the blessing that came a little too late

fluff fluff fluff.

met three "ex"s in a span of a week. ex-crushes, that is. haha. isn't that funny. encounters that are now simply under my memory file labeled "Blessings That Came a Little Too Late".

thursday, ex-crush 1:
theater actor who appeared in one of my indie undertakings. the one who's got a girlfriend and has a baby on the way.when i saw him again last thursday i remembered the last time i'd met him: earlier this year, when i and a couple of friends had gone to see his play at the ccp, and we accidentally bumped into him as he was on his way home. it could've been one of those transcendent moments if i hadn't totally bungled it up. haha. trying to appear nonchalant, i came out as rather...cold. impersonal. wahoo. how predictably pubertal for 25-year-old me.

the farthest that i'd gone for this person was to "stalk" him on the net. hahaha. those were the days. my return to hectic days in the tv world proved to be an excellent tool for getting over "crushes" of this kind. hectic days, and old loves. harhar.

saturday, ex-crush 2:
artsy-fartsy literati who dabbles in music, film, poetry, literature, art criticism, etc. high-nosed, offbeat intellectual stuff, and for that i suppose he exists on a somewhat different plane from me.

met him in one of my projects one december afternoon in '04--i guess i was intrigued by the "doobista" sign on his shirt. either by that, or by his native boy looks (har! euw). or maybe it was all circumstantial, and i really was just looking for someone to put on a pedestal (yet again) at that time.

whatever it was, i was positively odd-ified. because on our first meeting (and on "official business", so to speak), he suggested that we stopped over somewhere for merienda. and that, over merienda, he asked if i wanted to go to a gig that night with him in that much-heard-of reggae bar along timog. and that, on the way to timog, he offered me one ear from his walkman so that we could both listen to an unpublished, unreleased e-heads song that he said he liked. aww. girls are suckers for that. and just remembering what a big sucker i'd been makes me laugh now.

"feeling"-era na kung "feeling"-era, but i gotta admit. not every guy i'd meet for the first time would likely ask me to spend an entire day in his company. but then i was to eventually realize that this dude is not like every guy.

well. it was one of those times again, when i'd be in-between hectic and idle, and had some time to languish and dally with the fluff. one time i pulled a really tacky trick on him via text. wahihi. that was funny. heartbreaking, but funny. on hindsight.

and so, eventually, another prince-turned-into-a-frog. a fact which i soon got over, thanks to my first dabble into the hectic days of the tv world.

hectic days, and old loves. hahay. same old story, nauulit-ulit lang.

the next time i saw him i was reeling from (yet another!) heartbreak-of-a-sort. the "old love" had fallen in love with someone else. and so i went to a friend's house party despite my low spirits, and there was the artsy-fartsy guy. the case with no closure. the perfect "rebound" target. but i no longer saw him the same way as before. he was too different from me. too...artsy. di ko masakyan ang mga obsessions at interests nya. and i suppose he even has contempt for the likes of me, whose knowledge of music is limited to the popular e-heads songs that aired, who couldn't tell one reggae artist from the other. simpleton me, who would rather settle for gut-feel, did-you-like-it-or-hate-it kind of critiquing discussions than those academe-inspired intellectualizing discourses (ho...hum). pop sellout me, who would most likely churn out the same cheesy fare from the mainstream world i'd come to inhabit and make money from.

last saturday when we met again all these differences sprung up anew. hearing him talk about so-and-so blah-blah with the hauteur of a, well, art critic. i was bored. in my worst moments the term "intellectual snob" popped in my head.

all in all, a bleak disappointment. at least he was wearing the same "doobista" t-shirt that he had on, the first time we met. fitting bookend. funny now that one of the reasons i can't tolerate the way he talks is that he reminds me of someone else. the irony of all friggin ironies.

tuesday, ex-crush 3:
cultural attache of a foreign embassy. met him two years ago when my first baby project needed shipping for a foreign film festival, and since then i'd been, well, nurturing hopes that maybe his extra-kindness wasn't just of the professionally-friendly, goes-with-the-job nature. haha. masarap mag-feeling talaga.

on my way to his office yesterday i was almost going through somekinduva de ja vu. remembering two years ago, when i used to walk those halls with mixed anticipation and anxiety, thinking of how i'd talk to him, resisting the urge to do one quick final check in the mirror to see if my makeup was ok. haha. i remember how one time i decided to make tambay at the st@arbucks near his office, hoping against hope that maybe he'd materialize and pass by, since office hours ended at 5 pm. and he did appear. in passing he made some offhand remark about me "waiting for a sundo", and as he walked away into the golden afternoon i wanted so badly to yell "oo, may hinihintay ako! ikaw, manhid!" at his retreating back. ehe.

eventually i realized that i was just one of those young dreamers whom he deals with everyday. just another. a fact that i eventually got over. like how i always do.

yesterday i met him and he was the same. warm as french latte on a dreary day. i guess it goes with the job. and i considered it a job of mine, as well, to be equally warm to the likes of him, who has been an invaluable help to the likes of me. a job that didn't require much effort, though.

but it wasn't the same as before, because i went through this moment already, about a year ago.

bottomline: i'm a passionist for punishment. in all aspects. not to mention a likely candidate for the nuthouse. i've done really hilarious things for the sake of (the lesser equivalent) of (one-sided) love but i'd like to believe that i've at least learned from all that. and that from these ironic encounters with three people who used to be The Crush, i learned a major lesson that i can probably apply to the present.

feelings will pass by me. things that may matter so much right now may no longer matter at all one year from now. and so there's no point, no sense, in dwelling too much on things of the present. fret about things that are presently not in my control. because feelings--and people--are as fleeting as the present.

the things that might be hurtful today will only be something to laugh about tomorrow. or something to blog about. hehe.

the world is small, and i may meet these people again. should there be a compelling urge at the moment, to do something that i'd consider "stupid" or "embarrassing" for the sake of a present concern, it would be best to, well, check myself. because this is such a small world, people are bound to meet again.

eh ampangit naman kung pag nagkita kayo uli, mahihiya kang harapin ang isang tao. for one reason or another.

playing safe again. playing sage again. baka nga ako lang ang nakakaintindi sa sinasabi ko. but nonetheless. they might say that i keep the ropes on too taut but it might have just saved me more than a couple of times in the past.


another i figured out from this is that my relationships with people improve when The Crush is no longer The Crush. when i'm not emotionally vulnerable to the person i'm dealing with. hehe. and there's the Inverse Proportion theory again. i'm much less guarded, much more open, and a lot less neurotic than i normally would be. i can actually do things that i normally couldn't do, if i were still emotionally affected. like initiating an invite for coffee. or asking a probing question in a casual, natural way. or even making beso. or taking the initiative to say, "Musta?" via a simple text message.

in certain cases, though, sometimes i wish i could've done these things when i would still be emotionally involved. instead of being obsessed about emotionally shielding myself, or guarding my feelings. who knows. maybe there would've been more stuff to tell, aside from asinine "ex-crush" stories and the like. haha! but drat's drat.

graciousness is a virtue, a blessing. in this non-normal girl's case, though, it's a blessing that always comes too late in the phase.

hmm. i should put that on file, too.