounded by it. I programmed and reprogrammed my mind to never hang on to it. Happiness was always a harbinger of bad things. I think I'm just scared, still scared, that if I write anything specific down, if I hang on to things too much, that the world will come swooping in again to take it all away like the eternal villain it is.
I finally have roses in my garden and here I am afraid that they'll die.
But I'm not making any more sense. The red haze is there, holding me back or egging me on, I do not know anymore. I'm going around in circles in my own head and I can't even string a proper paragraph together without being vague.
My fingers hover over the keyboard again. I close the program window, get the strikingly white sheet out of my face, shut down the computer and turn on the TV. The buzzing doesn't die down.

Touch Stone

I think of you every now and then, when I'm reminded of you.

Sometimes when it rains I remember sharing an umbrella with you,

Running to the college from wherever it is we sat talking,

Almost late to class because we lost track of the time.

Sometimes someone says something that is so quintessentially you,

And I have to hold in my smile.

I think about you when I read my books,

Maybe that's why I don't read so much anymore.

I think about you when I write in my diary,

Because I have two diaries filled with your name.

That's why I don't write as much anymore.

I'm happy now, though.

I don't know if you'd believe me,

I don't know if you ever believed in happiness.

I never believed in it when I was around you,

All I felt was the need to impress you, to be your friend,

To be SOMEONE to you. I failed though.

But I still think about you sometimes.

I wonder if you see me online, see my photos,

What do you think, how do you feel;

And then I'll realize, all of a sudden,

You don't really care, you never did.

That's the sad part though.

I made you a touch stone in my life once,

A marker, a monument.

And I was nothing but a bystander to you,

Inconsequential, forgettable.

I was barely a word in your story,

And you were an entire book in mine.

My Life, Part 9: He never loved me back.

That was you.

It will always be you, my first love, my first heartbreak,

My white pickett fence.

Cloudy Friends

I had a friend who told me he wanted to be a cloud. I never understood why. I was younger then, more alive, more naïve, less...scarred and angry.
Anyway, I get it now.
What a wonderful life, to not have to fight for what you want, to have no plans, to just drift. Let the wind take you where it wants, let the rains come, and the sun shine, and you'll still be there, floating.
Here I am, tired from fighting wars that aren't mine, feeling that death is more of a blessing than a tragedy, again; waiting for the darkness to envelope me in its embrace like a mother would. I can cry in the dark, no one will judge me.
I am tired.
I want to be a cloud, too.