puttering

i think i might, just might, be feeling the tell-tale signs of a major burn out. that said, i really don't know what i can do to improve my endurance than to simple ride out the "storm".

there has been a lot troubling me these past few days, most of them about anxieties of what is to come. it frustrates me a great deal that until now, i don't seem to have things all figured out. i recall telling myself that by the time i reach 30, i'd be made. i'd know what my purpose is and i will have direction in my life. yet the big 3-0 came and went and i still feel i am no different from the time i had that thought. i still feel clueless. i still feel i have no direction. i definitely feel i have yet to be made. all of this, what i am feeling now, this is what scares me.

i would sometimes try to console myself that my time will come eventually, that all i have to be is steady. strong and steady is the secret of the game, i say. but when i am amongst my peers, some the same age, some older, some younger, i cannot help it but feel a tinge of panic... mixed with a smaller tincture of envy i guess. ask me what i do and i cannot answer you unless it's in the form of a paragraph. ask others the same question and the answer is most often short and simple: doctor, lawyer, account executive, agent, architect, engineer, vice president, president. ask me what i want to be years from now, and expect another dizzying paragraph. ask others and be prepared for another serving of skillfully executed conciseness.

(sigh)

people i recall said that time is one commodity you can never buy back, and i cannot help but feel, maybe, i had been wasteful.

apologies for my looseness

it rolled effortlessly off my tongue, rather, i typed it effortlessly and pressed send, without giving it a second thought. it was a smooth transition from idea to execution yet the moment the deed was done, my gut went on an upheaval. i was too late to stop it and simply sat and watched the ripples of my actions come into effect.

yan ang sakit ng taong gusto makisawsaw sa buhay ng iba.

feigning concern was i? what was my motive? what was i hoping to achieve with that aimless statement?

my splintered psyche stayed apart, assessing the damage of my blunder. not really too much, to be honest. i certainly have done much worse before, yet it was still damage nonetheless. there was one shaking his head, another rolling her eyes, another frozen in panic and slowly having the sensation of shame overwhelm her.

haaaay naku. ayan kasi. ayaw pa kasing dumistansya. ayaw pa kasing umiwas. ang daming pwedeng pagkaabalahan, yan pa ang pinipili. wala namang ikabubuti. wala namang mapapala.

fine. etching this lesson onto stone... again, company to the countless other lessons my stupidity, tactlessness and lack of self restraint had led me to experience.

what a fine specimen of character i'm turning out to be.

chinks from the world over

my family, last night, decided to host a dinner for our relatives who came from abroad. it always amazes me really how my large family seems to get even larger whenever i would attend dinners such as these. the new additions tonight, my dad's cousin who is visiting from greece, where she in now based with her family, and my grandama's cousin and her kid, who are visiting us from hong kong.

i have heard about this cousin of my dad's quite a number of times already but this was the first time i have ever seen her in person. i can't really say my family mingles often with the family of my lola's sister so beside some familiar faces from their side, the rest are practical strangers to me. she was wearing a black and white sun dress, her skin tanned by the greek sun. one look at her face and her small physique and i could immediately recognize familial features that most women in my family possess. the angular jaw, the beady eyes, the wide hips, the small feet, yup, she's a relative alright.

i didn't really get to chat much with her since, well, she didn't really talk to us that much either. after the brief introductions that she's the cousin and i'm the youngest son of my dad, we basically went on our separate ways and found ourselves occupied by other things more interesting. she went to adore my uncle's siberian husky and rotwieller while i was too engrossed watching UFC.

the other set of guest-relatives however were more interesting. she, was technically my lola's cousin (to what degree, i have no idea) but she's as young as my mom. her son, is a 27 year old national scholar of china, currently taking up his PhD in mathematics. she, is a reserved, soft-spoken, dotting mom. he, is an equally quiet, awkward, big boy. i think, and some of my aunts agree, that he's actually autistic, well, maybe a savant, a super genius trapped in a socially handicapped shell. he spoke very little and interacted very little through the night despite my cousins constantly trying to get him to talk. if ever they do manage to make him speak, he would limit himself to single word answers delivered in a voice as soft as that of a mouse. he followed his mom like he was her shadow and kept himself occupied by staring at people like we were walking numbers (i guess).

again, i however, lost my oppurtunity to know this side of my family better since, well, i didn't really feel like i was in the most socialble of moods. i kept myself to the people i knew and basically stayed with them until the end of the night and after everyone had left for home. it would have been nice, now that i thought about it, to have learned something new from these people but alas, the moment had already passed me. (sigh)

ON A LIGHTER, LESS REGRETFUL NOTE however.... meet my current fixation.



i swear, hacking coughs and effervescents never looked so.... adorable.

enlightening sundays

it must have been the yoga, the food at Abe, or the heavy rain, but i found my sunday yesterday quite enlightening. while savoring the dishes the narnian and i were having, and while listening to his opinions and thoughts aboout his past turmoils, i could not help but feel tickled with the realization that our lives were quite parallel.

for the most part, i had wanted to keep my mouth shut and just listen to him talk since i felt there was no reason for me to contribute to the conversation anymore. to do so would just be too redundant, i felt, since my pains, my worries, my thoughts were already being worded out by this more eloquent friend of mine. but the need, i guess, to hear myself just say out loud what i really felt made me do so otherwise. i wanted to hear myself say it out loud. i wanted to affirm that what i felt was not imaginary. it was real. it happened. whatever it was i was going through needed to be acknowledged. i was tired of hiding behind niceness and being proper.

