The Letter

Dear Son,

If you're reading this letter, it means I'm dead. Hmmm funny how everything becomes clearer at the end of your life even though clarity would have helped better at the beginning of it. Confessions too become easier and even necessary as if we absolve ourselves of all sin and responsibilities after we go. But this is not why I wrote this. I wrote this because while I was alive I could never say all these to you and expect you not to be affected by what you hear. I could not tell you these things and have your vision remain untainted by them. I guess, in the words of a selfish person, I wanted to protect you the way I saw fit.
Of course now that I'm dead I can tell you everything and hope that it will not change the way you felt about me in any way. Even if it does, it'll hardly matter because I will be gone. Ah the selfishness of it all, but the necessity, oh the necessity. I see in you too much of me and in me, too much of my father. We, each of us, hold back too much. We are a disciplined bunch so that our lives are lives that have lived but were rarely alive. To say that I hope what I write here will change things is perhaps too presumptious, but I hope nonetheless and even if it doesn't change anything, at least I've done what I could and besides it won't matter either way because I won't be there to see it. Only you will know and perhaps with your dying breath, you will write a letter of confession to another in absolution of your sins to come.

My confession then is this. My dearest son, in my life I have loved only one woman with all my heart and all my soul, Eve. She was everything to me and for her I would have given up life itself. I met her long before I was married. I met her when I was still young and rather impressionable. She was everything that I was not. She was brave and adventurous and optimistic. She laughed in the face of danger and most often, convention. She'd mock customs and traditions and question ways and believes. She was smart and funny and very very beautiful. In fact, everybody loved her.
We were introduced by a mutual friend while we were in college. I was persuaded to join many societies and activist groups because of her and I found that my views widened around her. We were one against the world and when I was with her, I felt that nothing would ever get us done and even if we were to lose we'd still win. Nothing was impossible with her and for the first time ever, she taught me to live. To truly come alive and see the things around me and feel every breath of wind and hear every whisper. I lived my son, I was alive.

We lived together she and I, in our poor student housing but we were happy...or a while. Then reality set in and graduation loomed. She was offered a teaching job at the university while I ventured out into the working world. At first all was perfect and we were still going for our meetings with our activist groups and still living the independent free-spirited life we chose and then, I got offered to take a job overseas. We thought that our love would see us through, we really did. We believed so much in ourselves that there was never room for doubt. She helped me pack and even sent me to the airport. Your grandfather disapproved of her and so he never came to send me off. Your grandmother was more sympathetic but that wasn't enough to push her beyond just sending me off to actually acknowledging Eve's presence. I left with a heavy heart but I was so certain that time would just speed past and I would soon be back in her arms. But as you know this was not to be. Time, as they say erodes everything especially determination. Pretty soon I was so caught up in the corporate world that I found we had nothing to talk about at all when we even did find the time to talk. I was constantly jealous of the attention she was getting from her students and angry that she was never jealous enough of the attention I got from my clients and co-workers. The distance put such a strain on us that I gave up altogether. I gave up because she was not there to encourage me and to root me to my believes. I stopped calling her and seh stopped trying believing as always in our independence and free-spiritedness. She respected my choices and decisions and even though she felt it necessary to tell me how she felt about things, she never did force me into anything I didn't want to do. So I never did anything. In my fear of losing whatever position I had in society, I let go of the one true thing I should have held onto. I gave her up and started a new life. I made amends with my parents and even got married and started a family. She came to the wedding you know. She was in the photos. Your grandparents were afraid at first, but she only came with well wishes and I like the stubborn idiot that I was pretended I didn't want to leave with her. She asked you know. She asked me when we had a quiet moment together if I loved her enough to leave. I didn't answer her and perhaps that was answer enough. She left after that and I never saw her again.

Do you remember how I was sick for days after receiving a letter in the mail? I couldn't stop crying and then I fell sick and had to stay in bed for a long time. That was when I received her last letter, something akin to what you're reading now. In her final days she chose to write to me telling me everything we could have been if only we made different choices. She never stopped loving me you know and even when she was suffering from all the pain during her last days, just the thought of me would make her overcome them. I cried when I read her letter, hurting because I wasn't there for her when she needed me the most. I was safe in my own little world, locked away from all the hurt and the pain never feeling more than I should and can. She left me her ring which I wore around my neck every single day to remind me of the million if onlys we gave up together, she and I.
So I write this to you now my darling son so that you might suffer no regrets. While the path of true lov may not be easy, it is a path we should all be unafraid to take because then and only then will we ever be truly alive even as we live. You are so much like me that I fear you will choose to follow in my path also and at the end of the day you will also feel the pain and regret that I feel and felt from the day I got her letter. I never want you to go through life without living it fully. Make your mistakes if you have to, but learn from them too. Embrace the good together with the bad. Be happy, be carefree, and even be stupid, but whatever you choose, just BE.

