Back

It is easy to find the footsteps back to where I have been relative to you. Either, I've never moved or am too familiar with them.

Silly, really to find myself back to where I don't want to be. Is it a natural regression or a necessary final lookback before I start moving on? Some sort of comparison, between the then and the now which should make the latter more palatable.

"Buti na 'yan. Kung hindi, baka ikaw rin madamay na sa bisyo n'ya," a friend said after I had told him about what had happened to him-who-doesn't-have-a-name.

I somehow see the logic, the rightness of the decision made a year ago. And I am reminded.

Reminded, too, that last year, around this period, was my personal version of the great depression. Instinctively, my being knows that. So I relive, once again, that sad punctuation of my otherwise, good life.

But I don't mind. Pain is necessary, as darkness is, to appreciate light, and relief.

"It's been a year," I told a former professor who knew of the great depression.

"See, you didn't realise you could live without him for a year?" she implied.

"I guess," I said, half-convinced, still, whether indeed I had made the right decision.

So I indulge myself with this self-inflicted pain as I trace the footsteps once again. But this time, not backwards. But forward.

But I guess, things will take care of themselves, as tomorrow, always does.