Inconsolable

I dropped you off to work about ten minutes ago, and for two whole minutes now I have been inconsolable. I blink repeatedly, forcing the reds, yellows, and greens back into focus.

Twenty-two years. All of them you spent in one company. Your connections across Luzon were unquestionable. Ask the folks at the Head Office and however many regional branches - it didn't matter; they all knew your name.

Prestige and competence is one thing, but the friendships you made were more precious. The antics you and your co-workers would pull in the office: staring down little children when their parents weren't looking, sending the messengers to the market nearby to buy fresh seafood to fry for lunchtime, cracking jokes here and there, and counting down the days until Irma's retirement because damnit, she doesn't have to be so cranky all the time.

I love your stories. Your eyes light up, and your voice gets louder. It's like you're transplanting me and you back to that space and time.

But I hate your stories, too. As much as I love seeing your face become animated in a story-telling frenzy, I stop halfway because I know you always tell your stories in the past tense.

Now when you talk about work, you revisit the long, long year when you were unemployed. You talk about the many, many companies you walked in and out of. The Pilipina women who mistreated you, were insecure of you, and spoke ill of you to your superiors. The age difference between you and your co-workers. The frustration you build up in your chest when you see young people without college degrees talking over your head, disregarding your Accounting degree and years of experience. The loneliness. The lunches you took by yourself facing the blank wall. The embarrassing moment when your co-worker handed you his iPhone to take a picture, but you didn't know how. The constant defending and proving yourself, just because English isn't your first language.

When you tell your stories, you always tell them in two separate batches. The happy ones, and the ones that you can only complain about. They're always separate, but I see the thread that ties them together. It's an unspoken despair that you'll never speak about because you want me to think you're okay.

Once again, I am inconsolable. I feel a heaviness that I know will pass but will never really go away. Not unless we leave.

Mom, I love you. I promise to bring you back home.

Heavy Boots

The air is crisp, a light wind passes, yet this heaviness separates you from me.

It is as if we are cramming the entirety of two years in the blink of an eye. I had so much to say, and expected so much to hear from you. In my mind our meeting would be less talking and more spilling. Maybe an overflowing of the things that we abruptly stopped sharing after a while.

The silence isn't as comfortable as it used to be. Before, a sigh would suffice to vault us into completely different fits of musings, giggles, or maybe even both. This time the silence lingers. It's like both of us are waiting for the other to break it. It's like we're waiting for something from yesterday to whisk us away from the reality of the now.

You speak to me of your dreams, your gripes, your vulnerabilities, and your loneliness. For a moment I am lost. To be frank, I had forgotten what it was like to be a friend to you. For you to so eagerly spill reminds me of my role, and how I had abandoned it. To me, there is no point of return. I'm terribly sorry.

Intermixed with conversations about the future, you take us back to the past. You speak so fondly of a different me who lived in a time and space where it was okay to call things retarded and gay, where ethnic studies was a joke, where we thought we were better than everyone else, and where reputation and grades meant everything.

My skin crawls when you describe something as "retarded," but I hold my tongue. Why is it that this happens to me so often?

To reciprocate, I speak to you of my own plans. Asian Am. SF State. Ethnic Studies. (You even ask me if I'm involved with Pillipinos still. Why are you chuckling?) I am everything I was not when you knew me. I am what we made fun of. I am what we thought was immature and unimportant.

You, you're still the same. The same passions and dreams, the same competitive drive, the same vulnerability, the same loneliness. You haven't changed a bit. I recognize you, as if from a former life.

We grow silent again, and as soon as our meeting has started it's over. We hug goodbye, and I wonder if it's heartfelt, the "Keep in touch" that I hear myself utter. For the hour that we sat so close, I don't think I've ever felt so far from you.