• IT WAS A GOOD NUMBER
  
   
  Original Manuscript started
  24 July 2004
  Cagayan de Oro City
  
  
  I am letting go of 33 in a few hours.  And here I am spending the morning writing on my txt journal, feet and legs in the air, tummy on the bed, mind on the memories of years past and burnt heart set on being gratefully happy.  If I could only press my oxygen-starved brain onto these pages and let all its taho-like content seep into them..
  
  It is good to be alone.  No one but myself present to myself. It is good to laze around in my sleepwear and not be harassed by the thought of my hotel's check out time nor by my plane's etd.  I lie on my back from time to time and look up, out my window and see clouds that look back at me.
  
  
  
  
  
  Christ died at 33.  September of 2003, I had nothing but thoughts of death and dying.  And in between Christ and dying, it's amazing how obsessed one can be about so many things.  In my younger years, I wanted to be a missionary.   A few years later, I want to be the blackest black sheep in town.  Those were the  few years when all I had were deaths. 
  
  I recently rediscovered C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed.  Once again I felt connected.  My life is never without a link to someone else's.  I am never truly alone though I am always gifted with some time for solitude.  And though I feel like being dead to the world and the world to me, it is never truly as I feel.  So long as some individual is happy as he or she lies on her bed thinking the best of days or someone is out there rushing on the street eager to be someplace else,  so long as these things happen, life happens.  And even when death comes to pay a visit, it is so that life may be welcomed in another's.   
  
  Life and death. At times it is good to see them both as companion.  Not one any less than the other.
  
   
  
  
   
  HERE IS MY LIFE-DEATH-LIFE LIST FOR 33RD YEAR: 
  
   
• First niece turned 1 in July, a year earlier tried to she really made it a point to rush out and make it still  in time for my birth month 
• Another niece came in October, my Tatay and Nanay's  birthmonth 
• August, 5 years of Nanay being physically away from us 
• Went back to school in November, less than 30 days of learning about development work and developing relationships
• Fell in love for the 2nd time, almost fell for the 3rd
• 3 days before birthday, gained 3 new friends
• Another death among friends just after New Year 
• Revelations about 3 friends whom I will never look at the same way again but love  nonetheless 
• Countless friends who have stuck throught he years and new ones whom I feel will stick 
• One CV passed to about 3 possible employers
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