We began to fall apart about a week before Christmas – around this time, last year.
She would claim that it was much earlier than that, but I was never very popular for my eye for detail. I only began to notice certain things – though few and far between – when the local carolers had already begun making their rounds along my neighborhood. “Pasko na naman,” they would sing, and if I hadn’t been reminded, I might as well have forgotten.
She had grown distant, to say the least. At first, I thought that it was but a festering paranoia that began to take me over, but then clues surfaced like in an estranged murder investigation – realizing much too late that your relationship is lying dead and bleeding at the foot of your bed.
They were the little things: from the awkward taste of her kiss, to the weight of her voice over the phone. Sometimes it would be in the way she took two steps ahead of you, and other times the way she would pull her hand away from yours. It was the way she would never look you straight in the eye over dinner, and in the disinterested way she would fork her pasta over conversation.
But I couldn’t accuse her of anything, no. She wasn’t breaking any rules, or telling any lies, or doing anything wrong. You couldn’t simply blame someone for being distant. And when friends ask how things had ended between us, I usually just shrug and say that “it was just complicated”. But in reality, it was actually very simple. She left me. And it doesn’t get any simpler than that.
But it isn’t unusual for couples to blame each other for unfounded reasons. Or to bring up issues that clearly have no basis whatsoever. It happens all the time, more often than it should, and if the world were to be a better place, blind accusations wouldn’t help. Not in the least. But looking back at last Christmas, I realize that the world was hopeless and unsalvageable. That God had sent his only begotten son to the world to save us – to save me – from sin. Well, let me burn in hell, I should’ve blamed her for something, for anything. I’d much rather die with the chance of being right, than live by having myself believe that I was wrong. And maybe, if I had told her, she might’ve listened.
Christmas is a very strange season indeed, and I will forever attribute it as the season we fell apart. It rolled around the corner without much fanfare, and I gave her a gift that I had wrapped in a rather large cardboard box, the traditional ribbon sticking out like a pig in poultry. But then again, what I had gotten her doesn’t matter anymore, not really. Or maybe it’s just that I refuse to remember what it had been.
“What do you want Christmas?” she asked me once, just as all girlfriends do.
And as we grow up we learn to never answer with what we really want. We are taught to be humble and generous, and simple and gracious. The idea of wanting and asking is imbibed to be selfish and needy. And so we answer with the obligatory “nothing”, “I’m fine”, “whatever, it’s up to you”, and brush aside our real Christmas lists for our fantasies and our dreams.
When asked what I had wanted, my answer would’ve been simple. You, I wanted to say, as corny as it had been. But it was the truth, it was the goddamn truth. And in her voice you could already tell that she was bored, tired, exhausted, thinned. I didn’t have much time left with her, I knew, and if I were man enough to admit just that, her leaving might not have been so difficult. And like a cancer patient asking his doctor how long he has left, I knew that we had until the summer at least. But then, I am not one for estimates, and it ended much earlier than that.
And when asked what I had wanted for Christmas. I lied instead.
“Nothing,” I told her. “I’m fine.”
She would claim that it was much earlier than that, but I was never very popular for my eye for detail. I only began to notice certain things – though few and far between – when the local carolers had already begun making their rounds along my neighborhood. “Pasko na naman,” they would sing, and if I hadn’t been reminded, I might as well have forgotten.
She had grown distant, to say the least. At first, I thought that it was but a festering paranoia that began to take me over, but then clues surfaced like in an estranged murder investigation – realizing much too late that your relationship is lying dead and bleeding at the foot of your bed.
They were the little things: from the awkward taste of her kiss, to the weight of her voice over the phone. Sometimes it would be in the way she took two steps ahead of you, and other times the way she would pull her hand away from yours. It was the way she would never look you straight in the eye over dinner, and in the disinterested way she would fork her pasta over conversation.
But I couldn’t accuse her of anything, no. She wasn’t breaking any rules, or telling any lies, or doing anything wrong. You couldn’t simply blame someone for being distant. And when friends ask how things had ended between us, I usually just shrug and say that “it was just complicated”. But in reality, it was actually very simple. She left me. And it doesn’t get any simpler than that.
But it isn’t unusual for couples to blame each other for unfounded reasons. Or to bring up issues that clearly have no basis whatsoever. It happens all the time, more often than it should, and if the world were to be a better place, blind accusations wouldn’t help. Not in the least. But looking back at last Christmas, I realize that the world was hopeless and unsalvageable. That God had sent his only begotten son to the world to save us – to save me – from sin. Well, let me burn in hell, I should’ve blamed her for something, for anything. I’d much rather die with the chance of being right, than live by having myself believe that I was wrong. And maybe, if I had told her, she might’ve listened.
Christmas is a very strange season indeed, and I will forever attribute it as the season we fell apart. It rolled around the corner without much fanfare, and I gave her a gift that I had wrapped in a rather large cardboard box, the traditional ribbon sticking out like a pig in poultry. But then again, what I had gotten her doesn’t matter anymore, not really. Or maybe it’s just that I refuse to remember what it had been.
“What do you want Christmas?” she asked me once, just as all girlfriends do.
And as we grow up we learn to never answer with what we really want. We are taught to be humble and generous, and simple and gracious. The idea of wanting and asking is imbibed to be selfish and needy. And so we answer with the obligatory “nothing”, “I’m fine”, “whatever, it’s up to you”, and brush aside our real Christmas lists for our fantasies and our dreams.
When asked what I had wanted, my answer would’ve been simple. You, I wanted to say, as corny as it had been. But it was the truth, it was the goddamn truth. And in her voice you could already tell that she was bored, tired, exhausted, thinned. I didn’t have much time left with her, I knew, and if I were man enough to admit just that, her leaving might not have been so difficult. And like a cancer patient asking his doctor how long he has left, I knew that we had until the summer at least. But then, I am not one for estimates, and it ended much earlier than that.
And when asked what I had wanted for Christmas. I lied instead.
“Nothing,” I told her. “I’m fine.”
