september
august 31 could’ve been just another thursday…
but then it wasn’t…it was a day that i didn’t want to end.
so after the partying at astoria, i flooded my system with caffeine and sugar to keep me awake… i just didn’t want to sleep…because sleeping will mean the day has ended…and i would have to wake up to a brand new day…. to september 1…
september… has 30 days… thus, 30 chances of getting shaken.. getting hit…getting wounded…getting broken…
got my biggest wound one september morning, 22 years ago…when dad left us for another woman…
time heals all wounds they say..
that, or it allows you a room for denial and before you know it, the wound’s festering and eating your soul.
and you find yourself waking up each morning, in someone else’s bed/car/poolside after an alcohol induced black out the other night..
or lying on the shrink’s couch, trying to focus on what the shrink is saying… while listening to the clock ticking since the shrink charges by the hour…
when i woke up on friday, september 1, i told september, “okay, why don’t we work together? i’ll do something today that would make the rest of your 29 days worth waking up to…”
september smirked at me and said “go ahead.. but don’t tell me i didn’t warn you..”
two weeks after that conversation, i bumped into a friend whom i haven’t seen in a long time and he told me, ” you look like a crack addict with an epiphany.”
i said: sure. have you seen my bruises? my allergies? take a look at my eyes…
oh yeah, and how about my heart? have you seen it? it was just here…on my sleeve…oh shoot… i remember giving it to somebody… he must have been hitting it with a paddle… because i feel pain… it hurts pare, i can’t breathe…
then…i broke my stupid-friendly nokia phone and was forced to shift to a motorola because i’m too poor to get a personal assistant to answer my calls and to take care of my phone.
thaksin shinawatra was ousted in a military coup on september 19…
milenyo rocked manila and blew the lights out on the last week…
i went home because i can’t take the storm and the darkness alone…
and just when i thought september’s wrath is over…
ateneo lost to UST…87-71…
and as i was on my way for a much needed run (i discovered that when ur reeling over something, it’s a lot better and helpful to go on a jog to release the endorphins and stress and to hold yourself together when u feel like crumbling all over the place), i sprained my left ankle….
last night, september’s last, i got myself a can of coke light with lemon (tastes like tequila!) and sat on our veranda… sky’s clear…milenyo must have swept away all the smog… but the tornadoes in my head remain…
i thought of what Rilke wrote, those epochal words repeated constantly by the lost and the hopeful:
“be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart. try to love the questions themselves. do not seek the answers which cannot be given, because you would not be able to live them. and the point is, to live the questions now. perhaps, you will then, gradually, without noticing it, living along some distant day into the answers…”
as i face another month, i tell myself to not give in to the disillusionment. to have faith, because everything, even what happened on that september morning 22 years ago, and the things that made me cry last september, will have a point…
so if you’ll excuse me, i have pieces of myself to pick up from the floor…
