The First Morning I Did Not Think About You

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It was a typical morning. I woke up, late as usual, the sun already near its zenith, its rays streaming through half-open blinds, the day as hot and as humid as it can be. I forgot to turn off the TV. A Discovery channel host was talking about whales, his voice a deep, monotonous drone.

I stood up, my head slightly aching from oversleeping, my thoughts still a blur, my knees, wobbly and unsure.  I staggered to the door of my bedroom, and headed downstairs for a bite. I was hungry. My stomach was growling in angry, desperate need. What my brain still failed to register, my limbs automatically addressed:  I needed sustenance.

I stumbled onto the kitchen and saw my younger brother in his pajamas, eating cereal, his hair unkempt and looking like it was badly in need of a bath. Much like I looked I suppose. I stared at his bowl, and hungry as I was, realized I still hated the thought of having cereal so late in the day. I asked Manang Cely what was for lunch. She didn't reply, but I heard bustling outside, and the familiar clangs of pots and pans. I settled myself at the table, and held my head in my hands. My brother ate in silence. 

"What time did you get home?" I asked him.

"Just this morning."

"Mom and Dad already awake?"

"Nope. They were still asleep." My parents never really imposed a curfew on us, especially on weekends, but they did like it when we got home before they woke up. 

"Where did you go?"

"Nowhere. Just out with friends."

"Malate?"

"Yea."

"How was the crowd?"

"It was okay. Typical. Not a huge crowd, but enough to be fun. Why didn't you go?"

"I was bored. I figured I'd just watch television, play PS2 and sleep." 

My brother nodded, then finished his cereal. He left soon after to catch up on his sleep. I riffled through several newspaper sections, and settled on Lifestyle, reading an article Tim Yap wrote.  He was still writing for the Philippine Daily Inquirer then. 

Manang Cely walked in with a bowl of hot tinola. I immediately tucked in.

Then I remembered you. Right at that moment when the spoon, filled with steaming clear broth, hit my lips.  Rather, or more accurately, I realized I forgot about you first, and then only remembered you.

What a shock. After weeks upon weeks of moping, of listening to sad, lonely, love songs, of waking up to the deep, precious pain a young man getting over his first love can manage to inflict on himself, I woke up to a morning where you weren't the first thing on my mind. And outside of the overpowering relief, I realized how funny it was that moving on would come at a moment so utterly, absolutely mundane. While at a table, eating tinola for breakfast and/or lunch, my hair a mess, smelling like something the dog just brought in. How unimaginative. How banal. How anticlimactic.

And still, I felt happy, and finished my meal in unanticipated felicity. Though lacking in theatrics (perhaps a lightning bolt or two in the background would have been nice), I exulted in the unadulterated joy of knowing that I have finally, completely moved on.  

Moving on, is a simple thing, what it leaves behind is hard.

~~David Mustaine~~        

Clarity

It was a few weeks since I last had any contact with Chad. I was making it a point to avoid any type of communication with him since our relationship was less than perfect at the time. Not that it was ever perfect mind you; in fact, I would have settled for normal if I could. If I'm being totally honest, our relationship was, in a word, toxic, characterized by passion and love, with no real substance to ground us. The perils of youth one could say, although that assumes only the young are capable of doing stupid things, and I have far too many examples of stupid things adults do to disprove that point.

It's always difficult, I think, breaking up. Most people assume it ends with a discussion, with the parties mutually agreeing to stop seeing each other. Sometimes there are tears, or harsh words, or things thrown, but the common idea is that everything happens at that one point, as if something that important could be so easily and neatly summed up and discarded in a half hour. As if the relationship you just had with that one person was nothing more than a footnote in your otherwise perfectly normal life.

But the idea doesn't take into account the slow deterioration, the unraveling of passion, the almost imperceptible, but unmistakable, disintegration of affection. If the relationship wasn't working in the first place, the cracks will show, and the lovers will grow distant, and things will start to fall apart. But the initial process is barely recognizable, until at some point the couple realizes that they are at a place neither of them had thought they could ever come before. And the breaking up, especially with a person you love, is rarely just a one time deal; most likely it's a process that will take a while to stick.

Breakups are rarely simple, at least in my experience.

In Chad's case, we didn't really break-up, since there was nothing to break in the first place. What relationship we had was in one of those gray, blurry areas that mimicked all the symptoms of a "real" relationship, only that it wasn't. We can be postmodern about it, and say that it had no label, and it would be true, because what we had was really, well, undefinable. I hate admitting it, because it makes the relationship seem so trivial, but it was true, and maybe it really was as trivial as it seems.

So I think I was already starting to settle back into my usual routine, with sudden pangs of pain here and there (it is impossible to just walk away from a person you love I think, even if you know it's what's best for you), when I got a text message from him. It started with the usual pleasantries (How are you? I miss you. What have you been up to?) and ended with an invitation to meet up. I didn't reply, because I didn't know what to say. I knew what I wanted to say and what I needed to say (and the gap between what I wanted and what I needed was oceans-wide), but I had absolutely no idea what I would actually say. So I waited. I figured I didn't need to decide right then.

It was midnight when I texted back. And though it broke my heart to do so, I told him what I needed to say, my head slowly, but inexorably, dismantling the fantasy of the conversation I wanted, dreamed to have.

Photo taken here.