Your Favourite Dream.

The first time I ever felt love was in a dream. He was faceless, just a shapely body moulded out of a mass of human flesh, and a constant darkness glowed around him; perhaps to show that he had no identity. The dream began where it always begins: In the middle, and we were walking hand-in-hand down a long stretch of road lined with pine trees, guided by the orange glow of street lamps. Stars shone, scattered overhead, like a paintbrush had been dipped in thick white paint and flung across a midnight canvas.

We stopped at the end of the road, before a line that separated the city from the woods, a backdrop of fluorescent lights glittered behind us as he turned towards me. His face was a black hole of nothingness, but I wasn’t afraid, because the love we shared showed me that the physical world was so small in comparison to that of which we cannot touch. He moved closer and we hugged; I was enveloped in a blanket of every wonder I have ever known. And when we pulled apart, I awoke, still feeling his arms around me. The projection of that faceless lover felt so real, the love I had for him still lingered when I lay in bed, recalling. I was longing for him to come back, so I could feel love, even if it was just in a dream.

Your Beliefs

Most of my beliefs are based upon personal opinion. I spent years struggling with the concept of religion and I finally decided that it just didn’t work for me, because to me, religion is just an official way to seek reassurance that you aren’t in total control of your actions, that things will be okay, that there is more to life. I believe in a higher being, call it “God”, “A way of life”, “The Force”, or whatever you want, I believe that it is just a simple flow of how things fall into place, and the rest is up to you. I guess you could say that I agree with the statement “Life is 5% fate, 95% reaction”.
I think that everything that happens to you is based on how you dealt with previous situations, and every situation is a lesson we have to learn, and those lessons will repeat themselves in different ways until we finally get it.
I believe that life after death is based on your state of mind, a person who dies in his guilt will be condemned to suffer until he learns to forgive himself. Because once you die, there’s no way you can make up for what you’ve done wrong, and that, to me, is hell.
I believe in peace and love and forgiveness. I believe in both art and science, imagination and knowledge.
But most importantly, above anything else, I believe in being a good person.

A Moment.

It was late into the night, probably two or three in the morning, and I was exhausted. We had gone through so much in the past few hours, and we all knew, with a quiet understanding, that the end would be soon. I sat on a hard plastic chair, giving my back a rest from the weight of my body. I took a look around the hospital ward, nurses were everywhere, the flourescent lights were blinding, and the machines beeped constantly. That’s what I hated the most, and that’s the specific sound that always brings me back to that very night: the constant beeping of a life-support machine, it’s haunting when you realise that when a person is in a coma, those machines are all you have to decipher life from death.

I kept my eye on the machine, taking note of every drop in number, believing that zero would mean goodbye. I kept staring at that machine, the red and green digits indicating oxygen levels and heartbeat. I kept staring until they turned into swirls and stopped making sense.

The numbers fell from the seventies.. to the fifties.. to the twenties, and lingered around nineteen for a while. I kept watching the machine and listening to its evil rhythm, when out of nowhere the numbers hit zero. Every sound in the room was muted, all I could hear was the pounding of my heart against my ribcage. My brain stopped working, I just couldn’t function. I felt paralyzed.

And then the numbers jumped back up, still dangerously low, but at least they weren’t zero.

Your Definition of Love

Love changes over time, from a burning passion to a warm comfort, to a tried and tested bond that has kept strong through the years. It manifests itself in countless ways, like words and kisses and gifts and time, but underneath it all, love is always a mystery.

Love is letting down all your fences, allowing someone or something to break into you and crush your very soul, but trusting them not to. Love is taking care of that special piece of someone’s heart as if it were your own, putting your needs after theirs. Love is risky, it means being vulnerable and possibly making a fool of yourself but taking the chance so that your restless heart will (hopefully) be at peace.

I don’t believe that all love is unconditional, because people can fall in love anywhere: With a face you pass on the street, with a new song, with a place that evokes old memories. These things can stir up the sweetest of all emotions, but disappear as quickly as it came.

Unconditional love is special; it is formed when two souls are bound to one another, and nothing, not even death, can part them. Unconditional love is often tested in the harshest ways, from the ultimate sacrifice to the decision of your utmost priorities in life. People who share unconditional love always find their way back to one another, no matter how many times they are forced apart.

My Parents.

Both my parents’ lives are somewhat of a reflection to the other. Both of them ran away from home at 16 to escape the constraints of their abusive and narrow-minded households. My father moved into the cheapest hotel he could find and went straight to work for a firm. My mother moved in with her aunt and it wasn’t long until her cousin offered her a simple job in Hong Kong, my mother pounced at the opportunity to take it, dropping out of college to do so.

My father spent his youth traveling and enjoying it with a group of friends, from living in Jamaica for a few months, to road trips across Europe that lasted weeks. It was after a trip to Cebu, when he went back to Hong Kong and met my mother. She probably evoked fond memories of his holiday, her Filipina charm and beauty had him at first sight. She moved into his apartment after a few months and became the talk of the town, but she didn’t care; they were in love.

It was two years later when my dad was being shifted to work in Washington, my mother didn’t have the right papers to go with him, and she was ready to go back to her home in the Philippines. They were forced to separate, and my mother thought that was the end, but she was wrong.

My father, after a few lonely weeks in Washington, must have realised what was important to him. He booked the first flight to Manila, rented a broken down car when he got there, and ventured off onto a quest to find her, with only a map as his guide. Along the way, he stopped for directions and asked a man if he knew who “Maria Luisa Santos” was, and by some strike of fate, that man turned out to be my mother’s cousin, who showed my dad the way to her

Sometimes the hardest thing and right thing are the same.

I looked through her handbag carelessly, flipping through the bunches of paper and the frosted bottle of split-end serum, brushing my fingertips with lipstick cases and powder presses, curiously peeking into pouches and bags. I pulled open the side-zipper, hoping that my passport would be waiting for me inside, and it was, but when I caught a glimpse of the contents of that side pocket, I no longer cared about my passport.

It was a small bag, red and silky, but probably some polyester blend, and inside it was a handful of golden jewelry. The thick bracelet I always saw her wear when I was a child, an Amethyst ring, earrings with Emerald stones, all shining brightly at me as my realizations came crashing down.
She was going to pawn them.
I didn't realise how bad things had gotten until I held that heavy bag in one hand, and my passport in the other. She was going to pawn her jewelry in order to pay for my plane ticket.
It's always a choice of happiness versus reason, for me. Decide between what you want and what you think is right. I always choose reason, and ended up regretting it. I've often heard the saying that life hands us the same lessons over and over again until we learn them properly, I could easily be selfish and assume that life wants me to choose happiness, but I'll never know until it's done.

People are allowed to be angry if they want. They shouldn't have to wear a facade to protect the feelings of people who care about them. If I want to be nonchalant, let me fucking be nonchalant. You don't have to tell me how you try your best to keep that smile on your face so that I don't get dragged into your sadness, but guess what? I'm not you and I will never be you, I handle things the way I want to and it's up to you to find a way to deal with it if you care enough. Nothing is fucking wrong, I don't need your "help"