january drowning

ELEVEN

I would've gladly ran away with him. I think, back then, I was actually prepared to say yes immediately if only he asked.

But I didn't know the weight he was carrying on his shoulders was heavier than most, and he was grounded by the sheer responsibility of it. He had no ability for flight at all.
He started his story by asking for my forgiveness. And for the first time, he told me what I probably knew already but only had to hear.

He told me that the sea has more than once drowned him. He fell in so deep there was no surfacing from it. He loved me then, when the Sea led him to me. And ever since, he loved me still.

But he also knew we were continents apart (if only he knew how wrong he was!), he had to deny what he believed with all the strength of his soul. He had to live some kind of life, and he tried.
But paths aren't always true to the intention, and they lie crooked and they double cross. He ended up lost.

I have no idea who Anna was. But he told me she's pregnant and he's the father. They're getting married in September.

TWELVE

He had to stay. I had to leave.

It felt like I was walking away from the Sea. It felt cold, and it felt heavy. But I had to live some semblance of a life just as he did, and it was then I learned to get by every day by pretending.
Pretending I wasn't alone. Pretending I was awake. Pretending I wasn't just a half-lifer, with it's best part torn away by the past.

THIRTEEN

Years later, I was to be married to a man named Moses. He grew up in the city, and he had never known the Sea. Oh, he knows about beaches and sun tan and jet skis. But he doesn't understand the waters he frolicks on. His incapacity to grasp my yearning for the real Sea was such that he did not understand why i didn't want to be married in a tourist-y beach side.

"It'll be romantic, Arie. You're just a sucker for that, aren't you" he asked once.

"No. Let's get married inside a stone church." I answered. The bleaker, the better.


FOURTEEN

I never made it to the Church.


FIFTEEN

This is what happened.

While sipping bad coffee in a pretentious coffee shop in the middle of a noisy city, Clarice chanced upon me. She shrieked her congratulations on my upcoming marriage. "It's next month, right?" Through gritted teeth I told her yes, I'm sorry I wasn't able to send an invitation, but would she like to come?

Her face beamed up and she gave a shrilly, "Yes, of course!" Then as gossipy cousins are wont to do, she invited herself to my table, as what she thinks is a favor for me, just to update me about what's going on in San Pedro.

She regaled me about who's marrying who, who's pregnant without marrying anyone, and who ended up in jail for three months.

As an afterthought, she added "And have you heard about your old friend, Noel? That playmate of yours who I was only a poor substitute for?"

"No."

Her face crumpled in mock sadness. "Ah, bless his soul."


SIXTEEN


The boulder in the cove had been quarried away. Where our hiding place used to be, there is a big, white gash where the miners dug up the limestone for cement factories.

There is no safe place anymore.

SO I climbed up to one of the higher points, just to see how the sea has changed.
Oh. It has changed vastly. My heart felt pinched.

Noel became a marine biologist fro the local state university. He was divorced. Anna, as it turns out, left him five years earlier to work in Japan. She found a rich Japanese guy and married him. And one day, on a standard topography mapping assignment, his scuba gear went awry. His daughter was waiting for him at the shore. He never surfaced.

Noel beat me to the Sea.


SEVENTEEN

I was tired of thinking. Tired of the Half-Life.

I just jumped.

I barely made a splash. I sank deeper, fighting buoyancy with all my might. At the heart of the sea, it almost felt as if the years were washed away from me. Th waters reached out to me, englufed me, covered me whole. It took away one breath and replaced it with the spirit of something else.

And just before my limbs stopped struggling, I realized it was the better part of me returned.

EIGHTEEN

I surfaced.