and this too shall pass

Learning to trust
Valid during many months: Under this influence you will become increasingly aware that all the truly important events in your life occur without your conscious intervention. ...

My life these days reverberates with the above part of my current astro.com long-term astrological forecast. Many things just happen without my conscious intervention -- often because these are all beyond me, anyway -- but with such a big impact on me, and my wellbeing. I can simply follow where the arrows point, follow with my heart and my hope, because that's the choice that's left. Whether to follow with leaden feet and clenched fists or follow hoping that things will turn out ok, somehow, one of these days, including in a form that I never imagined, even though it doesn't look or feel like it at all for the moment.

Things like the airplane not crashing two days before Christmas :D. Though this can be attributed to my fear of flying, that situation and my fright felt real enough to have made that threat probable. I mean, if it felt real to me, how could you argue? :P

(I thought then that the universe having forcibly brought me back to Manila may have been a concrete manifestation that i was "meant" to spend some time with you on the days that counted. Because otherwise how could I have? And this was really really what I wanted to do anyway.)

Or the fact that I can pinpoint the exact moment your caring mutated into seeming indifference without apparent rhyme or reason. One second you were telling me you were going to miss me, you had gotten used to being with me that day for hours and hours. The next you took me home, didn't hold my hand back, and left, almost without a backward glance.

Or my sadness at the coming of the New Year, and New Year's Day. Usually I am filled with peace and hope.

Or your continuing indifference that feels like the days when I found out my first love had somebody new, and had decided to act on it. Same time of the year, same situation. Just before Christmas, he took me home and held my hand, asking why what was the problem with holding my hand (at that time, we had already split up five months before Christmas)? Two weeks later, he failed to respond to invitations to celebrate my birthday, but sent me a letter telling me all about her. He was firm but kind to the weepy call I couldn't help making: V, enough please. He said that what we had was precious but it was time to move on.

Or the grief that simply swelled within me during my birthday, that I could not pinpoint to any single incident, but just was. You walked in, somehow, at the end of the day, and though that made me smile, and was the only possible feel-good response to my grief, you felt different still. Different from the day before the New Year when you, too, held me.

I almost expect to see you walking by holding someone else's hand one of these days, because all of this really really feels like the lost first quarter of January 1993 that I spent filled with love for my ex, in super catharsis. Like the way I cannot help but relive and grieve over every moment and funny incident that we ever had, cannot help but carry your picture in my head wherever I go, and cannot help but try to stay away too because not staying away would hurt even more.

Or the way I cannot help but try to reach out to all the people around me who might have the patience and love to sit with me and hold my hand, and tell me things will be all right, promise. Because I currently do not have all the imagination or the bigger heart that I need to carry me through. (Dearests, forgive my neediness, my kakulitan, I feel like a child these days that's lost its favorite toy, and simply need the time to grieve. I will appear like I don't understand all the rational hopeful things you will say, like some kind of bobo fixated girl who refuses to move on hehehe, but I just need somebody to cry to, like almost all of the time, hahaha).

What tells me to get hold of myself, and sustains me, is how my blessings continue to abound. Love and comfort are so near these days, and there is so much to be thankful for from life itself, to my snazzy digital cam, or the fact that I can drink myself to oblivion with all the wine in my ref these days. Hahaha. Or the knowledge deep within me, from previous experience, that all these too shall one day come to pass.

afterthought 1 (one of many): and probably this is really not about you, but about me, and the need to let go :).