The Breakable Fortress

'You should stop talking about he-who-must-not-be-named', my sister says, her eyes gravely addressing mine like a child reprimanded for breaking the living room vase.

'Are you trying to tell me that I'm an annoying-ass-person?' I ask, even if I know that the answer is yes. I've gotten too many eye rolls from friends, 'wasting-your-time-on-him' advice from my mom every time I bring him up. I can't blame them. He is the political unrest in Syria of international news, and the bombings in Mindanao of national news - nothing but negative and retrogressive.

'It's not for us, it's for you. This is so unhealthy. You're living in the past,' she asserts. I look at her and think to myself that she's more the adult than myself.

I told her, 'I'm not in love with him. I'm in love with the idea of him. Actually no. He is this fortress I've built around myself, like a turtle shell. I conveniently hide under my shell for fear of what is to come. The downside of it is that I've successfully tricked myself into thinking that I'm in love with my shell when logically, it can't feel, it can't love me back.

With a clear mind now, I ponder at the reason of why I liked him in the first place. He does not seem interested in what I have to say. He talks about other women in front of me, he even went to mention 'beauty and brains' women that he is interested in and he does it nonchalantly too, as if I'm not there.

Then I realized, there are plenty of people who are genuinely interested in what I have to say, I know of someone who sweetly asked me about my blog. The idea that someone is interested in my thoughts, my ideas help me in chiseling the sturdy fortress I've been suffocating in.

A Monday

The significantly low temperature made me think twice about getting out of bed. Wrapped up in my wool blanket curled in a fetal position with my cheek against my pillow, my bed was the ultimate temptation for sleeping in. I still had to get up though. It's the first Monday of the new year after all.

The sun was behind an array of grey clouds. As if that wasn't gloomy enough, my call time at work is at 9am and only at exactly 9am sharp do I leave the house. What an utter disregard for the cliche 'new year, new me' anthem. I was never one to draft new year's resolutions anyhow.

I bid my lola good bye and kiss her cheek as is the usual routine every morning before I leave work.
She watches by our gate until I get a pedicab. As the pedicab makes a u-turn headed towards the gate of our village I wave and smile at her.

I am now left to myself and this is how it is every five days a week for an hour or so of commute. An hour of contemplation if not reading in between commutes -the latest conquest being Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods.

The pedicab ride to get to our subdivision's gate takes around five minutes in one straight street as our house's. The wind was blowing strongly that day. The driver was silent. I usually look ahead, breathing in whatever oxygen the assortment of trees on our street can offer before the pollution whacked at me by pujs.

I then see a police officer questioning the newspaper vendor at the right side of the street. I look left and see another police officer questioning three residents outside their home. The pedicab continue to drive past and I see a group of people crowded at the left side of the street. They had blank faces that expressed solemnity. I look right and a fewer number of people were looking at the other side and some at me having the same blank faces. I look left again and then I immediately got goosebumps at what I saw.

In front of the bakery was a corpse under a tan colored sheet. There was a motorcycle three meters left of the corpse and it between the motorcycle and the corpse was a middle-aged woman of Middle Eastern descent crying and a Middle-aged man kneeling by her knees facing her, crying as well. I look at the corpse again and I see bright red blood oozing from his head. Splattered on the floor are brain meat.

Looking away, I felt disgust at how humanity can be so cruel. A witness to a violation of what separates man from animal, though shocked, a surprising calmness blanketed my fear. Selfish as it might seem, a bit detached I must admit, I had to be calm and not entertain thoughts of fear. I have got to get used to a world where man has the capacity to either be pure or evil. I had to be ready, I still had to go to work, I still have to live and it's just the beginning of the week.