Too many memories, in every page I try to recollect and preserve. Every circumstance and person appear questionable - of their intentions, of their truest worth, and of its hold in all of this collective ounce of me. Entirely opposite of being childlike, every move towards tomorrow marks a risk, and every picture represents a glimmer of subtle joy or tugging pain.

I was taken back along the many years of my childhood when I sprang visits to my grandmother during the past couple of days. For reasons that perhaps I'd never fathom, I yearned to be closer to her. I wanted and needed to make things up, for lost time and foolishness - things that don't justify in the system of choices and consequences, things that would doubt my loyalties in the eyes of many, things that would defy the world I was raised up in. Yet, a heartfelt and honest conversation was all it took to melt away any anger buried in me. I loved her, and I still do today, and will probably always love her, in my very feeble ways.

This was when I thought of my father - the man who betrayed my mother and ruined every member of this could-be wonderful family, the man who shirked every responsibility as a man to his wife, a family man who spent his days as a bachelor. But yet, my father, he loved me, like any other father. He gave me the happiest childhood I could want for, he gave me the bravery I lacked as a child, he passed on his guts and adventuresome outlook in life, he gave me commendable upbringing, and he gave me invaluable lessons. I couldn't have gotten here, this far with deep intakes on life without him. Alike my grandmother, I will always love my father, regardless.

So everyone's wretched. But without wretchedness, forgiveness wouldn't be all so divine, now would it?

It's just days away before we officially moved. I had to get down to packing. Too many clothes, too many books, too many albums, too many furniture, too many unnamed souls to have to leave behind.

I packed. I began with projects from my school days (and found multiple drawings that I lovingly crafted what seemed like so long ago), proceeded to filter out the books hoarded over 19 years, and hand-picked out photographs from every album dating since the 1960s. 26, and it still pained me. It pained me to know for sure that we were once happy together, altogether. It pained me knowing that happiness felt more real comparatively as to present. It pained me having to come to terms that it is going to take harder for happiness to suffice. What pained me most was having to bear the realization of everyone being jaded and separate from one another's lives as much as we are in it. But the pain was not the same this time. It was dull, and seemed distant. This time, it felt dull, like a spirit. The kind whereby you know it has co-existed with the years you wear on your back and has evolved into a spiritual memory, which you will keep only in only memory from here forth. Pictures will always be around and be passed around, yet the life inside of them has somehow ceased to live as evidently. It is nearly the kind of realization of knowing, that you're entirely alone in this world, and you'll always be okay alone.

But this change - it's a good thing, isn't it? And so I ask God everyday.