Control Yourself

A three inch cockroach crawled right next to my foot the other night. I yelped and jumped up the seat of my chair. As I did I lost sight of it and so fought my way to get as far away from it as possible. Oh Lord save me. I saw heads turn and then a sickening crunch as someone stomped on it with his shoe. I can imagine the white goo squished out of it.

I said three when in probably was only two inches - my eyes popped out, how could I have seen it accurately? I said I yelped, but I probably screamed - my ears go deaf in frozen anticipation of flight or fight response. Just now I said flight or fight but you know I always run off like a wave of locusts are coming to eat me when there’s really only one cockroach crawling away from me. Now if the cockroach starts flying around a room expect upturned furniture and a mass trail of destruction as I run around madly trying to get out.

An old man asked me to control myself in the face of a cockroach. I doubt he understands weaklings like me and the concept of fear of flying-biting bugs. Most times I wish I could be so smooth about it and pretend it didn’t matter while inside me a coward hid..I wish.

If there is one country in the world that didn’t have cockroaches I would move in a heartbeat. These bugs will be the death of me. I just know it. On my grave the stone will say - here lies Ali who died running away from a roach.

What’s to fear?

It isn’t as if it has never happened. It isn’t as if it happened only once either.

Why then this huge fear of failure now?

I can always go do it all over again. Perhaps all over again is daunting, but there’s really nothing scary about it. So why does my heart beat in tune to Flight of the Bumblebee? The closer it gets, the more it feels like a drum-roll in my chest.

So what if I don’t make it the first time? There’s always a second chance and third time’s a charm right?

It is not logical. I am just so afraid to fail because I don’t want to have to do it all over again. Not after this much. I am doubtful that I can pursue it again with this much earnestness if I fail the first time.

So help me I want to pull through the first time. Let this be the one time I do something so surprisingly good that I’d feel funny bragging about it. It would do my father proud just this one time in this one lifetime. Just this once let me do something right.

I am so afraid. But my biggest fear is being frozen in place when all I really need is to breathe.

Magnolia Full Cream Milk

I’d forgotten how much I used to love milk. Milk before bed was the best. In that tiny college apartment, I had milk before bed no matter how much beer I had consumed. If you opened the fridge you’ll find some beer, some milk, and food gone bad. (I really am a girl.) It was a good thing I lived alone too.

Magnolia Full Cream Milk is second best. I like Carabao Milk best (I think the carabao is called a water buffalo? in english.) But the good milk brings back fond memories. I was two, sitting on the dining table, sipping milk from that white plastic tumbler with a pink lid and stars printed on it. I was three, and I was delighted to find a bottle of carabao’s milk on the floor next to the door. (The farmer even used a folded up banana leaf as bottle topper.) I remember calling my father and asking him to boil it (yes, I knew about heating milk, because I once drank straight from the bottle and my tummy hurt.) yelling for him to please pick up the bottle because I didn’t want to break it.

The wonders of milk. Some days when I had too many things in my head I would warm my milk, and sip slowly. It always put me to sleep. But then I got old and forgot things. Does this mean that the older I get the more I’ll forget?

It seems the things I like to remember are slowly fading away like dry leaves that fall from the tree. If the good ones are leaves, then the terrible memories must be fruit that fall and rot all around me. A rotting madness that invite flies and scavengers, entirely unpleasant and endlessly uncomfortable.

Must I forget?

Must I forget?

I am certain that I am capable of forgiving. I believe I have forgiven. But does forgiveness mean getting over something completely? By getting over something completely, I mean the memories of whatever it was, will be unable to stir the same emotions all over again. Like a ghost that comes to haunt you and simply fails.

Should the memories rot in a forgotten chest or not? I would like to be able to remember with less pain. I would like to be able to laugh about it. But I don’t think terrible secrets revealed are funny at all.

But great is my love as the conundrum that tore me apart is something I have embraced. Throwing caution into the wind, devil may care, love it truly seems. (it seem like love, because at this point nothing seems greater than Hashana’s Love.)

Why do they always say forgive and forget when the hardest to forgive is the hardest to forget?

Eccentric

An uncle is convinced that my father is eccentric for skipping a wedding and a baby shower (and fifty other family affairs prior to that).

If you use a triple plate shingle splice there will be no eccentricity in connection.

hot in the city

The heat is killing me. Even the malls are not that cold.

Think cold thoughts. Think cold thoughts. Ice cold beer numbing my fingers. Buko Sherbet. Twin Popsies.

ay naku. It’s not working.

I can feel the sweat and the heavy humid summer air. *sigh*
I want to go to the beach where the cool breeze brings me relief and the waters offer comfort - until you see a jellyfish womp-womping beneath the surface.

It’s Alive!

If you’ve lived as much as I have you’ll know what it means to get attached. By living I mean opening yourself up and letting people touch your life. It’s not about experience as in the thing that comes with age. It’s about laying all your cards on the table and hoping that the friends and lovers don’t dump you.

If you’ve had your heart open for as long as mine has been, you’ll know that there are people who hurt and people who can make the hurt go away. I say can make the hurt go away because more often than not, the kind of people who make the hurt go away have actually no idea that they’ve given you comfort.

For instance, the hugging. If you have allowed yourself to become attached to people you’ll know that sometimes you don’t realize you’ve missed them so until you see them again after a long long time. And then you greet them with a kiss on the cheek and it turns out you feel like hugging them. The smushy side gives in and surprisingly they just really want you to hug them too. The hugger and the huggee. Not that it’s an actual word, it’s more of an actual feeling.

There are people you miss and then there are people you didn’t know you missed that much. And the hug that lasted brief seconds has warmed something else inside you. Not that it isn’t hot enough here in Manila with weather people saying temperature may well rise to 38 degrees celsius tomorrow. There is a clear difference between heat and warmth although most people confuse the two and spend their entire lives looking for the wrong thing.

Which brings me to, the past and the past lovers that you thought you loved. The past lovers that thought they loved you, would bring you a kiss under the pretense of a hug. Pull you towards something else under the pretense of a kiss. But who am I to talk about pretend hugs when past lovers complained that I never kissed them enough? Am I too forward with the Mister when I ask for a kiss when it simply is all I really want at the moment? Do I pretend to want to snuggle when a headache cure must be in order?

I sometimes wonder if playing games with the Mister is the better way instead of the jumping into things that is expected of me. I am sure I have always been brutally honest. Sometimes too much for other people to bear. But I’m a selfish girl and I am really not into sugarcoated half truths. Which brings me to any half truth is a lie.

Lies don’t make people like you. Well, the lies will probably work until the truth is revealed. And truths come together like moisture and before you know it there’s a leak and water is everywhere drip dripping into your ball of lies. I want to see it all fall apart. I wish it would all fall apart. Then people will stop believing that I am the devil’s tool. But what use will it be to have people see me for who I truly am when they refuse to see who they really are?

Who cares what everyone else thinks when I get hugs from friends who care?

It’s the hugs that push me to walk on, because things aren’t so bad when you know there are those who care enough about you to pull you into a hug even if you don’t ask for it.