Peter, Nevermind

Hey Peter!

Forgive me for this name. I’ve lost my yearbook and have no other means to address you. How long have we been doing this charade? Hiding our real names in letters and journals, as if it’s our secret language.

I have called you by many names before settling on Peter. Yet, I’ve always introduced myself as Nevermind.

Never mind. You’re never gonna listen to me anyway. You have always been busy exploring the world, navigating the sharp, jagged ridges of adulthood I carved before you.

I troubled you with this letter because I found a picture of you in my closet, and I thought it might be nice to talk to you after what happened between us in your apartment in Sapporo.

Can you believe it? I finally made it there after years of yearning. The universe finally gave a sh*t about me. My company sent me to Tokyo for a two-week seminar. I requested a three-day extension, charged to leave credits and experience, just to find you.

I spotted you walking along the sidewalk, looking just like the kid I met in high school at fifteen, but the baby cheeks had long since melted away. You were always someone I looked up to — a tall, strikingly handsome Japanese-Filipino man, with long, wavy black hair. Staring into your eyes felt like peering into the healing soul of a broken inner child — melancholic, yet a safe haven. A black scarf wrapped around your cheeks, still soft, radiant, delicate, and translucent, as if they could easily blush at the slightest pinch of embarrassment. The December snow camouflaged your porcelain skin.

Things haven’t changed, after all. You still walk like a model, except the runway is an autowalk. I had to chase you until you reached your apartment at the corner of the street.

The all-black baggy outfit of a puffer jacket and cargo pants has been your signature ever since you left the Philippines to chase your dreams abroad. I’ve always envied how we shared the same dreams, but life laid them out for you while I scrambled for scraps, just to be considered.

Here, you own a nine-story apartment building, providing you with a place to stay for vacations while earning from it. People pay for your stay, while I pay rent just to keep myself from being homeless.

While everyone expects you to inherit your old family business, you went to Harvard to study anthropology and to Cebu to pursue filmmaking, and your family supports all of it.

I had to work during my free time just to earn a bachelor's degree, which I chose only because it would certainly land me a corporate job. Now that I have a job, I have to work day and night because I am scared of being fired. I can't lose my bread and butter because I have to support my family.

In the span of ten years, you built your own publishing company, produced your own films, went to Cannes, and worked with artists from the Philippines, Japan, and Europe. Meanwhile, I spent those years soiling in my bed, plotting ways to break out of my 8-5 job, dreaming of finding you and drooling over your success.

Peter, my friend, you have everything in your life: beauty, money, and kindness. Yet, you still show no signs of passing your genes and fortune to a child. When asked about marriage, we’ve always shared the same answer. Our deepest desires recognize a romantic relationship as an obstacle to a worthier pursuit — yours for wisdom, and mine? My deepest desire is to become you.

Because I love you, Peter.

I long to be with you in Amsterdam, Florence, Berchtesgaden, and now in your apartment in Sapporo, warming our cold bodies by your fireplace and experiencing the world you live in.

That’s why I followed you to your apartment that day to tell you this. I couldn’t share it with anyone else because we’re both supposed to like girls. But my feelings for you are different. It’s not romantic but more like finding the better half of me, the part I long to merge with but not marry.

But when we arrived at your front door, what did I see? You rang the doorbell, and she opened the door. She kissed you and called someone inside. Is she your wife? Is she the same woman you once said you would never marry because you didn't want the peer pressure from your family to influence your decisions and derail your ambitions?

The girl who showed up at your door, is she your daughter? What happened to the dream you once had? Your dream of living alone, unmarried, untwined, but surrounded by trees, disintegrated into the canopy of snow on your windows, where I am no longer allowed to peek in.

I guess this is the aftermath of turning 25. The shelf life of those desires has expired into a fantasy and what-ifs, and I was left alone in the excruciating world of adulthood.

You said you forgot to buy something, so you walked back to the entrance where I stood. That’s when you finally saw me. Eye to eye. But at that moment, I no longer recognized the inner child in your eyes. Instead, there was nothing.

I walked away. Fast. As if each step could erase a memory of you. I heard you call my name. My real name. But the coldness of Sapporo numbed my ears.

Now, as I write this letter, I wipe away the long-withheld tears on the glass frame of your photo, trying to remember what it feels like staring into your eyes back in those days when the memories of you that I painted in my mind are still mine.

But all I feel now is the chilling pain and longing I cannot understand.

What do I know? I am just the man who talks to his picture, sending letters to a version of himself he never was.

- Nevermind