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as i watch Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan hold hands during the last scene in Sleepless in Seattle, i can’t help but sigh and wonder, when is it going to be my turn? (cue background music: oh tell me where? / where is that someone who will turn and look at me / and want to share my every sweet imagined possibility? [A Piece of Sky, Yentl]) i would be lying if i said that the thought of ending up alone doesn’t scare the crap out of me because it really does.
breaking up is hard to do
during the past couple of days, i’ve been consoling a friend who is coming to terms with the finality of her break-up. she and her ex-boyfriend called it quits more than a year ago but maintained a good friendship. we know how tricky that could be, right? to make a long story short, he has moved on while she has not. and of course, she’s devastated.
having had my heart broken before, i know how much it can hurt. as i listened to her tell her story while having cocktails in a crowded bar, memories of the pain i once felt came flooding back. it was a struggle to maintain my composure when she started crying. there is so much i wish i could do to help her forget the pain but i know there really is nothing i can do but be there for her. she kept on apologizing on being such a downer but i told her that my friends kept me sane during my dark hours and that meant everything to me.
it truly is hard to imagine how a person can move on after such a devastating loss but as i’ve learned, and i’m sure most of you have learned too, we all move on. it’s just the way it is. it truly is sad to think that a relationship ends and each person eventually finds someone else to be with but that’s the natural way of things. life goes on.
where are the boys at?
seriously, nasaan sila? hahahaha!
my mom has already told me that maybe i should try a different sport since it seems that i haven’t met anyone in ultimate during the 3-4 years i’ve been playing it. to this, i answered that i play ultimate because i enjoy the game and the company of all my friends and not to meet potential partners. i found it funny though that my mom had to tell me that. 
i once hoped i’d find love in the workplace but that didn’t work out so there goes another option.
i don’t think i’ll find a “good” guy in any of my gimiks either. let’s face it, guys in bars are mostly hoping to score and aren’t really looking for long term relationships. while this can be fun once in a while, it’s not really fulfilling at all. i go out to party more to enjoy the company of my friends rather than get picked up by guys.
so once again i have to ask, where are all the good guys at? can anyone out there help me out? hahahaha!
hope springs eternal
there is a book that has been catching my eye for a good number of years now, When God Writes Your Love Story. having read both I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Boy Meets Girl, i have a pretty good idea what that book may contain. whether or not you believe in a God is a personal preference. but i love the thought that i am a love story waiting to happen.
tv shows such as Sex and the City and Ally McBeal deal with the struggle modern women face with juggling a career and a lovelife. i love how both shows have dealt with the wacky situations single gals can get themselves into. but what i love most is the fact that no matter how many scrapes the characters in each of the shows get themselves into, they never stopped believing that true love was out there for them.
it’s important that we keep believing that love is out there for us, no matter how bad things may seem.
i’d like to leave you guys with one of my favorite quotes from Rilke. i have to confess that i was just reminded of it tonight while i was checking my blog for past entries.
“believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
~ an exerpt from Letter 4 of Letters to a Young Poet by Rainier Maria Rilke
a couple of nights ago, while doing my usual bedtime routine which consists of scanning channels before settling on one to fall asleep to then adjusting the sleep timer to 20mins, i was able to catch an old episode of sex & the city. in this episode, carrie was wondering: “In mathematics, we learned that “x” stands for the unknown. “a” plus “b” equals “x”. But what’s really unknown is: what plus what equals friendship with an ex? Is this an unsolvable equation? Or is it possible to transform a once-passionate love into something that fits nice and easily onto the friendship shelf? I couldn’t help but wonder… can you be friends with an ex?“ later on throughout the episode she comes to the conclusion that cosmopolitans + scotch = friendship with an ex.
i’ve never had an ex-boyfriend, having been a member of the Single Since Birth Club since, well, birth. however, i’ve had another type of ex: the guy-i-was-in-love-with-who-didn’t-quite-love-me-back type of ex. one of them is in Beijing now and the other one is someone i see at a regular basis. it sucks when an “ex” is part of the same group of people you hang out with. we’ve both become adept in the civil department, not really addressing each other unless completely necessary and if we find our eyes meeting we just quickly avert them as though nothing happened. once in a while, a smart-aleck-y friend would send a well-placed barb our way which we both would ignore. it’s become a comfortable situation, after a fashion.
recent events, namely the possibility of him liking a new teammate (yet again!), have got me thinking if it’s possible for us to be friends again. it shouldn’t be too hard to imagine being friends with him again considering we were pretty close once. even after the “breakup”, we still remained to be close, sometimes going out for coffee and discussing random stuff in our lives. but then something else happened which changed our dynamic and it hasn’t been the same since.
a close friend of mine congratulated me recently when i told her that i had chatted with the guy-who-liked-me-but-i-didn’t-like-back during the exciting and emotional (for me) match between Nadal and Soderling. she said that it was great that we can put the animosity aside and be friends again to which i replied that there was no animosity just a lot of awkwardness (and sometimes irritation) on my side. yes, it is a two-way street. sometimes you get hurt and sometimes you hurt someone else.
so what happens when a great love, or maybe just a passionate affair, ends? can two people transform from being intimate lovers to just good friends? i honestly don’t know the answer. i think it depends on the situation and the people involved. i believe that time can heal most, but not all, wounds and that eventually we all forget. As Joan Didion said: “We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forgot who we were.” (and because i don’t know how to segue into this link, i’ll just post it as is and hope you’ll be intrigued enough to click it. 
