The Faintest Chances

This, on a day when everything seemed to crumble right beneath his feet. Sure, it felt – and he sounded, no less – like a broken record, never mind that he’s used to throwing the same arguments and lament at the selfsame insecurity that’s always been flung a quarter of the way across the room. Admittedly, it was deplorable, his state; he’d only have to think that he’d only a little more than a year left and things were done, and he figured he’d have something to look forward to – that’s what he told me before: I suppose that’s how bad it really was.

Not that it was fair to begin with. Too many times, I’ve seen him try his hardest to do what he believes in his heart to be right, which was to reach out, really, despite whatever sense of belongingness they were withholding from him for no obvious reason other than that they were jerks. It was something which would consistently spur sporadic fits of self-imposed isolation on his part, though at the end of the day, he’d manage to overcome his own tendencies and give things another shot, only to fail again. From this, I guess, you could see he was nice as it is. Maybe he wasn’t the nicest person in the block, and maybe he never received some outlandish award for always trying, but he tried and he was certainly nice enough than most others who only pretended to be something they’re not. Instead, he found that people actually patronized hypocrisy – I guess that’s what really bothered him in the first place. And yet he still trudged on, quite unseemingly, probably, though he did.

“So where’s this strength coming from?” I’ve often asked him, I recall, a question to which he’ll merely give a virtual shrug in reply.

I managed to talk to him again a couple of hours back, and he was, I surmised, more aggravated than usual. He came home from a particularly frustrating day at work today, with stuff probably going on as usual, if not any worse.

“You think something’s wrong with me?” he went.

“Why?”

“Feel ko kasi laging ako ‘yung outsider. Parang laging ako ‘yung hindi na-a-accept since dati pa, samantalang ‘yung iba hindi naman nagkakaganun.” He then proceeded to have dinner.

It was most definitely surreal, when, two hours later, he’d come back to message me about a friend of his who was apparently in a crossroads of a different kind, as though he’s completely forgotten what we were talking about before we suspended our conversation.

“You know, she deserves to have everything,” went a spontaneous message from his end.

I was lost.

And he went on to explain everything.

“So you had dinner putting your actions into question and go on to comfort someone who’s wondering about her own future,” I teased. “How could that be possible?”

“Well…” he stuttered for a good minute or so.

“Well, what?”

“I guess we’ve always listened to each other is all. Not that she needs me, though – I know she has a lot of friends who she doesn’t need to feel awkward talking to over a cup of tea. It isn’t her fault either, but…” Another long pause.

“But?”

“…but she was always patient with me. I’d have to admit she was one of those people who allowed me to hold on to my faith. You know I could have lashed out at those people anytime, one year to go or not, but she always reminded me of positivity. Now, the roles are reversed. I figured the least I could do was to let her know I was there.”

And suddenly, I thought everything was answered.

“You know what I really think?” I beamed. “From the boy who’s having doubts, to the girl who’s having doubts – they say it’s called holding on together.”