Boys DO cry

There are days when everyone’s felt the same. You sit with your back to the wall, slumped over, waiting to cry. Today I felt like that. But something’s always different when you wait to cry. It doesn’t come. It never has.

I can remember staring at the wall, my eyes are glazed over. You look at the designs in the wallpaper and seldomnotice them. Sometimes you pick out random little things they form, and quickly forget. The eyes grow weary, the eyelids quiver, and you wait for that sudden rush of emotion that climaxes in the flowing of tears. The release of torment; it doesn’t come…

I’m dysfunctional. Yet it seems like the best i’ve been able to muster over the course of the entire year. And I can remember myself slumped over against the wall, watching the designs in the wallpaper, watching the weather change, waiting for that release of pent-up emotion, of feeling like a failure or like some dysfunctional stand-up comedian, but none of it comes.

It’s been on my mind for awhile. All my last few “relationships” have been dysfunctional forays into attempts at something normal. I’ve always dreamt of being in a John and Jane relationship where you’d be walking down the street holding hands, smiling, laughing at some silly private joke, having dated for almost a year and deeply in love. BUt I fear that isn’t just possible for me anymore for I have changed from the weak melancholic pet to the tough macho cowboy with a stone heart that I’ve always been afraid I’d become.

Nothing is ever certain.

Those four words have been so ingrained into my psyche that it’s really hard to have a lifelong opinion about anything, because everything changes. I can’t sit back in a corner and cry for my future, because I can’t believe it will be anything like my past. It’s not certain. I can’t even feel slightly sure about any of the events I foresee.

To whom it may concern

I never did tell you that during the last night we spent together, my consciousness was constantly invaded with premonitions. Forbidding intuitions of the future that I didn’t know looked down so grimly at us.

I often stirred from my sleep that night, shifting from one position to another, I was sweating yet cold, wondering why I had to be the way I was, inflicting pain onto you so fresh it was like the first time you had been hurt. It wasn’t like I cheated on you, nor was it anything close to being severe like getting you pregnant, but I was a pig for hurting you so bad. There was nothing I could do right; and there were many occasions that I curse myself for dragging you down in this position with me…

With the moonlight seeping in through the window along with the eerie glow of the neon signs across the alley, I could make out the contours of your body, doubled up on your side of the bed, curled up into a fetal position, as if you were bracing yourself from a brutal attack that will hit you violently from all sides. So I watched you fade in and out while clouds rolled over the moon; while the curtains swung in front of the window. TO see you this serenly is torture to me for knowing that when you wake up you will be faced with the reality that I have hurt you and we can no longer be together– the darkness was conducive to my melancholy and I saw the perfect opportunity to invoke my tears, get over with it while you’re asleep because I don’t want you to see me crying– I’d like you to remember me with the effervescent smile I had before we slept. I swallowed hard, and I feel as if an iron ball ball was rolling down my throat at ahalf an inch per hour and my loips was tempted to whimper. My eyes quivered, tears trying to force their way out of any available orifice. The moon came back full, and I saw your face, tranquil and asleep. That’s when I felt that I was no longer worthy to lie beside you.

It took me less than anhour to slip back into my clothes and sneak out the front door. I would have been out sooner but leaving while seeing you this tranquil and beautiful was difficult, it was aggravating and I came to the realization that I’m probably faced with the hardest thing I ever had to do in my whole life. Alas, I stared at your silhouette while you slept, one last gaze through the window before I headed out to my car parked outside your house.

Hiatus. Beginnings and ends

Must say that being away this long from writing feels very awkward. I feel like my spontaneity has been spoiled and my usually very fluid words have been stagnated. I had no intentions whatsoever to write again but it felt like my writing, as a passion, has some sort of longing for itself. I have alot of catching up to do with regards to this journal and I intend to bring it up to speed with capsules of what transpired during my long hiatus.

