long distance.

i wish i could help sort out his life for him. but i've fucked my life too much myself to know that what a fucked up person needs is space to sort himself out, not someone who's eager to help.

i'm getting older. i think romanticizing self-destruction already lost its hold on me.

or maybe not.

- from something i wrote 2 years ago.

my ex-boyfriend carlo rang me last night. he said he was trying to reach me for a few days now and was not able to do so, and could i call him now? it seemed pretty urgent.

by the sounds of it, he seemed like he was in an awful mess. he told me he has a gash on his forehead, and he could explain properly how he got it. he was in the hospital recently to have this wound stitched.

he kept on talking. talking about one thing, then another, then another one. moving from one idea to another in suddenly twists of transition. sometimes he'll be quiet and i don't know what he was thinking. sometimes i could hear him stop himself from sobbing.

he was remembering the time we were together, those last few months when i didn't hear from him for probably 2 months while he was confined. i only learned of it when he got out. i wished i learned of it earlier; i might not have been able to do anything, but i could have visited him. that was 2 years ago.

we talked of his stay in baguio. his inclusion to an upcoming group exhibit. plans of a 2-man show with another artist. artist friends he met in baguio, this writer's workshop he accidentally crashed into. he talked of amazing mud hats and butterfly farm.

carlo caught my eye before because he looked like an adorable lost little puppy. and then we started dating and i knew that he is a lost little puppy who probably is half-blind. he's beautiful and vulnerable and has no real idea how dangerous the world is.

"you shouldn't have gone with me," he said a couple of times. he said he would've messed me up. he wished that he was able to love me more. i told him i'm pretty messed up myself, it'll take a lot to mess me some more. i doubt if he believed me, or if he even really heard what i was telling him, but that's pretty true. i told him he didn't need to prove he loved me; i knew he did, back then. that wasn't the reason i decided to break it off with him.

he asked about my boyfriend. i told him i'm still with daryl, the guy i introduced to him when we bumped into each other in greenbelt some months back. he asked me if daryl's smart. "he is," i answered, "very much so." he asked me if daryl loves me. he does, i told him. he said he's happy for me.

"please don't hang up on me," he said when we started talking. i told him the only thing that will cut the call is if i ran out of load. 40 minutes later, my load ran out and the call was cut off. i reloaded and call him back.

"i thought you hung up on me," he said, when i told him my credits ran out. he was sobbing. i don't want people sobbing on the phone while talking to me. it makes me feel so helpless and my mind panics, knowing there's very little i could do at that moment.

when i knew he was okay again, i talked to him for a few minutes then said i have to get some sleep. i was ill that morning and i still have work the next day.

some people fall into self-destruction half-consciously, aware of what they were doing but choosing to think they didn't. i don't think carlo knows how just messed up he's become, and that's the saddest thing of all. in many ways, i still care for him and i wish that he could sort his life eventually. i'm just not sure if that's really going to happen.