Working Backwards
It's 7 am and I should be asleep. Typical. So Christmas has passed, whoop bleepin' do. I'm sick as a dog. Every time I return to Manila, I get sick as a shit. Must be I hate the place so much.
We'll work backwards from here.
Correction, I'll work backwards. I don't know who else reads this.
Congratulations, you have not worked out how to get back from that seething pit of anger. I don't know if its right to call it emotions, I never seem to have them. Messr. El Roboto. I just push it under. Not healthy, I commented to a friend that I'm jealous of my sister and her drinking binges. Friend laughingly offers to go drinking with me. It's a sweet gesture but I wisely don't take her up on it. Last time I went drinking with friends I started attempting to speak in drunken filipino. What the hell. Also I get damn maudlin, I can't take that now.
I walked to fort boni from school, about three times now. It's my escape, the mindless footsteps bleeding anger. All roads lead to home. I wish I had a camera, I want to document this. Third time doing this, the concrete feels firm under my feet like it will hold, at last. The first time I let my anger unscythe I ride raw hatred over scarred streets. A place, might have been special because of a girl but I carry my boiling anger past unmolested. The green fields and dark night conspire to remind me of better times in Singapore.
God I miss my buds, they just had a primary school reunion. I know, I just chatted to them, pretended I was all right. I lied to them with a straight face but it seemed right at the time. There was a meteor shower too.
Second time was almost better, more punishing. I take the longer way, I almost die of exhaustion. It was exhilarating. All the while I keep hoping for the stupidest thing, a glance of her.
The third time is the last day of school. I proceed by the direct route, leaving bewildered friends as I seem to walk towards nowhere. I feel like I'm headed nowhere. I know that back at school I've let myself fail three subjects intentionally. I could have fought the feelings of dejection but I didn't I let myself sink to the lowest mental capacity. Happy days it feels like secondary school again. I should have been able to do better. Fuck it, my psyche commands. The least I did was ensure that I didn't take a group down with me. Seems like I can let myself down but not a group. I feel like a dipshit.
And I exacerbate my feeling of defeat. I carry it on my shoulders, my dead blank stare. I have mastered apathy as the cure for the dull aching despair. Nothing goes right, a disaster of my own crafting. I had hoped for release. That my beloved night would have answers for me. On that walk I find questions that but mirrors my despair.
I find myself on a road. The dark pools around it and the world beyond in the light seems artificial, a mirage. For that moment I own that negative space, before a car clumsily casts its headlight in wild abandon, an attempt to drive away my darkness, I own it. It feels perfect but I must move on.
I don't know which is more painful, that the girl didn't acknowledge my invitation that night or that I found that I can shrug off the physical manifestations of defeat so easily and yet the emotional scars remain. Neither helped heal me I think.
I'm sick but I refuse to sleep. I think I fear something there now.
Douglas Coupland. Saw his latest book, for some reason while writing this I read up on the experience of someone being waterboarded. This incongruity struck me as Coupland-esque. I don't know why, but I'm compelled to write it down. I think I'm god damned chuffed to see myself as being worthy of a Coupland narrative. It's crazy but fuck it. Also, too much swearing in this post.
Fuck it.
Went to Baguio. Didn't get the girls anything in return for their Darth Vader. Sigh, I am a scumbag. I'll get them something from Manila I guess. Came back sick. Full damn circle.