5 AM

I opened my glassy, red-streaked eyes from a forgotten dream. I yawned and my arms automatically made its usual pathway to the air above my head--but stopped in mid-stretch. Surprisingly, there was NO blinding glare from the sunlight streaming in from my window--there wasn't ANY sunlight at all. It was five in the morning, and God knows why I had to wake up this early (like what Bird says, it's probably to remind me how early I got drunk and passed out last night). I tossed and turned a bit but cruel irony chose that very moment to flash a very bad visual in my head from the toilet of a gasoline station last night. Damn. I sat up and groaned from the painful throbbing at my left temple.

I usually slept through mornings and woke up around lunchtime--to the sound of a very bad rendition of the Cranberries' Zombie (from the Japayuki promotions building, two doors down). But there I was, with five hours to kill before he tells me to go online (i'm not even sure if he's going to). So what else to do but the usual crap that normal people avoid?---reflect.

People in the urban setting are used to the fast-paced lifestyle of getting up in the morning (or afternoon), rushing to get to work, probably going out to socialize with friends, going back home, and exhaustedly dropping back into their beds to wake up to another day of yet the same thing. No time to think about the wonders of the world (which is, uhm, nonexistent in Metro Manila), no time to appreciate the beauty of silence (to hell with the Japayuki promotions), and no time to search for the meaning of life (which yesterday meant that adorable top i saw with Divs at FCUK--cruelly priced at P3500).

So I reflected... I thought about the past several months of bumming around, wasting my money, and occasionally getting stoned or drunk just to make me forget how unhappy I actually was. I realized what a coward I've been, pretending to be okay and convincing even myself that I was. I guess I wanted so much to be happy because I thought everything around me was what I thought I wanted. But nothing was.

I chose to be lost and lonely. I didn't know where I was going, and I pushed away the only person who could show me the way...maybe because I was afraid of what I'd actually find. I was scared of learning that he was right all along... that there actually IS such a thing called destiny.

I closed my eyes and remembered his face, and thought about what a fool I've been for the past several months. Everything I've always wanted was right under my nose...I just stubbornly refused to see HIM. Luckily enough, he never left. He just waited. He let me go, knowing that I would come back, when the time comes that I've decided to be a grown-up and SEE life beyond the toxic, everyday routine of trying not to.

"SOHOMBI! SOHOMBI! SOHOMBI! HI! HI! HI! HO!..." a voice with a Bisaya-stricken accent screams into a high-decibel microphone. I feel the now-even-more-painful throbbing at my left temple, and smile nevertheless. In less than two weeks, i will be given a chance to a real life again. This time, i choose to live it.