Missing: Bits and Pieces of Self

February 12, 2007

The one thing that I miss about being a teenager is the aimless, purposeless drifting I had been able to do very well. Six years ago, work and the need for a plan had not squeezed the life out of me. I was passionate. I loved with abandon and hated with recklessness.  I planned my life selfishly, excluding most people except for my siblings, papa, and a select slew of relatives. I read until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. I wrote fiery editorials and made vehement protests. I grinned at mob dispersal units and flirted shamelessly with thin young men who, grimly and determinedly, vowed to change the social order, or in lingo truer to their revolutionary dreams, invert the tatsulok. I drank like a sailor and tailed after a misanthropic older man who mocked my age, bought me endless bottles of beer, and wrote for his column so beautifully and intelligently he broke my heart each time he refused to marry me.

I traveled. I went to provinces so remote the world seems to have forgotten about them. I joined fact-finding missions. Once, we dug up nine crudely buried cadavers. All nine bore signs of torture; four were children, and one had been in an advanced state of pregnancy. Once, we walked non-stop for twelve hours, past tiny huts, farmers on siesta, carabaos bathing in mud, and little children minding children not much smaller than they are. Once, I saw Major General Jovito Palparan. They called him The Butcher of Eastern Visayas and twice, I saw with painful clarity how he came by this nickname. I wept with a sadness that mirrored the pain of the highlands around me.

I was insolent, self-righteous, quick to anger but just as quick to laugh. No one could hurt me. I thought the world was my drawing board. I spent two days shouting directions to a group of hard-bitten, grown men and flagged down many a jeepney driver and asked him to join our cause. I barged into classrooms and implored students to become more socially aware, teachers to be more socially pro-active. I skipped class with the disdain of one who was being educated not by teachers but by life. I disapproved of those who had too much money and sympathized with those who had none. As for money itself, I looked upon it with the condemnation of the very young and the ignorant; how could they have used it as a tool for suffering when it should have been a means for progress?

I wrote long, shamelessly emotional letters. I slept under the open sky, cold but not alone, uncomfortable but not unhappy. I broke my father’s heart, as soundly and thoroughly as he had once broken mine. The heartache may have been inappropriate but I refuse to regret it. I had been fierce and fearless and in time, he came to be proud of me.

Yes, I had been all that six years ago; and last night, as I crawled into bed, nursing a bad case of flu and an even worse case of nostalgia, I thought of the girl that I had once been and how she must have laughed at my new-found caution and fear. She would have laughed at how I transitioned from loving the whole world to loving people in particular, from fearing for society to fearing for my daughter. But how could I not have done so? Old loves must make way for new loves and people change all the time; who knows if for the better or for the worse; what I know is that now I no longer live for myself and the world is not as unkind as I had once believed it to be. 

The Tiny, Exquisite Details That Go Into a Death

I sometimes wonder how Sylvia Plath and Maningning Miclat did it. Did they just wake up one day and decided that life is much too heavy a burden? Or, did they spend days, weeks, or even years weighing arguments, gazing at the things, people, and moments they will miss, thinking of the matters that make it oh so tempting to snuff out their tender, young lives? I don't think I'll ever be a suicide. Suicide requires much planning, and I suck at making plans. The only time I'm ever good at planning is when I plan how a million dollars would mysteriously wind up inside my bag and how I'll spend it.

But I digress. My point is that suicides are planners because a lot of thought goes into self-murder. Plenty of calculations go into it, too. After all, its tricky getting the oven to be just the right temperature, the rope to be just the exact length, and the tablets to be just the right dose. A suicide has plenty of floors to choose from, too. A fall from the third floor wouldn't be as lethal as a fall from, say, the ninth floor. Additionally, if one intends to wrestle with a truck, one has to consider the perfect angle that would ensure maximum fender damage. A suicide also has to consider the element of time. How much time does he/ she have to finish himself/ herself off? Would it be possible to suffer irreversible blood loss or oxygen deprivation before a family member or a meddling friend comes to your rescue? Finally, we come to the letter. Most suicides leave a letter behind. The message could be as trite as "I'm sorry" and "Could you ever forgive me?". Or, it could be the unusual type. "I want my nails done in pink." I would imagine that a suicide who has the luxury of time, who could plan the means of his or her death right down to the last nanosecond would also take the time to formulate a memorable suicide note.

I'll never stop wondering why people kill themselves. What pushes them to say goodbye with such finality? Could it be love, hate, misfortune, an emptiness that gnaws at you from the inside. Could it be a single tragic loss or a lifetime of buried hurts? It confounds me. True, life is short and difficult. But for all its shortness, its difficulty, its sadness, life is all we have. So, how could one simply give up on life?