CONSPIRACY

I was standing near the dining table yesterday, all set to go out. My tita walks in, looks at me in thoughtful silence.
"La," she starts.
"Ano?"
"Ba't wala ka pang boyfriend?"

I stare back at her, and then we both guffaw uncontrollably. What a way to start the day.

Walking to the village gate, I then remember what a friend had told me the other day while we were waiting for the train. He mentioned my ex, and wondered why weren't together anymore (goodness it's been two years and they're still at it). He casually adds that I'm "girlfriend material". I don't know if I should be flattered or appalled. I'm leaning towards the latter. It just sounds weird. What is that, anyway? Girlfriend material. It's...unfair, somehow. Sabagay, meron din namang boyfriend material. Ah, the intricacies of male-female relationships.

Anyway, so I go to my dinner and drinking session (90 proof. Emerald St., Ortigas. Cheap beer. 80s music. Dead Poets Society on video. Gooood stuff.) with SURP people. At 3 am, I'm on my way home. My friend who took a cab with me suddenly asks, "wala bang nanliligaw sa 'yo ngayon?"

What is up? What, what, WHAT?

So now I'm wondering, do I really, actually want to have a boyfriend? At this point in my life? I feel like there's this wave, slowly building up, and I'm just staring at it, clueless, not knowing if I should run or just stand and wait for it to tumble over. I have this nagging suspicion that the universe is trying to tell me something. It's so Coelho. Sheesh.

To top it off, at the prodding of my brother, I took a test at OKCupid. My brother, of all people. But he wanted me to appreciate the "cleverness" of the test. Looked a lot like Quizilla to me. Anyway, got the results below:

The Window Shopper
Random Gentle Love Dreamer (RGLDf)

Loving, hopeful, open. Likely to carry on an romance from afar. You are The Window Shopper. You take love as opportunities come, which can lead to a high-anxiety, but high-flying romantic life. You're a genuinely sweet person, not saccharine at all, so it's likely that the relationships you have had and will have will be happy ones. You've had a fair amount of love experience for your age, and there'll be much more to come.

Part of why we know this is that, of all female types, you are the most prone to sudden, ferocious crushes. Your results indicate that you're especially capable of obsessing over a guy you just met. Obviously, passion like this makes for an intense existence. It can also make for soul-destroying letdowns.

Your ideal match is someone who'll love you back with equal fire, and someone you've grown to love slowly. A self-involved or pessimistic man is especially bad. Though you're drawn to them, avoid artists at all costs. ###


I love how the internet tries to dictate my future. Haha. By the way, the reading is not entirely true. I am not prone to sudden, ferocious crushes. I don't even know what the hell a crush is. But I am drawn to artists. And I am genuinely sweet. Shut up, this is MY blog.

I digress. Thing is, honestly, relationships scare me. Or they're starting to. I was all out with my last one, and now I'm...apprehensive. I'm now honest enough to say that. I mean, yes, I'm looking forward to meeting that best friend, that one person I can rely on and trust with my life and heart and all that jazz. I've said that more than once, and it's true. I have faith (and "anticipation is the purest form of pleasure"). But the reality of a relationship is actually kinda scary. I think because I don't want to make the same mistakes that I made in the past. I want the next one to be real, honest. And fun, dammit!:)

I had a dream recently. I was on a race track (F1, I believe, hehe), holding a guidebook or rulebook or some literature about racing. I wondered what it was about, coz I've never had a racetrack dream, if you know what I mean. A friend guessed that it meant I was running out of time and that I should probably speed up (she was pertaining to my love life, naturally). I joked that maybe I'm just running away from my past, haha.

But you know how it feels when you're running a race? All the adrenalin, and the insane determination to reach the finish line first? I get that feeling, too. And for the most part, it feels awesome. It's such an inspired run. Problem is, whenever I get very close to the chequered flag, I almost always begin to slow down, or worse, bail out completely. I don't just lose steam, I will myself to lose steam. I woke up from my dream with that exact same feeling.

I dunno, think all the disappointments in my past are causing this debilitating insecurity.

So maybe I don't want a relationship, maybe I do. Or maybe what the universe is telling me is simply to stop losing sleep over my dilemma and just run the race to see where it will take me.

I'm hoping for a podium finish. But there's no guarantee.