Sometimes it's easier not to explain.  Days have been strings of "What's it like without her?" or "Do you ever miss her?" or  "Why are you so stoic?"  Questions I never warrant answers to, because well, what can I say?   I mean, what the hell could I say to What's it like without her?

I say I'm fine of course, like a phony does.  I think I say it more for myself than I do for anyone who asks.  Not because I think that they don't care enough to really hear what I want (need) to say. The truth is that (some) people really care, they do.   It's just hard to meet them halfway, when I can't even meet myself.  When I don't even want to meet myself.  I say I'm okay because it's easier -- there's just no time for being sad, or frustrated, or angry.  Detachment has become a necessity.  I mean, in between school and family and friends there's just no time.  Being sad, or angry, or frustrated are always stolen moments, sneaky instances.   Like during taxi rides home alone, or during an exam.   When it suddenly rains and I don't have an umbrella (Ma, naiwan ko na naman yung payong ko!) on days when classes are suddenly suspended (Ma, hahaha!  Wala palang pasok, sayang byahe) -- who do I text now?   During family pictures on Christmas.  Mostly on jeepney rides, and always, always on late nights (like right now, like tomorrow night).

They say that the pain comes in waves.  It doesn't.  It comes in flashes of lightning, a sudden ripping -- usually blatant, ungentle, unkind and unforgiving.  The kind of crippling pain that you can't do anything about,  the kind that makes you want to crawl in bed and never get out.

Dinner and then gone.¹  Here one moment, and gone the next.  Her eyes were gone even before darkness.   Here, but gone.

You usually say I miss you and at some point it stops because you meet and then it becomes hugs and kisses and tears.   But how can you miss someone open-endedly?  (I should know the answer, I guess.   But I don't.)

How can you miss someone without the promise of a hug? A kiss? Tears?

¹ from Joan Didion's A Year of Magical Thinking

Labels: Incoherence, issues, Late Nights, mom, Reality, Sadface, Thoughts

 

• I keep collecting pieces of you.  Everywhere.   (Where is just a matter of time, a matter of circumstance, a matter of remembering.)  Some days finding you is a happy thing, on most days I wish I could just... wander away.  Forget.  Deny the collection.  But I keep them under lock and key -- in an inconspicuous box beside my mug of pencils and my cups of coffee.   Sometimes I lay them out piece by piece, carefully organizing them and reorganizing them until I get some semblance of wholeness.  Until I've rearranged the story into one that's believable and present and good, but only always fleetingly so.  

• Two months ago I was reading Didion's A Year of Magical Thinking.  "Dinner and then gone."  It was something that resonated far beyond the words (Far beyond "dinner", far beyond "gone").

• Everyday is Yes and No.  Everyday is pulling and pushing between remembering and forgetting, then guilt and/or pacification (not necessarily in that order).  

• I don't know what to do with myself.  I don't know what to do with every one else.  But I'm trying.  My best.  

• I can't write.  Not about you.  Hopefully, not yet.

 

I like my lazy mornings.  They're rare (because: a) I am always asleep in the mornings, b) I wake up too late and c) I am probably cramming something like mad) and always appreciated.  Today I'm having a particularly laaazy morning, just fresh out of the festivities of days past.   I'm mostly unthinking and unprepared even with having to go to school fast approaching (say, two hours from now).  Maybe this nonchalance is a bad thing, but right now it feels good.  I mean, I feel like I should have done schoolwork... ?

I tumbled out of bed sometime after 8 and proceeded to make a breakfast of corned beef, omelet and toasted bread.  I'm not the type of person to just grab whatever.  I like things complete.  I got it from my mom.  It can never just be longganisa and rice; it has to be longganisa and rice and tomato omelet.  Or it can never just be adobo, it has to be adobo and itlog na maalat and kamatis and sibuyas.

While I wait for my corned beef to turn out crispy just the way I like most things, I grind some coffee beans and start my coffee.  I like my coffee brewed, and slightly sweet,  no cream.  I don't like it steaming hot, but I don't like it warm either -- I like it right at the point before it cools down to warm.

I've just cleared the fog blocking my view of the days to come.  I've taken out my planner/journal and I'm filling out spaces.  I like planning my life, imagining it full and well-lived.  It doesn't matter if it pushes through or not (which is usually the case), which I guess is sort of funny.

I like tradition, and routine, and being in my safe place because it reminds me that not all things have to change.  It reminds me that I'm not leaving behind the person that I was yesterday, or the year before.  That I'm still myself, even for those little moments of sameness.

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Anyway.  Happy 2012 from my family to yours!