Loving you always,
Mom

Secret Addiction

The eyes drink in the view like a dessert gone without rain for much too long. The pupils dilate to take it all in, refusing to miss even a little bit of it. The brain works like a sponge and soaks it all up leaving not even a tiny drop behind. The heart immediately locks away that moment to be taken out again and again much later for savouring.

The hands reach out to make friendly gestures and caring ones and lingers a second longer. The body remembers the embrace and the way the other feels against it. The warmth of the other and itself meshing into one giving the impression of home.

Every nerve and sinew reaches out, every cell and sense yearns and all the while the whole acts nonchalent moving and speaking like a normal person. Inside the battle rages on and the longing once too much to bear threatens to break out and reveal itself in strange actions like the lingering of a touch or a shortness of a breath almost too subtle to catch.

Once alone, the body replays every instance like a broken record over and over again somtimes for pleasure and sometimes for pain. Because having the memory is pleasure worth reminicing but being without in reality is pain.

Always a secret, desire hidden behind actions and longing submerged inside words. Never to see the light, never to be known...always a secret addiction until it becomes too much and consumes the entire being and drowns it in pain from wanting yet lacking the cure.

smells

Smells trigger memories in a person. You heard that in a movie once and thought about it long and hard. You remember carefree days at your grandmothers whenever you smell freshly baked cookies. The smell of grass after the rain always reminds you of your mom and how she used to let you lie on the grass in the garden daydreaming your days away.

His smells have always been distinct and your memory of him always clear. The smell of alcohol and men's perfume, Eternity for men by CK in particular, was always your weakness and it always brought back memories of him and you during your happiest times. The restaurant where he brought you to on your birthday, the rose petals strewn all over the place, and everything you said and did remains clear as day. The only thing that you could never remember was the food you ate, but all that you want to remember was that kiss...oh that kiss...it was like a taste of heaven.

Some things just stay with you no matter how much you try to erase them from your memory, like the smell of burning flesh. The rancid quality of the scent as it stings your nose and draws tears to your eyes is something you're not likely to forget. It reminds you of a barbeque at the beach where someone has put on the meat for too long.

He loved red wine, desert wines particularly because they were sweet. He looked oh so grown up sitting there sipping his wine and smiling at me. The matre'd had recommended a fantastic wine, I believed it was french. I'm pretty sure we ate all our food though I can't be sure. But I certainly remember him finishing the whole bottle of wine. I didn't drink as I couldn't stand the taste of it, but he loved his wine.

Ten years down the road and as soon as the smell reaches you, you're instantly transported back to that fateful day. Nothing you can do will stop the memory from coming. The drugs never help, they never block them out. The doctors think it's a mental thing and will never admit to incompetence.

He was drunk on the wine and you were drunk on happiness just being with him. He wanted to take you to another lovely restaurant for desert and you simply couldn't refuse him. The combination of his perfume and the alcohol intoxicates you and you hold him close taking it all in.

You've tried everything now but nothing works and the memories keept getting clearer and clearer and nothing you can do will block them out. You've stopped sleeping because sleeping only allows the dreams to come and that makes it even more real. You feel trapped when all you want is to be free. You've become so desperate...

The bus came out of nowhere or perhaps it was there all along but you never did see it. The lights were blinding and the sound of tires screeching and horns blasting filled your eardrums. You hear someone screaming in the distance and then you realise it's you. Your car skids and flips. The smell of burning rubber fills the air and in your state of semi-consciousness you can smell the burning of flesh like meat on a barbeque.

You lie on the cold bathroom floor reliving the night of the accident over and over. You try to remember what he looked like burning next to you but nothing comes to mind. You can't even remember how you managed to survive. All that remains is the memories before the accident and the combinations of smells that lead you to the accident, but nothing after. You've seen many doctors and none could help you. Finally, it has come to this and you decide it's time to help yourself.
You lie on the cold bathroom floor wondering how long it'll take for the super glue to block up your respitory system completely taking away your sense of smell and with it, the memories of him.