Little Things

I have moved my blog here: http://riknavena.blogspot.com/.

For the first time, I don’t want to explain. I feel the usual urge to scream at your face and make you realize that you are wrong whichever way you look at it. But I know it’s useless. And I don’t have the energy. What, go through it all over again just to show you how every second of it was hell for me? No, thank you.

It was a weird feeling, to be so mad and hurt (but mostly hurt) that I wanted to puke. In my mind, as I puked, I watched whatever remained of the little respect I have for myself go down the drain with that night’s dinner.

The people you love best can hurt you the worst. I learned that the hard way that night.

You know what happens every time you say things that hurt people who love you? They love you a little less.

I have seen you hurt the people who love you with the sharp end of what you say. It pains me. I cannot imagine how they could hold out. You snap at anyone about the shallowest of things. You ruin even the best of times. Your mood swings are impossibly unfathomable.

You are difficult. You don’t care about how people might feel. As long as you have your way. And you believe that if it’s not your way, it is not the way.

Everyone gets to be cranky and obnoxious sometimes, and we understand that. But with you, any nice conversation could turn into a nasty exchange of hateful words. Thanks no less to your endless bickering about things that displease you in the littlest way.

There are always better ways to say things. We may all fall for the oh so tempting urge to snap and yell at a person sometimes, but even the nicest and most understanding people can only take so much bickering.

And you know what I hate so much about your constant bickering? Is that it is often completely unnecessary and uncalled for.

It can’t be a way of life, can it? This quick temper, this disposition, this failure to realize that it’s not okay to say spiteful things to people even on the nicest of days? Are you going to live the rest of your life breaking people’s hearts with your tongue-lashing? Imagine all the feelings you are going to hurt, imagine all the great times you are going to ruin.

Sometimes, you get on my nerves so much that I want to scream at you to friggin’ shut up. But, no, I can’t bring myself to do that, because that would mean doing the very thing I hate you doing.

Please stop hurting the people who love you. Love transcends patience, bravery, and the physical, I know, but you’re draining them of their love for you. Don’t turn their oceans of love into deserts. For your own sake, please don’t.

Ina emailed several questions for a feature article she’s writing about our team for the company newsletter. My answers are terribly long; don’t know what I was thinking. Most of them will probably be edited out, so I’m copy-pasting some of my original answers here.

What is the soundtrack of your life?
I’d love to say Alanis Morissette’s "Not All Me" because I sooo love that song, but, no, I must say it’s the Diane Warren-penned Walter Affanasief-produced Tina Arena song "If I Was A River". It speaks of giving nothing but unselfish, unconditional love and care to a loved one, of giving that person all you’ve got. I can also relate very much to Alanis’s "So Unsexy" and Jewel’s "Near You Always". But one of my favorite lines from a song ever is "I hope I love you all my life" from that mushy song by Daniel Bedingfield.

What was your best subject in school? (ie, where did you excel)
Would you believe, Chemistry?! I completely don’t remember my periodic table now, but I topped one departmental exam in NatSci I in UP. I’m not exactly proud. Yuck. What a nerd. But I loved Film 100. I read "Film as an Art" from cover to cover… twice! I did okay in a few of my major subjects, but I forget all of them now. Sorry Prof. Umali and Prof. Mamaclay! Hehe…

What’s the best advice anyone’s given you?
"Kamayin mo na lang" — by a resource person invited to talk about sex-related crimes in one of the completely useless LES sessions in college.

What Simpsons character best reflects your personality?
Lisa, according to my cousin Telly, who is one of the biggest Simpsons fans I know. I, too, have always thought that I’m like my favorite Simpson character in some ways, although I’m tempted to scour all of Springfield to look for a character that reflects my personality even better than Lisa does. Anyway, Telly says I’m like Lisa because she’s smart. I don’t know; you tell me. She’s resilient; she keeps her sanity even with her lunatic dad and brother around. She is also precocious and very nice, and has just enough evil in her.

Did you cry when Littlefoot’s mom died in "The Land Before Time"?
No. I remember it saddened me very much, but, no, I did not cry. I would not cry watching a movie until I’m much much older. "The Cure" and "My Life" come to mind. The very first time I cried in a movie theater was while watching a Lualhati Bautista adaptation. But the two movies that made me shamelessly cry my heart out in a theater are "Big Fish" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind".

