I lie half-awake in a state of confusion,
as I take a deep breath with my eyes closed – slightly squinting. I can feel
beads of sweat forming on my forehead and some flowing down my temple to my
nape. I can’t resist this steamy
sensation lingering around my neck and chest anymore, like I’m being passionately
raped all thru out my body. I wrestle
with the pillows as to not open my eyes. Because once I open these eyes, I know
there’s no going back.
As the summer kisses my lips, I felt
this tingling inside my system. It’s decided. I’ve decided. I open my eyes
slowly as they adapt to the dimly lit environment. I am alone.
I got up.
The AC stopped working; I must’ve set
the timer incorrectly. Nonetheless, I turned it on once more, but leaving the
lights as they were. As insensible as it may seem, it is the darkness that
gives me a sense of peace and tranquility.
“Agh, Metro Manila, why are you being
a jerk to me?” I sigh as I gaze upon
Manila’s nightlife from my glass-walled room, 34-storeys atop the ground. “I’ve
worked hard my whole life to gain leverage and yet you still make me feel like
I don’t belong. I’ve worked my way up the ladder of success and still being
treated like an outcast. I see myself as unique in one way or another, yet you
simply see me as indifferent.” I warrant these statements inside my head as I
tap on the glass-wall.
I’m not usually like this, maybe the hot
season just got under my skin. I hate my sleep getting interrupted.
I went to the kitchen and got myself
a glass of Malbec Gran Reserva Fabre Montmayou, my favorite label of red wine
as it shows a remarkable balance - with very elegant, delicate and silky
tannins, a comparison I’ve always wanted to associate myself with, thinking
that this might lure the Sandman back and lull me to sleep.
I went back to my room and turned
myself towards my laptop. I put the glass of wine down with a coaster beneath
it onto the table adjacent to my bed, where the digital clock rests – which reads
18 minutes past midnight. I picked my laptop up, flipped it open and turned it
on.
“I’m fully awake now, might as well surf
the net and catch up with the current events” I think to myself as I cautiously
sit down on my bed with one leg crossed and the other touching the floor.
I grabbed my headphones and put it
on; I then jacked it on my laptop and played my favorite playlist – first song:
“Aspri mera ke ya mas” which translates
“There will be better days, even for us” by Agnes Baltsa.
I logged on to my email account, for
no apparent reason. Or maybe there is a reason for this, I just don’t know it
yet. I then went back to surfing the net, appreciating the masterpieces of
lesser known and/or up-and-coming artists on the deviantart site.
As I am being mesmerized by the art
offered by promising common people, I suddenly heard a familiar sound. It was a
beep sound, a customized beep sound – very familiar from long ago.
“**bleelip**”
It was my personal email account,
minimized in the background, prompting that I just received a new email.
Knowing that my close relatives,
peers and co-workers are well-informed that I become dragon-like when my sleep gets
interrupted, I got irritated - but it was my curiosity that has gotten the best
of me.
“Who is this brave heart that emailed
me in this unholy hour?” I mumbled onto the darkness.
So, I maximized the email tab and
directly went onto the inbox. It so happens that I have 436 unread messages but
it was that email that got my curiosity earlier that really stands out of the
bunch.
I can’t believe what I’m seeing. The
message’s preview reads:
Sender: Jessie Elizalde; Received: 2
minutes ago; Subject: A broken arm heals, A broken heart dies
I’m in shock. The preview left my mouth
open, my jaw hanging, ‘brows on a head-on collision with each other and my head
tilted to the right – like I have just seen a ghost.
“What the fvck!?” I blurted out.
I collected myself and mustered every
bravery within me – and clicked the said email. It was dated from a decade ago.
A time-traveling email. This got me dumbfounded even more. Still a little bit
shaken, a started reading the email.
“From: Jessie Elizalde;
Recipient: jzalde_sonata@yahoo.com
Received: [12:43 am] May 2, 2015
Subject: A broken arm heals, A broken
heart dies
Message:
Service provided by: Futureme.org
Date created: [00:00 ??] ??? ?, 2005
I am writing to you, my future self,
so as to remind myself that . . . ”
The cold air coming from the AC has
filled the room since almost half an hour ago, yet here I am staring blankly at
the LED of my laptop with beads of sweat yet again forming on my forehead.
Maybe this is really a ghost – a ghost of the past – visiting me . . . to
remind me . . . of something . . . I forgot . . . from a long time ago.
Something – something I forgot to
remember.
As I continue to read, I see flashes
of images inside my head. I can’t seem to make something out of it. But nonetheless,
I continued on reading a few more words – words to phrases, phrases to
sentences and sentences to lines.
As I go
and read on, these blurry visuals begin to clear up. These are memories of the
past, living beneath my consciousness for the past decade, lingering somewhere
in my mind and are now resurfacing to meet with me again – like a group of friends that hasn’t seen each
other for a long time that are set for a reunion. But whether it’s a jubilant
or a melancholic reunion – I don’t know.
I blanked
out. Everything I read has slipped out of my mind, like I was pre-occupied with
something. Maybe this is the other part of my brain reacting – rejecting these
memories and suppressing them back into oblivion – into the deepest pits of my
consciousness.
And so,
I closed my eyes and tried clearing my mind of anything that can obstruct me
from fully understanding the message of the email. Someone I know told me once
that sometimes even three deep breaths can change everything. So I took three
deep breaths. 1 – 2 – 3 and poof! My head is now like a clean canvass that an
artist would willingly kill for just to have his masterpiece drawn on it.
And so,
I started reading again from the top, but this time, instead of seeing simply
flashes of images, I am rather watching a movie inside my head. As if my
memories came to life and I traveled back in time.
I see
myself sitting in front of a Pentium III-powered computer set inside our old
mini library back at my parents’ home in Quezon City from half-a-score ago.
To Be
Continued . . .
