good as gone

Dreams say what they mean,
but they don't say it in daytime language.
--Gail Godwin

remember this?

after quite a long time, i dreamt of him again.

just like the last time, i didn't see his face, i doubt if i ever will... but i knew it was him. he was standing a good distance away from me, and, weird it may be that i could tell, he was looking at me.

i couldn't see his face but i could feel his eyes on me, and i just felt the need for me to look away.

i did look away, but only for awhile. when i looked again, he was still there, standing a good distance away from me, but he's no longer looking at me... he had turned such that he had his back facing me.

...and then, he started walking away, slowly and without a sound.

i was tempted to call out his name when he started to go, but i held back knowing that even if i did, he wouldn't turn around for me. so i just looked as he trodded away to where i don't know. i looked until i got so familiar with his back, until the distance ate him up, until he faded and became one with the horizon.

i had this dream and, in less than a year, it became real. tsk. maybe i'm clairvoyant or something.

i never thought it would really happen but it did, anyway. a painful deja vu, it was. without a word, he was good as gone. things got complicated, our friendship got ruined, and i never got to find out why he had to go in the first place. eventhough i was left free, i was also left confused. perhaps, that's what hurt me most.

i remember a lot -- from the first text message he sent me more than five years ago to the last one he sent in september, from "Patay..." to "Hmm", from the first "Hi..." to the last "Good night" in Y!M, from the line "sa wakas..." to "see you" when we last met in may, and all the lines in between. they haunt me. i should forget, but i suck at forgetting.

if only things could go back to how they used to be, then i would do things differently. it is clear to me now that our regrets tend to stem from the things we should have done but did not do.

he is scared of me -- this i knew even before he told me so. honestly, it stings like a hard slap on the face. for not denying who i am, i was put on a pedestal i didn't want to be on and, for that, one of the prices i have to pay unwillingly is to live with the threat that he'll see me as someone who'll always be beyond him. it hurts a lot to know that by choosing to be myself, i ended up alienating the very person whom i believed to be my soulmate... but i cannot deny who i am and i cannot choose to be not myself -- i can only be nicer.

how can i convince him now that the pedestal is just an illusion, that we are actually on the same plane, that we belong to the same ground? how can i, when he is there -- there where i cannot see him, where i cannot touch him, where i can barely feel him (if, indeed, i still do feel him at all)? the horizon he faded into is out of my reach and i don't know if there is still anything that i can do to change the way things are... but i still think of him. fondly... because i loved him. i love him still. i think i will forever do. geez, i'm so pathetic. (i just gave my friends a reason to disown me. ha ha)

maybe someday he'll emerge from the horizon. maybe someday he'll come around again to give me a friendly shove and say, "ikaw gyud, madrama ra kaayo ka." then, i'll have to playfully shove him back and we'll both be laughing like silly high school kids.

maybe there won't be that someday at all.

tsk. i should have dreamt of winning the lottery instead. if only i had known... i would have been filthy rich by now. he he.