Dreams, dreams

The moon grinned by my window. That was two hours ago. Now, all I see are pitch black skies, unlit high-rises, and my reflection staring back at me.

It was unlike that rainy Thursday several weeks ago when I stared across the glass window of a coffee shop and saw city lights glistening, reflected on the drenched road.

I remember shaking, in cold and in hunger. Mea culpa. I spent the rest of the day at a seminar and in an interview and did not have proper lunch. (Like any other day, I also did not eat breakfast.) I wore a thin-fabric blouse, forgot my jacket, ordered iced coffee, and sat with my back to the aircon. I could have eaten more than the stick of kikiam I bought at a street food stall at noontime. I arrived two hours early. I brought some work with me to while away the hours. Waiting, I thought, was better than being stuck in the rainy rush hour traffic. I ended up waiting five hours for a dear friend I wasn’t sure would come. He did.

It’d been almost a decade since we last saw each other.

What’s good about meeting Franz was how the last image we knew of each other was that of our decade-younger selves, idealistic and blind to the harshness of adulthood. We spoke about high school, how childish what we used to think our mature decisions were, how ambitious and hopeful we used to be.

I was taken back to the early midsummer mornings of 2013 when I would wake up with gusto, despite a two-hour one-way commute to a Quezon City office. I did not have to show up as an intern anymore back then. I already received my college diploma; it wasn’t as if I’d earn extra credit. Still, I went because, despite much of my internship hours offset by my extracurricular work at the university, I had committed a certain number of hours I had not fulfilled yet. And I showed up, above all, because I believed in the work I was assigned to do — even if that work at the time meant running individual pages of high-ranking government officials’ statements of assets, liabilities, and net worth (SALNs) to a scanner. It was a menial task, the impact of which I believed to be greater than its humdrum nature.

Ten years since then, I circled back to the same company, only at a different address, no longer as an intern but as an employee. Franz congratulated me. “Wasn’t that your dream?” I was equally glad and sad he remembered because it was The Dream. Much like how I thought the person seated with me at the table would eventually become my groom and father my children.

I have long wished for the opportunity to talk: At first, it was for questions I needed answered about what went wrong; now, it was to clarify what I already know. It was weird, at least for me, discussing the same timeline but different events. I had vegetable curry, mild spice, and three bottles of Pale Pilsen. The dinner was a better memory than the bitter feelings it triggered.

I had expected the old days to resurface. I prepared for it. But I hadn’t thought memories from those days would touch a subject I was not ready to face.

So, when Franz asked why, I almost begged him to not prod. It took me so long to finally decide, I said. I was not about to add nostalgia to my already-confusing mix of feelings.

That was when he said, “You’ll find another dream.”

As if it were that easy. For many years now, all I wanted was to liberate myself from the dreams that bind me.

Nigel told me one morning how I was “fidgety and restless” while asleep. It was unusual, he said. He held my hand, and I immediately calmed down.

“I woke up because I wanted to poop, but I made the mistake of holding your hand because you were fidgety and restless while asleep. You calmed down but wouldn’t let me go,” he said. “I very poopy.”

We both laughed. How could I dream of more when I already have this man? •