mahiwaga

Somehow, summer has quickly slipped into autumn. Scoff all you want, all you non-Californians, but there are too seasons in Southern California. You just have to look a lot closer. It’s all about subtlety. And in any case, the sunlight still fades this far south.

A week and a day ago, I headed back to S.D. from L.A., and I had this portentious sensation, and I felt like all these memories were suddenly bleeding together.

L.A., the city of my birth, the place where I spent the first 17 years of my life. For a time, it was the entirety of my universe. Chicago was just a name. NYC a rumor. Manila a distant dream. The Bay Area came in fitful episodes, brief summers, and a fog-filled memory of wandering down Market St, the mist so thick that you couldn’t see more than 10 feet in front of you.

And so all these memories, long forgotten in these years of self-inflicted exile, came upon me with a vengeance.

This was the song I was listening to as I drove south on the Glendale Fwy., and that feeling of being haunted by a dream didn’t pass until I made it to the Golden State Fwy. It was like a shadow thrust upon me. A dark weight cast on my heart.

This is why I feel like I can’t move back to L.A. just yet. Some ghosts just pop out of nowhere. I need an exorcist or something.

It’s been a strange ride. Friday, against my better judgement, I went to the Beer Festival. Hilariously, I ran into a bunch of people from my residency class. I didn’t know whether to be disturbed or to be comforted that there were at least six or seven physicians at that place.

I feel rather ashamed that my first thought when they said that I had 10 free drinks with admission was “That’s it?” But since I haven’t been abusing my liver quite as much as I used to, it proved to be more than sufficient. I’ve definitely lost a lot of my metabolic prowess over the years.

Somehow, we almost got involved in two altercations. But that is neither here nor there.

The more subtlety entertaining part of that evening was going over to Club Sin. It was β’s birthday (I don’t really know her all that well) and it was J™’s command decision to move our contingent of the party over there. Which was all well and good. I had, however, hit my limit, and didn’t think I could safely drink anymore, considering that I still had to drive home. (Not to mention the fact that I had to catch a 6:40 am flight to San Jose the next morning.)

Of course χ was there, what with β being one of her oldest friends and all. She didn’t see me at first, which was all well and good. She was practically pinned to the wall by this big hulking dude, and I’m all like, hey, let the girl get her game on. I wandered the dance floor, searching for what exactly, I’m not sure.

But I ended up passing by again, and this time she saw me, and waved, and I felt conflicted. Was that a mere acknowledgement-of-my-presence wave? Or was that a come-save-me-from-this-guy wave? Chickenshit that I am, I fled, befuddled. Luckily I ran into J™, who was in fact looking for χ. I led him and D over to her, and when J™ tried to say hi, the dude got all up in his face. I couldn’t actually hear what he said, but his face looked like he was saying, “And you are who, exactly?” After exchange pleasantries, we walked away, shrugging.

I don’t know why, but my soul hides whenever she’s around. She’s never really said more than a few words to me. I find her attractive, but I know nothing about her, and yet already my soul twists in non-specific turmoil. There is clearly something wrong with me.

Going to bed at 1:30 a.m. and waking up at 4:30 a.m. was pretty painful. It was only the first of my mistakes that weekend….

So S (of whom I’ve written a few things here and there) got married on Saturday. Strangely, it didn’t seem like it had been all that long since she first hooked up with her now husband, but four years is a pretty long time.

I find what transpired in those few months before she left for the Bay Area somewhat strange, and still a little confusing, but it is what it is, and the likelihood of traversing that pathway has long ago dropped to zero.

There are other what-ifs in my life that are more likely to keep me awake at night anyway.

In a half-comatose daze, I drove myself over to Lindbergh Field before the sun was even up, and somehow got myself to the proper terminal. I contended with the TSA, and plopped myself in front of my gate. I watched an Indian (South Asian) family deal with their 2 year old daughter running around all over the place. Eventually, they called my boarding group. I found myself a seat and soon passed out, waking up some 20 minutes south of San Jose.

I don’t particularly remember my rationale for showing up in the Bay Area nine hours before the wedding, and seven hours before I could check into my room. Be that as it may, I had to kill some time and found myself wandering the streets of Milpitas.

It’s rather odd. My aunt used to live in the South Bay, and we would come to her house almost every summer, as far back as when I was five years old. That house on Hillview Drive was kind of a fixture of my childhood, more so than our old house in Echo Park, even. I’ve had quite a few good memories of summers there. The best was when our cousins from the East Coast had come out to visit L.A., and we ended up on a 12 hour quest to the Bay Area via U.S. 101, stopping in Santa Barbara and Solvang before finally making it to Milpitas. Somehow, my cousins thought it would be fun to throw spitwads at cars passing by in the middle of the night. They exhausted several boxes of tissue paper which ended up on the driveway, much to my aunt’s consternation.

