2

It was a dream.
A marvelous, spectacular, awe-inspiring dream.
But was it really a dream?
Or was it a hideous, repulsive, dreadful nightmare?

She woke up only to find him gone. The house was still and empty without him. The silence casted its shadow upon the entire vicinity of their love’s dwelling sanctuary dampening her hopes, incarcerating her heart.

Its half-past 5 in the morning and the darkness slowly fades away as the light rise to claim his power and take pride in his glory. A new dawn shines its mercy to the hopeless. A new journey awaits the restless soul. A new agony lays ahead her beaten heart.

He is with her.

She knew it. She always does.

Why won’t the ache and the anguish stop while the hot tears and the suppressed sobs did?

Is there an end to this demented torment?

But she knew even before she asked that the pain and the suffering are infinite, the torture; endless. For as long as she loves him, there will always be misery.

The desolation of the day ends when the bliss of the night begins.

She always likes the night for it is the only time her love returns to the divine haven of her affection. It is when the despondency stops and time is a tangible matter which she could manipulate. She likes the night for its darkness shelters her from the ruthless and brutal reality.

He loves her. Or was she only the one conceiving this make-believe tale? For if he loves her, he doesn’t have to leave her during her reverie. He would have stayed and held her close, not permitting even the shortest distance of separation.

But he loves the other girl too, perhaps even more than her for he is willing to share the magnificence of the day with her.

She wished she was her. She wished that she would be the only one.

However, the realization of her wishful thinking is past beyond the threshold of what her heart can bear. Instead, she braced her heart for another blow of pain that even Morphine and Demerol can’t take away. And as she lay her dying heart, all that she can think of was him and the memories she held so dear.

He didn’t come home that night and the nights that followed. He never knew what happened that fateful day. He seemed to have forgotten her existence. Until a grave was dug and mourners came.

There a letter was read.

"I woke up and you were gone
Everything has been said and done
I am the night and its darkness
She is the day and its light rays
And I knew I can never be the only one
For I am just your SECOND one"

A Typical First Love

When I was 12, I met someone in a place where my pals and I used to hang out. He was four years older my age that time and was going to a college nearby. I still blush whenever I remember that day. My heart still beats like a wild drum in an African ritual. He was the first guy I met outside school, outside the confinement of my house, outside the circle of my family and friends. I don’t know about first love but if it means flushing of the skin, tachycardia, tachypnea, diaphoresis, sudden elation of mood, apraxia, aphasia when he’s around and the use of fantasy as a means of adaptive mechanism when he’s not then maybe it is first love.

I remember those times when I intentionally pass by, if not, schedule another “friends hang-out sessions” in the same spot where I met him so I get to have a glimpse of him. And whenever my parents and I go to mass, I glance left and right, front and back to catch a sight of him. When I don’t get to see him, I ended up having a sad face and a bad day. Its funny is it not? I didn’t know that I was so obvious in my childish affection back then.

But just like any other first loves all over the world and in different generations, I had my first heart break. I didn’t know what happened but after those times when see each other and have our friendly talks, he disappeared. It’s like I woke up from a very beautiful dream. Then one day we saw each other, little that I know that it was the last time that I’ll get to talk to him. And just was my luck that day. I wasn’t expecting the “I have a girlfriend” statement from him that it hit me like a Hiroshima bombing incident. I remember the gloomy feeling upon hearing that she’s pretty and nice and that he really liked her a lot plus she was his age which means they relate to each other rather well.

From then on, we never saw each other. Or maybe it was me isolating myself from the feeling of my first heartbreak that I never glance around anymore or hang out with friends in that place where I met him. I used to say; “I don’t want to talk about him” whenever my friends brought his memory in a conversation. Was it really traumatic to my being that I got to suppress a conscious thought? I actually don’t know.

Years have gone by so fast that it is almost 8 years already. Looking back, I could not help myself from smiling whenever I remember my silliness and my childhood admiration to a certain person whom I thought was the “one”. I wasn’t expecting to meet see him again 2 years ago. But who knew that I was going to bumped into his sister who at that time got my number and gave it to his brother. That’s how I get to see him again after years. It surprised me that upon seeing him it was all coming back to me! The feeling, the “physical symptoms”!

And then I told myself; “Run and hide! You’re not going to be dumped this time!”

That’s how I ended up typing these words. That’s how I ended up making a mess with a lot of things in my life. That’s how I ended up asking a question I guess will be left unanswered.

Wonder

She was wrong.

As she was engrossed in a monotonous act of typing numerous letters and remembering an endless flow of pain-staking thoughts, she knew deep inside that she was wrong. But was it her fault? She was just at a wrong place, a wrong time and a wrong situation. She was with the wrong person.

Sometimes destiny has its way of playing games with our lives. In a spun of a moment, a 360 degree turn happens and before you knew it; you’re facing what is perhaps the end of life as you knew it.

She was naive when she met him at what seemed like a randomly selected time and place. He was dashing and cool and as expected from a small town girl like her, she failed to see what is beneath the superficial.

An inexperienced girl like her should have slowed down and took the road less taken. But who could blame an innocent kid? She was excited and ecstatic as she entered a world where reality does not exist. A world carefully crafted to entice a raw feeling into a dizzying spiral fantasy of true love and hopeful dreams of a true love’s kiss.

She was too blind to see that she was taken for granted, that she was just another girl that boy caught in his web of thrilling games and selfish endeavors until she has given him her everything. A mistake she could have prevented form happening if only she was intelligent to comprehend things.

No one told her how painful reality could be. No one told her how it could devastate your sense of being.

They departed as quickly as they have met in what seemed to be a randomly selected time and place.

Time passed and she saw him again. She was pretty and perhaps a suitable partner for him, she thought to herself. They seemed happy. He seems to be happy.

She wonders if he still remembers her. She wonders if her memory crosses his conscious being. She wonders if he still sings that song he so fondly sings when they’re together. She wonders if he yearns for those sweet kisses that they passionately shared.

But that’s all she could do. WONDER.