The Hour that Lingers

By: Funnyberry

Graphics by: Cassius Klai C. Francisco

There’s a particular hour where the atmosphere is uneasy, and a cold chill breeze sweeps throughout the campus; usually, that’s when the ghosts come out. It shadows everyone. It walks with me in and out of classes on the same path I’ve taken a hundred times. I have been accustomed to this kind of ghost. I sense it in the eyes of strangers and friends. There is always something hallowed underneath their eyes, almost as if a bright burning fire was smothered into dust to fade. In contrast to the freshmen with wide eyes full of hope that I used to carry. Twists my guts into knots because they serve as a reminder of a part of myself that once roamed here. They echo on the life that never unfolded. 

I lived a past life wherein I did routines as if they were a reverent prayer that would secure a future I once envisioned. Every detail of my day was measured to a tee, color-coded notes stacked in mountains of academic notebooks, all while I willingly sacrificed sleep with no hesitation. Even the smallest task or subject, I treated with equal seriousness. I know the potential I had and honed it relentlessly. For that brief time, I had hope that I would make it. That everything felt certain.

Dwelling on the past does nothing as my library of notebooks collects dust. I now trade a passing mark for a full sleep. Relics of routines are there to haunt the last piece of self there is left. This just makes me ponder every night on how life has succumbed to this. What was once a rigorous routine has dissolved into survival. Waking up to only hope to fall asleep again. Even then, at night, it's still not easy to just drift; there is the grief of the person that once lingered. Mourning, bargaining with God to bring that missing piece back. 

They tell you for comfort, ‘life happens and you move on, but what they don't tell you is that it hits you when you least expect it, just when you think you’ve reached the peak of the mountain. It leaves you to deal with different broken pieces of yourself that you can’t put back together. It will leave permanent scars that holistically change into an entirely different person that I can barely recognize anymore. They don't tell you that, but what you do tell yourself is all the things that have gone wrong. You’ve been familiar with rock bottom. ‘Why are you here again? You know your capabilities, then how can you let this happen?’ That’s the ghosts of your past mistakes haunting you, reminding you of every fall you braced.

Which brings us to now, I have learned to live with ghosts of the past and to let go of it. Let go of what could’ve been. As a new self has been molded in the ashes of the old, the uncertainty of what once was is marked by a new dawn of hope. I carry with it the baggage of wisdom to navigate the sea of the unknown. But then, that particular hour again, where shadows start to talk in a familiar tongue. In their constant whispers telling me to fall back again, I caved in and listened to their calls of disappointment. Little by little, I fell back. Back to the bottom. I start to notice the shadows of ghosts don’t trail behind me, but rather they walk with me. Waiting for me to see them out of the shadows and whispers. Calling me to face them, and so I did. Truth struck colder than the hour. As the shadows took their shape, it was familiar. There it was staring at me directly, a version of myself that didn’t learn how to forgive me.