Close Your Eyes, Count to Ten

Lack of Color to See the Difference

In my dreams, I was always falling.

               I had no idea where I fall from. Dreams do not really start with a concrete beginning. I was just falling, and I could feel the pull of gravity, my body rushing towards the hard ground—the ground that seemed to light up as I rush downward. I didn’t know if the ground was made of glass or something else, but every time I dream about falling, the grounds grows brighter and brighter until I hit it—presumably dead.

               Am I really falling? Is gravity really pulling me, or there’s something else pushing me down? Those were the thoughts that ran through my head, sudden thoughts while in the caress of free-fall. I have yet to learn from my Physics subject at school the laws—natural or divine—that governs this world around me.

               Before hitting the ground, I wake up to my silent room. When my eyes opened, all I saw was the ceiling. There are moments upon waking up when I couldn’t discern where I was that I always take a moment to stare at the ceiling as if trying to decipher some ancient language written on it. Maybe it was my version of a morning prayer, I don’t know.

To my left was a window full of sunshine, a cabinet of books, and a poster of my favorite Filipino band, Typecast, tacked on the wall. To the right was the rest of the room: a closet for clothes, a desktop PC, an electric fan, and then a door to a hallway that leads to the rest of my house. Grasping my surroundings is a way to ground myself, a way to tell myself that I’m no longer dreaming nor falling. I am awake. Back to reality.

               It was as if I lingered the whole night on a cliff somewhere in the dream world, and has fallen to wake up on my bed on a Saturday morning.

               In my eyes: filthy dried tears. In my breath, the taste of last night’s beer, savored in an event or another hanging-out session with friends. In my left arm: the Black-Sabbath bracelet she gave to me, tied there like a mark from a slit-wrist a long time ago.

               In my heart: only one name. One girl.

               Out at the window, the turquoise sky made me think that the rest of November would be better. Be better and over with. In almost month, the year will change. Goodbye, 2009. Hello, 2010.

               I rose from the bed, walked out of the room and went straight to the bathroom to wash my face. On the table in the kitchen, my Mom left a note. She’d be working late. There was food in the fridge for reheating. How many days has it been like this? My Mom would be working late, leaving the house before I wake up, and she would come home with me already in bed, asleep. But we have to live. And if living like this will make us live another day, then I should just get used to it. She always told me she’d use up her saved vacation leaves and she’d take me somewhere. That day is still yet to come.

               But being home alone meant one thing: I couldn’t get out. That was the number one rule Mom always impose: never leave the house unattended. My Mom never gained the trust of safety door-locks. Not leaving the house didn’t matter to me one way or another, just as long as Erika wouldn’t call to ask me to come out and hang out.

               I took a half-empty carton of milk from the fridge and ate some cereal. After eating, I smoked a cigarette while inside the house. It was the only time I could smoke and feel like a king while inside the house. My Mom knew I was drinking since I entered my Junior year in high school, but I did my best not to give her a hint about my smoking.

               The house was silent. For what seemed like a long time, I felt so lonely. The smoke curled away from my hand and dispersed like ghosts in the light. I put on a tune by Alesana, “Early Mourning”, and just stared at the floor. I took my phone, but there weren’t any texts, just some useless emotional quotes from the mobile texting clan I recently joined. I finished my cigarette, just as Shawn Milke was singing the final notes. I stared at the ashtray as if I was staring at myself in the mirror.

***

I rarely dreamed about Erika, but I often told her about my dreams anyway, and she would give her crazy interpretations. “You will die that way. You’d slip and fall, or jump yourself,” she’d say. I queried that I wouldn’t find myself in any high ground or elevation since I’m afraid of heights. “That’s the thing! That’s why you’d die that way!” she answered and then we’d just laugh it off. She loved reading horror stories and have a fascination for the macabre, the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King, which was probably the reason why she had this dark canopy over many things, including her clothing. Every time we’d hang out, she only wore clothing of a single color: black. Matched with black eyeliner, black nail polish, black bracelets—and it was normal; normal for us sixteen-year-olds and our Emo culture (as it was later dubbed, but nobody cared), yet causing panic among our elders.

