Surprised? You should be. And please, catch me here:

 K I K O K I X

It's as if my world got transported to the abyss. I should fester and burn to ashes, but I feel cold. Frozen.

It's official now. One of my most important lifelines is about to be taken away from me. I feel helpless, derailed. My heart is heavy. My mind is a mess. My tears won't come out. My emotions are building up inside me. I'm cold. I'm frozen.

It is the most difficult goodbye.

It's not just about losing business, nor losing the position I've worked hard for. It's not even about losing the perks and material rewards, nor the prospect of having to start my career all over.

Even the point of suddenly losing all the achievements you've worked hard for all these years - to keep the company alive - micrifies the one thing I cannot bear to let go.

I cannot bear to lose the people I have built a very strong strong friendship with over the years.

I cannot imagine how to step inside this place knowing that I would soon be facing complete strangers. Where's the comfort in not being able to witness and experience, again, how we used to deal with our everyday lives - the funny moments fooling around the floor, singing out-of-tune songs, relaxing during coffee breaks, burning cancer sticks at each opportunity, gobbling down food during food trips, and forgetting sanity for each gulp of that amber liquid?

There's no way I could describe what I am about to lose. I can't even begin to deign how I feel. Sure, it's sadness. Dysphoria. And that makes it all the more tiring. I haven't experienced how it is to lose someone you hold dear. But the way I'm feeling right now, I fear it's this close.

My tears can't seem to find a way to get out. My non-reaction is fleetingly dangerous. I'm a breakdown waiting to erupt. I'm a heartache waiting to unleash hell.

I'm still trying to put the pieces together. Perhaps, despite the sadness, I'll be able to find a shifting happiness in reminiscing times spent in reverie. But at the end of the day, as sure as night turns into day, I would find myself unwillingly turning my back on the people I have come to cherish. A miracle would be most welcome, but the uncertainty of it is daunting. I am not confident to be positive about it, when we were surely confident before that no way would our exploits end.

It is the end.

Goodbye Web Hosting. Till we meet again.

I never expected you to go. Not like this. Not when everything is just so right.

This is harder to bear than the usual separation I have endured in the past. You have been a force in my life for more than three years. In fact, you are where my world revolved around. I cannot imagine life without you this sudden. I have in the past attempted to let you go, but your pull always leads me back. I never noticed as time passed by that I have spent more time than I expected sailing through rough times with you and relishing the victory of overcoming those once unfriendly seas.

I do not want to live without you. I feel so lost just thinking how you'll be gone. Imagine just missing the familiar routines that we go through each time our roads meet? Everything will turn so hollow. A vacuum will erode the sense of security I have established because of you. But do I have a choice if you are so bent on departing?

Though I cannot afford to curl up and die, I want to succumb in your arms and wail my despair, if just for an instant. How could you leave this way? How could you choose abandonment when you have just turned my life around?

And yet, I have to accept that you are who you are. We never owned each other. We never had even a short leash to each other to thwart our diverging ways... You had promoted me to enjoy happiness, growth and formidability. You had gotten me to appreciate how challenges could be turned to achievements. And for one last test of character, I guess I would have to employ the ways you had helped me develop about myself to overcome this threatening certainty that is about to lead us to our real destinies.

Off you go. I'll find my way. If not back to you, perhaps back to myself.

Of all the groups I associated myself with during my pre-fallout years in the University of the Philippines, the UP Subol Society Diliman Chapter was my longest ever love affair.

Love affair, eh? Well, let's just say when you give a part of yourself to something without expecting anything in return, I guess you could call that love. Or whatever that comes close enough.

But yes, I consider it a love affair. From 2000-2003. When a significant part of my colorful life began. When I considered Subol the center of my universe during my younger college days.

It feels like deja vu trying to relive those days, as I'm sure I've had spent many hours before penning this same story during my Silew (the org's official newsletter) days (I almost took the post of editor-in-chief a career... Not!). I never really planned joining a provincial organization halfway through college. But I guess I owe it all to fate that eventually I finally found a place to belong – to share a heritage that I embraced during the time I lived in a town called Binalonan, Pangasinan.

So Subol brought my home in the province closer to Manila. As it turned out, Subol later became my solace when turbulent times in my life came; it's also where I began to feel the need to lead. Needless to say, I could not have enjoyed the good without the bad. And so Subol was also where I got to experience some milestones of baptism by fire – my first taste of breaking down after a very tumultuous encounter with Mr. Love, and yes, even politics in the microcosmic level.

Truly in many ways Subol helped me grow and evolve.

There's just too many events to reminisce about Subol. Too many memories so good to relive. I remember too many people whom I have touched and touched me in more ways than one. People I have always looked forward to spending time again to reconnect.

It is a cascade of many wonderful times that truly made my college experience something really worth treasuring.

Yet time flies and in my desperate quest to find my life I took a detour and had to depart from the life I have had with Subol - my way of growing up more outside of the org's reach. As I learned to deal with the more important things of life, being with Subol had its toll. In no time I found myself buried in the midst of winning how to survive life. I had to move on to be sure I did survive. But surely the legacy Subol had imprinted in my existence continued to live on...

