I have written about this so many times, mostly because I was in this hormone-induced stage of teenage agony and I had to let it out somehow, but now that I’m well over it, I think it’s time I tried writing a version that doesn’t contain as much emotion as comedy and sarcasm. Wish me luck. :D
This boy shall be known now and forever as Robbie. He was a pretty average kid but I managed to magnify his personality to a size reality could not accommodate. He had long-ish hair, always too long for school rules, and these naturally squinty eyes so when he looked at you it always looked like he was staring into the sun. Already, I feel like I’m overdoing his adjectives. Trust me, he was painfully average, except that I liked him a lot.
I think that he was the most serious crush I’d ever had, because even though I was less idealistic than I used to be, I was still pretty hopeful. I remember it was during the first few days of August when I saw him with his friends standing in front of this giant fan, cooling off; and decided that I would like him. I think I chose to like him because I knew I could somehow get him to like me back (and I wasn’t wrong, wink wink).
We did this thing – it started in the sixth grade – when we would have a poking war whose rules were fairly simple: poke the other person until they’re too annoyed to poke you back. It carried over to the first year of high school.
We chased each other around school doing that once – around the lobby, around groups of people talking, around the maintenance and security staff. I pretended to be really annoyed with him, because he was so fast and I was so slow (if you think I’m unfit now in 2013, you should’ve seen me in 2009, oh boy). My heart wasn’t racing from lack of exercise though, it was more from the fact that this boy I liked so so much was literally running after me and had no idea how happy he made me.
We texted a lot. I want to pretend I take pride in the fact that I made that a staple in our relationship but seeing as it played a huge role in my ruin, I’m going to count that as a mistake that just happened (through no one’s fault, really, ehem). If I had my phone in first year here with me right now, I would probably be throwing myself at a wall from reading our conversations, especially, the texts I sent to him. I don’t know if that was when I started texting with proper grammar, and if it was, hallelujah; but if it wasn’t, I’d like you to add poison spikes to the wall you’re imagining me throwing myself onto. Thanks.
I was really cutesy, as in flirty but in what I imagine was the innocent little girl version of it. As in: asking what he was doing, where he was, listening to him talk about his family and basketball, and pretending to be so engaged in who won that DOTA game after school that one time. In my defense, I didn’t mind because I really liked him so knowing all the little things about him was actually really fun for me (at the time). I can’t imagine how much load I wasted, and even then we never spoke in person.
It was about a month after I decided to like him when Joy, my friend, came knocking on our classroom door at the beginning of break. She was so excited and she was smiling so hard, it was like 67% of her energy was being put into this social interaction. So I brought one of my other closest friends with me and we were asking her what it was that was so important (what I will say next is a direct quotation): “Kasi nag ‘hot seat’ yung Romans di ba?” “Mmhmm…” “Tapos si Robbie na yung sa hot seat…” “Uh huh…”. “Girl, patay na patay siya sa’yo!”
We basically lost it. All three of us were on the floor, trying to pull ourselves together. This is no exaggeration, one of my friends actually rolled around on the floor outside our classroom because she was feeling so much kilig for me. I was up against the wall, laugh-cry-holy-crap-yes-yes-yes-yes-ing whilst trying to hold on to my sanity. I was twelve. I was a pre-teen romantic comedy minus the romance. We looked ridiculous but we really didn’t care because he liked me - because he liked me - because he liked me. Back.
‘Huzzah! He wants me… I clearly have the upper hand!’ twelve year old me said as she continued to stare at her phone, planner, and desktop screen, waiting for him to go online or text or something. Needless to say, it changed nothing except from then on, I began pestering him for the name of his crush (who I knew was me but I wanted to hear it from him nonetheless, probably because I was a twelve year old girl).
It was like Little Manhattan minus the direction, soundtrack, cinematography, and script. I over-analyzed everything. “He didn’t reply… he must hate me! I must ask his friends about him. What if he’s dead…” I didn’t stop there. I even wrote poetry about it (do you remember the Philippine tween emo phase of ’09; yeah well, I was a huge fan of that movement. My poetry will attest to that, not that anyone will ever read it, thank God). Nevertheless, it was fun on a certain level because someone liked me and I liked them back and not everyone could say that.
