Hello, Stranger.
I don’t have much to say about you, really. Aside from the basic facts made known to me by the short time we have shared as we walk pass each other, I guess I don’t have much.
Hello, Stranger. Hello to you and to your share of life which I don’t know, and chances are will never get to know. Hello to our parallel universe. Hello to our salutations of one another’s existence, stubbornly coasting on the shore of mere recognition, (or the imminent ignorance of it).
When I look at you, I see someone who loves another so deeply, so purely and marvelously, that I must always thank Chance I am permitted to know, through you that love.
The distinction between familiarity and strangeness is hot and cold, happiness and loneliness. Hello to this distance. Hello to this profound sorrow. Hello to the rainbow we both hold at each end. Hello to here and there.
Hello to you, Stranger but you don’t have to smile. Don’t cast those eyes on the floor, Stranger, because it’s just me who looks at you, alone. Walk slowly Stranger, I am no thief of your time. I tread my own steps (away from you) and not pry. I’m trying, Stranger and tomorrow I will hopefully be walking a different sidewalk from yours. But I will remember you, Stranger.
Hello, Stranger, I am just like you— a mere memory of fleeting glances which promise an amount of insincerity worthy of symptoms of this growing hurt, of appalling disdain that takes our individual lives to oblivion of the forthcoming past.
Hello, Stranger. Hello to your quick goodbye.
My favorite uncle had a stroke the other day, his second in less than a year.
Uncle Mat had his first stroke in mid-day in front of his office in Cebu. He was alighting from his car when suddenly he felt the ground heaving towards him. Good thing there was a standing-by guard on the front door when that happened. He was rushed to the hospital and he knew right then he would never be able to talk straight, eat straight, or even smile decently.
I was saddened when I heard the news of his first attack, more so when I saw him last semester break. He was scrawny, but he laughed more often and kidded with us. His beer consumption has dropped dramatically but he still drinks and smoke cigarette like as if he has never lost a healthy vein in his brain.
He is my favorite uncle, alright, although his life is close to what you can consider a mess. He and his wife broke up almost ten years ago, leaving highly dysfunctional children who are into sex, drugs, and limbo of sanity and insanity. He has extreme fond of girls, too, which is quiet not a surprise considering his boyish sport at age 50.
He is my mom’s best friend, as I was once told, since they practically grew up together. That is why his’ and our family was particularly close.
When his family separated, he decided to stay with us and left his children to his wife. (I really hate his wife, just to make things clear first). I was in fifth grade then and the house became unusually busy when he was around. There was drinking session almost every night with my father, our house boy and his driver, and occasionally with his kumpadres. They would drink all-night, and him ranting, and cussing about how filthy his (ex)wife was. That went on for a year and then another until he transferred to Cebu shortly before I finished high school.
Uncle Mat assumed a fatherly role to us way before my father died, more so after it. I am thankful for his mere presence though we hardly see each other. It makes me feel secured that there is this one old man who can stand up for us whenever the need for it arises. He gives me this same feeling with the way my father assured me of things, of life, of the future.
When I learned of his second attack yesterday, I felt anger discharging up to my head. I was angry at him because he doesn’t know how to love himself, not even care about it. Last Christmas, this was this large dispute at home with my mom, my cousins and his children convincing him to stop all his vices. I joined at it for the first time because I really really want to tell him to do so. I just don’t want to lose another father, I guess.
But there. He had another stroke. And I am all scared because it happened. What a gift from the heavens for my birthday, and a week before father’s day.
This is one of those days when you wake up with a jolt like as if you were dropped from a great height unto your bed. For two minutes, your mind is empty, no recall of its most recent state of consciousness.
Your eyes survey the four corners of the sedate ceiling, a warm squeeze of orange sunlight suggests it is a fair day outside.
Then your brain roll calls the things that have happened the day before:
Call and Answer by Barenaked Ladies, that stupid Powerpoint, your first confession of one true love and the irreparable rejection thereafter, and this dark angsty pit of loneliness you fell into.
Suddenly, you wanna throw up. You hug your pillow and smother your face with it. There has never been this much bitterness in recent years that wants to come out from your stomach. You groan, partly because you’re sick and you knew about it all along, and partly because you made another person feel sick and knew about it only now.
Your room is dead quiet. The sparrows are fidgeting playfully on the palm fruits right across the window. You sit in silence against the wall on your bed, deciding whether to go out of your room and face the world, or to stay and get some more sleep. You crawl to one corner, covered your face with your two palms, and mumbled an incoherent prayer. You asked for His enlightenment, for His indomitable presence to win back your self-worth. You feel like crying now. Something is really really awful.
You lie down. Sometimes, love can be really really sick. You smile, no you smirk— a smile between guilt and pleasure. But who am I to know? I was wrong, but it was wrong too to categorize my matter as right or wrong. Oh God, fuck love.
You stand by the window and light the first stick of the long day. The painful spasm of nicotine on your lungs somehow resolves the hurt of the heart.
Nobody said it was easy. Two fucking week worth of tears maybe, and a weekend of pot session with high school friends will do you good.
You strip naked, almost dreamily, and wrap your waist with the towel. Maybe, just maybe, the cold gush of shower will make things better. The thought of it makes you want to die again.
20 something, quarter-life crisis, loss of love, name it, nothing's weird.
