I have just walked past McD and Pizza Hut when my eyes travelled to the lane across. A familiar face. It couldn't be. With a familiar girl. Whapack! I froze. The people walked past me as I stared at the couple with my feet planted where I stood. They were getting on the escalator. When they disappeared from my view, I ran. After them. I lost control of my feet. I, the walk-out queen, ran after THEM. The reason behind doing so eluded me. I took the escalator but they were nowhere in sight. He was holding some paperbags which made me figure they were shopping. I turned left towards the tiangge. My eyes were fixed on an imaginary spot right in front of me. With trembling fingers, my heart in my throat and the tears welling up threatening to fall at the corners of my eyes, I dialled Nico's number. I did not know why and I did not know for what. Just hearing his voice told me I was not doing the right thing. I retraced my path and as I exited the tiangge section, I was greeted by Gold's Gym. Ah, work-out maybe.
I said goodbye to Nico and dialled the person more sensible to call. There was a communication error at my first call but when I tried again, a groggy Ariane listened to me yet whine again about the boy I supposedly broke up with in her apartment the morning I left Cebu. A good five-minute call later, I've regained my composure but the spring and giddiness before the encounter was irrecoverable.
Ho looked different. Maybe he did or maybe I just looked at him differently. I've known all along that I haven't completely moved on. He just made it appear so by disappearing from my life. Like, he was never in it. We might as well be strangers. They might as well be just another couple in the mall that reminded me of a past dream.
He is a stranger. He has the name and the face that made my heart gallop in the immediate past. He has the name and the face that I've held on dearly in my heart. But, I doubt he is the person.
Whenever I thought of him, I made a distinction between the him when we were together and the him when we were not. The him when we were together was up on a pedestal, the perfect man who did and said all the perfect things at the perfect time at the perfect place. The him when we were not was hidden behind my consciousness, distant from my logical thinking, blanketed by my emotions. The him when we were not still did and said all the perfect things at the perfect time at the perfect place but not for me, only for himself.
I hate myself for believing I have gotten over us, when there wasn't even an us to get over from to begin with. Perhaps, it was I alone who fell. It was I alone who decoded his intentions as reciprocation of my own. When I thought he lied by claiming another girl's name as his girlfriend, it must have been an auditory dysfunction on my part. [Nitz = Liz] He never meant to hurt me, thus, he never had the heart to tell me off. I and nobody else hurt myself. I am womyn but I am primarily human.
Do we truly fall in love with a person or do we only take his/her identity to personify our ideal partner?
*.* as if! @ 10:56:00 AM • • RBJ
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