It was December or maybe January and I was on the way home from a church talk that ended really late, around 10 pm. I was in the back of a cab with my mom and I was texting him then. I’d been bothering him about his crush for a few months at that point and I could feel it, he was finally going to say it. (Insert suspense here.) And he did! He said he liked me! I think that’s when the emotional seizure began. I wasn’t contented with that though, no sir, I kept going and asked him why he liked me. And low and behold the gods smiled down upon me that blessed night because he actually answered that question. (He said I was smart and kind and pretty, if anyone’s wondering. Giggle giggle.)
It took a heroic dose of willpower not to scream like a madman in the back of that cab. Imagine a little girl curled up by the cab door, her legs folded under her in an Indian sit, with her face to the window so no one would see the smile she couldn’t manage to wipe off her face.
Life was pretty good for a few weeks (cue Wouldn’t It Be Nice by the Beach Boys).
Fast forward to Valentine’s Day. I knew Robbie was at school with a couple of the other guys even though it was Saturday because they had to do “community service” for being late for a particular class. I don’t remember what the offense was, exactly, but incidentally, Joy was there too. It was given that she would have to give me the 411 later that night over Y!M or something.
Everything was normal up til’ she called me that night. I was in front of the desktop in the living room with my mom watching the news. She was so sketchy with her, “Kath, I really want to tell you something but I can’t!” I had to coax it out of her for maybe five to ten minutes. “Kath, if he finds out I told you, I owe him a PS3. You really can’t tell basta promise ha!” “It won’t be good…”
I should’ve listened to her, I really should’ve. Basically, he said he didn’t like me anymore. He said that from then on, he was going to dedicate his life to God (for the record, he didn’t). I should’ve just let her keep that secret. “Kath, are you okay? Are you crying?” Yes. Definitely. Mmhmm. It was Valentine’s Day and my not-boyfriend kind of just not-broke-up with me, sort of, in a way, a little.
I couldn’t just let myself start crying in the living room though. There was no need to let my mom in on all this pre-teen nonsense. I made a smooth escape to the bathroom where I proceeded to sob as quietly as humanly possible. Honestly, it was like someone had died and I couldn’t tell my family that (insert relative here) finally died of (insert terminal illness here). I played music from my phone to mask the sound of my heart breaking. I may have also turned the shower on. Actually, I think I did the cliché crying-in-the-shower scene. It made a good cover for the tears and the puffy eyes and everything. Then I locked myself in my room until my face looked normal again.
For the next two months, I wrote the worst, most depressing poetry the emo movement had ever seen. Secondhand Serenade became my jam. Boston (by Augustana) was my anthem. I tried my very best to pretend it didn’t faze me, because I was stronger than that; but if anyone saw the inside of my journal, sweet merciful God – they’d understand how much it devastated me. (To quote my boys over at Linkin Park, “I tried so hard and got so far, but in the end, it doesn’t even matter.”)
I knew it was my fault. I liked him first. I started the domino effect that led up to the Valentine’s Day Massacre (where I was the only casualty, me and maybe the vague non-existent relationship I conjured up so often I might’ve convinced myself it was real).
You can stone me for quoting John Green but I’m going to do it anyway, because I think it’s fitting. “Maybe there's something you're afraid to say, or someone you're afraid to love... It's gonna hurt. It's gonna hurt because it matters.” And boy, did it hurt. No matter how much I tried to tell myself that it was nothing, that life would go on, that I would get over it, I couldn’t, not really. It changed me, all that self-imposed drama, it was definitely significant.
It was all the little things that made me happy that made everything worth it, I guess. The little moments, the small silent secret moments, they’re what made remembering bearable. The pain was bad, but before that, there was unexplainable unforgettable undeniable joy. So it was okay, I guess, in the end. The heart break was bound to happen, but before that shoe dropped, man, it was sweet, and innocent, and beautiful.
