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After wandering aimlessly for days my mind stopped in a labyrinth of confusion and melancholy. Depression looms over like halo in my head. It has been taunting me mercilessly; wrapping its loving arms around me in a bittersweet embrace. For what seemed to be an eternity, I sat down motionless and with my mind adrift tears started falling down my face. Amidst the serenity of the white painted room with its door wide open welcoming the blinding brilliance of the morning sunshine,the iridescence of the powder-blue sky,and the cool breeze of the wind blowing gently on my sun-kissed skin; the tight clutch of desperation refuse to liberate me. Searching for an answer through the innermost depth of my intellect proved to be futile. The reason for this seemingly surreal quality of emotion is somewhat unknown. I am alone contemplating in a room filled with vast collection of literature. Books which I consider were written by demi-gods of the literary world. Lahiri,Garcia-Marquez,Ha Jin, and my favorite Zafra to name a few. On the far left side of the room adjacent to where I am sitting are vcds ranging from gay to hetero porn, documentaries,independent foreign films, and classic Audrey Hepburn movies. Streisand, R.Williams, Madonna, Simply Red, Jamiroquai, Mozart, and Gloria Estefan(with rolling eyeballs, some consider this a good background music in a dark-lit room crying buckets of tears: for someone who has just been dumped & had his heart broken..Haayy!) are some of the cds collected through the years. Obviously, this is the perimeter of my brother. He is temporarily staying down south while I spend most of my time living idly in the outskirts of Antipolo. My contemplation over the strangeness of being drawn to sadness brought about the possibilities of my current state. The vagueness is slowly diminishing,and I could see quite clearly. A few months back, I spent an evening like no other evening. It was an evening as if the stars lost their brilliance. The defeaning sound of silence was broken by my sobbing. It was a night forever engraved in me. On the night of August 15, my maternal grandmother whom we fondly called Mama fell into deep slumber. Like in Greek mythology,she became a permanent resident of the night sky with Morpheus as her constant companion. The rarity to witness the departure of my earthly-goddess filled me with great sadness. I flew out of my mind. I felt the dire need to escape in a world of fantasy. I tried not to be consumed with thoughts of grief. For me the reality was too much to bear. It smothered me. Sadness so bone-deep that even writing about it for a lifetime would never capture or even begin to describe the massive loss that I felt. Missing her has not been easy. I miss sleeping in her room beside her. I miss the scent of her skin that brings me back to the earliest memory of my childhood mixed with the smell of burning tobacco wherein as a child I used to hate,but eventually grew to love. I miss seeing her sweet smile with white puffs of smoke escaping out of her delicate lovely mouth everytime she talked. I miss her telling me stories of the past. Snippets of her colourful personal history. Stories about my mother back when she was still the mayor of our town. She spoke of my mother quite frequently. How much she adored her and how greatly she was affected by what seemed to be my mothers’ tragic battle with madness. Mama was surely a gifted storyteller. I miss the time when she was still strong and had so much power over me. There were times wherein her ladies-in-waiting would tell me to put on traditional Maguindanaon ensembles consisting of a bangala,malong,and a tendung simply because it was my grandmother’s wish. It would take quite sometime of asserting me to do what my lola wanted for I am very stubborn. The only time I would succumb to her wish was when she would start giving me lectures,and seeing her disappointed pale in comparison with having your heart crushed. She would then ask me to parade around her house to show my aunts and uncles how I looked. I remember trying so hard to stop myself from crying like a helpless little girl in embarrassment. I thought to myself I looked hysterically ridiculous. I hated it so much. Today I find myself missing it. I miss everything about her. I miss every little detail. I am having difficulties writing this down. My train of thought is lost from time to time. They drown in my sea of tears. I still have so much to tell about how my Mama lived her glorious life,but I believe I have to stop somewhere, somehow. I am still grief stricken and cannot stop myself from crying.  I miss her terribly.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 2nd, 2005 at 11:26 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.