TO SAY that there is a global hype for anything that comes in a series is nothing new. People watch out for the next Harry Potter movie or book because the ending is easier to bear when there’s surely something bound to come after it. Soaps endure because people are hungry to see what comes next. Waiting then becomes more of a rest, a pause before the new beginning, rather than a fatal final breath. To cut a show short would be to blind its audiences to what comes next.
I had difficulty explaining to my eight-year-old brother how our favorite anime Chobits had finally come to an end. The abrupt end of an old routine may have a devastating effect on people, young or old.
After graduation, I missed wearing my uniform. Summer became an extremely vast blank slate, too difficult to fill. Now that it’s finally reaching the end, I think I spend most of my time trying to reground myself again. I am no longer a student, what now? The possibilities are endless, like static once the station signs off.
***
The word “last” has two faces: one that turns its back, bows and says a clipped goodbye, and one that lingers for a while like an after-image, a memory. In this same way, we try to reinvent beginnings once the credits roll down the screen.
To Gracielle, Criso, XY and the rest of the barkada, our first-year adviser, Prof. Tuble, to the staffers and editors of The Flame during my stay there, and the to the Thomasian Writers Guild, thank you for grounding my first two years of college.
To all 12 of my third- and fourth-year classmates, especially to Mai, Monette and Lea, to Jaymee Siao who does not know how to sleep, to Sir Candido, Sir Campomanes, Sir Ferdie Lopez and to the rest of the Literature faculty members in AB, thank you for making complicated theories actually enjoyable once you get the hang of them.
To Nerisa Guevara, for being there before and being here now.
To the Varsitarian, especially to Sir Lito, who helped us push through even the most difficult projects, to my editors last year who helped me through the hectic work cycles, to Brix, Jules, Dex and Marisse, who were there to lend an ear whenever I needed to whine about the most mundane of problems, to my “kids” — Sharline Bareng, Ryan Reyes and Chuck Smith — who are bound to grow up too fast, to Tina, Elka, Melvin, Jason, Julie, Djinn, Bimbo, Stephan, Abbie, Nico, and Alder, to TL and Eldric, who are back, and to the rest of the staff whom space denies me to name right now, thank you for being there.
To my family, especially my parents, for always being behind me.
To Monmon, for bearing with all my mood swings.
To God, for making everything last.
***
My brother found another show to fill in where Chobits used to be in his morning TV schedule. Now, the girl on the screen sits on the swing, the credits are rolling, and the show ends again. It doesn’t seem to bother him anymore. I wish it were as easy as that to replace certain periods of life once they end.
They say endings are mother to most metaphors, how we try to replace certain realities with something similar once we lose them.
I’m putting this one on replay for a while, hoping, that at least in my head, it will last longer.
