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Everyone likes you, G
I cling to your words as if my entire life depended on them.
I went to bed with a smile on my face and woke up to a glorious morning
filled with promise.
Goodbye
The inevitable has happened. It was bound to happen. I have to let you go. It was never in my control. I will miss you.
Best friend, part 3
The college was deserted save for the security guard dozing off at his post near the building entrance. It was the start of summer break and I just finished my last class for the school year. I was not expecting to see him today. I had made a conscious effort to steer clear of him in the hopes of eventually purging all those confusing feelings. For two months, I’d look across from the Science Bldg. to see if his car was parked outside our department building. Only when the coast was clear would I venture into the department.
Today, in my haste, I forgot to check the parking lot. I had gotten as far as the lobby when I saw him striding confidently towards me. I immediately turned to walk in the opposite direction and heard him call out, “Wait. Please, we need to talk.” Before I knew it, he had grabbed a hold of my elbow and was steering me towards the stairs that led to our professors’ offices on the second floor. His touch sent electric currents through my body and it was more than I could bear.
“Okay,” I said meekly.
We sat at the foot of the stairs and he put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me closer. I lay my head on his chest but kept looking straight ahead. God! I missed being this close to him. Neither of us said a word, afraid that we would ruin the moment.
Finally, he broke the silence.
“No matter what happens, we’ll always have something special. We gave each other the best possible gift that people in love could share.”
It took all of my being not to break down and cry. So this was it. I knew the next words that would come out of his mouth would be the ones that I dreaded hearing from the moment we found ourselves in this situation.
“It’s as hard for me as it is for you, you know,” he continued.
“I doubt that,” I responded. My words must have cut deep because he hugged me tighter and sighed.
“Don’t say that. You know I would rather be with you but it’s just…complicated.”
I met a wonderful boy that I had a huge crush on. And never in my wildest dreams did I think we would become close friends. Soon enough, I fell in love with him but never said a word. Just as I had given up secretly pining for him, he reciprocates. We were good together. We are good together. To me, there was nothing complicated about that. But then there was her.
“I don’t even know if she and I would…you know…eventually marry.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I couldn’t hide the dejection in my voice and maybe it was time I lashed out. It took two to tango and I wasn’t the one who made the advances. I knew he had a girlfriend and that’s why I never made a move. He was the one who went after me!
“We’re young and this is the time we should be enjoying ourselves. Years later, when we’re older and married to other people, we will still remember each other. You were my first and I was yours. No one can ever, ever take that away from us.”
How could I argue with that kind of reasoning? Maybe he was right. I could have a string of boyfriends but he will always have a special place in my heart. I have something of his that belongs to me and me alone. No one can take that away from me. Not her, not anyone.
Our time together was drawing to a close, short-lived as it was. We will always be friends, I reassured myself. But he had to go back to her; back to the way it was before. I look up at him and smile. I was ready to let him go now.
But something happened.
He kissed me so gently and so passionately that I thought my heart would stop beating right then and there, at the foot of the stairs. In between kisses, he whispered, “I can’t stop. I’m sorry. I want to be with you. Only you.”
Posted in best friend, fiction, non-fiction
Tagged best friend, college, love, memories, non-fiction
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A reason to box harder tonight
I had a shitty day today.
It would’ve started alright but one tiny request can ruin an entire day. And what makes it worse it that I’ve been pretty good at not wasting my time being angry or annoyed – well, at least I try not to. The thing I’ve learned though, is to not let an annoyance fester. After all, I’m only ruining my day and the offender ofttimes is clueless that they’ve offended.
So anyway, I arrived at work at 7:30AM. Jon Snow was at work and I was meant to escort him out to site, like I usually do. See, where I work, you need a pit license (basically, approval from the mine managers) to be able to drive into the mining area. I have a pit license so we convoy.
Wait, before I continue, I normally don’t like to complain about work by blogging. My work doesn’t make for good entries but I’ll make this an exception so that I can let off steam (as Frankie suggested).
