A lot of people considered me a villain.
A relationship-wrecker.
A Bitch.
A giant snake they make hollywood movies of. Starring J Lo and her big butt.
A full fledged Flirt.
All because I fell in love with one guy.
And
if you believed the rumors, I single handedly seduced numerous other
males in our class: big and small, short and tall, that and all.
And if you further believe the rumors, I flirt with props too. Lollipops, in particular.
I was a ship (how imaginative!). Superferry. The replacement for the worn out motorcycle. (The most creative thinkers are also the most amusing backbiters)
I’m
also the criminal mastermind of a conspiracy to bewitch the object of
my affections and I have carefully planned my crimes for 3 whole years
before I put everything into action, mobilizing my minion friends into
a smooth clockwork.
Like the comic book villains we even have names:
Anaconda.
Almighty.
Lolipop Boy (my favorite!).
The Ra-Ra girls.
Dr. Doom would welome us into his secret lair.
The Green Goblin would ask our advise on how to break up Peter Parker and Mary Jane.
It was our specialty, after all:
Ensnaring men in their hopeless, mindless fragility, that they are simply helpless under our spell.
I was so good at it, I actually wrote songs to satirically express my opinions of his then-present love.
I brought fulfillment to their meals like the worm for the little chirping birds.
I was breakfast.
I was lunch.
I was dinner.
I was brunch.
I was the icing at birthday parties.
Especially ones held at seashore restaurants.
I was the pulutan at drinking sessions.
I was the nicotine in their cigarette breaks.
I was carried with the wind through the whispers of the quiksilver slithering tongues.
Notorious.
Infamous.
Coming to school everyday as though I owned the world.
As though I had no guilt whatsoever of the crimes I have committed.
…If you believed the rumors. I was simply heartless.
I heard them all.
Tales of magnificent proportions.
Great and small. Short and tall. That and all.
Like the men I supposedly seduced.
Some with the believable element of the hyperbolic truth.
Some with the sworn statement of the credible know- it-alls.
Little birds that chirp too much have a tendency to do just that: Chirp too much.
So I heard them all.
I was a joke that was not even funny.
And she was beautiful.
I was silent despite the explosions in my chest.
Half the time, I was beheading someone in my head with a rusty nail cutter .
Or popping someone’s pimples one by one, like the bubble wrap, in the colorful world of my imagination.
Or secretly planting bulan-bulanan ( a treacherous plant from the mountaintops of Napulak) into the bags and make-up kits of unknowing know-it-alls.
But it was all in my head.
Because in reality, I swallowed it all like an unnecessary pill.
Then I washed it down with water, ready to swallow the next dose of abject humiliation.
And when I can no longer hold my facade, I retreat into the corners of the Vital Signs Office.
The walls were witness to my tears.
The darkness in that dingy room became my light.
Slowly, I replaced my smile.
And I headed out to face the world again.
Knowing that poeple can hurt me over and over again,
but that I have nothing to be ashamed of.
Because I am a woman.
Just like her.
I was hurting too.
Just like her.
I was eternally questioning my feelings and decisions.
Just as she had done when she decided to let him go.
I
turned a deaf ear to everything that she might have said because I knew
that had we switched places, I would have vented out my feelings in the
same way.
And she was entitled to everything that could have helped her crawl out of the hole we three have fallen in.
Looking back, I know that I was never angry at her.
This may sound patronizing, but I never meant her any harm.
And all this is not to recount the cruelties and the horrible events.
It’s not because I’m sour-graping.
It’s not becase I’m bitter.
After
two years since this Giant Wind has blown pieces of me to places inside
me I have never been to before, I have not once admitted to myself that
I actually went through it all.
It was all just pushed into the back of my mind along with the other bad memories:
The frst time I fell off a bike exposing my underwear.
The
time when I last stood in a stage in front of a crowd, in an
extemporaneous speaking contest and lost all elements of speech despite
the structured answer I have formulated in my head during the 3 minute
designated time (I have had the terrible case of stage fright since
then.)
The time I found myself standing in front of a high school crush and feeling absolutely stupid.
Memories we tend to purposefully try to forget.
We flush them down the toilet hoping the legendary sewer alligators would gobble them up without a thought.
But
just like anything we flush down the toilet that we’re not supposed
to, these things come back to us in a very foul and explosive manner
that we are cought off guard by the simplicity of its logic and the
reality of its basic physics.
I simply cannot forget.
I
simply cannot press the magical silver lever attached to the toilet in
my mind where I try to dump out all those unwanted gory details.
It simply would not be right.
Because they are intimate parts of something I have right now that is indescribably wonderful!
July 3, 2008
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