Flames to Dust

It’s like I just came from a recent break-up. One morning, we were so certain of our future, and next thing you know, we’re strangers. It’s funny how things can leap from one emotion to another. More like a freak accident when everything happens so fast, circumstances won’t give you transition periods.

Now what I got here is more like a premonition. I’ve foreseen everything before. Not through a vision, but more like a flat fact which is inevitable, like death. I was never sure about how long we’ll last, but I was pretty sure we’ll end sooner or later. I just wasn’t expecting it to be this soon.

They say people always leave. Could we blame them? I say leaving is a part of life, inevitable, like death. When people die, they leave. But we don’t get mad about it, but we rather cry. Leaving was never easy, for anyone. A kid to his yaya, a deported OFW to his American dream, a teacher to his graduating students. These are the moments we fret but certain of will end. Then why do we do it then? We must be loving the feeling of break-ups, being left behind, or leaving.

I say no. Nobody does. So just like the billion other people who felt that they were left behind, I mourn. I know the feeling, trust me. I’ve been left behind before, oh, many times before. But you see, I’m stronger now, or that is what I keep telling myself. We’re trying hard to become stronger, stronger for the people who are afraid to lose us whenever we get left behind. It’s a cycle.

Since I already saw this break-up coming, I went two steps ahead of the flow of things, and went straight to the breakup. They say, I’m too aggressive, that I rush things that I easily jump to conclusions. Well I don’t like it either. And you running after me do not make things easier.

So tell me, are we going to last forever? In my own world maybe. Where I had our future on blueprints, our house designed atop a cliff, with a perfect view of the Himalayas. We’d have coffees on our porch, barbeques with the neighbors, and maybe some wild drinking parties from time to time. But it’s too selfish to claim the world all to myself. In your world, other guys can make you happy, other guys can make you listen, understand and believe the points I’ve ben trying to tell you ever since we started. I might be saying the right things all along, I just wasn’t the right person to tell.

So with goodbyes come the sleepless nights of knowing that the mornings will welcome me one person less. We’ll that is one thing I have to deal with everyday, or at least until the day I can finally accept that it’s over.

In difficult breakups, I only learn one thing-- that what I had was something big. Big does not come to anybody anymore these days. Big comes only to those who deserve them, and I am thankful for having been deserving at some point in my life. It was short-lived, but you made sure it was worth it. Thank you so much.