Where was I? Yeah, so I was meant to escort him to site. Now, there are two drill rigs at work at the moment: the rig I’m on and the rig Jon is on. The guys on Jon’s rig also don’t have pit licenses and my drillers need to escort them out to site too. Jon’s rig needs to move to a new location and they need to be escorted out. A number of people could escort them and that includes my drillers (the logical choice), me (if I was not busy), or the clients (the next logical choice). Long story short, it fell to me to escort them to their new site. “Could I ask you a huge favour, please?” was what the female mine geologist said. I said yes because, well, what else can I do? Long story short, I escorted the other crew which meant I was away from my rig for about 20 minutes which meant that by the time I got back, I had two six metres of core to identify, label, measure, sample. I was behind on my work and to top it all off, there was another geologist on site doing geotechnical logging on the same core. I don’t like people invading my work space when I’m in the zone. He was clearly invading my work space!
I tried my very best the entire day to keep things light; to smile and say encouraging works to myself and to the other geologist onsite. Ever the diplomat, I didn’t say anything nasty. Sure, my geological hammer and other site equipment went flying and crashing every so often and I think I muttered one to many curse words a bit too loudly today. But none of them had seen half of how pissed off I really was. I was angry at having to do something that I clearly shouldn’t have been asked to do. I was angry that this other geologist – well meaning as he was and really a nice guy – was in my way. I already told him the game plan so we could work harmoniously and still, he kept on walking into my work area even after I said that I’d measure the core; do the metre marks; identify the lithologies; and do his orientation lines. Still he kept on jumping up in front of me as soon as the drillers laid the core down on the table. I was so infuriated. By the afternoon, I gave up. I let him do my job. I was over it.
At noon, I was angry at everyone. I told him that I need to step away and just calm myself down otherwise, I would make a lot of mistakes which could be catastrophic to my work. I thought taking a lunch break – which I don’t normally have time to do – would clear my head but it didn’t. That’s because the situation didn’t change. I was still struggling to keep up with the drillers as they kept on pumping out three-meter runs of core and I had to struggle not to explode and tell the graduate geologist to let me do my job first and just keep away from my work space. I know he was also a under a lot of pressure too because he’s only started to learn this task he’s assigned to do but he needs to clear his head and just focus on his job and try to not get in my way. Hay naku! Him mulling over my core was what was slowing me down. I could easily keep up with the drillers if I was on my own. Heck, I’d even have time to go online! But not today.
I didn’t even get to escort Jon out. I had to ask my drillers to escort him offsite as I had to stay behind. Normally, I’m done with work by 4PM. Today, I left site at 5.30PM. I wasn’t happy. I was still fuming mad when I got home that by 7PM, I was so pumped up and took it all out on my boxing session. I’m still a bit irritated because I know it will be the same again tomorrow with the graduate geologist. At least Jon won’t be onsite so I don’t need to worry about escorting him anywhere. I swear, if that bitch of a female geologist asks me to leave my post again for something that she should be doing herself, I will lose it. Yesterday, someone else needed escorting out and I told this female geologist’s boss that I couldn’t do it because we were driller and he went out and escorted the other crew out. Would I have expected the female geo to do the same? I don’t think so. What a bitch. She was also the same female geo who wanted me to change my entire work procedure without having even bothered to know how I do my job! In the end, she realised she was out of line and that the way I did my job is more efficient. Bitch, bitch, bitch. I hate her.
End rant.
Too young
You’re too young for me, I said. But he didn’t care.
Maybe we could make it work but I doubt it.
I wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship and I know that I was just a rebound.
Maybe we should just enjoy the ride.
Maybe.
This again? He’s too young and I’m too old for this.
Posted in fiction, work-love
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These are my confessions
It was a hot summer’s night and my mother and I were watching a late-night talk show. The topic was pre-marital sex. In a country where there are still many pretending to be righteous and prude, the topic of pre-marital sex is discussed in hushed tones so this was a pretty controversial topic on national television. Blame that on our blind faith Catholic upbringing!
