ad meliora semper

It is a dilapidated house. You take stock of your surroundings and spot broken blinds inside a dingy room. You walk further inside, and you find yourself in a hollow and closed-in corridor with floorboards that creak and groan with every heavy footstep.

The children's hushed voices bounce on the walls of the house, hurried and excited. Their sounds carry from another room over. 

You look down and are greeted by the gaze of an emaciated young girl with neat pigtails that clash horribly with her overall drab disposition. She pulls at your hand. Her eyes plead with you to come with, so you allow her to lead you. 

This is the entertainment room, she says, even though there was barely anything that could be considered even remotely entertaining in that room. Littering the space are torn-up curtains, settees and chaise lounges with their upholstery and coiled springs spilling like guts out of a stomach. You look up, squinting at the patches of rain on the ceilings. The cracked wallpapers flutter limply in the drafty room.

And then you notice, there, tucked in a corner of the room, is a man. He is tall, lean, and with strips of his clothing hanging off of his frame. He's hunched over on the table in front of him. The children huddle around him, and one by one, he tries to scare them albeit without much success. An empty, faraway look haunt the children's eyes, and it is a far more terrifying scene than what he is attempting to do.
 
The girl drops your hand gently, and walks forward to stand in front of the man. You watch her push herself back against your chest as he playfully lunges at her. You try to comfort her, caressing the top of her head with a hand and rubbing her shoulder with the other.

You look at the man. I know him, you think. He knows me, too.

Bending down to her eye level, you explain to the little girl that he is a good man; he's not going to hurt her or any of them. She looks up at you with a dull shine to her eyes, and then walks away without a word.

With the little girl gone, you conjure up a chair and sit before the man. You start talking. You find out that you are each other's. He looks so much different now, you think. But it is, without a doubt, him. 

In this world, you were separated. But you have finally found each other again. He is older now, and so are you. In another lifetime, you are much younger. And you are together for much longer. 

The room suddenly brights, light spilling in from all the windows. It is brighter, but somehow it is still not enough to make much of a difference. Your heart leaps in your chest with something like quiet relief. The white noise insde your head dies down. 

You steal another glance at the man, searching his eyes for answers. Steadily, he meets your eyes and provides the answers to all of your questions. 

Boldly and with all the courage you could muster, you take hold of his arm. You pull him towards the children. You find they are preoccupied with nothing, so you try to get their attention. 

He has to leave now, you start to say. But we're not going to let that make us sad.

The man's hand shoots out to grasp yours tightly. Helpless against his hold, you let him. He grips your hand firmly and squeezes resolutely. He shakes his head at you once, and understanding dawns on you.

I don't have to be anywhere you aren't. He rearranges his grip and entwines your fingers together. No more letting go this time. 

And then, I"m staying here with you. I don't have to leave. 

You are bursting to full with astonishment, hope, admiration, joy, love. And you think to yourself, finally, someone who won't leave me behind. 

The floorboards and the walls sound their happiness and gratitude back to you. 

You smile at him, and this time, he returns it.
 

i think i might just cry. but, i won't. i just feel an overwhelming surge of love and appreciation for the kind of person that my grandmother is.

the thought and what it implies terrifies me a little, but today she gave us some of her most prized jewelries. she's told us over the years that she has nothing else to give for us to inherit, but now we have this. it feels like a passage of rites to adulthood somehow. like a reminder of the passage of time, and so the need to pass down heirlooms and well-kept treasures and possessions arises.

i know from the stories that my mom has told me that my greandmother sold some of her gold to pay off the hospital bills when i was born. lola had chosen to stay quiet about this whenever i tried to bring it up in the past for some kind of confirmation, but when i mentioned it again today, she finally gave me an answer.

she showed me the cases and luggage that she has kept hidden away in her room that she said used to be filled with her jewelries and her gold. now, that stock has considerably depleted and some of the few that had remained, she decided to give to us.

lola acknowledged to me that her gold used to be great in number but it has since decreased over the years.

and what she said before i left her room really struck a chord within me.

"my gold collection may have diminished, but at least i managed to save a life."

i wish i could've said something to that, but i couldn't speak. i had no idea what to say to that. i could only bid her a heartfelt goodnight that i wish had conveyed the emotion and the gratefulness that i felt for her. she lost a lot, but saved a life. it really spoke volumes of what my grandmother considered to truly matter in this world. it made me feel precious to hear that.

i love my grandmother so much. i don't know how i could ever repay her for what she's done for me and for us. i know we don't have as much time anymore.

i have to show the people i love that i love them. i can't stand this anymore.

i accidentally scrolled through my old twitter dms and i saw all the past conversations i've had with the people i met over the years. some of these conversations are years old, some left hanging, others completely abandoned. it was heavy with dust and time. 

it made me reminisce for a bit and remember just how many people i made friends and connected with. i used to be so friendly, making sure to reach out to meet new friends. always eager to strike up a conversation. i tried so hard to hold and prolong those talks in hopes of keeping them around or so they wouldn't think i was boring and they wouldn't tire of me and eventually stop being friends with me. i wanted so hard to be liked.

why did i try so hard?

all those conversations dried up in the end, anyway. they died their own natural deaths, i guess. 

these days, i keep a very small and intimate circle. you could even call it stifling with how small it is. even then, it's not like i get to talk to every single one of them constantly, nor do we share similar interests now. 

i guess i don't have much energy to expend on making new friends anymore. i don't see the ned to play the part of the friendly extrovert any longer. sure, i still wish i had more friends than i do sometimes, but i'm simply grateful for the people that do stay and make an effort to keep their place at all. i understand now that i have a limited reserve of energy for the people who really matter.

i'm not always going to be as important to some as they are to me, but it's a fact that i'm going to have to learn how to live with. because that's just the way that the universe and relationships work, i guess.

*

2:52AM

it's always up to the living to tell the stories of those who have gone ahead of us. 

my dad probably would have loved netflix.