One of the most funny episodes was when they decided to pelt a semi-truck. The impacts caused the trailer to reverberate, and it freaked the driver out enough that he actually got out of the cab to check out what the hell was going on.

There was also my last summer there, in 1998, after graduating from college, in my vain attempt at securing employment and actually starting a life out there. I ended up leaving in August, in defeat, in more ways than one. It’s pretty bittersweet. Even now, I don’t like to think about it too hard, because there’s always the possibility of finding myself in yet another downward spiral.

But I remember the endless Starcraft sessions. And riding my bike all over Santa Clara County, from Fremont to San Jose. I mean, it wasn’t an entirely bad time at all, really. Although I doubt I would want to relive those moments again.

But my point was this: I felt like I was wandering around my old neighborhood, nine years after all that shit went down, nine years after my aunt ended up leaving the Bay Area. Even here, there are ghosts. Shadow memories that spring up like boobie traps. The lazy summers of my childhood. The four years I spent at Cal. The moments I managed to steal from my exile in the Midwest, surreptitiously coming out to visit the Bay. Even that month I spent with A+E.

Odd that nearly a decade after the fact, there is still a possibility that I might give it another shot in the Bay.

Even this far out, I have no idea where my fate will lead me.

I’ve never been sore from crying before. I mean, literally sore. My recti abdominalis hurt the next morning.

Like I said, my brief, strange, and confusing history with S was not the main driving force for my drunken bawling. If anything, my complete failure with A still weighs heavily on me, and if I let my guard down, all sorts of sad and twisted thoughts rise up like bile.

Of course, it didn’t help that I had downed three shots of Grey Goose in a row. “Ataxic” would be a generous descriptive term for my depraved method of ambulation as I extricated myself from the alcoholic depradations of the celebrants. I quickly passed out onto the rather luxurious bed in my hotel room.

And I found myself crying. Hard.

I don’t think I’ve sobbed that hard in my entire life.

Frankly, because I was quite nicely drunk, I don’t really remember what I was crying about. Only that it hurt very badly. No matter how hard I’ve tried over the years, I have done little to exorcise this deeply rooted sadness in my soul.

Was it the betrayal of my heart back in high school?

I don’t know. The shadow seems to extend farther than that. If I look at my childhood in a certain way, I almost feel like there were very very few happy moments. I know that can’t really be true, but no matter how many times I reason it out, all that ever comes back is this unfathomable sorrow.

I felt like I had been cut deep. So deep that it will never heal. So deep that I’m not sure it’s not eventually going to kill me. I just remember lying in that bed wracked and tormented by my aching sobs, trying to vomit up all this darkness that is surely suffocating my soul. The only thing I remember crying out was ”Hindi ko na makaya” I can’t bear it any longer.

Now, in all seriousness, I don’t want to kill myself. I don’t want to give in to this darkness that has been gnawing at my soul for as long as I can remember. I want to live free of this parasitic disease.

I don’t want turn bitter and angry. I don’t want my defense mechanisms to become so impregnable that I can’t get myself out of them, that they won’t ever let me get close to another person ever again. I mean, in all seriousness, I’m heading in that direction. I guess if I’m lucky, one of these days, I just won’t feel a goddamn thing. I’ll be invulnerable. From pain, from sadness. But also from love. From joy. It’s a bleak future, not really all that better than suicide. But I guess I’d be alive. I guess. Sort of.

If I were naive, I would say that I want to be happy, but we all know how intractable happiness really is. What I want is peace. Not resignation, not grudging acceptance of my circumstances. But acceptance. Not necessarily being always joyful, but always being receptive to joy.

One of the sad thoughts that flitted through my addled brain today was when I gazed at the brilliant sunset over Point Loma, coruscating over the San Diego Bay. I wondered to myself, why doesn’t this make me feel happy? Because I think it should. That is, if I were more sane.

I don’t know. It’s going to be a process. It’s going to be a pitched battle. It’s going to be an interesting war with myself. I hope I win.

1. It was probably poor planning to drink coffee at 9 p.m. and expect to be able to sleep.

2. If my goal was to avoid being depressed, it was probably not the best decision to load up my iPod with Morrissey and Elliott Smith.

3. I’m feeling pretty goddamn lonely right now.