Like the proverbial salt-in-the-wound thing, lately my life
has been a series of subtle, not so subtle and outright neon-light warning
signs.
It all started several weeks ago. Since then, it seems that
everywhere I looked, there were announcements about couples, articles in the
paper about love, snippets, conversations on finding your mate, even a whole
Reader’s Digest issue on finding your Soul Mate. It’s enough to make me wonder
if someone is out to get me.
Yes, yes, I know as the popular saying goes, “wala na sa kalendaryo”, or rather, malapit ng mawala sa kalendaryo”. For
the past few years, I have been shrugging off questions like “kelan ka ikakasal”, or ”meron na ba”, and all the other varying
graduations of that question ranging from polite to downright insulting.
Lately, it had been harder to pull off the innocent-smile-and-shrug bit, so a
curt “bukas ,at imbetado ka” has come to be my standard
answer. Why are people so nosey anyway? I sometimes make up a story about an
impending wedding and a non-existent fiance, and even I am astounded at the
extent people believe my stories. Big lie technique. The more outrageous the
lie, the more it just might possibly be true. I feel a bit terrified at how
believable it all sometimes sound.
My standard answer of “hindi
ko pa kasi nakikita” or “dadating din
yan”, worked for a while. It worked for several years, in fact. But lately,
it has started to sound hollow, even to my ears. Eh kelan nga ba dadating? Hasn’t the jerk realized that he is the
only one left standing on the platform and the train has left? …Or is that
analogy more befitting me and my predicament?
The past few weeks have been different, a bit empty, I
guess. It’s not as if I am waiting for someone to come into my life. If that
were the case, he has come and he has gone, riding that proverbial train out of
the station in the arms of someone else.
I sometimes recall a movie….an unmarried woman being “always
the bridesmaid, never the bride”, with younger and younger bridesmaids beside
her as the years went by. I sometimes feel like that, tho I will never be
standing beside those girls as I do hate bouquet tosses at weddings. How
humiliating. Really.
Hay, buhay. It’s
not as if I am aiming for single blessedness. There’s nothing “blessed” about
me. Am not a saint, nor am I aspiring to be one. I guess like thunder, my
reflexes only kick in after lightning. It always takes time for me to grow. I
always need something / someone to shock me into doing something. In this case,
a wedding. But then, dear, reaction always comes after an action, not before. Sometimes
the results are not to my liking. But then, as I said: “reaction”, not “action”.
Good guns, he got married already??
Marriage is a commitment, the stuff that count as
jumping-over-the-edge-off-the-cliff type of decision. Either I am too scared to
jump off the cliff, too analytical in asking why I should jump over the cliff
and wondering if I have a parachute handy, or just too stupid to realize that there
is a cliff. . . . Hmm, I don’t think I’m that stupid so as not to realize that
there is a cliff right at my feet, I think even I have enough IQ points to
recognize a cliff when I see one. . . . I think I just took my own sweet time
finding the cliff…. And then maybe measuring how high the cliff actually is,
and taking even more time doing a body count of the fatalities at the bottom…
Rationalization, I know. Morbid Rationalization. But then, if I didn’t view life like that, what else could I come up with when asked the inevitable "kelan ka ikakasal?" Darn nosey people….