In my absence, I feel like most of my time was spent quenching an insatiable thirst, or is this thirst really a depravity which slowly and painfully consumes me? These past few months I’ve been so sickeningly inlove to the point that I have forgotten that I have a self to love as well. My days have been more gruelling than they were before I fell in love but the strange thing about it is I’m not complaining–and I’m actually happy with what I am doing. A friend asked me recently why I even bother with love and all its torturous meshes; and this got me thinking. I have come to the sudden realization that her happiness precedes mine in the same manner that it has become vital to my own; and more often than not, my convenience takes a backseat to, ironically, make her convenient. I’m way past the point of the galant paramour brandishing expensive gifts and a sweet tongue– and unlike most forays into establishing some sort of dysfunctional relationship where I’d usually feign concern to get into someone’s panties, I feel like my intentions are pristine and unadulterated–it’s almost like I’m inlove for the first time.

Conventionally, people who go out develop this spark and gradually fall inlove–amazingly for me, I began with huge, glowing embers. We’ve been going out for eons now yet whenever I’m with her, the eagerness I feel is almost the same as our first real date. My only wish is that I can sustain this fire, this drive; I hope that all of these won’t be eroded by time and tainted by impatience.

“…When love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you…For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning…He kneads you until you are pliant…Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love…Think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course…”

Goodbye monotony of black and white

These past few days I’ve been busy practicing for a band competition that me and my friends are joining and I think I’ve found the perfect antidote for the depression that has been bothering me lately. I feel that the very same depression is channeled through my instrument and I can move up and down my scales with relative ease. I’ve also noticed the marked improvement in my flow as a guitarist/singer and I think I could finally say goodbye to my days of monotony; of waking up with nothing to look forward to but the hope that tomorrow would be not as bland as today. For the first time in weeks, I could see trickles of color in the life that I’ve been living in black and white; the life I, seemingly, have been living in endless lethargy and apathy.

Happiness, it seems, is so mind numbingly obvious that we tend to forget that it exists in the guise of little things: The smile I brought to my 3 year old niece when I bought her a cheap little toy; the few words of gratitude given by the old lady I gave my seat to in the bus; a conversation with my younger brother regarding basketball and the praise I got from my band mates for hitting the riffs of our songs head on.

I’ve been so busy projecting an image of sophistication that I’ve made happiness very elusive for myself and I doubt if I’d ever see the opportunity to be happy even if it was right under my nose. I made myself believe that happiness is unattainable like a designer drug that everybody wants but nobody could afford. I’m sure everybody has been in this phase. The phase where you feel like dwelling on melancholy forever and in the process, blind yourself from the fact that there are simple things in life that could pick you up from the quicksand you’re slowly sinking into.

Stay. Please don’t pull away

—
I can feel you pull away, And it’s just as I lean in, And the timing cuts me wide open. With amiss I am betrayed, Slicing right through my thick skin, Yet I seek another hide I’m asking you to stay In my arms; Wait, you’re breaking me apart.

I miss you in my fingers and valleys in between, It’s odd how feeling lingers for something yet unseen;
There’s ages between my heart and my mouth my veins throb with that which I can’t spit out. Now I don’t need much Just presence in mind and the assurance your ache matches mine. So stay, please don’t pull away from me.—

Props to L. Lynn Johnston for these words. Recently certain confessions have been made regarding feelings that I kept bottled up for so long. It felt like singing a song about mangled dreams that were left unsung; it was a release; it felt like vitriol was oozing out of my body at the cracks and seams; it felt like my body was being purged of a poison that’s eating me. I told her that I was in love with her and yes, it did feel good. But now comes the hardest part…Waiting; waiting in fearful anticipation of an outcome that is obscure.

I’ve never been good with portents. I’ve lived my life misreading signs; doing nothing when omens were smiling down on me; being hasty when they’ve been forbidding. There’s nothing more painful than assuming that something’s within your grasp but when in fact it’s so far away and because I don’t want to hurt myself over this, I conditioned myself not to expect her to reciprocate my feelings; to love unconditionally; to love the way it’s meant to be; to ache without expecting her aches to match mine.

The question now is whether or not I could live with this. Would this setup be detrimental to the both of us? Is it better if I just turn my back and walk away?