Katipunan II

Happy endings are so passé. It was rather unattainable. As I thought, there would be not any happy ending for us, because we will last forever. But then, I realized that the last clause of the sentence should be simply cut off. It's not real. It's not forever. It's not a happy ending either. We're not gonna end up together.

5.42 PM

There's just too much people on a Friday afternoon at the Faculty Center waiting shed. I decided to take a seat on one of those green slabs since I won't get in any jeepney just yet anyway. There's just too much people.

It's been almost two months from now after we broke up. Yes, that odd girl from Spanish 11 of first year, we broke up. I thought we'd be happy together, viewing the entirety of Katipunan avenue on that blue Ateneo footbridge, holding our hands forever, sitting beside each other, simply listening to what's around us. But it was just a realized pipe dream. Those happy memories of time long gone just haunt me, like how it scares me to death to see a dead cat on the roadside or how it almost broke me to lose my wallet on my first Lantern Parade when I had just got my seven-thousand peso Christmas money from Dad. It's all gone and lifeless.

Should I even think that it broke my heart? From that morning she called me on the phone to tell me that she wanted to break up with me, I have never been so unstable as before. It's when everytime someone leaves you, you just get lost all of a sudden. Equilibrium lost me, too. I didn't know what I was thinking then, really. I was doing silly things like throwing my phone on the garbage container even if she had not hung up the call yet, crossing the road without even looking out for speeding cars, and accidentally breaking my eyeglasses when I was hurriedly running to class and I hit it badly on the corridor wall. Wearing contact lenses now just adds up to my carelessness problems, since I often doze off without any clue. I suppose it wasn't being bitter. Perhaps it's from being shocked instead, that even for the last person that I would want to love would still leave me hanging in this world by myself.

6.04 PM

Daylight flees to give way to the other celestial illuminants, and I'm still here sitting in the ugly green slab waiting for the people to go off. I know that I should've walked to the terminal near Benitez Hall instead, but I'm just too tired and at least I could rest my feet for a little while. Besides, it reminds me of our strolls and those other memories that I had junked into the garbage can along with my cell phone, that I just wanna have in my hand again, scroll to the never-erased messages and cherish the events I had marked in its calendar, and stare into the gallery's photographs and remember those days. Sometimes, I regret it. But maybe it's just what it should be.

Okay. So I might just have exaggerated it. Ever since that incident I had never been to Katipunan Avenue ever again, nor rode that red-roofed jeepney. So under the banner of moving on for a cause, I decided to go to Katipunan to spend the whole weekend at my best friend's place. I'm not so sure if I had actually moved on. Yes, I'm getting my life back from being disoriented. It's roughly eight weeks, and a lot of things had already happened. There's nothing to look back. There must be nothing to worry about. It's not like I cried over spilled milk. Tears have dried even before they came out. It's over. We were over.

6.07 PM

The jeepney is surprisingly spacious on a Friday dusk. I feel very tired that I just want to sleep, but ever since I was independent in going places, I've been always bad at sleeping while on a trip. If I attempt to sleep at this very moment, I might just repeat what I did when I was in third year high school that the driver even have to wake me up at the terminal, which was, by the way, too far from our house. Good thing I'm listening to music from my iPod. By paying attention to the music I can kill the drowsiness and let it die away.

Two months isn't that long anyway. It still feels like the usual Katipunan ride that I always take every Sunday to eat out or to go the Cubao or Marikina. It's still the usual thing where it's too seldom to see anyone I know. It's nothing new. It's - Wait. Is that her? She sure became prettier. We practically tried to avoid each other somehow and now she seems to be running to this jeepney. Oh no. Man, no. Okay. She successfully got in, and I can't hide. There's no way I can hide even just my face. Oh great. She sat beside me. How fated was that.

So what's it that I'm gonna do now? All of a sudden I feel like a dork. I let her break6 up with me without even listening to what else she was about to say in that call, particularly the reason why she broke up with me. I feel so stupid for eliminating contact with her even if it might appear to be alright anyway. I can see globules of sweat over my arms and I can feel the butterflies in my stomach. This is all so crazy. Damn, it feels like what Miley Cyrus "felt" in Party in the U.S.A.

