Dear readers, gather round. I am going to tell you something that, until now, only I know.
I am going to tell you about my secret weakness.
It's sunset.
Surprising, I know. But since I could remember, that dusky one-hour period, from 5 pm to 6 pm, has always held a certain power, almost a spell, on me.
As a little boy, every day, at 5 pm, I was made to take a shower. Once I had gotten out of the bathroom and put on some clean clothes, there was always this strange, deep melancholy that came over me. I would kneel on the sofa and look out the window, gazing at the orange-purple sky and the darkening road and the neighboring houses' lamps that were starting to come on. I would call out, silently, in the coming twilight, to my father and my mother who are making their daily commute from their places of work. "Father, Mother, please come home," I would chant under my breath with a voice only I could hear.
I did not have a name for it at the time. But each day, at sunset, I was heartbroken. I was pining for my protectors, my guardians, my lovers, wishing for their presence beside me, knowing that everything would be right once they are in my arms and I in theirs. There was this ache in my chest created by their absence that has no remedy save for their coming home and saying something as simple as, "Hello, Son, how was your day?"
That was when I was a small child. When I loved few but my parents.
I have loved much more since then.
But thankfully, as I grew, so did the distractions. My schoolwork got tougher, my circle of friends grew larger, television shows got more interesting and numerous, if not always better. Even more so during junior and senior high school. Discovered books, attended extracurricular lessons and courses, got tangled in the mess that was the world wide web, experimented with computer games, played guitar, sang, laughed.... There was no shortage of diversions that protected me from the dread melancholy with a shield of forgetfulness.
A thin and flimsy shield it was. For at times, I forgot the distractions, and I looked up to the sky as the sun starts its dive.
And the sunset hit me with the force of nearly twenty years of experience. Nearly twenty years of knowledge. Nearly twenty years of sorrow, of fear, of longing. Nearly twenty years of life, and of love.
And my heart was broken once more.
And there was pain. The deep pain of memories. Of broken playthings, lost loves, enemies, and friends. Of hateful encounters and joyous reunions. It was pain that made it hard to breathe. The pain that made me want to hide behind the curtain. The pain that made me want to howl, want to sob, want to wail, want to beat at the ground, want to run away from it all. The pain that made me wish for oblivion.
And there was the pain that made me want to cut my chest open, and to pull out my heart, and to caress it lovingly, and to whisper to it gently, and to soothe it with my voice and my touch, as a shepherd soothes a lamb, or as a father calms his son.
To be able to still my own tumultuous heart, like a lone albatross flying above saying, "Courage, dear heart." Ah, that would be a power worth having.
But I am my heart, and it is me.
The pain did not last very long. Very few things really did, in my experience. Soon I would forget about it, and immerse myself again in the swamp of distractions that is the world.
But the sunset comes every day, ever so patiently waiting for me to raise my vision to the western horizon at its hour.
