To feel

Under the light drizzle brought by La Nina, I found myself treading the water-washed cobblestone streets of Eastwood, contemplating on a time not so long ago when I was a different person.

I'm trying to remember who I was.

There's comfort to be had in meeting an old face, one you've almost forgotten, whose features were tucked away in the deepest recesses of your memories to exist only as a name. A passing figure.

Funny how a simple exchange of pleasantries with a former colleague improved the mood of my night. It was surprising how, too, in a blink of an eye, Dakila Angeles and I crossed paths in front of Fully Booked in Eastwood City Mall at that ungodly after-mall hours.

Daki and I knew each other way back in 2007, when we were both associated with a travel magazine, when I was still a wide-eyed fresh graduate from an exclusive school. He was one of those contributors I never knew intimately. We acknowledged each other but never exchanged conversations over coffee. We just know each other, because it was standard operating procedure between editor and contributor.

We lost touch when I ditched my old number, easily deleting all the contacts I've made in my one-year stint in  Mabuhay. I never heard from any of them again. Once in awhile, I come across a photographer or a writer in an event. Small as Manila may be, we seldom meet.

Whenever I'm in the lowest point of my life, I always look back at that time after college, that short-termed spot of being in-between two realities: one shaped by idealism, the other by experience. The time when I believe I was in my purest, most raw form, still grasping for balance, the time I have neither a clear path nor a clear plan.

Under those circumstances, I see the progression of my life, my career, my affairs, as if doing so would suddenly show me a way I never considered before, a decision I could still take, a lesson only hindsight can provide.

Depression gnawed me like the cold breeze the moment I woke up this morning and as Joie and I ventured to Novaliches for another round of applications, I keep on remembering.

Funny too, how another figure always crops up in my thoughts like a plague, a curse, a single source of inspiration, of motivation, of everything both high and low and everything in-between. When I try to remember the person I am before this depression hit me, I always remember that brief anti-climactic affair fostered by words and characters and electronic smiling faces.

I dissected the blissful incidents one by one--most I realized I've forgotten.

When I'm in the doldrums, when I'm standing still, when my mind is clouded by mists of undefined emotions I never knew I had, I always remember the first and last time I ever truly felt. Not the instances when I think or understand--those short moments when I simply feel. Because in those memories, I grasp who I am.

And these few seconds of seeing an old friend's face, of remembering the pain of an unfulfilled love, of re-learning how to feel and remember--these things keep me sane.