)
perhaps someday i’ll be able to have coffee and laugh over fun memories with an ex. perhaps we’ll always be tiptoeing around each other. who really knows, right?
c’mon, i’m sure you know what this game is all about but for those non-alcoholics out there, here’s how it’s played…
i’ve played this game only twice, not really wanting to reveal anything to people i don’t feel comfortable sharing these type of information with. plus it can get pretty uncomfortable when you’ve hooked up with another person that’s part of the circle and you don’t want the rest of them to know about it. i’m still pretty pissed about him trying to get me to drink to one of the statements which we both know i should’ve drank to but didn’t.
there are two ways you tend to feel after playing this game: either that you are prude or that you are a slut, both of which are entirely subjective. there’s nothing wrong in feeling either emotion too. it’s pretty interesting how sex has evolved from being a somewhat taboo topic to being the main theme of some movies, tv shows (Sex and the City!) and advertisements. we are surrounded by sexual innuendos… an Axe deodorant commercial where a woman bites off the ass of a chocolate covered man and billboards of hot celebrities modelling underwear. sex is everywhere nowadays!
the Philippines is currently being taken by storm by the Hayden Kho scandals. videos of a local doctor who has a fetish for videotapping himself while having sex have been leaked on the internet. it doesn’t help that his victims are starlets, models and mainstays in gossip columns. what’s really funny though is how everyone’s making a big deal out of it. the case is in the senate for crying out loud! why our government deems it necessary to intercede in such a menial issue is beyond me. in my opinion, there are far more important issues that the government should be paying attention to. i think they’ve sensationalized this issue because the Philippines is supposedly a “conservative” country. yeah, right! there’s nothing “conservative” about teenagers getting pregnant, streetwalkers along Makati Avenue or Quezon City, and our ever-booming nightlife scene whose ingredients can include booze, drugs and sex. we even have our own craigslist, ya know?! i’m sure we would all like to portray our country, which is known to be a Christian country, as pure but it really isn’t anymore. what’s more irking are how self-righteous some people are, condemning and judging Katrina for the video. remember the story of the adulterous woman from the Bible? when Jesus was asked what her punishment should be, he says, “Let the person among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” (John 8:7) okay, so i totally googled that one up!
sooo… this post suddenly became a rant on the Kho-Halili scandal which wasn’t really my intention but i couldn’t help it. haha! i guess what i’m trying to say is that what happens between a man and a woman behind closed doors is their business, whether they have a sextape or not. we’ve come a long way from Ladies being told to lie down and think of England during the sexual act. there is nothing wrong in exploring or enjoying everything there is out there. and, mind you, there is quite a lot to explore! so go and kiss someone of the same sex (something i don’t think i’ll ever do. ), makeout with a stranger at a party, maybe even have a one-night stand… just don’t expect to be sober or functional after playing “i never” though. hahahaha!
i’ve been wanting to post about this for a while but i keep loosing the nerve to actually write about it. it still is, and i guess always will be, something that’s hard for me to talk about. at first i wanted to write a locked entry but then the words never came to me. i think now i’m ready to write about it.
despite my typically fun, friendly, bubbly persona, i’m actually depressive. there, i said it. a few of my friends know but i’ve opened to only a handful about how it really is with me. the handful i’ve opened up to aren’t even any of my closest friends but rather people who i thought would understand me.
it’s been quite a while since my first and only “lapse” into depression, 4 years to be exact. it’s hard to explain what triggered my lapse, even harder to explain how my mind was working while i was down. but i’ll try… i had gone home to davao after a very stressful engineering week. i didn’t notice that anything was wrong. i spent my vacation just like any other vacation… eating, sleeping, reading, sleeping, meeting friends, and sleeping. yes, i sleep a lot when i go home so i didn’t think anything was wrong while i was there. when i got back to manila, i didn’t want to go back to classes yet so i cut classes for the first few days which wasn’t that big of a deal. however, as each day went by i kept missing more and more classes. i didn’t want to leave my bed or the house. i didn’t want to go to class. i didn’t want to see or talk to my friends. so i stayed at home, slept and watched tv. right before my sister would come home i would shower so that when she’d ask if i’d gone to class, i’d say yes and that i just got home. i barely checked my cellphone, purposefully didn’t charge it. i didn’t check my email either. all i did was barely eat, sleep and watch tv. i occasionally went out to buy groceries for us but that was all. i did this from january to february without my sister noticing anything was wrong. finally, i became aware of the fact that the deadline for filing a leave of absence was drawing near and i had to come clean to my parents and my sister about what i was doing. so i called my mom and dad and told them that i think i was depressed. i described to them what i had been doing for the past couple of months and told them that i had searched the web for it and found out that it was possible that i was depressed. i’ll be forever thankful that i have very understanding parents. they were very concerned and probably wanted to fly me back home asap but it wasn’t possible because we didn’t have a helper then so if i left my sister would’ve been left alone in the house. i actually wanted to see a doctor but they told me it wasn’t necessary and that i probably just needed rest. i went back to school then but only to get file my official leave of absence. i still didn’t want to see or talk to any of my friends so i tried my best to avoid our normal hangouts. as soon as my LOA was filed, i went back into seclusion.
