I AM NOT HURTING ANYMORE.
And it’s July 26, 2009, 1:30 am. It had been almost two months since the last time I saw you smile… The last time I heard you laugh and called me by my name…The last time I felt your hand intertwined with mine….
It had been two long months but the last week that we’ve spent together still lingers… often visiting me in between my sleep….like the night when we almost did things that we both know we should not be doing…that time when you and our friend were in the mall on your birthday… or when you and our friends were in your post birthday celebration (that also happened to be the last time we met in person)…the songs we sung… and many other bitter-sweet memories that had happen within that last week..
And now, I can say that I no longer feel the hurt…I am no longer tormented by the pain…I no longer cry myself to sleep and be awaken by my own sobs.
But you still fill my thoughts… There were still those mornings that I’d wake up reaching for my phone to search for your name on my phonebook, type a text message and when I am about to send it, I’d realized how much things has changed. Mumbling (and oftentimes cursing myself for my stupidity), I’d replace the recipient’s number into someone else’s while keeping to myself how much I am missing your presence in my life.
I am moving on, yes. But denying the fact that I am also missing you terribly would be hypocrisy.
I had forgotten how it hurts (or am I just convincing myself that I already did?) And I guess this is the right time to give explanations on how ill mannered I thought I’d reacted the night I saw you posted a message in a public chat room on a one gloomy night.
Prior to that “incident”, I was already thinking how well you are doing. I was in my bed and having a hard time chasing fairy dusts in my dream, hoping to have a good night sleep. But then, instead of catching fairy dusts, I only found myself running after the thought of how happy your week had been since I am very much aware that you’d spent a weekend with someone whom I guess you’d always belong to.
It’s just a thought… a thought that is so painful to take in as if it had venom that kills me each time I think of it….and that thought was my first killer.
Not expecting you to be there, I’d enter a chat room using a nick that can best describe my emotions… a maze, a puzzle, a jungle that is so confusing…just like a labyrinth. And there (in a public chat room) I saw words that made me die twice that night… For I know it too well, based from what you once said, it is really ‘her’ that caught your attention the first time that all of us met.
One of the posts went like, “ Matagal na kitang gusto naunahan lang ako ng kaba.” The ‘girl’ answered back but my attention was more on your posts. Then another one came…
“Kung sakali bang itinuloy ko papayag ka? “
“Am I reading his posts right or have I gone insane?” I even told myself as I repeatedly looked and read on the posts. “Is he really talking about how he was supposed to court her? Does he mean…oh shit! Am I just a spare tire (I know I already am but am I just another spare tire in case the first spare tire won’t work)? Was I an easy prey? Did he lie about going back to where he truly belongs?” Then before I realized it, my pillow is already wet with tears that flow endlessly from my eyes. My already confused thoughts had become more and more tangled and perplexed as different emotions kept on pouring in… I don’t know what to think say or feel anymore…All I know is that I felt like I am repeatedly dying…over and over that very moment.
Because first, knowing that I’d let you go to be with whom you’d always belong is acceptable and I would rather treat it as an inevitable but natural death of my emotions.
Second, learning that aside from ‘the woman’ is ‘another girl’, (or should I say, I had let you go not really for ‘the woman’ but for yet ‘another girl’) would already be a murder of my feelings…a heinous crime indeed.
Third, dying more than once is too much dying that I can take in one day.
I had become irrational I admit, that at once, even if my tears are already blinding me, I searched for your name in my list and accused you of how bad you were for posting those things and making me feel so stupid. But I guess what I was really trying to say did not reach you because I started talking trash. Then you said you were just joking to start a conversation with ‘her’. And little did you know that it reminds me of how you used to start a conversation with me.
“Kung pwede lang,liligawan talaga kita”
“Di marunong magmasahe yun, naghahanap ako ng bago”
“Di pa ako nakakarating ng Laguna” (I already caught you one time using this phrase to someone else)
My reminiscing was interrupted with your post in the room explaining to the ‘girl’ that courting her would be impossible of course because of your situation. Moments passed by and the room went silent… and I considered the idea that you two were just exchanging whispers... and it was confirmed by the careless post that ‘girl’ made before ‘she’ left the room.
And then your personal message struck me.
“I am already happy with my life.”
Isn’t there so much irony on how those words were positively said but had cut my heart in a million pieces that night?
Damn! Were you telling me that I am already a nuisance and I am destroying your happiness? Am I getting in the way of your plans? Do you want me out of your life, completely? No friendship, no past whatever, as in nothing?
“Don’t say that…Don’t act like that…You don’t know anything”
I can barely remember the explanations that went with what I saw in a public chat room that night. I cannot even identify the things that made sense from the things that are better be forgotten. I can’t tell the difference between the things that I should understand from the things that should better left unsaid.
I DIED OVER AND OVER THAT NIGHT, AND AS BAD AS IT MAY SOUND I WANT YOU TO EXPERIENCE THAT KIND OF DYING TOO… because no matter how I tried, there were still a lot of things that I could not understand…
How can you be so happy and contented after everything that had happened while I was left from where you took off?
How can you have someone by your side while I was spending two long and lonely months crying each night, and making through the pain on my own?
How can you joke around with someone else that way, while I am having a hard time pretending I was fine going out and having fun with someone else?
How is it possible to be hurt by you and still fill my thoughts with the places we’ve been and the things we did while I was hanging out with two different guys?
What is the real reason why I am hurting this much? Was it because I never succeeded in making you really fall for me? Was it because I had been to naïve wishing in the first place that maybe I could change things? Was it because I have seen every sign that I would not succeed and that you were never sincere but then I just let you to deceive me? Was it because I had been an easy prey and it ate up more than half of my pride? Was it because I really don’t want to let you go for the ‘woman’? Or could it be that I do want to let you go, but not (and never) for just another girl? When will enough be enough?
I AM NOT HURTING ANYMORE.
That was my first statement. And I am sticking to it. When did I finally stop hurting? That I couldn’t tell. Maybe I grew tired of the hurt. Maybe I grew tired of waiting. Maybe I grew tired of pretending and making me believe in made up stories and wishful thinking… on butterflies that could lose its wings and can still fly… I guess I simply grew tired of the half-lies…
I am not aware when I finally and literally stopped hurting… but as far as I can remember, the last time I felt the pain was with the sight of you together with the ‘woman’ whom you should spend the rest of your remaining life with. I’d rather not ask questions. I guess for the last time, I will just assume and make myself believe that there is one promise that you kept… that you came back to her… and that the photo I saw was taken in an out of town vacation.. The one you told me you spent with her… the thought that used to kill me a hundred times before…
But it can’t kill me now. It can’t even harm me anymore.
Not now that my new life is waiting… for he had been waiting even before you came. (But I was too occupied by you to notice him). He went away while I was with you but he never took his eyes off me. And he did not mean to keep me waiting from where you took off…he just want me to take a rest before he leads the way and join me in moving forward…
And I am giving him more than a second chance. I am giving him my dreams. I am giving him my fantasies…I am giving him every piece of truth and all the things that I am bounded to give you…
Because in him, I felt what it is like to own and be owned and to cling on to someone you are most afraid to lose but then be rest assured that he would gladly risk everything that he has so as not to lose me.
I am maybe still dreaming the second time around. I am maybe just in a hurry to learn how to live without the things (and the people) that I cannot have. But I know my heart is not lying when it throbs to live for yet another day, feel yet another pain, and maybe surpass yet another heartache….
