TINTED SKIES
a novel excerpt

After an abhorrent night spent with high school classmates at the Hyatt Grand Hotel, the immense pressure of that dreadful night still remains, crashing your entire being. That night was a crowd of unstoppable mouths. Mouths murmuring and gossiping about you, deafening your sanity like an infectious virus. So infectious that it clogs your veins and even your brain, that breathing normally with your heart and mind still intact, seems more like a struggle.

Although not all of them were meant to scrutinize, you can't help but still fall in complete self despair, because most of these people feel so sorry for you, and that makes you feel all the more miserable.

How do you move on? How do you teach yourself to brave the storm when you have this sinking feeling inside you that you’re all alone in this one, no hand to hold on, no ear to listen to your endless pit of wallowing, no shoulder to lean on, and that any moment from now, you’re bound to lose it already? And how do you pick yourself up from a drastic fall? How? When you haven't been in this kind of chaos all your life, when you don't even know what brought you here, and when you can't even grasp the logic of all this?

Reminiscing the events from last night makes you also remember in full detail the excruciating agony brought about by your ex-best friend Abby Mariano and your ex-boyfriend George Villena. Let's put huge emphasis on the EX part please!

You even considered alienating yourself from all the human beings in the planet, wishing really hard that the earth open up and swallow you whole right this very minute just so you could save your face and few dignity left from all this humiliation and public scrutiny.

But you paused, and then thought twice, because there's this sudden voice inside you whispering in all its remaining courage and the little sanity it managed to store in the deepest corner of your heart, "Hope is still right here. Somewhere in this darkness you can find your way out."

Just look. Look hard enough. And you'd realize that there's still more to life. That you are in great need to finally convince yourself, "Yeah, there's still hope. I learned how to love and I got hurt in the process. So what? Everyone went/is going/will go through this very same blackhole you're currently in sometime in their lives. Now, I am starting anew, because learning how to love is just the start of a journey... a fabulous journey."

So breathe in, flip that negativity away, and enjoy the ride of your life!