At Length

At a certain time, people who used to understand your situation, cannot anymore.

Post

The deepest of all thoughts can be - pointless.

Distinct

Selfishness is different from exercising independence.

The Stranger From Facebook

"Are you ready?" He asked.

"I am."

Anyway that was a lazy day after all, I might as well hear what he has to say, er, read what he has to type.

"It's gonna be a long one." He further added.

"That's fine, I can take it." I replied.

"My boyfriend and I were together for three and a half years. We do almost everything together. I love him and he knows how much I love him too. We couldn't stray away from each other. We have to be with each other most, if not, all of the time. He even transferred schools just for me. He transferred during sophomore year, from CSB to UST because as I said we couldn't be apart. "

"And?" I butted in.

"And it was wonderful. I mean, here was a guy I was truly in love with, a guy who even transferred schools just to be with me, and we do everything together, even studying."

"Then what happened?"

"Then med school came, and, and it just crumbled, what we had just crumbled down..."

"How come med school came into the scene of your relationship?" I guiltlessly asked.

"Well that, plus the fact that I met someone interesting at med school." He quickly added.

"Oh..."

"He is a Filipino-American and he is currently studying medicine here. We were classmates. At first, of course, I paid no attention to him, after all I am committed and when I do a commitment, I stick to it."

"So what made you, uh, attracted to this Fil-Am?"

"Well...I guess it was a process. I was not initially smitten but along the way, there was something in him. I don't know. Then we became friends and before you know it I was making excuses to my boyfriend because we became study buddies."

"Didn't your boyfriend even wonder why he wasn't your study buddy anymore?"

"Of course he did! And my boyfriend is the typical boyfriend who gets really jealous and starts getting suspicious. But I kept it from him that I had a new friend. Well, as for the Fil-Am, initially, being his study buddy was something different. Me being friends and study buddies with him feels different."

"I see."

"And then before I know it, I started hanging-out with him."

"And then it gets juicier."

"What do you mean? Anyway, yeah, we started hanging-out more often and then..."

He stopped mid-way.

"And then I slept with him"

"I see. How interesting."

"But don't get me wrong." He immediately added. "I slept with him but we didn't have sex. It was literally hugs and kisses. And that continued for some time."

"And how did it feel?" Okay, so I was excited to know.

"Electrifying. Yeah, that's the word for it, electrifying."

"And your boyfriend?"

"At first he was just speculating but he already knew the guy. After all, I do tell him of friends and school. Then one day, he went into my phone and he looked up the guy's phone number and e-mail address. And before I know it he was threatening him and sending him profane messages, trying to blackmail him. Well you know gut feelings, someway or another, your hunches become facts."

"And then?"

"And then everything just started to fall apart - relationship, the Fil-Am, med school - everything seems to get out of hand. And before I knew it, I was out of med school, out of my boyfriend's shadow, out of the Fil-Am's life, and out of the country."

"Wow." 

"What's so wow about that?"

"Nothing. It's just that I never had a boyfriend as madly in love as yours."

"Well you have a point but the thing is, what drove me away was how he got so controlling that even if I want to just study alone in a coffee shop, he said we have to study together. As in everytime. It was sweet at first but sooner or later, you will get tired from it."

Honestly, I don't know what to say to him after. It's not that he was just ranting, but it's because I cannot relate. True, I had boyfriends that were bordering paranoid but none compared to his.

"I told you it's long."

"Yeah, it is long."

And our conversation ended just like that.

Part 2

Threading Books

Completely difficult. That is all I have to say.

I could not find the words to say, the words to describe, and the words to express.

Last night I already planned how I will start this, well, at least a few lines just to warm me up.

I said to myself before I slumped onto my pillow that I will start with books.

In more ways that I could think of, perhaps I had always sought novels as sanctuary - a glimpse into what I was feeling at that particular moment - a simple escape route for when I need it much.

Somehow I find it intriguing how I would seek books then suddenly find myself caught up by the moment of reading - at home, in malls, in the MRT. I would get myself too engrossed I could not care less about the people around me.

