Paranoia, I Hope / Sometimes

I’m scared. Of what you think of me. Of slipping down. I’m not used to feeling this way. There’s something about the way you said, “Ikaw talaga.” And the look you gave me after that. The disappointment. It was searing. Yet it could’ve been just imagined. I’m hallucinating. I hope I am. God, let it simply be paranoia. There was a point—amidst all the good, all the jokes, all the shallowness—when I began to care about what you thought of me. It was when I started to open up. And eventually you did too. It was an investment. An investment I don’t want to go under. Few people have this effect on me. At least not to this extent.

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Sometimes the stars align just right. Sometimes the sun rises and sets at the exact moments you want it to. Sometimes I have weekends like these when family doesn’t seem like a hopeless notion. Yesterday it was time with Dad, today it was Dad, Mom, and Tita Chi-Chi. Yesterday it was a seminar, noodles, and negotiating with condo tenants. Today it was pasta, a haircut, book shopping, and more negotiating with condo tenants. Tomorrow we all wake up to the problems we went to bed with on Friday. But at least we had these 48 hours. I missed mass today. I’ll have to thank God in the privacy of my own room.