how would you do it?

How would you do it? It’s a question that’s been in my head for over a week now. I suppress it, fill my head with things to do, anything to get my mind off it. Deal with problems as they arise. My laptop battery dies, I grab my charger. My tummy rumbles, I eat. My coffee spills, I wipe it up. Never succumb, nothing is let go. But there are days like today when I’m too weak to fight; too weak to stay sane so I just let the thoughts calmly trickle down.

I imagine white sheets on a white bed in a blindingly white room. There is a Tornatore score in the background. The windows are open but the sun is too bright to see anything. The curtains sway feverishly. I am naked, lost in slumber in the middle of the bed. A small red dot appears in the middle of the bed. It grows and grows until all you see is red. The sheets, the bed, the curtains, the wallpaper. The cellos end on a peculiar note. I’ve slit my wrists. The scene fades to black.

The next scene finds me on the roof of a skyscraper. It is nighttime. Hyperballad plays from a loud car on the street. I go through all this before you wake up, Björk sings. Her song mixes with car horns, traffic sounds, trains screeching through tracks. I feel the wind on my face. My shirt gets magically unbuttoned. I leap. I am free. I smile. Safe again with you, she sings over and over again. The scene fades to black.

I am in the bath in the house I grew up in. I soak. My mind is at ease. I close my eyes. My mother is listening to the news on our old multiplex. A murder in Marikina. No one saw it coming. No suspects, no leads, just a body in the middle of the river. I tune out. The water is so calm, so inviting. I fidget a little, ripples on the water’s surface. I dip my head slowly. The water enters through my nose, my ears, my eyes. I feel it in my lungs. The radio begins to sound muffled. The scene fades to black.

Hanging. Sleeping pills. An insane amount of ecstasy. An air-conditioned car with a hose in the muffler. Leaping in front of a speeding bus along EDSA. Gasoline and a match. A river and a stone. The scenes mix, one right after the other like boom boom boom. The soundtrack confuses. Sia, Adele, Sparklehorse, Fiona Apple, Liz Phair and Amy Winehouse. OneRepublic, Robyn, Paula Cole and a Lady GaGa song for good measure. Silence, static, the Angkor Wat theme. I am dizzy. And then, a realization.

How can someone die when he’s already dead? How can you kill someone who’s already been killed?

How? We meet. It is wonderful. We share coffee and cigarettes. A Train song plays in the background. We laugh, discuss poetry and movies, time flies. A park bench. Love. A day, a week, a month, six months. I start to believe in myself again. All of the shit I went through in the past suddenly makes sense. We make plans. He talks about our home, our children, the stories we will write. Promise me you’ll always be happy by my side. I promise to sing to you when all the music dies.*

And then, it does. There is only silence. A bump in the road. And then another one. And then another one. It feels like all we ever think about is him leaving. I hide, weep quietly. I show him nothing. There’s no reason for both of us to be miserable. I withdraw. Am I here? A missed opportunity. Another one. Another one. I am invisible.

A week before a year and he needs me. I am distant. I am busy. He seeks comfort in another man. Can you blame him? A choice, a decision. Him instead of me. Another decision. Him again. Again and again and again. Can you blame him? I am broken. I am nothing. I’ve lost faith in men and love and the birds in the sky. I’ve stopped believing I will ever love again. It feels like I’m a sheet of paper slowly burning in anger and self-pity. He has killed me. The scene fades to black.

A co-worker barks my name snapping me back to reality. I am suddenly awake and painfully aware that all that I’ve written is true. And then there are things to do, bills to be paid, emails to respond to and reports to be sent. Life goes on despite the absence of it. I breeze through the tasks at hand.

Are you okay? a friend asks. You look terrible.

I’m not, I answer reluctantly, but I will be. I smile. It is vacant. In my head, I see slit wrists, tall buildings and buses speeding along EDSA. I put on my headset, plug it into my iPod and the world is silenced by a song.

You'll say you'd never let me fall from hopes so high.
But never is a promise and you can't afford to lie.

♫: Fiona Apple | Never Is A Promise (1996)