ZEN Bitchin'

Until now, I still find Valentine’s day to be  a strange holiday. From my childhood I remember that it coincides with Teacher’s day at school, a time when we give flowers and little gifts to our mentors after mass or a short program on the nobility of teachers and teaching as a profession. In high school Valentine’s day is usually when the Junior and Senior Prom is held–a time of serious adolescent anguish for me. In our home, Valentine’s day is usually observed by a somewhat special dinner cooked by my mother, with the night ending with me being tucked in bed a little earlier than usual. My parents are not the romantic, touchy-feely type of couple. Their affection for each other, I’m afraid, is for the most part, Edwardian. They are very decorous, and cautious of revealing too much of themselves. This is probably why I’m such a cold-hearted bitch myself. Of course, I joke. In recent years dinner is still being served, but with the physical improbability of them being able to tuck me in bed early, I now take it upon myself to “conveniently” vanish at the appointed time.

Here in Buddhist Cambodia, where I have seen Valentine’s day for at least 5 years, I’m still surprised at the increasing fervor in which this holiday is being celebrated. I would venture an opinion that it rivals–if not exceeds the celebration of Christmas, in terms of the commercial aspects of this particular holiday. From almost every street corner of Phnom Penh, vendors with flowers, balloons, plush toys and other gifts sprout like mushrooms after a rainy day. Blame this on the increasing purchasing power of the so-called middle class Cambodians, or on the fact that more than half of Cambodia’s population is under the age of 24, even on the youth’s love of anything barang (foreign).

Now, there has never been a Valentine’s day when I had someone to celebrate it with. It always come at at time when I had no lover, or if I had one, we always seemed to fight a week or a few days before that day, to reconcile a few days after, or never. Some of my friends think it’s a deliberate effort on my part, but it’s not. Really. I don’t mind spending for some gifts, silly as some of them might be. Though I’m clearly not the world’s biggest romantic (refer to my Edwardian parents above), I still long for that day when someone who’s not my friend will greet me a happy Valentine’s day with a kiss, or God forbid, a gift of sweets or of fragrance. But there are times when life seems to play a practical joke on me, forcing me to laugh at myself rather than risk being laughed at by others.

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By some twist of fate, the start of the project I recently acquired was postponed, leaving me with a 2-week gap I had no way of filling with other bits of work, having refused a short assignment in the end of January. Another source of mild irritation in this turn of events is the fact that I missed going to Bangkok to meet a dear individual because I expected to be working on Monday. I could only clench my jaws and shake my fist against the sky crying, ‘Why, God?’ Of course, I exaggerate. That instant, two words flashed in my mind: ‘movie marathon’. During this time, I also learned that the American version of ‘Ugly Betty’ has been canceled, and will consequently end its 4-year run in a few weeks. This provided me the impetus to finally get the DVD of ‘Ugly Betty’. I always tried my best to catch it at Star World but I think I managed to watch most of season 1 only. So off I went to my friendly-neighborhood (pirated) DVD-store and promptly got me the first 3 seasons of ‘Ugly Betty’.

America Ferrera as Betty, circa season 4

Towards the end of season 1 a scene tugged at the remaining strings of my heart. In this scene, Betty (America Ferrera) was being prevailed upon by her father, sister, and nephew to forgive her colleague/friend who betrayed Betty’s trust. Frustrated, her elder sister Hilda exclaimed that Betty was too hard on her friends. Betty denied this with alacrity but when her father and nephew agreed with Hilda, she was forced to examine herself if she was indeed being too hard on her friends.

The state of my friendships has been relatively peaceful since the turmoil of the last 2 years. However, lately, I have found myself becoming irritated at some of my friends over the most mundane things. I have increasingly felt that most of the people around me seem to be able to do nothing but fail me in some way or another. This feeling did not help me at all. It, in fact, added to my distress, fueling my desire to avoid company as much as possible, for fear of being hurt or worst, frustrated.

Like Betty I had been told that I’m too hard on my friends. Unlike Betty I did not deny this. On some fundamental level, I know that this is at least partly true. I think, because it takes me a long time to be friends with somebody, I tend to completely give my trust to the few that become my friends. In addition, probably because of my insecurities, I like–no, I need to be reassured that this particular friend deserves my friendship. Because of this, I always tend to subject my friendships (and my friends) to tests and experiments.

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Something remarkable happened to me a couple of days ago. I was logged in Facebook, looking at the wall of status updates of my friends. A name popped up in a friend’s status update comments. A blast from the past. Before I could control myself, I directed a question to her, asking if she, by any chance attended my high school. Turned out that she was indeed the one I thought of. If memory serves me right, she was a transferee from Bacolod, a place that the rest of us that time must have considered exotic, being land-locked Bulakenyos who probably considered Luzon as the only part of the country that mattered.

After this initial contact, she invited me to peruse her profile so I could get in touch with our other classmates. And before the euphoria faded away, I did exactly just that. I stifled a groan when I saw that she had 500+ friends. How was I supposed to get through this list? But about 90 minutes (and a blooming migraine) later, I have seen the many names that populated my young life. However, out of the 30+ names I saw in her profile, I only managed to click about 3 other names.

I have previously written how I felt about my unremarkable years in high school. Of course, when one hears that I graduated from high school at age 14, he or she wouldn’t agree right away that it was an unremarkable 4 years. But to be honest, that’s really how it was. If anything, the only remarkable things in my high school life were how socially inept I were, the sense of alienation that I felt (which never lifted until after my second year at university, and my utter lack of friends. If I were going to use my present definition of friends, I’d say that I only made one true friend in high school. And I never contacted him again since going to Manila a few weeks after graduating from high school. I saw him only 10 years later, by accident, while I was dining with my boyfriend at a restaurant. We were cordial with each other; he seemed excited about a supposed high school reunion that was going to happen in a few months. I feigned excitement when he mentioned the reunion, but I knew in my heart that I couldn’t be bothered to return to a place where I existed virtually invisible–always on the fringes, on the outside looking in the beautiful and popular ones.

