Coming Home to Me

06 Aug 2009 No Comments

by angkuletin Uncategorized

I woke up this morning with this thought, I am giving you up. Not for any reason but that. I woke up this morning feeling and thinking I am giving you up. Not because last night you said you do not want me anymore not once, but three times with complete conviction. Not because you said you have always wanted to break up with me, that you had wanted to for an entire year, that you wanted to let me leave on that airplane knowing full well that there isn’t any you I am coming back to and it hurt like hell, but because this morning I woke up thinking and feeling I am giving you up. Not I should give you up, but I am.

This afternoon right about one in the afternoon, the wind picked up, and blew and howled. I stood firmly on the ground as the wind whipped stray fine hairs into my eyes and I watched gray heavy clouds drift swiftly past above the densely green hills. A thousand tiny knives borne out of the loneliness of my heart, surged  and pricked me in a thousand sundry ways as deliberate diffident tears escaped from the pools I collected from the corners of my eyes. The leaves rustled, twigs flew, branches were broken and torn, tumbled down the bleakness of the grass bowed low. The wind commiserating with the turbulence in the depths of my heart roared silently. I know this sadness. I have felt it over and over again countless times. It is as familiar as my smile, the smell of my skin, and the feel of my hand against my cheek. In the grayness of early afternoon, something was sticking out tenaciously against the willful wind, vivid still – one lone crape myrtle flower, that gave me hope, gave me joy.. Just as in the past, there was you, now there is only this purple flower, now there is only me. No one else but me. Steadfast. Resolute. And as I always have been, will always be, stubborn though weak.

The rain fell in torrents tonight, unfalteringly wicked. It fell on the tin roof, spit-spattering like Morse code, and made me wonder if somehow it was trying to send a message across that I because of ignorance just couldn’t get. Somehow I will know, sometime. I am slowly, painfully learning, though crawling through bit by bit.

So this is how coming home really means, my coming home to me. There is no one to come home to anymore but me. In this island far from home, far from the people I loved most, cherished the most, treasured the most and the things I deemed most important, I found me. Beautiful and ugly in more ways than two or three or even ten, but decidedly real.

Written August 9, 2005

August 2005

06 Aug 2009 No Comments

by angkuletin Uncategorized

Sitting with myself, a glass of coke on the balcony ledge, a cigarette in one hand, sprays of rainwater with the occasional gust of wind on my face, I look at the gray pouring sky and think, this feels familiar.

Four years ago, there was also this. Days of this in fact. Sitting with myself, a glass of coke sitting next to me, a cigarette in one hand, sprays of rainwater with the occasional gust of wind on my arms and legs as the roof of the small unused little hut standing in front of the house that was my home for the past three months was not enough shelter for the little me that found myself in a little town, deemed somewhat inaccessible, right by the beach with the looming Cadlao island right in front of it.

Four years ago, I was not married. I did not have a baby. There was just me. Venturing out into the unknown world of other people and other places. Places that my feet have trodden on for the first time. People whose faces I was just getting to know and getting used to. It was a big world and I made it little. Little enough so I could find myself. And I did.

Four years ago, I lived in a small house with four other people. I had a wonderful roommate who was vivacious in so many ways. When we were down, when we were lonely, she would cry out at the top of her voice, “Endorphins! Endorphins! Let’s make some endorphins!” and we’d dance on our living floor that five days a week was the classroom for the little boys and girls that we called pre-school. We’d get our badminton rackets and play right outside our house, in the middle of the street. We’d run to the beach, tie our shirts on the outriggers of docked boats and swim. We’d walk briskly to the Art Cafe and borrow mountain bikes.

On rainy days like this, we’d make hot cocoa drinks, sit around on our little dining table and talk about our past lives and the wonderful kids that made us laugh, that put meaning into our otherwise dreary, boring lives.

I miss those days.

It’s been four years. Two of us have gotten married. Someone is in Slovenia. Someone is in Singapore. No one is still in El Nido, that place that have adopted us and in so many ways, have made us into who we are now. I still live with three other people: my husband, the baby and the maid. I still have a dog, though now it’s smaller and officially mine. Not anymore the neighbor’s dog that I made into my own.

I wish I could cry out at the top of my lungs, “Endorphins! Endorphins!” right now but I can’t. I wish I could make hot cocoa drinks and laugh about the kids. There is no cocoa drink to make. There are no kids to laugh about. And most importantly, there is no one to laugh with.

Tomorrow morning, I know it’s going to rain. I will get drenched. My cheeks, my face, my shirt will all get drenched. Just as it did on my twenty-seventh birthday.

I always leave when Ryan leaves. Just because I cannot stay home by myself. The house just feels empty with just me in it.

Now I can’t leave. Because my plane to El Nido does not take babies. Because my parents can’t meet me in Catanduanes. Because I can’t drive me and the baby by myself to La Union. Because the weather is bad.

I know a week does not seem too long, but for me it does. It is. A week is a long time to be talking to no one but myself. A week is too long to be taking care of the baby on my own. A week is just simply too long.

I miss those days from four years ago. When you’d crawl under the covers and read a good book for an hour or two for your quiet time, knowing that when you need someone to talk to, someone to laugh with, there is someone in the bedroom next door, doing just what you are doing, feeling just the way you do.