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.

The trifecta

Then there are those moments where I just want to give up. I wonder what I'm doing these things for because it used to be because it was fun. I know there will always be tough times and it's all part of the reason why the fun things are fun. How do I know, though, when to call it quits? When nothing more is left? I guess it's really true. We're here on this earth to make a mess out of our lives. To go up above our expectations and to suffer until we are scrapping the bottom of the pit. Oh the exhaustion and the high. Sometimes, when I put them side-by-side in my head, it exhilarates me. Though other times, I'm scared shitless when I imagine the vastness of how far I've gotten that I start treading with trepidation. I just look back in amazement and let out a deep breath and watch myself stare back into the void. Sometimes, I hate being this limited in such a limitless universe but, most of the time, I remind myself that we're not wired for limitless like gas or water. Not just yet.

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.

I am hesitation

I am that soft comforting voice in your head that tells you, you don't need to do a save when you're writing a one page paper. Because why else would you need a save for, when you're going to print it a few minutes later anyway? So you agree and continue typing and then seconds later, there's a brief power interruption and your computer restarts. Then you remember something every single professor you've had in every single computer involved subjects reminds the class: always save your file because you never know when there's going to be a power interruption.

I am that person in front of the mirror when you stare at it with a long-sleeve you just put on, wondering if you should wear it with the outfit. Then I'll tell you it's better if you took it off because less is more. Later in the day, I'll tell you, you should've worn it after all because you look too shabbily plain.

I tell you that that guy is probably only saying it because it gets him off more when he says "I love you" and he'll probably be screwing someone else a few days later or worse, you're the one he's screwing a few days later he said the same thing to another guy.

I am that electricity in your finger that stops you from typing "I miss you" to a message you're going to send to that guy. The same words he sends you two messages later.

I am that nagging voice in your head that comforts you by saying you haven't gotten jaded. You've just learned to patiently wait and accept whatever thing comes your way with temperance.