loving like a boy...not my style

I’m finally done with my paper and presentation for Monday. The weather here in UN is so weird it rained with the sun shining.

Anyway, today I thought about building your life around someone. You know, like going out of the social circuit when you’re in a relationship. Ve and I always talked about that, about how we always, always fall into that routine. Friends do take the backseat when we’re in love, and while we know this isn’t healthy, we never really fight it back, nor do we reprimand each other. We’re happy that way, never mind if this prioritizing, of course done unconsciously, is never reciprocated.

But that was before, when we were younger and still fools in love. Eventually, we got hurt and thought about all the gimiks with friends we missed all because we wanted to be with our boyfriends, all the phone calls we abruptly ended to talk to the SO, etc. She said, “Totally not worth it!” But I was quick to say that that was what we wanted at that time, and that was what made us happy so we shouldn’t bother with wanting to reverse the past.

They say experience, especially in love, makes us wiser. At 22, I don’t have enough experience in love to speak of, and I don’t really know what ‘wiser’ in love means. There will always be hard habits to break, if you ask me. Unless of course, you meet that one person who turns out to be special enough you’d want to do things right for the sake of forever after.

So I got to thinking, should I really start thinking about how I am as a girlfriend? Angela asked me something along the lines of: “Would you put your boyfriend first before your friends?” And without batting an eyelash, I let out a “Yeah.” Ha! You see, being pragmatic and realistic in order to avoid getting hurt in love has never been my style. Heck, nobody can be spared from a heartache, I believe. It’s fun to think you’d last forever, you know. As the poem goes, “Not even the rain has such small hands…” See? Why mess up the romance?

For my own sake, I’m probably just going to infuse an ounce of pragmatism in my girlfriendhood. I’ve actually tried this, but I was met with questions like, “Are things with you and your boy okay?” or “What happened? How come you’re entertaining the thought of you not ending up together?” So you see, my attempt at becoming like a boy in the relationship (read: practical) was met with curious, if not inquisitive responses. That led me to think that perhaps, girls really do have high hopes upon entering a relationship and more so when it actually progresses to something serious. Saying something like, “I can never be sure if we’ll end up together, anyway,” kind of sends messages of practicality (which isn’t normal if you’re a girl) or even of discontent.

I remember a friend of mine at work ask, “Why is it that our schedules depend on our boyfriends such that we have to check with them if we have plans so we’ll know if we can plan something with other people, but for them, they can make plans on their own and just inform us about it?” Well, don’t ask me. I, who seldom makes demands, rarely sets the day’s schedule (no “let’s watch a movie then eat at so and so…”) and never goes out with friends when there’s a date with the boy (yeah, even if the gimik was planned days before.) Funny thing is, my mom’s become like me. Almost every afternoon, she texts or calls and asks, “Are you going out tonight?” Implication: Do you have a date tonight? And if there are no plans with the SO, my mom and I set a dinner date of our own.

My day is NEVER without a thought of my boy: Why isn’t he texting? Or, Right about this time he’s probably eating breakfast. Or, Are we going out tonight or does he have his own gimik? Or, Traffic’s pretty bad, I hope he doesn’t take EDSA (this is when I’m on the MRT and feel like a traffic reporter.) Yeah, “tattooed on my mind” seems like the best way to describe how I make him a part of my everyday. I do, indeed, fall hard!!!

I guess it all just boils down to how happy and content you are with the relationship and with all that takes of you to do your part in making it work (or what you think can make your relationship work.) I’m probably never going to be able to successfully take on that male approach to this whole relationship thing (not that I really want to, anyway). I’m always going to be a girl no matter how hard I fight the urge to look deep into the future. My boy will always be on my mind, and even a project presentation would have to take the backseat. Likewise, friends will have to deal with my I’m-a-devoted-girlfriend-persona for as long as this is applicable. Well, I’ve been known to claim that I’m a better girlfriend than a friend, so friends, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Maybe by others’ standards I’d be wrong to prioritize my lovelife, but hey, that’s what makes me happy. If I get hurt, well, that’s life, isn’t it? And why should I measure myself againts other people's standards, anyway? To each his own! Even in matters of the heart.