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We were to submit photos for the article. Thanks to Letlet’s incredible talent with lenses and Miray’s incessant begging — no, more like demand — that we do a nude photoshoot of sorts in UP, my shift was able to come up with these:

• An elephant goes through a total of 6 sets of teeth during its lifetime. The most common cause of death among old elephants is hunger, when the sixth set of molars wears out. A single elephant tooth can weigh more than 11 pounds and measure 12 inches long. The tusks on male elephants are actually modified incisors.
• No, elephants cannot jump. They are the only mammals that cannot jump. However, they can swim! Water in lakes and rivers supports them and enables them to swim long distances without tiring. They walk on tip-toe, because the back portion of their feet is made up of all fat and no bone. The movements of the AT-ATs (All Terrain Armored Transport) in Star Wars movies are based on walking patterns of actual elephants.
• The elephant’s trunk has about 15,000 muscles. This powerful organ, which combines both nose and upper lip, is strong enough to uproot a tree, sensitive enough to pick up a pea-sized fruit from the ground, and long enough to reach leaves in trees.
• Humans normally cannot hear elephants communicate because about two-thirds of the sounds they use are below the human hearing range: between 14 and 35 hertz. These sounds may carry for distances of up to 10 miles. Recently, it has been found that elephants can also communicate by stomping their feet and emitting low rumbling, both of which generate seismic waves in the ground that can travel nearly 20 miles along the surface of the earth. Elephants may be able to sense these vibrations through their feet.
• Once every four years, adult female elephants give birth. Pregnancy lasts 22 months. Healthy, full-grown elephants have no natural enemies other than humans. In the past, they have been slaughtered solely for their ivory tusks. During World War II, the very first bomb dropped on Berlin by the Allied Forces killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
• Never forgets. It is said that an elephant never forgets. In fact, elephants do have remarkable memories. Elephants remember for years the relationships they make with other elephants, even if they see each other only occasionally. In the wild, they remember places to drink and to find food. Remarkably, this information gets passed on from generation to generation.
• You weigh less than a newborn baby elephant. After 22 months growing inside its mother’s womb, a newborn baby elephant weighs more than the average adult human being. They, of course, grow to be the largest terrestrical animal and the largest land-mamal on earth. Female calves weigh 198 to 221 pounds, while males are heavier and weigh up to 265 pounds.

Today is Elephant Appreciation Day.

references:
encarta.msn.com., www.corsinet.com, www.elephant.se, ww.iucn.org, www.phoenixzoo.org, www.seaworld.org, scifi.about.com, www.worldalmanacforkids.com

The trouble with happiness, they say, is that you don’t know it when you have it — you remember it. But what if you don’t remember it, does it mean you were never really happy? What if, by the time you remember it, you are amidst times so dark happiness doesn’t mean anything anymore? Does the memory of happiness just drift away, gone forever?

I used to think that people can never be too happy, as long as they deserve it. I don’t know now. I think I deserve some happiness, too, but why does it elude me?

How do you get happiness, anyway? Is it given to you because you deserve it, like a prize for doing something good? Is it given to you because are a good friend, brother, son, or parent? Do you just get lucky and have it, like a winning lottery ticket? Or do you work for it, like a goal you strive hard to achieve?

"Why do you have this obsession with unhappy things? There are so many things to be happy about," Ina scolds me. I wish I could be like you, Ina. I wish I could drive away unhappiness with the wave of a hand. Ah, but I think despondency is my twin brother. I was born with it and am destined to live with it.

The thought of a big truck running me over still haunts me, Anthony. Every time it gets me, I try hard to think of happy thoughts, like the big, tight hug my mama gives me on my birthday. At least that’s one happy thought I can hold on to. But that thought may be overused, what with the frequency of me feeling down these days.

It’s amazing what two words can do. They can turn a person you think you know very well into a perfect stranger.

I used to say you are the coolest guy I know. I realize now I have to take that back, along with the all the other nice things I said about you, along with all nice times that I must admit I shared with you.

I fucked up, all right. But doesn’t everyone, at one point or another? Still, friends don’t say that to each other. Oh, but then again, I doubt now if we ever were friends. Okay, you told me all about the superficial things about yourself. You eagerly told me about all your love interests and bragged about all your achievements. And I listened equally eagerly, if not more. But after everything, I realize I don’t even know you.

