Molting

I WELCOMED the New Year in solitude.

The year 2007 came in the guise of a minor "thud" one humdrum night. I slept through most of it, rousing occasionally amid the muffled sounds of firecrackers from outside. Some time during the night, I decided to watch a movie while devouring one whole pizza and a couple of "floss" breads I had bought earlier.

Of course, I cannot recall the title of the movie now. It may have been some chick flick or a breathtaking romance I've seen far too many times and whose "happy ending lines" I have already memorized. Yet to keep the cheer of that lonely night, I remained fixed on the small screen watching hero and heroine kiss like it was for the very first time. It promised to be the highlight of my New Year's Eve.

The film's soundtrack struggled to contend with New Year's own musical score of syncopated etudes of "five stars" and other noisy firecrackers. The explosions gradually intensified as the night wore on, until it peaked, as usual, around midnight and died down by two in the morning. No clanking of calderos that night, no silly jumping in the air in superstitious yearning to add a few more inches to my height (I could have but I was too lazy that night), and no overrated TV countdowns and painful "Auld lang syne" to bear as I, alone in what used to be a charming 1950s art deco apartment in Ermita, relished how I yawned, lazed and slept, alone in utter contentment with the seeming triviality of how my New Year unraveled.

I had planned to go home that night. I even bought champagne a few days earlier and had it sent to our house in Laguna, where I was supposed to spend the New Year. Just like in the previous years, I intended to repeat the same tradition of drinking sparkling avec mon famille. Even my sister, who had stayed away from us for many years, decided to show up and join us for the season. Subtly rebellious as I know she was, she preferred staying with my mom in the province to avoid "family affairs."

But I never went home that night; I decided not to. Dad must have felt let down realizing that his hijos and hijas wouldn't all be present for the New Year cheer after all. Well, I wouldn't really call it a cheer, especially when I reminisce about the past few years. We almost never got to eat our media noche dinner the last time I was present. I thought everybody dozed off, except for me, and dad went home some 10 minutes before midnight, amid the increasing sounds of firecrackers, breathing a faint scent of alcohol under his nostrils.

It was one of those days, although he did manage to save that night from becoming a total humdrum. He woke up the sleepyheads to join us in lighting the fireworks and we sat for dinner afterwards in photo-finish fashion.

I wondered for a moment how the night went this time, without me. At that thought, I felt a slight pang of sadness. "At least they had champagne"--the idea came as if to give myself a reassuring consolation for my intentional physical absence.

As another new year approaches, I look back to that night in Ermita and see it now as sort of a thematic conversion that brought about interesting twists and truths for me in 2007. Uneventful as it was, my one night of solitude signaled the stirrings of a new personal outlook. It made me react to things quite spontaneously and sometimes in reckless abandon. Call it a molting of a snake's old skin, but my casual decision to be alone that night turned my year into one great adventure. I experienced not only a great deal of pleasure but also a great deal of pain. I felt abundant love but also agonized over stinging losses. I met new people of different colors whose lives splashed passionate hues in mine like a Joya. I built up expectations, only to be thwarted most of the time. So I re-molted, and reduced my expectations. I loved with the conscious effort of not possessing those whom I loved because I learned that freedom means to love without possession.

I jumped at every chance, while still missing out on a lot of hints. However scared of heights I was, I braved falls. I conquered places I've never been before, leaving my indelible soul in each of my travels.

I find it amazing as I reflect now that life never runs out of surprises if we expect only one thing from it: the unexpected.

I don't regret a single thing. I've "been to me" more than in any other year. It all began in 2007, ironically, sparked by what seemed like an uneventful New Year's Eve.

*** Published in Phil. Daily Inquirer's Youngblood Column, January 1, 2008

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