6.12 PM

"Oh, it's you," she says, finally noticing me after a few moments of my sweating from anxiety. "Oh, yeah," I reply, finally looking at her face too, but just in a short glance. "It's been a long time since, isn't it?" She tells me. Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. "I'm sorry," she says some more. How come she tells me what I'm about to tell her? "Sorry for what?" I ask, acting like I had totally moved on and forgot that even for some four months we were together. Yeah, that was actually short to remember much of but I definitely know what a lie it would be. "For that call," she then replies, holding my hand that restlessly lies above my left knee. I turned my head back at her. W-why? I wanted to ask her why but I no sounds come out of my mouth, and instead I just gaze at her face, seemingly looking for the answers that obviously were not there.

"Forget it," I crack out, even though I really want to know her own reasons. "Yeah, I guess so," she agrees, and finally I see her smile again, that smile that for a lot of nights I've been missing so much when I'm lying in my bed reminiscing about the past, about our happy yet short memories, or that for some times in class I look out the open AS door and gaze at the sky that's peeking through the trees that reaches out to it amidst their constant fall of leaves. "So where're you heading?" I ask, trying to change the mood that we immersed ourselves into. "I'm going to Manila," she replies, "to a friend's party." I simply nod at what she had just said. I did not listen at all. Or I am unable to, since beside the jeepney is a speeding truck that distracts me from paying attention to her voice, the voice that even in the shower I thought calls me, the voice that even talks to me in my sleep when I'm in the Main Library - General Reference Section just after I send the crammed term paper of 6 sleepless hours to my professor's Gmail account.

6.25 PM

It's a Friday evening and we all know how Katipunan becomes a depressed sink hole of cars every now and then. And now I'm beside her again, and I deeply pray that this jeepney would run slower than everyone else, just so I could savor this moment, the only moment that's happening, which may not happen to us ever again.

I catch her staring at me. "What?" I ask, thinking if she was waiting an answer from me to an unheard question. "You seem to be so bothered," she says, without any other extra feat, just her lips artistically opening and closing at certain lengths. "Sorry," I apologized, "I guess I wasn't paying that much attention to anything."

6.38 PM

The slow flow of traffic is really getting to my nerves. I feel very uneasy right now, especially that I'm beside the woman I loved, and lost. For a long while there was no questions, no remarks, no voices. It becomes awkward around here as the minutes go by.

"It gets awkward, huh?" she says - how come she knows what I was exactly thinking? "Uh," I reply, "yeah. It does seems like." Then she smiled as I looked at her for a bit. Then her smile made me smile. Then my smile made her do a little laugh. Then it made me laugh a little too. Funny, as it is, that it becomes a game without us noticing it.

6.40 PM

"Hey," I call to her, "I wanna know why." "What why?" she replies, and I laugh. "Why you broke up," I say. "I thought you just want to forget about it," she says, and that reply just seemed to be silly to me. Or it made me feel like I'm silly. Of course I told her that we'll forget that. Of course I'm moving on, forgetting that myself, and that's why I'm hanging out with my best friend instead, finally after a lot of busy weeks that we had. Of course, what am I even thinking?

In a little while I'll be going down this jeepney and I might never see her face as close as this again. This might be the last time that I would fall for her, for the smile and the eyes and that sweet little face that I had missed for so long. Maybe it must all boil down to something. Maybe the feeling really should fade away. And maybe we don't have to stick together too just like what we usually do. Maybe this is just the way it is.

6.42 PM

"I'm leaving you now," I tell her, as I already see the blue Ateneo footbridge and the other establishments around, "someone's waiting for me." She smiled, as I expected. I pulled the string on the ceiling of the jeepney to signal the driver to hit the brake. "Goodbye," I say. Before I could even raise my body to move out of the vehicle, I'm very sure that I heard her say "I miss you so much." I know. I must know that. I missed her too. And I probably will miss her still.