examen xiv

parents have been asking me why i seem 'matamlay' but i don't really know how to tell them what is going on right now. the last time they asked they were dropping me off near church to meet jarro and i couldn't help the tears. they didn't press on with asking me after i brushed it off and said i would kwento soon because i was about to get out of the car. while writing last night my mum walked into my room looking for something and casually said, hindi ka pa nagkkwento. i was writing already then so felt i shouldn't break the rhythm. she just left.

i don't know how to be close to my parents this way. to say, i have realised i am not at all where i should be with God and i need to sort it out. i can imagine saying it and more often than not with them that is just what i do - imagine it and then do it. but paying attention to how i feel i am still often reluctant. unsure of what to expect from a connection, wondering whether i will be disappointed or enlightened.

one of the few times i was really sure was when i stood up for my sister about her marriage. it was clear to me where i was coming from and what i knew needed to happen as a result of my pushing them. but if it is me standing up - or even just opening up - for myself... i am not sure.

i can imagine possible responses like, lagi na lang ako ang mali, most likely from my mother.

as i write this my door is open and across from it, two steps away, is my parents' open door. they make before bed shuffles in a lamp-lit room. both rooms are together in silence. i am reminded of what kath said lately: being together doesn't necessarily mean connecting (paraphrased). and as they do their own moving and breathing and living... i do the same, not too far from them, but in my mind i could not be farther. why is there a feeling of missing? why is it more pronounced right now, than say the normal missing, the comfortable missing of my sister who exists mostly through a whatsapp window?

it feels the same with kath. and the rest of the family. i feel far and left behind - my own fault. right now it is worse than i was physically far away.

james told me the last time we saw each other that he is going to be the worst person ever at keeping in touch. and it couldn't be more true. he explained that he cannot deal with emotions and connections that are beyond his physical periphery. when he realised it, he accepted it. and just carried on. explaining to anyone relevant (only if they were in his physical periphery). i don't know if his last breakup which happened just before i met him was the reason he went into emotional overdrive and when he got over it, he dropped it completely. choosing to live differently. his world so small. i understand him and i appreciate and accept that kind of connection. but at the same time, it is not how i want to live. and since his new way of living had happened, i detached from him my own idea of a close friend.

perhaps trying to accommodate so many different experiences and people have turned me into a character-less vessel. i knew who i was in different contexts, with different people, different cultures.

and coming home. i thought i knew who i was coming home.

but i have been confronted with the question of who i am. plainly, simply, and most painfully. because of course. home isn't now as it was.

i needed to know who i am out of context. maybe in outer space, just to give my brain the abstract place to chew on. maybe in the heart of God. in the hands and feet of Jesus. in the cavity of Mama Mary's bowed head and reverent stance.