Breathe.

Today you roll out of bed with a kind of unacknowledged dread and strip yourself out of your comfortable gauzy night shirt, snatching and putting on a fresh one. The floor seemed wary of your tensed feet as they dug on its surface, wishing it's not as Decemberish cold as it seemed to be. Besides, December's still a month away, the floor said, I should still be warm. You dismiss it the way you dismiss your email's overdue calendar reminders, saying I don't care.

Passing by the mirror, you stop and catch yourself looking sleepless again albeit getting temporarily cemented with your bed for a good eight hours. You look closer and the mirror wished you're as fresh as those models on TV ads waking up with glowing skin. But you won't be, because you know, it's just not possible unless you stop eating the things you like to eat, or get a dermatologist to work on a magical skin program with you. You dismiss the mirror's thoughts and start preparing your daybreak meal.

A thought squeezes itself in and before you can stop it, it managed to wriggle inside your head. 

How many days since? it asked. 

You answer your own self with a heavy doesn't matter, and wish you'd listen to your inner self more. Because at the back of your head, you know it's the 665th day today. You feel kind of silly tracking the days, weeks, months, knowing that in case you're good at converting days to hours and hours to minutes, you're so sure you could've kept tab on it as well. Good thing you're not some sort of a nerd, thanks to your sometimes sieve-like brain, or you would've given yourself a much awkward time.

While these things are running inside your head, you take your breakfast a little indifferently, and you hit the showers with a cold shot of water to start.

And it hit you, as much as you don't want to, it did.

You realize how haphazardly you have been living the past two years of your life. Your life, you realize, isn't what exactly you wished it was months and months ago. Two years ago, you wished that today, or days before and after today, are all lovely days. With that person. Yes, you can't discount the fact that you had been steadily happy so far, but you know, hiding somewhere inside you, is that eerie sadness you haven't really told anyone about.

665 days. Wow. 

It's been a very long time since you pretended, both to every person in your life, and yourself, that you're okay and that you had moved on. Maybe you moved on, and you're actually okay, but somewhere inside you, you're sure it's only partially true. 

Trying not to make any noise, you remember how much you've deprived yourself of a good opportunity to properly cry. Yes, you haven't properly cried. You had been busy busying yourself just so there won't be any instance of a good, agonizing, liberating cry, thinking it won't do you any good, and that you're just too old for drama now. Whenever asked, you'll say you're okay, you're over it, you have moved on, only not ready for the next, not now, not soon, not later. But you could've sworn your heart says, not really. And that you haven't even really acknowledged to yourself that you have been liberated from that kind of past. That past you're sure you want to let go of, but couldn't.

A day of properly addressing everything that has happened, to cry it all out, to release what you have been keeping inside. No you haven't had that day. You never had that day to yourself. A day when you'd let yourself just completely shed tears, just bare yourself to yourself because closure isn't possible, and closure is overrated. You did go out on a date with your old, tired, broken person, hoping you can pick yourself up and talk yourself out of a probable and imminent misery but you never did cry as much as you wanted. Suppressing every little outbursts just so you can tell yourself you're strong enough to take everything in and just silently move on, you didn't even cry a hefty amount even though you know you should've given it a shot.

You did have some sob spells though. They happen almost always during tearjerker scenes of whatever Korean drama you're watching. You get carried away with the sorry scenes but, under their guise are your chances to cry. But they were usually stifled, smothered, so as not to make the people around you panic. 

You try to remember the times when you let everything out, forcefully, emptying yourself of all the pain. But there wasn't any, you robbed your scrawny self of that chance because you thought it's better that way. There were three significant times though when you know, you almost cried yourself to drought.

The first time was when you finally had the courage to ask if that person loves someone else, and without an answer, the mute acknowledgment was the only thing you needed. You remember crying a little, but since you still have work that night, you know you can't allow your tears to ruin your invisible mascara. 

The second time was when? Ah. The day after, in front of your work PC on a hot afternoon screened artificially by the office AC. You remember exactly what triggered the fit. An image of that person's mobile screen bearing three words, sent to the new love. You had to run away from the image as saline tears started fogging your eyes. The restroom had been your brief refuge so you can hide what you don't want others to see. Promising yourself that after that momentary emotional collapse you'd stop and pull yourself together. Your throat was burning from the imaginary cork you pushed down your mouth, It has got to stop, you scolded yourself unforgivingly and promised how you'll punish yourself if you don't. You thought it was over.

But a third time came, about a year after, you were inside a cab and you were listening to That Man, a track from a drama you have just finished watching. You guessed it was because the song sounds really sad, and you sort of recall the heartbreaking scenes from the drama that you were propelled towards another sob spell. And you know the other reason you were crying was because, you remembered a scene so similar to what happened to you and that person a few years back. It was just too beautiful not to remember.

