Moonlight

So I sit here in a full parking lot trying to decide if I should kill myself.

It is not my fault. It is a function of this disease that rules my life – a few weeks of elation followed by this sudden crash into despair. It doesn’t really work that way, the doctors told me, but I feel that it is what happens to me. I’m unbalanced and my brain tilts one way or another, never fully gaining equilibrium.

Maybe it is the moon tonight. Did you see it? It was so big. It lit my way out of my house into my car driving to who knows where. I ended up here.

They say the moon makes you crazy. That is where the word lunacy comes from. Luna. They say that the moon’s gravity pulls your blood into your head and makes your mind race – an endless treadmill that goes everywhere except a place of sanity.

Except I already know I’m crazy. I didn’t need the moon to make me this way. The doctors already gave me my diagnosis.

So I sit here in an half-empty parking lot still trying to decide if I should still kill myself.

Then I think of her. I will see her again tomorrow. I will wait for her as she steps down the bus and I walk with her to work. We will talk about everything on the way, up and down the pathways of Makati.

I will see her again. I will see this girl who is so kind that she buys a sampaguita from every little boy and girl on the street. I will see this beautiful person who smiles too much like the moonlight.

She is part of what makes me so sad. I know I will never be hers. But she is also what makes me happy. I think I will be content just basking under her radiance.

I will see her again tomorrow. And that makes want to live.

So I sit here in an empty parking lot – and I decide not to kill myself.

I turn on my engine and I drive home.

Ang Huling Hugotero