After almost four years, I finally came to terms of revisiting my so called Subol past. Yesterday, I found out through Friendster that the org was to be holding this semester's talents night for applicants. Though I was meant to prepare for Leo's birthday that day, I asked Edward to tag along, short of gate-crashing, just for me to finally have an idea on how the org and its members were faring. (Leo and Edward are friends of mine who are also characters of another dimension of my UP experience – that is, the Narra days. But that's another story).

After almost four years, I suddenly found myself sentimental about Subol. I guess it was about time that I paid my ex-love affair a visit. My nostalgia was just too hard to contain.

Pity, the venue was off-campus. So we had to ply the pristine suburb of Balara (even passing by Mang Jimmy's – yet another spot that evokes many memories) to reach the place. And there, with less than 20 people, I found myself surrounded by members and applicants who undeniably paled compared to my age...

Being with them (later on Edward agreed with me) made me feel so old. Old in a very disturbing way...

I guess the point of going there was to re-establish my connection with the org, though I was half-expecting I'd chance upon members of my own generation. Though everyone was a complete stranger, my presence was enough to draw attention. I was slightly taken aback when they almost hesitated entertaining me. But thanks to Edward, we were able to break the awkwardness with his usual display of ricocheting queen antics.

So there I was, almost trying to bully the applicants with all my questions. As if not enough, I rounded on the members too. I don't know how to earn their respect, so I just had to be myself. The usual Kiko – bubbly, loud and full of non-sense. It felt good to give them a short laugh, no matter how artificial it probably had been.

Still, it really felt good to reconnect.

Too bad I couldn't wait for the program to start. Sadly, I couldn't even wait for any more familiar faces to show up as I had an appointment that I couldn't forgo (being there in Subol had me already cut hours on my workout session). I was a bit disappointed to see how not being able to follow their own schedule (due to Filipino time circumstances, I guess – it never changes after all) deprived me of the chance to meet some old friends again, but meeting the force that currently keeps Subol alive (it just celebrated 32 years of service to Pangasinan) felt more than enough now as I am more confident that Subol would still likely survive the years to come.

That way, there's still a Subol I could return to. Until time really makes me realize that though old I may have become, a part of why Subol still exists today was in a way because of me and the members who persevered to pass on the old Subi tradition.

Francis Eusebio L. Bautista
The Subolite Known as Kiko – and no, not the founding member.
Batch 2000A
Mga Incredible Subolites - Mi2S

I guess the ironic thing about hearing out a friend vent out all his frustrations about his failed relationship is the part that reminds me that I've been there, I've done that.

How do you challenge yourself to be at peace when you feel you've given him all you've got, all you are, but turns out he neglects your role in his life and you end up feeling nothing at all? How do you take all these reasons, albeit alibis, about why and how that thing you have with him won't certainly work out when you're doing all your efforts to make it work? How do you let go of something you have made your life's center, no matter how foolish and condescending you have become just to insist on keeping it, when you know you're blatantly given the run-around of a surely sour ending?

How do you accept your love wasn't worth it for him? How do accept him accepting your love only to see him disregarding you like he never took it all?

Hearing all those things, I felt my insides twist a little. It kind of made me remember the same hell I've been through before. Only that, I can't see why my friend hasn't seen the answers to his questions. I had seen mine, and it's so simple. But I guess feeling his shoes, I had to remind myself that it took time before I ended up in my own realization. It really is always about time - time to let go and heal.

In this case where you see yourself lost in your own labyrinth of confused emotions, to truly find your direction is a matter of choosing how worth it is to keep something that keeps you happy but at the same time makes you miserable.

People become stupid because of love, blinded by the fear of losing the one they hold dear.

But then, it always goes back to the part where the more important person for you is yourself.

It's obvious, but most of the time people forget. Suffering never is a pleasant experience (except for masochists perhaps?). You can't suffer all your life. And in the natural order of life, all things must come to an end, suffering too.

You just have to know when to stop.

-oOo-

I'll be having my own laptop soon. Thank God Edward offered me his because he's off to the US any time soon and he won't be needing it there anymore (He still hasn't confirmed when he'll leave, only that it's soon. Fine!). But the cost, though relatively cheaper than it's original cost of purchase, still exhausted my resources a lot.

Yet, I look forward to better things because of it.

I can already see myself so messed up trying to redo my abominable blog.

But I think I'll be able to delete those private pictures I stored somewhere in the Internet now. I feel uncomfortable letting them lie there just in case it turns out I'll be the next big scandal in town. Hahaha!

But the best delight is the part where I'll be able to write more now. I feel my scrawny fingers typing those keyboards each time I feel a little off and need to loosen up by writing.

Geesh. Am I forgetting I bought the darn thing because that absolves me of any more alibis why I cannot do my freaking bachelor's thesis?

Touche!

-oOo-

I'm feeling a little "old".

But let me do some cheer dancing to see if it helps. Hahaha!

I hate it when I'm bored. It makes me write silly stuff.

Gotta go!

It's not my fault you're tired; I'm as tired as you are. It's not even my problem you're crapping all over the place; I have my own crap to clean up.