Last I heard, J is dead. I remember he had a congenital heart defect. In fact, in our senior year, he got sick and almost died, about the time we had our annual spiritual retreat.

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Perhaps the most perplexing thing about whatever-the-hell-I’m-going-through-right-now is my inability to write about the whole experience. This is something I used to do with ease, since I was young. Whenever I felt troubled, disturbed, and confused, writing has always been a refuge, a sanctuary. When I was grieving–the passing of a loved one, or the end of a relationship, writing has always been an effective coping mechanism. It didn’t matter what I wrote: a poem, a story, or a simple outpouring of thoughts and feelings; writing made me feel better.

And now I can’t even do that.

I am resisting the urge of seeking someone to talk to regarding this, whatever-the-hell-this-is. I tried doing it to my friend but it ended in disaster. What was I thinking, anyway? I couldn’t–shouldn’t burden any of them with this. I am told I cannot do it alone but how can I bring other people into this morbid dance? It’s not that they brought me here in the first place. Well, some of them, probably. But the nature of my friendships has always been one that is frustrating and infuriating and loving and caring, all at the same time. Although, lately, yeah, I have to admit that, of late, all of them seem to frustrate and infuriate me more than love and care for me.

My gut tells me stay away, but my mind tells me I cannot do this alone.

But, pray tell, do what? Get over this funk? Emerge from this rut? Be free from despair and anger? Regard the glass as half-full instead as half-empty? Let my heart swell with emotion?

It seems that like writing, I am unable to do any of these things as well.

My mind is a bottomless well of ideas. A thousand ways–or more, to deal with whatever-this-is.

Do the things that made you feel differently. If this fails, do new things that will (hopefully) make you feel differently (hopefully, better). Seek the company of friends. Go out and (try to) have fun. Eat and drink and indulge. Do some physical activities and get an endorphin high. Read books with positive messages. Have a good cry. Have a good laugh. Pray. Talk to someone. Talk to a professional. Renew ties with  loved ones. Communicate with your family. Communicate with God.

The list is possibly endless.

If only these ideas will march out of my mind, coax my tired body to actually move, and turn these thought-forms into concrete actions.

About two weeks ago the winds suddenly blew cold in Phnom Penh. Nights began feeling too cold for me to use the a/c in my room. This happened for about a week before becoming balmy and dry like a summer night again. The trees in the small yard facing my building began losing their leaves weeks before that. It started with a few leaves falling on the brick walkway and on the stairs going up to my house, progressing to a handful or so finding their way unto the porch–courtesy of the wind. Three days ago, I woke up to find the ground littered with leaves, almost covering the bricks and the stone steps. I looked at the trees and saw that only one seemed to have completely lost its foliage. The other trees had significant losses, but at least remained covered with green leaves. As I looked at the brick walkway, my eyes began to differentiate the yellow and burnt sienna of the dried leaves against the ochre and reddish orange of the bricks. Shapes began to take form against the other shapes and I would’ve continued to stare at the patterns I were seeing had it not for the ding of the toaster, which reminded me that my bread was done.

Since I learned to count, I have been fascinated by patterns. I would measure the area of a room my counting the tiles, count how many books would fit on a single shelf, or decipher the order of colors in a printed fabric. The word ‘obsessive-compulsive’ comes to mind. Over the years, this fascination did not bloom to be an obsession (fortunately) but instead distilled into a quiet interest that nudges me time and again. I guess this is why I always excelled in abstract reasoning exams and why I love jigsaw puzzles.

However, this quiet interest has also caused me to look for, and see, patterns in my own life. My behavior, my decisions, even the things that have happened to me. Please don’t be so quick to dismiss my hypothesis; twenty-five years or so of scrutiny have led me to make this pronouncement.

For example, in the last 3 decades of my life, I have met at least one person who became close to me and later s/he betrayed me in one way or another. In my teens, my social ineptitude made me vulnerable to manipulation that resulted in a social disaster that tainted my entire high school experience. In my twenties, a colleague who’d become my confidante betrayed my trust for his own career advancement. A couple of years ago, I experienced quite a public betrayal in the hands of two supposed-friends (one old and one new) who not only tried to appear to be the aggrieved party but also tried to malign me to our common friends. Did they succeed? Let’s just say that my remaining friends deserve to be my friends and those who chose to listen to their shit-talk do not.

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On the surface, I wouldn’t strike anybody as someone cheerful and perky. In fact, I know that it takes me a while to warm up to anybody. At the few social gatherings I attend I would be what people used to call a wallflower–I would talk to the few people I know and speak only to those who spoke to me. I was never forward. In terms of being funny, well, I know a few people whom I would call funny but I don’t think it applies to me. My attempts at humor–the successful ones at least–seem confined to word-plays and some attributed to my askew manner of observation. Some find humor in my social awkwardness, while still some would think of my humor as wry, if not bordering on the sarcastic. Otherwise, my humor is largely unintentional.

But very few people know me past the bright eyes, the impish smile, and the laughter. Very few people know that I have this great capacity for melancholia. It’s like there is a well deep within my chest, or ample belly, that continuously taps me on the shoulder, like an insistent beggar of my attention. It is this well that I constantly turn to when I tire of the world. It allows me to wallow in its darkness until such time I am ready to emerge and face the light of day. In a way, sadness nurtures me.

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