i cant really say i felt good after airing out my thoughts, but it did give me some form of clarity. i guess the heavy feeling im lugging around would eventually dissipate, inshallah, with time and effort. for now however, i think i have to work on stopping myself from being all too caring and learn the value of nipping a bad thing in the bud.

i know i have repeated this many times over already, but it seems like i still haven't heard it enough. God is telling me something and prodding me to go a particular direction. i think He's telling me that i had the chance to do things my way, and that it was about time i give Him the chance in steering my life a try.

i'm not being preachy, this is not the blog for that. but i try to regard God to be as real as the person sitting beside me now, with a mind, a soul, a will, a sense of humor even. i guess this perspective is good. frees me from a lot of that religious crap that ppl keep throwing at me. anyway.... that's a bit off topic na.

so. as of today, i am making a conscious effort to really, surrender and move on. BAHALA NA PO KAYO DAHIL SUKO NA AKO. YOKO NA! take it all. i really have no use of it anymore. goodbye bridges. goodbye memories. goodbye idiotic ideals. goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. it was wrong from the start, and however which way you look at it, it's still wrong. that's the lesson. i really, really shud have been smarter.

haaaaaaaay naku. YOKO NA NGA!

ugh.

a reply to delusions (expanded irrelevant thoughts)

it was good that i was lying down. i seriously would not have known what would happen if i was standing.

my mind is picking up the broken pieces now. i think i had a mental tantrum not too long ago, just throwing things around, smashing them inside this room i have made for myself, where i hid everything about you, where i have kept you safe all this time, away from prying eyes, away from the elements that i felt would corrupt what we had and eventually, take you away. i loved this room. it had all that i could give, all that i was willing to give, and they all belonged to you. but. there is no need for this room anymore, and since last sunday, i guess, i have been wielding the full intensity of my mental sledge hammer on it and its interiors. it's irrational i know but really... fuck it!

this is, i am hoping, not too much of an emotional post (who am i kidding) as it is just me clearing my thoughts that have been swirling madly in my head since that last moment you logged off from YM when you said goodbye. it was a brief conversation but like how i am with things about you, i knew. i knew it would be the last time even if you said nothing, which i guess by far, is something that had bugged me the most about you. you say nothing... nothing at all. even when you talk. nothing. i would listen intently to what you would say but all i hear is a faint buzz, like static on those uninhabited radio frequencies. i never really understood why it was so for certainly, words were coming out of your mouth, but they felt empty, irrelevant. i only learned much later, on our succeeding conversation, that your heart and your mind were disconnected and the only way for me to make sense of you was to listen to you with my heart. good thing that i did. it prepared me for all that was about to come.

ever since then, i knew how to listen. past round-about words and nonsensical babble and listened closely to what your heart was saying. it said a lot actually and your actions, despite contrived rationalizations, betrayed you. you would say one thing and yet, you do the other. you say you would draw away but your embraces became tighter and longer everytime. you promised that the end was near and yet you became more and more affectionate as time went by. it was truly confusing and even fatiguing to an extent for everytime i was with you, i had to bridge the gaping chasm between your words and your ways. you have no idea how difficult it was for me, but indeed i still had to try. i had to. i was bound by a promise, one that now, in hindsight, i should have never made.

how does it feel to want something you cannot have? how does it feel to be in a position where you cannot demand nor ask for anything? how does it feel to be undeserving? how does it feel to be dispensable, to be in a state of weathering, fading away slowly? how does it feel to be the one, who can never be the one, but is still forced to linger? how does it feel to be left high and dry and feeling that i was left with nothing? here's an idea... it's not pleasant. emotions, a misguided hope and foolishness are really to blame, and most, if not all are mine. i would be lying if i said i never cared. i would be lying if i said i never hoped things could go my way. i would be lying if i said that i was ok with this, to be an accomplice to your broken vow. but this is my reality, and my actions, sincere as they may have been, did not correspond to it. this would probably be why i feel i have no right to complain. i really should not complain. i deserve my comeuppance, whatever THIS may be. i entered into this in full knowledge of the euphoric madness of the game and now that i am being disciplined, i should take things like how any man should, head on. i will not hide behind either comforting words or well wishes or hopes of a brighter tomorrow for i really need to learn this, however raw, unforgiving or painful it may be. if ever there is something i can take away from all of this, it's to learn a lesson that i should have learned a long time ago.

you keep reiterating that i was strong. i must correct you to say that i was not. if i were as strong as you say i was, then i would have never allowed this affair to drag on this long. i would have never given in to your plea. love made me weak, and you were the unfortunate subject of the best of what i could give.

goodbye to you as well. i, too, will end this here.

irrelevant thoughts

i am picking up the pieces right now, remnants of the mental tantrum of days past. i need to throw things out. there's no point in keeping memories of times i never had the right to keep in the first place.

i feel so stupid right now, far more overwhelming than the feeling of being broken.

i am left with nothing, i realized, and my world feels like the rug got snatched under my feet. what's weird about it all is that i already knew it was going to be happen and yet, could not prepare for it.

i can't say the pleasure is all mine in response to your dutiful gratitude for i don't feel anything right now to be honest. i do hope that i will and will genuinely wish you the best when the time comes and all is right.

for now however, pardon me for keeping my wishes. i think i have given you more than enough.

the Lord is kind. even if it means beating the hell out of you for being foolish and stubborn.