This is when you realize the word relapse exists. 

It started manifesting its damned existence irregularly, always shocking you for goodness' sake. A scheming bitch that prowls and pounces at you when you're doing the most common stuff people like you would probably do. 

Relapse strikes when, you're reading a book for the third time, bawling loudly over a tearjerking drama series you've been following for weeks, eating hastily at a favorite food shop, soaking under the rain while you pick dirt from your short nails, waiting for a shiny orange bus while letting other PUBs pass, cramming an article that's not even past deadline yet, conversing animatedly with a co-worker about hilariously romantic movies, sending odd text messages bearing "shut up" "sod off" "yuck" to the wrong recipient, clearing the beautiful clutter that's been a funny design on your desk for days, hugging a friend tightly as if you haven't seen each other for years yet you actually just had dinner the previous night, opening the fridge and finding too many sweet things inside giving you a woozy feeling, sliding into your hoodie rather slickly instead of clumsily, purchasing a shoe you had wished to buy during a sale because it's not white but you badly need it, mopping the splatter of spilled tomato sauce on your shirt. And when it happens, you feel like the camera zooms in on you to capture your facial expression. You are very sure that the color has been drained from your already wan face and that whatever it is you were doing, it is abruptly interrupted. Your brain uncoiling and coiling back to its place for a few seconds, while your heart, your awesome heart tries to keep itself from suffering from arrythmia.

These relapses are like nightmares dropping in while you're awake. Inside you is a screaming you, always wishing the horror would stop right away because you're freaking cold, and alone. And you notice yourself clasping the edges of your shirt, gritting your teeth, your breathing quick and raspy. You imagine yourself curling at a corner, withdrawing from the crowd, except, you can't actually move from where you originally were. So before insanity makes its frontal breakthrough, you kick yourself upward and rob all the air you can breathe like you have never done in your entire life.

Thank God, you're back to life. At least for the time being.

Your life, where you look convincingly normal and abnormal outside, actually is a schizophrenic patient crossing back and forth to saneness through rehabilitation, the amazing prayer.

So you go forward and live. You live for the sake of yourself and the people around you who believes you can go forward and live. 

You go about your business, you bow down in the morning to give thanks for another day, eat  your breakfast, prep for work, work and have fun, take your late lunch, happily and obediently accomplish your duties, talk to people and laugh and chat and do things with them, commute home and watch the city move behind you, step inside the comforts of your home, quietly consume your dinner, bow down again to say your thanks, crawl back to bed making sure you're extremely exhausted so as not to give yourself a chance to let any unwanted thoughts to visit you. Because you know if you don't, the scary relapse will linger longer compared to last time and will leave you sleepless and pained.

Unfortunately, there are nights when you lie on your bed, physically drained but mentally active. These are nights when relapses pay you a visit, compelling you talk to the pillow desperately. And you stare at the space between you and the wall, saying, Where are you? Are you there?, and you fall into a pit of helplessness.

Because you know, that person will never be there no matter how hard you look, no matter how long you wait. That that person wouldn't hear any of your pathetic sobs, nor the hiccups that follow after. That that person wouldn't have any idea what you're going through and wouldn't even wish to know any more of what's happening to you. You know that you will probably see this person in a week's time but that person wouldn't really be seeing you, that person may look at you, but not see you. To that person, you are merely a human being now. No more, no less. That no matter how much you wish to go back to how things were, no matter how much you try and come up with a plan to go back to what used to be, nothing will work. It's like living in an another time and space, where you will have no possibility of seeing each other the way you used to see each other. And that's what hurts you, the fact that that person won't see you anymore than that person sees a stranger. 

But even though you know these things, you sometimes can't stop the relapse from trying to reopen the already sewn wounds. You realize then that maybe, maybe it's time to let the cuts heal permanently, so the suture won't go to waste. Maybe you have to try harder not to allow the memories burn so the stitches will stay in place.

So you breathe and allow your lungs to have more room for deep breathing. You know you're too old for any of these dramas and that these sentimental surges should stop. That these relapses should be murdered so it will die its painful and well-deserved demise. 

So today you promise yourself, you will allow for yourself one whole day to properly cry, to grieve, to acquiesce if you cannot wholeheartedly accept everything yet. You promise yourself this will be the last relapse, and you wish you won't break this one. 

You pray, that you will not live your life the way you lived it during the past 665 days. That you won't talk to the space between you and the wall anymore, that you will recognize every single face that show up in front of you, that you will truly enjoy every moment of your breathing days, and you will fight the relapses that wear you out like an unflinching warrior. Besides, life is God's gift so you can create a truly fascinating trail of memories and a journey full of lessons. 

While getting out of the shower, you don a new, glowing skin. 

It says: When relapses debilitate you, pray. And never forget to breathe.