A few months before this night, I had lost my virginity. I had thought that maybe I’d look different, at least to my mom, and so I tried very hard to look “normal”. How do you pretend to be the same innocent little girl to a woman who knows you the most? I bet mothers have a way of knowing and they’re just not letting in on the secret. Either way, I’m glad she was never the confrontational type.
So anyway, also a few months prior to that night, I also got my very first tattoo. (This was a year of many firsts for me!) Now this proved much harder to conceal. Keeping this little secret would’ve been easy if my family was in the habit of closing the bathroom when one was taking a shower. We’re all females in the house and growing up, we never felt the need to lock the bathroom door, no matter what we were doing. So you can just imagine the stress I went through for the first couple of months trying to make sure that I had at least the shower curtains drawn as I took a shower. But keeping secrets from my mother was never something I liked doing and I had to make a compromise with myself. I was never going to tell her about that other night but I’m sure I can tell her I got a tattoo. While we were watching these panel of celebrities talking about pre-marital sex, I got up, stood in front of my mother, and said, “Ma, I have something to tell you.”
I could see her hold her breathe for a moment as I paused for a couple of seconds – for dramatic effect – before I did my big reveal. I pulled up my shirt to reveal the little dolphin in suspended animation on my belly. My mother breathed a sigh of relief and said, “For a moment there, I thought you were going to tell me you’ve had sex!” I smiled a knowing smile and shook my head.
Once she had gotten over my revelation, she said this: “Don’t show your cousins. They look up to you and might think that it’s alright to do that. Also, I don’t think it’s a good idea to show your grandmother or your aunties as well. But yeah, it looks cool.”
My first tattoo. I was 19 years old.
And that is the story of how I broke the news to my mother that I had ink on my body.
Rumour has it…
that I have been blocked by at least two persons on Facebook. Scratch that. I know for a fact that I’ve been blocked by two persons on Facebook. One person, I can totally understand because he’s my ex-boyfriend. But before I continue, let me just say I’m not hurt. I’m amused, to say the least. Let’s just say, umuwi ang kilay ko sa Pinas. Ang special ko naman masyado. Grabe.
So which one should I talk about first? The vengeful ex-boyfriend or the much, much, older woman who has the sensibilities of an adolescent? Let’s go with the older woman since this Facebook status was directed at her:
Ang taong nagkikimkim ng galit at sama ng loob ay hindi magkakaroon ng tunay na kaligayahan at katahimikan. Magpatawad ka kasi para naman gumanda-ganda ka kahit konti.
Obviously, since we’re no longer friends on Facebook, she won’t see this but who cares? I just wanted to say it because it’s true.
So I used to hang out with this woman – she’s not a girl, she’s pushing 50! – and her best friend. We had a lot of fun and at the same time had really meaningful conversations and discussions. I thought she was smart and caring, and I treated her like a big sister. Without going into much details, they stopped hanging out with me and a few of our common friends. Constantly, we would invite them out and it was one flimsy excuse after another as to why they couldn’t make it. See, the thing is, there was a rumour going around that maybe they were more than best friends. Maybe they were lesbian lovers. Frankly, none of our common friends would’ve cared. As one friend said, “Tayo pa?! We’re so open-minded!”
I had my doubts too, but I didn’t start the rumour and neither did I fan the flames. If they think that I had anything to do with it, I had hoped they would have been mature enough to talk to me face-to-face to set the record straight. But it seems like ignoring friends they thought were in cahoots to purport this allegation was the more mature thing to do. I tried to reach out but gave up years ago. What’s the use? They clearly don’t want to have anything to do with me and quite frankly, after all this time, the feeling has turned mutual. I feel sorry for them really, because for as long as they are hiding the truth (whatever that may be), they will never be truly happy. For as long as they continue to shut out people who obviously cared for them, they will never be at peace with themselves. What makes matters worse is that they’re supposed to be real Christians. Well, where’s the Christianity in that, huh? You can’t go on praising God for all of the blessing you receive in life and on the flip side, are not a blessing to others. From what I’ve learned and experienced myself, when one experiences overwhelming Grace from Salvation, you can’t help but share that joy with others. That Salvation, by the way, was bought through forgiveness. So it’s a bit thick that they wouldn’t forgive – assuming we had even done anything wrong! But hey, good luck to them and while we’re not on speaking terms anymore, I continue to pray that they find true joy and peace.
