A letter

May 24th, 1999

Dearest C.C.

I wrote this letter before we left for Paris as, most of my letters are for you, an answer to your request. This being the only letter apart from the one we buried in that island in Pangasinan that you coerced me to write. I handed this to Kohji-san when I gave him the payment for our debt. I asked him as a favor, to hand this to you, at a time convenient for him whenever he receives news of my passing, which is hopefully not in the near future. If ever, he goes first before me, I have asked him also to entrust this letter and the task I have asked to one of his most trusted men. I wrote this also, in any case that I might forget to mention to you that I have HIV, and among other things that I will be sharing to you in this letter. I'm writing this under pressure of time because we have to leave in a few hours. So if I get lost in my words, I ask for your patience.

First, we are explicably where we are: chaste and burned. Sometimes, I feel like I have caused you the biggest share of your sorrows. If I didn't think it would be too impractical to completely remove myself from you, I would have. All those chemicals and a life seething with cruelty is too bad for such a gentle soul like you. We're just unavoidably dependent on the other.

Do you remember that time in Marabella? The day after the party, when I was sitting at the beach on a gloomy afternoon while Felix was asleep, you sat beside me and you told me that you think perhaps every one loves most the person one cannot truly be with in a married couple sense. That that is what life is truly about. Because what else shall one do when that person finally attains that?

We're comfortably lonely, complacent in this somewhat loveless state we have. For us, now, that is just a distant childhood dream we've grown out of. I take my responsibility in soliciting this predicament to you, which I, on some part, regret. I confess though, I never saw us going down this road. Once, I also dreamt the same dreams you had for the two of us. I just woke up earlier.

I didn't love Felix -- for a time perhaps but that was mostly infatuation. He amused me more than any guy I have been with even up to now, I have to say, but I never felt anything for him remotely close to any part of my feelings for you. He is a friend at the most. You, on the other hand, are a totally different matter. Perhaps, even now at the time of writing this letter, I am still confused of what my true feelings are for you. I'm not even close as to figuring out how we will be in the future.

If time grants me, I would never need to say this, but if ever there is a case that I am hindered to prove because I feel I am treading on a wobbly thread myself, I trust that you will believe my words that I will take care of you and that child in your womb. I paid the debt to Kohji-san already as I have mentioned. He told me that man who attacked you is Yusuke's brother and his intention was to take advantage of you and in no way was he one of Kohji-san's. We have no more reason to fear Kohji-san. Although I told your uncle that it would still be best if we left the country because if word gets out about your condition, and I doubt we will be able to conceal it in the coming months, I fear propriety will put too much pressure on you and you may make terrible decisions. I believe that anonymity will bring much comfort to you in your current condition and help you reflect better on what to do. I also didn't tell my cousin. I don't think Iñigo is smart enough to take responsibility for this. I decided to let you make that decision for yourself on how to deal with him.

I have considered marrying you as a consolation but given my condition now, I doubt I will ever be able to give you a child that is both ours. I don't think a disabled child would truly make you or me happy. Hopefully that child will be the consolation. I know the both of us well enough (and yes, apparently, I am considered disabled). We're too much of logical idealists, which is the worst kind of sentimentalists, I think.

Millions of years will pass and billions of solutions for a trillion more problems will be made and I will still feel this same confusion for my feelings for you. "We do what we do because of who we are. If we did otherwise, then we wouldn't be ourselves." Perhaps you will be the only person I will truly love in this lifetime.

"In a trillion years, stars will no longer shine. We'll get it right or come back again still hopelessly hopeful. What lies I learned lessened my ability to be present. My love will never change though we've ruined everything. The stars still conspire for us."

With all my heart,

Adrian

Kindness

One realizes how deeply and profoundly disillusioned one is when one is starting to judge kindness bestowed upon. Perhaps, one simply has too much time on hand despite having too much deadlines to meet and drafts to submit. Nevertheless, there is truth that can't be denied to the idea that each act of kindness is motivated differently.

Some people are kind to other people because they like the person. It could be because they have some physical attribute that tickles their visual stimuli right enough, or they have a certain character quirk that rubs their hearts warm. Maybe, they were told by their parents to be kind and these people are simply too respectful enough to follow what their parents told them as kids without question. Some people are merely forced to be kind because they are afraid to be judged by the people around them.

Then, there is that kindness that comes from experience. Call it guilt, regret or penance or whatever you may have inside your bag of wise-ass retorts. But, this kindness comes from a deeper region of human emotions. It goes beyond fear, prejudice and hate, and perhaps, the only one that can truly understand them.

A verse my mother fondly recalls to us over and over comes to mind. "Mighty is he who can conquer a city but he who can conquer himself is mightiest of them all."

Last night, I was talking to this guy whose over the top gestures of kindness towards me I initially dismissed as simply being motivated by superficial reasons. As he told me more about himself and the past mistakes and mishaps he has done back in his hay days, I started to understand where all his kindness was coming from. Maybe it still had a touch of neediness but it helped to understand that the most part of it was coming somewhere genuine.

My best friend told me, after sharing this particular inquiring thought with him, that I am perhaps the most shallow person in the world for judging kindness. Maybe I am. After all, I have been called an asshole, greedy and evil in the past.

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.

Eggerisms

I always have that same feeling when I'm about to finish a book. It falls on the same part of the spectrum as with breaking up with someone really great but you know that your relationship has reached its determinable end, or when a really awesome escapist trip is about to end, or like when something dear simply has to end like an amazing dinner birthday party for a friend. And always, always towards the end, I break the intended progression of the story by the author. Whenever I get that feeling I jump right into the last scene of the book then start reading disjointedly different scenes that leads up to that end in random order. 

I started reading You Shall Know Our Velocity out of interest piqued by a couple of quotes from the book a friend posted on her journal. Through the course of its neurotic and often painful narrative, I've had some opinions about the characters, some I liked more, some less than most of them. Towards the end, and after reading that there's another version of the book with an additional 50 page or so digressive narrative by the other main character (the story was narrated by one of the two friends),  I've somehow started seeing everyone, even the smaller nuances, on the same light. 

"You can't ever guess at life, at pain. All pain is real, and all pain is personal. It's the most personal thing we have. It eats each of us differently."

-- Dave Eggers