The true you, at least. You paraded a personality that could fool anyone. It’s all a masquerade. But the curtain’s down now. I applaud you for a wonderful performance. I saw everything – I was in the front row (with popcorn, as Alanis would want to say).

I apologized. You know I meant it. I explain myself and you slap with those two words. Hell, perhaps I deserve them. But that doesn’t matter any more, does it? You saw what a jerk I could become; I saw what an asshole you could become. I guess we’re quits.

The two other people involved in this brouhaha, more than you, deserve my apology. It is them, not you, whom I betrayed. It is they, not you, who have the right to hit me with those two words. But they did not. All they did was to make me realize the gravity and the effects of my blunder — and then accept my apology.

I guess sometimes life shows you know who your true friends are in the strangest of ways.

After everything, though, I have to admit I still owe you my own two words, words that may be the last thing I ever say to you, the way things look: I’m sorry.

Thank you for telling me the story of your life today, Dens. Well, at least part of it. I wouldn’t have imagined that anything, save perhaps sheer fury, would ever make me cry in the middle of the street. I think your story has changed me forever.

I’m certain that I couldn’t have gone through what you went through. I understand now where all that goodness in you comes from.

You reduce my existence to nothing. I look back at the way I’ve been living the past quarter of a century and realize there’s nothing there that I can be truly proud of. I just think about the lives you’ve touched and the profound ways in which you touched them, and know that there’s so much I have to do before I can even be half the person that you are.

I’ve always said you’re the nicest guy I know. I know now that you must be one of the greatest persons I’ll ever meet — great not in the grand but mundane way that most people only notice, but in the simple, quiet, more meaningful way.

You might say that it is a little too early for me to concede, but I tend to think that I will never be truly happy. I know I will always find happiness in other people’s happiness, but I’m pretty much convinced that I’ll never find my own. And that saddens me deeply when I think of it, especially because I think that I deserve some happiness, too, in spite of myself. I realize now that if I deserve happiness at all, you deserve much, much more.

I wish that you will find happiness, Dens. I know you will. You must. Because when you find true happiness, I’d have known that there’s some justice in this world.

I am very, very proud of you, Dens. I am very, very proud, more than ever, to be your friend.

The other day, Lyn, Anthony, and I were walking back to the office after having lunch together for the first time in a long while. We were having so much fun, just enjoying each others’ company when Lyn, who had her arms around Anthony’s on one side and mine on the other, blurted, “I’m so happy. I’m with my two best…”

I found it at once funny and amazing that the exact same thing was on my mind. I was with my two best… ! Only a few days before, I had the three of us photographed together, our first, after all this time that we shared this friendship – and after all this time that Lyn has a camera in her bag wherever she went!

Later that day, while we were at some of the places we used to hang out in with our friends every  Friday, Lyn and I found ourselves reminiscing memories we shared with our friends. Not a few times that night, we asked ourselves, “Whatever happened to those Friday nights?”

Lyn and I not only share the same friends, we also share the same passion for friendship. It was she who cried when I moved to another job, practically ignoring my promise that I won’t be gone, I was simply moving to another job. It was she who once told me off, “Ba’t ka mahihiya sa akin?” when I was asking her an incredibly big favor. I realized just now that she was the only one who ever told me that.

Incidentally, or perhaps consequently, we also hate the same people. Tee hee hee…

Lyn and I have a pact. I treasure that pact because I don’t remember having made that kind of pact with anyone my whole life.

It’s Lyn’s birthday today. And Lou’s too, of course. So happy birthday, you two.

Angela, in one of her tinkerbell moments (which is 80 percent of the time) asked, “Do you think life is fair?” as if it was the most natural question to pop on an ordinary day at the office. I shrugged off the question at the time, because of the absurdity of the circumstances in which it was asked.

But it’s a perfectly sensible question, if it was asked in the right situation and in a manner other than goofy, one that we don’t ask ourselves everyday, but one of those that we should when we examine ourselves and our existence.

Of course, life is not fair. If it were, I wouldn’t be wishing you’d turn my way even for a fleeting moment to see in my eyes just what I have for you. If it were, I wouldn’t have to wonder why I just can’t love. Indeed, if it were, it wouldn’t seem to other people, and especially you, that the idea of me loving is a sickening farce.

Anthony always tells me I have no wings, I can’t fly. But I realize, even if I did, I’ll never be able to fly to you. You’re farther away than I ever imagined.

I’ll never understand you. I’ll never understand the world. I’ll never understand life.