But never - NEVER - ask me to clean up your own mess.

I've been through enough mess to know how to mop it out my life. If you're struggling to be at par with me, then work hard and beat me. Just don't ask me to go down with you. I've been down long enough to suffer; all I can do is go up after hitting bottom low. So stop being a crab and don't be mental about it.

I find no pleasure in seeing you suffer. But I'm not even sure you care when I'm the one obviously suffering. Just because I take it easy doesn't mean I'm not grumbling.

That doesn't give you any license to question the sincerity of my position. I am disgruntled because all this time, I've tried hard to be on your side. It crushes me to learn that you antagonize me in spite of all the efforts I've spent in trying to please you.

Through it all, it even irks me to see that I'm trying to explain myself when I don't owe you any. It only makes me arrive to the conclusion that never will I take any more blows for you when I know for a fact that you'll never even glance my way when you already know I'm dying.

I don't need you. So get out of my life.

There goes the scattering of lost feelings.

Before I could hardly restrain myself from wanting to have him again. Everything back then was so raw and fresh. I couldn't remove him from my system. From my life.

Now I can't believe how foolish I was to have insisted on something that I had already lost, something never meant for me. My take on love then was that if I wanted it so badly, I would have to make sure I did everything possible to get it.

And I ended up where I first started - alone.

Now, I'm still alone. But curiously, it dawned on me that after a long time of letting go, after a long time after I did let go, I can look into his face again and find my feet still on the ground. I am not crashing down, as I did before.

He's merely a face now, not the one I used to almost worship.

I guess it's true then that time heals all wounds. Everything ends in time.

I caught a glimpse of him today, I entertained the thought of glaring at him to test myself. Thankfully, I can now turn away, happy that what was once a sad episode of mine has now turned to a murky chapter of little significance. There's no more heavy emotions. Just the delight of discovering that I could make it afterall.

There goes the scattering of lost feelings. There he goes.

And I'm gone from his life as befits my choice.

Listening to Lifehouse’s “Hanging by a Moment” and eating my favorite banana fritters on a hot Friday afternoon, I couldn’t help but choke upon reading Leo’s short message about him wanting to get taken – as soon as possible.

I couldn’t blame the poor guy. He’s been in and out of relationships, even beating me for the shortest possible relationship (if you can call it that). Loneliness creeps up easily when you’re alone, much more when you know there is absolutely no one out there you can share your loneliness with. I guess Leo suddenly felt that surge so he just sent me such a lackadaisical text. Worse, I have this nagging feeling he sent me that on purpose because perhaps I might just relate with him…

Me? I just want to laugh this out. But yes, I could relate a little. Just a little.

I am single. Steadily single. And yes, sometimes I fear I’ll be perpetually alone.

I just spent the last months of my life chasing the wrong dreams. I wasted my time for another relationship gone wrong.

But curiously, I wasn’t bothered. I am not bothered, even now. I saw it coming. I knew how to read an “it-won’t-work” type of relationship, but I wanted to prove it otherwise. I wanted to digress from the inevitable. But like a rock that’s sure to fall from the edge of a cliff, I plummeted to the impairing truth that I couldn’t force something that’s bound to fail in the first place.

Maybe, just maybe, I am just forcing myself to be in a relationship at a time all forces of the universe are not in agreement with my decision to be attached. I accepted eventually that maybe it’s just not really my time yet to consummate my fantasy of an everlasting love affair.

Surprisingly, I haven’t ranted at all. Many weeks have passed by my blog without it being updated. I’ve taken a time off from all these negative thoughts. I’m still working my way to resign myself with all these troubles about finding the right one.

He should be out there. Somewhere. All I need is a twist and trick of fate so that we’ll stumble upon each other. I haven’t given up hope for him at all. I haven’t given up hope for Mr. Forever.

So I guess I’ll let Leo choke about his longings for now, but I think I’ll hang by a moment more to see if I’m really bound to be alone after all.

Suddenly, it's too hard to breathe.

I. I drag myself to do my routine. I feel the best of my years has been eclipsed by the lack of importance I found myself to be bound in. I find my circle of trust skewed, my comfort zone seceding. I feel done. I feel gone.

You. You don't know me. You don't look at me hard enough to realize the real me. You just know that I exist, but you don't bother showing me I do. I'm like a phantom to you, haunting you like a demon. You promised to be with me. But you're not with me. In more ways than one. You only know I exist when you have to pronounce your reasons of why you can't be there for me. You were never there for me. Never...

He. He hasn't come to my life. He's somewhere, still lost. Our paths have not yet crossed. He's been lost for too long now. I wish he could just find me and steal me away. Away from all these miseries. From all the loneliness. He will come... He will come.

We. We? We were never us. I wish I could have us. But there's no magic about us. There's no tingle. Nothing at all. Yes, we can never be us.

You. You again? Enough of you.

They. They were all the things I hoped for. But I don't know if they could ever happen now. I'm imprisoned in this eternal dilemma of uncertainty. I wish I I could have them all. But sadly, I can't have them all. 

It's still hard to breathe...

Too long have I held up all these pains. Too long have I stood up against all these adversities.

And too long have I lost. Too long.