               “You’re not doing drugs, are you, son?” my Mom asked me one time when she saw me, about to go outside, wearing all-black clothing.

               The thing was, I couldn’t explain my strange fascination to this Emo culture: the one-sided hair, the stud belts, sneakers, nerdy-glasses, music with highly emotional lyrics, high-pitched male vocals, voicebox-wrecking unclean vocals and screams, and crushing breakdowns. And I doubt any of the guys my age could explicitly explain their fascination to this. To be honest, it felt really cool, it felt really rebellious, like we were indicting this system—this system of total normalness.

               Or maybe I just found more connection to it than in anything else.

               Sadness is a reality lingering everybody’s lives. Pain, angst, despair, bitterness, melancholy—they linger everywhere; and realizing that is a harsh truth we often ignore or brush away simply because we wish to escape from such a reality and live in an imaginary optical illusion known as joy and bliss. Am I being too pessimistic? Maybe so. But some people are forgetting that without these harsh truths in our lives, we will never understand the true value of happiness. And Emo music somehow made me understand these things better than anything else. Whenever I look at their lyrics, say from the bands My Chemical Romance, Alesana, or Typecast, I feel that there’s a fishbone slowly digging itself in my throat, jolting me, and making me reflect on so many things.

               “It’s not just a fashion statement; there’s more to it, something that only we can see,” Erika told me one time when we were at the Bridge smoking a cigarette.

               I let out a laugh. “Cool. Now we’re seeing things.”

               “The problem with these older people, they want us to be like them. When in fact their time’s all over and gone.”

               “Hmm.” Okay, I know. I’m not really the talkative type. Sometimes I just let her talk and I just listen.

               She flicked her cigarette towards the creek. I watched her slowly stand on the ledge of the bridge while maintaining her balance.

               “Hey, be careful!” I said.

               She was laughing. “I’m fine, don’t worry.” Erika spread her arms like a majestic angel spreading her wings open. “If I jump here, what will these people think? That I’m a crazy girl contemplating suicide? That’s how their minds work. Nobody will think that I just want to fly.”

               “You are crazy, Erika!” I said.

               She went down from the ledge laughing. “But I’m right, right?”

               “I guess so.”

               “Nobody looks at the other side of things; the side that they can’t understand.”

               “It’s probably because nobody wishes to ruin their good vibes.”

               Erika smirked. “When I’m smoking and somebody tells me not to, I get really pissed off. I don’t want anybody telling me what to do, or what to feel.”

               I just smiled, for truly, I didn’t know what to say, or if I should say anything. Because I knew, from the deepest wells of my heart, that I was feeling the same.

***

I was about to take an after-lunch nap when suddenly my phone rang.

               “Hey,” it was Erika. “Where are you?”

               “Home alone.”

               “Can I come over?”

               “Sure.” Suddenly remembering something, I added: “Hey, before you hang-up let me just check—” I rushed towards the fridge, and then opened it. “—that’s right, we’re out of potatoes.”

               She laughed. “Damn it. Okay, I’ll bring some. You peel them okay?”

               And then she hung up.

               My heart was beating fast. I felt as if I ran for hours.

***

French fries were Erika’s favorite snack. She liked it so much that she preferred to cook it herself instead of just buying it from the grocery store, or ordering a take-out from a nearby Mcdonald’s or Jollibee. She even wanted to slice the potatoes herself, slice them with such precision, and then fry it to the right crisp. I couldn’t understand this habit of hers. When I asked her about it, she told me this:

               “Everything that is fun or delicious needs to be done carefully. You hurry it up, then everything goes wrong.”

               Maybe she had a point there. Just what, I’m afraid I wasn’t so sure.

***

While waiting for Erika to arrive, I thought about telling my feelings for her. Inside my head, it felt so easy. In fact, I could say all the words: Erika, you mean a lot to me. I like you. I like you a lot. You are the reason why I continue breathing. I am incomplete; without you my life lacks color.

               How they will sound to her is the thing I’m worried about.

               Suddenly, the doorbell rang.

               “It’s me,” I heard Erika’s voice as I approached the door.