There are times that I want to feel magical and whimsical, like Neil Gaiman's works, where anything goes. That I want to feel what it would be like having powers I could never dreamt of having. The part of me that wants to look at the world like miracles and supernatural activities are feasible yet no explanation could be ascertained from such. A part that just blows out my imagination, and for a time, I would listen to what my heart is saying and just go with it: succeed or fail will not even matter.

Then, there are moments I want to feel adventurous and brave, courageous to say the least, like Dan Brown's Robert Langdon. That while reading the book I feel that I could gallivant around Tondo, Recto, Divisoria, and dark alleys searching for something. It could either be something concrete or an abstract. Even I could not guess. Where my feet takes me that is where I go. And I shall head to where it is with much gusto.

Of quite a few times I have also sought melodrama. Arlene Chai's The Last Time I Saw Mother and Eating Fire And Drinking Water made me well up in tears. Yes, I nearly sobbed inside the MRT! So it is true, sometimes we just want to feel what the characters are feeling - of sorrow, of despair, of bliss, of simple joys, of tears of happiness...that somehow our current emotion will be swept away and completely taken over with the character's.

And perhaps the most fascinating are the Japanese authors Kazuo Ishiguro and Haruki Murakami. They have such different styles of writing from the Western authors that I myself am surprised how contrasting their books are from say, Elizabeth Kostova  or, hmmm...Nicholas Sparks. Primarily, I did not like Murakami may be because his book South Of The Border, West Of The Sun did not move me much. Heck, I did not even notice where the climax was. So I was disappointed the first book I read from him. Then I recently purchased and read Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. The book tells much about emotions and feelings. Like how certain people grow from each other, learn how each burst of emotion can be evaluated and in turn make it into something positive and constructive. Their works have all this certain subtlety. Yes, I think that's the perfect description, subtlety plus profundity. They would never lay out all the cards for you hence, the ending gets nipped short.


Well may be I am writing too much now, after all, if you have noticed some of what I write actually has a continuation. But now I want to finish this. I don't know but somehow this post feels very different to write. And this is in a good way.


I want to finish this because I felt compelled to end this even if my creative juices go out of stock for a time.


So what do I really want to express on this one?


Nothing really too important. I guess, the very special attribute that I have learned to deal with during these times of reading books and novels of all sorts is I learn from them. That simple moments of reading can do wonders. I still don't know how it does that but I sure know it changed me in a distorted, convoluted, tortuous, mixed kind of way.


And this is coming from someone who just turned a quarter of a life.

The Stranger From Facebook

People are right. It is more comforting to tell your story to a person you don't know well. It saves you the judgement, the face, and the embarrassment.

I have not experienced narrating my life in exquisite detail to someone I barely know yet, I feel, and chances are, I might soon.

I was logged in Facebook (FB) the other night. It was s typical day for me: wake up, go to work, go home, postpone jogging, log on to the net. As I was meticulously browsing from one URL to another, I suddenly chanced upon my page as having a pending notification. I immediately clicked on the page and saw someone requesting for acceptance. Since I almost always add people who send their request, I accepted him.

A few minutes passed and I heard a pop, the FB pop when someone sends a message over chat.

"Thanks for accepting". The boy said.

"Welcome. :)". I replied.

I was still browsing other pages so I leave every now and then from FB. The boy has not made a reply so on I went to checking tech sites.

A few minutes passed and I heard the pop again. I clicked on the FB window.

"How are you?"

The message window appeared on the lower right corner of the page again.

"I am fine."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"What is your preference?"

"I am gay. And you?"

"Cool. I am gay too." He said

"That's nice to know."

I quickly saw his location to be in Japan.

"So how come you're in another country now?" I added.

"Hiding. I'm hiding from my ex-boyfriend." He told me.

"Because?" I blatantly asked.

"I got tired of him. I felt suffocated. He made me feel like I was in prison."

Whoa! I was quite surprised. Here was a person I barely know, whom I have barely known for more than a couple of hours yet he bares his part of life as if I was someone who knows him for a long period of time.

"He was not really like that..." And so he continued.

Part 1

Process

We feel insufficient when in a relationship, yet feel we gave too much once out of it.