(First posted here.)

This memory is the answer. Tidal waves don’t beg forgiveness. Ang Pearl Jam na ang nagsabi.

I had no idea where she was then. I was desperate and I only had a single clue after hours of searching. Nanginginig ako sa nerbyos sa nalaman ko.

When people are sad they do certain things. They drink, they talk, they stare off into space until the next things happen. Nirvana sings, smokes, and helps people. When I met Nirvana, I did not know she was sad. I just always figured she was quiet and reserved and spoke in the low tones of the coolly unassuming. I always mistook the despondence as some version of wisdom, cynicism even, about the world.

But still, there was that, the certainty that she was keeping the radiant glow of an untold past or a current secret just below the radar so no one would see. Hindi ko maintindihan minsan kung bakit tila ako nga lang ang nakakakita sa kanya sa ganitong paraan.

Which was why seeing the Mass Comm seniors and terminals practicing some graduation presentation that afternoon was bound to remind her of the heartbreaking accident that wiped out her father, mother, and five doting brothers. I had no idea how hard this was going to hit her. From this point onward, I would say all bets are off.

Later that night, I found her body in the topmost floor of the Film Center. The sight tore me apart. She had her back against the wall and was in the middle of disinterestedly cutting herself in the arms. There were ribbons of blood spatter where she sat, but they might as well have been red or brown paint.

She was pale and dry-looking and her short hair was wiry, sprouting in all directions.

“Hey,” I said. “What the hell are you doing?”

She looked up, not entirely surprised to see me there. But she did put the blade down. “I can’t feel anything.”

“No one commits suicide in an unfamiliar place,” sabi ko. This is not true, but not unlikely.

May binubulong siya na maaaring bilang sagot sa sinabi ko. Pero ilang taon ko nang hindi ito marinig. O naririnig ko pero hindi lumalapat sa utak ko enough to make sense.

Because what my ears heard was this, “Baka kasi makita mo ako.”

And what that meant, what that would mean, for years and years to come, was the entire reason I’m going to do what I’m about to do. Nirvana and I had no reason to find each other, and yet we did. I don’t thrive in meaning, you know that. I live in the present, almost to a fault.

But this, this is more than mere meaning. I feel like I have bits of her flowing in my blood, like somewhere where things were written we were built for each other, in a way nobody will ever understand.

We are not in love.

Love is overrated.