It’s 11:56 pm and you’re just done watching the movie you longed to watch then you think of going upstairs to your bed, but before that, you brush your teeth, you answer the call of nature and you turn your sala lights off. Now you’re in your bed and you close your eyes, but you know you can’t enter the dreamland that easily.
Life has given you a lot of burden on the act of sleeping and you think of all of these before you sleep.
Your journey to the dreamland is nearly impossible when you are, at first, deciding on what to read before going to sleep: whether Anansi Boys by Gaiman or The Historian by Kostova.
Anansi Boys was a good read and you want to read it again because you know it will be a good “reread” but you know you will find it hard to drop the book and you continue to read and the problem persists—you cannot and will not be able to sleep.
And The Historian will not be a good option to read before you sleep because it will only give you the chill you don’t want to have before sleeping, and if you do read the book it will scare you a bit you will find it hard to close your eyes and that you open it to check whether Dracula is beside you, and you close your eyes for you not to see if he really is there, and you open it again just to be sure, and the problem is still there—you can’t sleep.
Or you open the encyclopedia volumes 3B and 6D that you’ve been reading the past nine years since you were in grade school but you decide not to read the volumes at all because it will only give you lots of things that you end up memorizing and putting the things you read in your mind and that your mind keeps on working that you think of everything and that, again, you can’t sleep because you are thinking of everything.
You set books aside, and you find it hard to sleep when you know that it’s raining cats and dogs, and that you presume that cats and dogs might cut the power down and that your lights will turn off and that it will add to your difficulty in sleeping when you worry of sleeping alone in a dark room that you had a problem with since you were younger and that the rain will keep on making sounds that will keep your ears disturbed for the rest of the night, setting aside the fear that the heavy rain will cause power breakdown.
And the dogs keep on barking, no, not the dogs that you were referring the previous paragraph, but the dogs from your neighborhood and yours yourself that are making it hard for you to concentrate on the act of sleeping when these dogs feel like making noise during these times and you ask yourself why in the world do these dogs make your life miserable especially this time of the night when your utmost concern is just to enter the dreamland and not to mind of dogs after all, and by that you think you might want to cut the heads of those dogs off.
And that you feel like there is wrong with your digestive system you already had gone to the lavatory twice this day just to release the unwanted waste in your body but then it’s keeping you up this time of the night because you worry about yourself you think this feeling might be a disease or a malfunction of your system or worse, cancer, and you think of it you have difficulty going to sleep and more so, the feeling of uneasiness and unwanted feeling forbid you to have a good and wonderful trip to the dreamland.
And then you close your eyes but someone pops in your head when you should not be thinking of someone, no, not only one but many, some“many,” and that you keep on thinking about that some“many” and you think of what you’ve been through together when you should not be thinking of those things this part of the day because it’s time to sleep but then you realized the power of a memory that you force yourself to forget and erase the memory that you, for a long time, forbade yourself to remember but it only gave you difficulty and burden on the act of sleeping.
And then you write these things down and you worry if you can sleep because you will be thinking if you will be going online tomorrow to post this as a blog or just have it as is, and you still have the feeling of uneasiness in your tummy, you still hear the dogs barking, you still worry on the heavy rain, you still think of some“many” and you still find it hard to decide on what to read before going to sleep and you will be going to the lavatory because you will urinate because you have spent at least thirty minutes writing this and your toooooooot feels heavy—you assume—of urine, and then the problem still persists when you worry if you ended this piece the right way and you read this over and over, again and again, just to come up with a good piece, and the journey to the dreamland is nearly impossible.
And when you came back from the lavatory you realized that you are the only one awake and you read this again and you fill missing words and you try to sleep never minding the shock and scare that you just had when a very big mouse appeared while you were doing your thing.
I was viewing your Friendster profile, you seem not to know. I wonder if you ever thought of me, or at least of my existence. Your profile gave me the idea that you’ve logged on within the last 24 hours, and it reminded me of your addiction to social-networking sites, most especially Friendster. Back then, we were always together as we go online and check our mails, accounts and profiles. We never failed to comment on each other’s pictures, although most of our uploaded photos always projected the moments that we had shared together. You used to take your pictures using my camera phone, and I was telling you not to delete it for my friends and family to see you, to know you. I was once proud to tell the whole world that you were my best friend.
Your profile told me that you are in a complicated relationship. I wonder with whom. Once, I knew everything of you: your parents who treat you like a baby, your sister and her rich boyfriend, your two brothers, your ex-girlfriend, your crushes in the campus and even in your community, your friends who had a crush on you, everything! I’ve known of your schedule for the day. We share each other’s whereabouts, and we accompany one another to wherever we wanted to go. We never failed to tell each other regarding the changes in our lives, even the slightest thing, such as a new song in your mp4 player, or a comment in your profile. But now, I wonder who you are hanging out with, or if you still have the same habit of going to SM or Ayala. I’ve cut my ties with you, so is yours with mine, just a year ago. I’ve never known of you from then on. Or so I want it to.
Your Friendster profile had background music. I bet it’s your favorite song as of the moment. Not long ago, your favorite song was Sparks and Brown’s No Air. I first introduced it to you, and it took you a very long time to appreciate it. Eventually, you learned to love it. I once loved Ne-yo’s music as much as you did. Now, his music is nostalgic, at least for me. It reminds me of you, everything of you.
You seem so happy. I can see it in your smile, or at least, the smile in your profile picture. You always wore that wonderful smile. I, too, always wear a smile in my face, though I never thought of it as wonderful as yours. For once, you have been one of the main reasons why I smiled. Even through your slightest presence, I feel assured. I was sure that I was not alone; that I always had someone to turn to; that I have a friend no matter what. Your smile reminded me of what we used to be—our laughter, our dances, our trips, our triumphs, our happiness. It reminds me of a series of memories that we had—memories that I never thought would come to an end; memories that were once the gravity of my soul.
“My Best Friend.” That was the caption of your profile picture. I wonder where your old pictures have gone. I wonder where OUR old photos have gone. Had you erased it, I really don’t know. We are now strangers in each other’s world. I can barely forget the last words you uttered, the last words that you said while I was still part of your world, the word that really broke my heart but eventually became my motivation—move on like you never really knew me, like we don’t exist in each other’s world.
And now, here I am, viewing the profile I cannot fully view. It’s set to private. I erased you in my friend’s list the very moment you told me to forget you. I can’t cling unto a very crumbling relationship. I have to move on, like what you told me. And I did. I fortunately and unbelievably did. It was never easy, but I have to follow what you said. Even until the end, I was faithful, I obeyed you, and I listened to you.
We both met our happy endings. I ended up successful in my own field—being a student leader and an academic achiever. As for your case, you seem very happy with your current life. I heard you’ve found the love of your life, but I have no updates about you. You seem so happy, though I really never bothered or cared to ask you. Just because I’m not looking, it doesn’t mean that I don’t see. I was like a villain in your world, and you are to mine. We were like villains who hurt anyone who come our ways. I hurt you, you hurt me, but we are fine now, at least I think so. The villains in our different worlds have become the superheroes of their own lives. The villains have actually moved on from miseries of their lives. One of the villains, however, will continually look at another villain’s Friendster profile, reminiscing quite a bunch of memories that will always be part of their lives.
(Photo courtesy of Google Images. Edit Effect: Old Image)
