(I) Your wish is my command
March 2020 —April 2021
Stay alive. Stay home. Stay where you are. Stay safe. Stay sane. Stay alive
Keep your mask on. Keep your doors closed. Keep your distance. Keep others safe. Keep others away. Keep in touch. Keep your spirits up.
Have you washed those hands? Have you bought the vitamins you need? Have you been going out? Have you only been thinking about yourself? Have you been selfish?
Have you seen the news today? Have you been well informed? Have you limit your screen time? Have you helped others? Have you shared that information? Have you checked if it is the right information? Have you thought whether it is your place to share? Have you been keeping it to yourself?
Have you thought about how people would feel about you doing this, that, or even you doing anything at all?
Be grateful, be positive, we got this. Oh wait, scratch that. Stop your toxic positivity.
But I feel fine.
No, wait. Stop trying to feel fine. It’s ok to not feel fine.
But, what if I’m actually fine?
Stop your toxic positivity. The world is not ok. This is not fine. Like billions of people around you, you, of all people, should not feel fine.
How could you feel fine at this moment? People are going through things a lot worse than you. You only think about yourself.
How could you be smiling? How could you not try to make people smile? How could you share such jokes? How could you be so negative? How could you be so positive?
Stay alive.
Your wish is my command. It has always been my command.
You know what I did to stay alive? I killed myself.
I think we all killed ourselves. Bits of ourselves.
We all watched parts of ourselves die to survive. We killed the idea of what we thought living was about.
To survive. To help others survive.
After all, that’s what matters.
Right?
The rights or wrongs are clashing, all is blurry. Who the hell cares anyway. I’ll try to be dead and alive at the same time. I’ll try to keep my heads up while not keeping it too high that people feel bad about themselves.
I’ll try to be happy if you’re happy. I’ll try to not be happy, if you’re unhappy. I’ll be both loud and silent. I’ll be nowhere and everywhere.
I buried myself alive.
Here I am, six feet under. Breathing from down below.
Redefining what it means to be alive.
Your wish is my command. What else would you like me be?
Alive?
Yes, I will do whatever it takes, I would even kill myself to stay alive.
Oh wait, I have killed myself.
Look! I stayed alive.
After all, your wish has always been my command.
(II) Learn to be human again
May — August 2021
You know that thing you see in movies —
When the war is over and everyone is rushing through the streets. Strangers hugging each other. Tears of joy. Confetti. The world is good again. Life as we know it has returned! Psyched!
Or that scene from Beauty and the Beast when the curse is finally broken. They all turn to human and sing human again.
“When I’m human again, only human again
When the world once more starts making sense
I’ll unwind for a change, really? That’d be strange
Can I help it if I’m t-t-tense?”We’ll be floating again, we’ll be gliding again
Stepping, striding as fine as you please
Like the real human does, I’ll be all that I was
On that glorious morn’ when we’re finally reborn
And we’re all of us human again
Weirdly enough, the real world does not work that way.
Resurrection does not happen in a click.
Why? Remember what you did? Oh yeah, right, I killed myself.
This resurrection does not happen in a click. It involved a lot of learning.
I learn to have fun.
I killed that part of me, I don’t even know how to have fun anymore.
I watched them laugh. I watched them go. I watched them hang out. I watched them walk around as if nothing is happening.
Oh wait, I don’t actually watch them. I was there with them. I sit and laugh. I go somewhere. I walk. Ok. I should feel happy. Why wouldn’t I feel happy?
I watched the crowds and all I can feel is guilt and fear.
After all, that is how I have been re-programmed.
I should be happy. Why am I unhappy? Loosen up, will you?
All I can feel is guilt.
I learn to live.
I killed that part of me, I redefined living. Living was surviving, merely surviving. That is what I believe in now.
I’m afraid I killed too much of myself.
I wonder if I can ever learn to be human again.
(III) Back from the dead
September 2021
It was a (weirdly) sunny afternoon in London.
I was on a bus passing through St. Paul’s.
There was this tourist bus going the other way. I saw people not wearing masks on that bus, taking pictures of the beautiful Cathedral.
They were smiling.
Something hits me.
Underneath my mask, I smiled. I was grinning ear to ear.
I feel like I am seeing this place for the first time.
All things comes rushing through. Memories. Fun times.
The weirdest thing is , starting in June this year, London has been going back to, you know, London-as-we-know-it. Filled with tourists and all. But all I can feel was anxiety, guilt, even anger.
But today I smiled. I looked at those crowds and I smiled.
It’s like someone have succeeded in knocking some senses into me. Bits of myself that I killed back in March ’20.
Suddenly I remembered why I love this place, why I’m even here to begin with.
And I remembered why I love living. What living meant before all this. Beyond surviving. How fun it can actually be.
I looked to my right and I saw London sitting next to me,
He looked so damn fine wearing his shades, with that blue skies on the background and that annoying smirk of his, bathed in sunshine.
He laughed and shook his head, “Well, well. Look who’s back from the dead!”
