Polarity

There is this long running thing in my family. My departed lolo, from my father, had it. My dad has it. Unfortunately, I got it too.

My mom calls it a curse. She never explained its origins or why we have it but she would often play her mind games on me, dropping cryptic lines like "I may not see what you're doing but God can and God never lets a sin go unpunished." Sometimes, I think I have it due to all the mind games that she has been running on me ever since I was a child. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is what pushed my dad over the edge as well when he left her. He told me he never loved her in "that" way but I've always thought there had to be something else that pushed him away because he lasted more than two decades with her. They even had three children. I never bought my mom's crazy religious crap about curses and punishments anyway. She even had this zany line about how if a man sins against God, He will punish his family ten folds down to the third generation. God knows where she gets all her pitiful prejudiced beliefs.

I remember she told me that my lolo died, about six years ago now, because of grief from that curse. Then, in another occasion,  that she'd rather have a dead son or husband than someone who sins against God and that my father will probably die of that curse as well. I guess she's also telling me that so will I. Sometimes I don't even think it's really God she's talking about but rather someone who's just her god. Some godhead she created for her emotional convenience. Although sometimes her virtues works for her but, after all, most of her values are anchored deeply to pure unadulterated Christian beliefs. But like any form of Christianity nowadays, it's nothing but a byproduct that derivates from the ancient religion and compounds it with their own contemporary agendas.

While we were on our way to my lolo's remain's resting place earlier, which was an unbearable three hour drive, I wondered about his funeral. I could vaguely remember it now. All I could remember was it was a sunny day. Everyone wore white. Apart from those I can't remember any detail anymore. What was everyone talking about? Who cried? Who wasn't there? Did I cry?

Then I thought about what I was doing when I got news that he was already gone. I was sure I was in a bus. To where or which stop exactly, I couldn't remember anymore. I know I was about to go to a date or a hook-up or something my mom would deem immoral.

I was never close to my lolo. We rarely talked. He was like my father. They were men of few words. Or maybe we, three, are all alike also in that way. We have a hard time connecting to people. Even our own family. I've always wondered if my dad has a best friend, someone he can talk to freely and someone who can make me feel comfortable to be himself. He was such a well-conducted formidable man. So was my lolo. They must've had someone they can let themselves loose with. I was never introduced to anyone who seemed like it though.

Ever since I was a kid, I've always dreamt of meeting someone I'd grow up with, like those things I see in the movies I grew up watching, someone who will be my best friend. I had a friend in grade school. We'd be in school together almost always. We'd visit each other's house on weekends. When I was transferred out of that school, we lost touch and we grew apart. After that I never really connected with another person. I became this shy, timid loser geek who everybody liked because he did their homework and had an enormous amount of humor to let everyone slide when they picked on him. Sometime between high school and college I gave up on ever finding a best friend. That was when I started my life of debauchery. I started using MDMA with an unbelievable amount and frequency because it made me the happiest I have never been.

Death is always synonymous to justice for the emotionally injured party

There was once a boy, whose last name was Paraiso, who went to my school a few years ago. He was a swimmer for the varsity team. He was, as my professor this term fondly remembers him, a very considerably proper young man. He dressed very dapperly and had a very meek countenance. He attended my professor's Tuesday and Thursday classes, usually a few minutes late but still always present. Though he would often head straight, in a very low inoffensive manner, for the back row. One Tuesday meeting, after my professor's lecture, he voluntarily offered to help her gather up her things, as she didn't ask anyone because she didn't interact with her students then in a manner as casual as she does so with her students now. The next Thursday, surprised by the boy's sudden absence, my professor was prompted to comment to the rest of the class present then about the boy's absence. To which the class reportedly answered that the boy earlier mentioned was stabbed to death. Now, according to my professor, there were three versions of reports offhandedly being spread around the school. One was that the perpetrators of the stabbing were people who have had a long running bad blood with our very honorable protagonist. The next one was that the boy was dubiously suspected of participating on gang wars and the incident was like those kinds of incident that inevitably happen to these sorts of boys. The last one, which my professor strongly attests to believing the most, was that the boy had a couple of rounds of beers, just enough to get one very well buttered up for easy conversation, with his friends. That these said friends were arguing about something most college boys argue about, and that the boy was left with no one on his said of the argument. Now the boy, noticing this predicament and being the proper young man my professor so eloquently illustrates him to us to be, politely excuses himself to head home, which is a high-rise a few steps away from the bar, which is a block away from our school. While he was slowly going his way down the stairs of the bar, the said drinking buddies suddenly starts attacking him with their knives and leaves him to bleed his guts out on the deep black painted steps. The boy was rushed to the nearest government hospital but wasn't able to arrive in time. Mr. Paraiso is now in Paradise.

Interestingly, my professor commented that the last version sounds so statistically familiar. That in most news items in my country, about drinking and stabbing incidents, occur with friends doing it to their friends.

Now, this story was shared to us by my professor after someone, in class today, retorted a joke about how students in my school use knives instead of fists to a commendation my professor gave to students in my school about us being very behaved, and how in her whole career, she has never heard of an incident of brawls and fist-fights happening on school grounds, and on the same day the story about a certain double murderer was given Presidential clemency after only more than a decade of serving his life sentence, which everyone probably suspect was because of his family's connection with the government, was broadcasted. Now I've always been pro-life and pro-second chances, which is why I've always wondered why victim's families often wish their loved one's assailants death when rotting in prison for the better part of their lives is worse. What I wonder now though is how it must feel for the victim's parents, who have migrated out of the country, perhaps to help them move on, would feel after hearing this news.

You know what bothers me

Sometimes, in my deepest moments of arrogance, I like to pretend that I am, in the sheer audacity of my narrow-mindedness, one beyond my years. But then stuff like having HIV and knowing actual people who have turned tricks for drugs, and still being in college under a three year program at the age of 23 reminds me how categorically stupid and incredibly naïve I still am. What really bothers me, though, is that despite all these things, I still crave for a life of aimless drug abuse and sexual promiscuity. The mere thought of it sends hundreds upon hundreds of volts across my whole system. After fighting myself, tooth and nail, for this organized productive and moderately successful collegiate life that I am close to finishing, the life I used to have then is all I feel that can really make me happy still.

Myself back then should give myself now a talk

I remember someone asking me if I still manage to surprise myself.

Yesterday, a friend wanted me to see a picture of a guy he was dating in this dating site, which asked me to login. I have already forgotten I used to have an account with them two years ago but the site thoughtfully reminded me. So what I just did was to reactivate that account. I left it activated and tonight I got an email telling me that someone from that site sent me a message. I was wondering how exactly someone took interest in my profile when I haven't really filled it up. I thought that deactivating it would scrap the profile I used to have. Turns out, it was still preserved from when I deactivated it.

When I read the profile a few seconds ago, I was totally shocked at how much I had more grasp of who I am then, how spot on my profile write up was. Because if I would've written on now, I would've probably done something very brief and cryptic. That's how I am to myself nowadays, a mystery, which doesn't actually surprise me. What surprised me was the me back then that had a very clear understanding of myself. If this is the direction I am heading then I should be bothered. Or I guess it's only natural that the more the I grow older, the more vague every detail seems, that line between black and white fades into a broad gradient of gray.

Oh and yeah what better time for this than my birthday, right? Thank you God. Thank you playful Fate. Thank you taunting universe. I get the joke. Now can we all have a moment to laugh? So we can all finally move on.

I like it though. A little self-doubt sometimes can be good.