THINGS have CHANGED,..ever since I had writing as an occupation ( I hate how dramatic that sounds!!). Anyways, wrote this one I guess 10 months ago. Go on, read on..it's a good one I promise.
(This essay or shall I say letter was written by me as a sample piece for the Supplement Writer Position in Business Mirror, but this is really for the NOMO TROPA of LYCE. I miss you so much guys! Itaas ang TAGAY!)
Addressed to Red.
Dear Red,
We just got a piece of each other yesterday night, and still couldn’t get enough of you. I do miss you that much that I’m scribbling notes about you. I could remember the first day we met, the first time I got a sip of you and you literally saved me from pain. I was just nine years old then, remember? The menstruation cramps were so terrible that I’d rather be dead than deal with it, but you came, my shining beacon of hope. You tasted awful then, but I didn’t mind, I guzzled you like chocolate milk, though I thought for a while that the horsey image on your bottle was literally smiling. And like magic, the pain was gone. I could never thank you enough, you and I just clicked, and we are a match. You became a monthly routine, I thought that was all it. I thought wrong.
High school was over and college came. I was away from home and we did spend more time together. Well me, you and a couple of friends. We’d hang-out before and after classes, then in between classes. You didn’t mind, did you? You don’t know how much trouble we nearly got into because of you. Sneaking to get pass the Lyceum guards. I hate it when we’d chew tissue to get rid of the “drunken smell” and over dose ourselves with candy plus spray too much cologne. And there’s more, we did lie on the school corridors, crawled on stairs, took midterm and final exams half awake and performed productions yet aced them. We even gulped you an hour before our thesis presentation blurting out the excuse of “pampatanggal kaba”, and bagged high passed. You seem to be our lucky charm, our tonic. You have moved countless of people, hundreds of songs, scripts, novels are written under your name, and influence, if you were a lady, you’d make a good muse.
But you aren’t that nice all the time, too bad ass that when I get too much of you, you hit me on the tummy first then to the head. Remember one time when I was so drained that I had more than enough of you, I threw up, and I can’t seem to stop. It was excruciating, like my tummy’s cut or something, then their goes the classic cracking of the head, the hang-over.
Often times, you are a charmer. You creep unto my senses, slowly. I like it when my head spins when I’m intoxicated by you. My cheeks get so warm and red, that I could do well without make-up. My whole body starts to go numb and my feet, they turn out to be so light, so light that when you’d walk, you’d look hilarious. But no matter how sober I am, my brain’s way too active that I could blurt out anything without any fear of disgrace. Imagine when everybody’s that honest, no hesitations, it might as well be the next big thing for documentaries and reality shows and I’d call it “Basagan”.
Despite the hassle and humiliation each of us gets when you sink way too much further in our heads, you have been so good to us, to me. I have met the truest of my friends because of you, and have determined the fakest of the people through you. Have laughed out loud and louder, you never dared to leave too, or would you, soon? You have seen almost everything, that I could not hide anything from you. You have this way of making everybody truthful. You’ve been a witness to every break up, exams rarely passed, bad choices made, lucky strikes and more. In every “tagay” that flows to each of our throats, indeed, “papasarap ng papasarap, habang tumatagal”.
I know you’ll be leaving soon, but I guess not that soon…but when that moment comes, I’m sure we’re old or somewhat in the middle of a nasty liver cancer, (would you really let us pay that much?). But suddenly I’ve realized, it’s not always about you Red, or the Happy Horse on the bottle. It’s always been the bond that you’ve created, the conversations that we have over you, and the drama that we avoid, yet still happens, the unguarded laughters and the once in a life time drunken moments that no one would ever understand but us.
I’ll be seeing you this Friday, that’s for sure. You know the drill, when the booze is out, we move on, but we won’t for now, not yet, not any time soon.
Always,
Marianne