These dreams
Threesome (1994)
I saw this movie and wept.
It’s one of those days when I wake up from a dream so disturbing that I have to put it down in writing.
—
I open the door and enter an unfamiliar apartment. In the kitchen, I can hear Frankie and Abbey talking. We’re about to head out for a short stroll around my neighbourhood. I don’t really remember when I moved to this suburb. Is this Glebe or possibly Bondi? I would never move to these suburbs, being a North Shore chick and yet, here I find myself in an apartment that’s supposed to be mine. I don’t recognise the two men sitting in the lounge room. These men with strawberry blonde hair, lanky, well-dressed, and refined are my good friends. The manner about them shows that they’re dating each other. I notice they’re drinking white wine.
I say a quick hello to everyone and excuse myself into my bedroom. There I find sleeping on the bed is an ex-boyfriend. I look at him with disdain and think, “What is he doing here? We’re not even friends anymore.”
Lying on his side, watching TV, is another boy from my past. We never became a couple but we did kiss. We were best friends at university. I suppose you could say, I had to choose one over the other. He looks up, smiles and motions for me to lie beside him and I do. He pulls me close and says, “This is the right choice, you know. I was always the right choice.” I was unsure and tilt my head to one side and steal a glance at the bed with the ex-boyfriend fast asleep. I fix his eye glasses and touch his cheek.
“He knows to step aside. All you have to do is kiss me and it’s done. This time around, you’ll make the right choice,” he says.
“But I think I still love him,” I whisper in reply.
The boy on the bed stirs. I pull away and walk to my dresser. I take off my jumper and sit on the chair and I brush my hair. The boy on the bed wakes up. I whirl around and ask him, “Why are you here?! We haven’t spoken in nearly 13 years!”
“I’m here for him. And I’m here for you,” he says cryptically. He stands up and walks toward the door. He doesn’t seem happy to be here.
Up and down my neighbourhood I walk with Frankie and Abbey; the two men in the lounge; the ex-boyfriend; and the boy with the eye glasses. It’s dusk when we get back to my front door. I expected all of us to have dinner at the apartment but once through the door, I found myself alone with the boy with the eye glasses and the ex-boyfriend.
In the blink of an eye, I was in the bedroom with the boy with the eye glasses.
“Kiss me,” he says.
“I can’t,” I reply.
He persists and I give in. I knew it wasn’t a good idea as soon as our lips touched. While the kiss felt good, it didn’t feel right. The ex-boyfriend enters the bedroom and says, “After all this time and you still manage break my heart. All you had to do was resist his advances. You disappoint me.”
I was perplexed. He hadn’t spoken to me in 12 years and had some pretty awful things to say about me to our friends and yet, here he was in my apartment, in my new homeland, accusing me of infidelity!
The boy in the eye glasses whispers, “He made me do it. He wanted to know the truth…if you would pick me over him. I’m sorry.”
—
Then I woke up.
Posted in dreams, fiction
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Concussion?
I was just remembering the numerous photo ops that Frankie and Abbey and I had on our great UK adventure and it got me thinking of all the “aches and pains” poses that we had. We really got a good laugh out of them. It turned seemingly normal women into weirdos. Again, I have to stress it was all for a good laugh. I would never be caught dead striking similar poses because I thought it looked good, right? Oh my God, wrong!
Whatever possessed me to get myself into these poses, I haven’t got a clue. Have a laugh anyway at my expense. I know I am.
My right ear hurts but I’m going to smile through the pain.
I think I bumped my head really bad. I’m turning ditzy.
This is so embarrassing, I need to go and hide!
The Witch of Oz 