i had it in me earlier during my ride from tacloban back to borongan, an urge to scour old messages i had sent to a former friend, maybe lover, or more aptly, a stranger that i used to know.
the dates would sometimes surprise me. they seemed random, but if i remembered hard enough i could recall vivid details. cursed are the digital footprints that archive my myriad attempts at begging. by my count, i had sent roughly twenty-four messages, various iterations of "please don't end it like this, i'm sorry, i can be better" and by that same count, i received three replies. one of them a mistyped "im sorry."
much has been said about how the covid years wiped away half a decade’s worth of memories, yet the messages i found myself poring over (stretching from 2016 to 2017), made the decade feel loose and poorly stitched together.
patched, i think is the word that best describes it? mostly out of my poor vocabulary.
may 14, 2016, 9:48pm. somewhere in sampaloc, manila, i sent you seven messages asking to see you one more time.
the cause was the three messages you had sent earlier, at exactly 5:00pm, maybe around up diliman, saying you weren't sure where we were headed anymore. that staying was pain. that maybe i wasn’t worth going through it.
see, i'm not as good at remembering you as i am at remembering the pain. the begging. the endless pleading: to talk, to stay, to fight for another chance.
it is 10:47pm, march 6, 2026. i am in my bedroom in borongan, except this room has no real attachment to who i was ten years ago. not really.
still, whenever i find myself thinking about the times i almost gave everything up to be with you, your memory slips into the usual ramblings i have grown to detest.
so often i realise that the version of you in my head is different now. i do not picture a kind smile or a reassuring hand anymore, and i wonder if i will ever allow myself the reprieve that forgiveness offers.
i knew you to be kind and funny and frighteningly smart. you knew me more broken then, lost and out of place in a city too large for who i was.
i think i'll never get over the fact that i knew you so kind that remembering you still makes me cry.
still, i wonder if you ever think about me too.