laughter truly is the best medicine. i still remember the first day of class after i had come back from my lapse. we were waiting outside the up theater waiting for the freshmen to finish their orientation when a friend said something really funny which made me laugh real hard. jencarps then looked at me and said, ayan… pa-depress depressed ka pa kasi. dapat sumasama ka nalang sa amin para lagi kang masaya. that was the year i started playing ultimate and started hanging out with the jogadores.
it’s been years since that happened and i’ve only opened up about this to a very select number of people. i remember breaking down when i was meeting a few high school friends soon after the incident. i never opened up to any of my college friends and they never really asked me. they just seemed to accept the fact that i was back and that i was okay. i really didn’t like talking about it so that arrangement was perfect for me. the only other person who i told about this was the guy who ended up breaking my heart. i saw in him a kindred soul. someone who felt loneliness and probably understood it as much as i did. i’ve been feeling the urge to talk to him for quite a while now because i know he’d understand but i’ve been stopping myself because i might get my signals mixed and fall all over again. (and we all know how well i’ve been doing in the “getting over him” department, right?)
i’m writing this because i feel myself sinking into a dark abyss that i once found myself in a few years before. it’s been harder for me to get up in the morning and yet i find it hard to sleep sometimes. i know if work were as easy to cut as class, i’d definitely be cutting work right now. i haven’t been going to any of the typical toda gimiks anymore. i keep finding excuses to miss training or hengs. then just recently, a couple of friends decided that i wouldn’t probably want to go out with them and didn’t invite me. this normally wouldn’t be a big deal for me but my reaction was to cry then a thought entered my head, what if i just disappear? would they even notice? that’s when i knew that i was starting to tread into a familiar but unwanted territory. i’m trying my best to get myself out of the house and join friends but solitude is beckoning to me once again and i feel myself surrendering to it more and more.
i’m a bit uneasy about people reading about this because it’ll be all too possible that i’ll be getting text messages and emails of concern from my friends. i actually don’t want any of those ‘i know how you feel’s. believe me, you don’t know what dark places i’ve gone through in my last lapse. it may be mind-boggling to most people on how a person can take their own life, but i do understand because i fought against it back then. i never actually picked up the knife or bought the rat poison but i did contemplate it more than once. i know i’m strong and that i’ll never be able to do it because of that time i went through before. it’s not the solution but i don’t know what is. perhaps i need to rest again. i’m glad that the holidays are just around the corner and i can start hibernating back home.
i’ll be fine friends, don’t worry. i needed to let this out to let you know why i’ve been missing in action the past few weeks. i need you to try to understand and leave me be if i seem aloof or unsociable. i really do hope this goes away. i just don’t how to make it go away. 
i finally got to watch in search of a midnight kiss last night. here’s the trailer if you missed my previous post…
when i first saw this trailer i was intrigued because i didn’t know what the hell craigslist was. i checked it out and realized that it was this classified ads kind of site. there’s even one for manila. anyway, i was a bit surprised to see all the postings on the personals section of the site. there are some really cheesy ones like Looking for the girl of my dreams and some really blunt ones like Looking for NSA fun (NSA = no strings attached). there are even more sexually explicit stuff posted on the casual encounters section (yes, there is a casual encounters section! hahaha.) while reading the various posts (and getting shocked by some of the pictures), a thought occurred to me… there are so many lonely people out there. i think most of us are just looking for some kind of human connection, whether it be a short & physical one or a long & meaningful one.
you realize you’re growing a bit more cynical when movies like this, once and before sunrise make more sense than those with disney-like happy endings. two strangers meeting randomly and having a brief but tangible connection can seem more realistic than two people falling-in-love and living happily-ever-after.
sometimes i wish i were still a kid and movies with princes and princesses and happily-ever-afters were all i knew. i have some weird moments where i feel as though i shouldn’t be doing some things despite my age. when this happens i stop and think to myself and i realize that i am an adult already and that yes, i can do those things. somehow, i feel that i’m still not ready to be an adult. i can’t explain it, it’s a weird feeling. *sigh* sometimes, being a grown-up can suck!
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