22

i think that you have to learn that the strands of your lives entangle once and that’s it. no more twists, no more chains, just that, and you have to accept everything the same way you accepted that you’re going to grow up and die and leave everything behind.

last night someone told me that all i needed to do was hold on. i am holding on, grasping on shadows and forsaking the temptation of sweet deliverance. haven’t i told you that my mind is cluttered with untimely processions of tragic ideations—all dark and mistakenly mad, mad, mad. i am going mad, is that it? is that the tragedy of life? that we’re all going mad and no one has noticed anything. we proceed on living but each step towards the end we take another step backwards into the madness of it all. there again, i am not making any sense. i’m so tired, i guess, because my mind isn’t bringing it into a standstill.

on the way home, inside a taxi, i briefly eluded the idea of dying and lived in that moment, inside a taxi, with a kuya manong who was friendly enough to possibly become my reason for living.

i remembered that one time i almost jumped off of the hotel balcony. it was my grandparent’s wedding anniversary. so close to the divide, so close to dying, so fragile this life. if that kuya manong is my reason for living then i guess i have to live because our lives entangled once and i have to accept the fact that this life is not mine to end. this life is his, hers, yours, mine, ours. if i kill myself tonight, i am killing everyone else. a mass murder.

i cannot commit an act of selfishness and excessive malevolence.

good night (and not goodbye).

but who am i kidding really?