truth

When my grandmother died, I imagined her meeting her mother, the great grandmother I never saw and whose name I never knew. My grandmother kept a child in her, you see, and a few weeks before she died she begged us to allow her to talk to her siblings. It’s so easy to forget that the elderly people in our lives came from their parents and that they were once little children. My grandmother’s past was quite stormy and until now I still don’t know why exactly a Bicolana married a Batangueno and moved so far south to CDO.

When I form a connection with someone, I suddenly start overthinking to the point that I daydream about the time when the cord between us finally snaps. It’s so easy for me to get lost in my own head. I think of awful things, like you telling me you’re sick of me, and I see them in my mind’s eye, and my whole body trembles, and the conclusion that I draw is, “This is going to end”. 

Everything is in my head, but the fear is as real as your lips on mine whenever I come to you for comfort. This isn’t going to work. And on the days that I see a slight change in your behavior, I think to myself, maybe you don’t like me anymore. This...assumption builds up, one by one, fed by my own paranoia. I’m at gunpoint being commanded to pour fuel over the fire. I can’t stop myself. The flames are licking my skin charred; I’m pouring and I’m hurting. You don’t like me anymore.

Then I start to slowly distance myself, but your keen eye and superb instincts know that there’s something wrong. But unlike mine, your paranoia is built on reality. I’m done, I’m sick, I don’t want you anymore, I’m leaving. And by the time the truth hits you, I’ve moved on. 

My story about how I conquered my first year in medical school is probably but a drop in the vast ocean. But for the sake of my sanity, I shall write anyway, because earlier, as I was making myself a cup of coffee, I realized I had gone far. I’m almost through my first semester in second year, surely that means something. The clink of the spoon against the mug echoed in my ears, going “You are almost there”.

Actually, there’s still no official confirmation that I passed my first year. I haven’t seen my grades yet because the admin did not, would not, post our grades online. The damn pandemic begun just as I was celebrating the end of what seemed like a dreamy year. 

A month before the lockdown, me and my med friends decided to unwind after a brutal module exam (about the kidneys, blergh). I study in the quiet city of Legazpi, sparse in sight, sparse in population, sparse in attraction. But their medical school attracted me for one simple reason: Tuition is free. I packed my bags and left home for Bicol, the home of the most beautiful volcano in the world. 

One attraction in Bicol is the Legazpi boulevard. I wasn’t going to come with, but a sweet person convinced me to go. We needed it, she said. And she was damn right. We went there before sunset and when we arrived, we saw that it was beautiful, and our hearts rejoiced. The sky was pink, the air was salty. The sound of the waves felt therapeutic to my ears. The moon was full and big against the cotton candy sky. We couldn’t speak; we were in awe. We took pictures, we looked at everything and everyone. People were sitting on benches, some were jogging, some were skateboarding. We arrived at a restaurant soon after and had the most filling dinner. No phones allowed, the mother figure in the group said. And so we enjoyed each other’s company.

I never dreamed that that would be the last time I bonded with them. A week after there was chaos...in the form of a damn virus.