The fourth kind.

I want… Wait. How can I know what I want? What I want lies on the other end of the world. Although I may have so many other “wants” I could want, this unreachable ‘want’ is what I keep thinking of, what drives me to sustain myself until a miracle happens. A miracle that would once again make both ends of this world meet. For a thought of a miracle brings out a sense of hope; and a sense of hope makes the unbearable bearable.

Would it be scary if I tell you you’re with me wherever I go, whatever I do? You have unknowingly rented out the back of my mind. Thinking you are with me every step I take is my sole consolation. We can’t be together, we can’t make promises, and this uncertainty is our only truth. But once in a while, go with me. Go with me somewhere that is ours and ours alone. Go back to those steps, those walks, those beers, and those songs. Remember me and try not to forget the days you spent with me. Until we meet again — if ever we still do.

“We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. The first category longs for the look…. of the public. The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes…. Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of the people in the first category. One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. And finally, there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers.”

– Milan Kundera, Unbearable Lightness of Being

Crack is no end.

“Aix, when you find yourself in a happy thought — anything that makes your heart perk up — stay there. Don’t look back, don’t look deep within. Don’t. Stay there in that happy thought. Hold on to it and don’t let go,” my best friend told me in tears the other night over coffee. No beers. Coffee. There was no attempt whatsoever to cover up the already strewn internal struggle I was going through. I didn’t expect looking back to the eyes of my hurt best friend would be as painful as that moment felt for me. I wanted to seriously slap myself for being such a douche for thinking of giving up.

It happened somewhere on the 88th set of hand-outs (out of 170-something) I was stapling for the next day’s class; somewhere in the middle of random thoughts of what dress I want to buy next and what kind of food I’d like to eat for dinner that day. Down right in the middle of all that was a very detailed multiple choice question of the quickest way to go. A: that blameless pink cutter on the table; B: mid sky diving from some roof top; C: a run over empty battery energizer bunny on the middle of a street. There were so many choices. And I didn’t know catching myself thinking of such thoughts would be one of the scariest things to catch myself doing.

Needless to say at the end of the day, I was sobbing on my bed and half-howling, “Mommy… mo-mmy..” — referring to my mother people pray billions of daily rosaries to. I was scared of myself. Something was about to snap earlier that day. And in every sense of what I’m about to say, I felt only this: I lost all confidence there was to me.

After crying and imagining myself being cradled in the arms of the one I was calling out to, I fell asleep. Lo and behold, ten whole hours. After two weeks of no sleep — two weeks of laying in bed in deep thought until exhaustion permitted me a maximum of 2 hour dawn naps. Somebody in heaven prolly went, “Let’s give this girl a break.”

The next day, I decided to open up to a few of my closest friends. It was such a scare that I had to inform somebody in case something happens. I saw it in their faces, the disbelief that I could think such. I suppose they were surprised as I was. I was not permitted to think so because I had so much to be grateful for, a friend’s words. They are correct, I had no right — have no right.

The greatest war we face on a daily basis is the war within ourselves. Once something tips us over that makes us lose our balance, we lose our sight, our direction, our confidence, and in rare occasions, even the taste for our own lives. We have to understand and accept the reality of the cycle we often overlook the importance of: we fight ’til we crack; we crack to find more reasons to fight again. Cracking, in the natural course of everything, never is the end objective.

I realized that watching my best friend cry was only the pinnacle of the many people I will be giving irreconcilable misery to should I decide to go before my time. And that pinnacle, as I have come to witness, turned out to be something more than I can bear — nothing I myself would ever agree to.

No matter how it feels like the world is miserably gravitating itself towards me, I still am part of it. I belong in it. If I harness pain, they will inevitably absorb my pain. If I end my life, I will put an eternal halt in parts of theirs. If I give up, I give up on them. As far as anyone is concerned, no one was giving up on me and no one has intentions of putting a stop on any part of my life. So I began to laugh at my pathetic self and there it is, the beginning of my happy thoughts. There is only one absolute truth: when it comes to living, one has more reasons to hold on than to let go. We’re idiots if we don’t see that.

Aix, you idiot. Lol.