Goddess, I Am.

You know what they say: birds of a feather, yada yada yada. Well, everyone knows I’m a strange girl, so it’s only perfectly natural that I’m surrounded by strange people.

Take my family, for instance. I have a mother who dances 80s dance steps while cooking binignit, and a little sister who truly believes her unborn child determines her daily diet. I had an aunt who developed a weird, nasal British accent that’s definitely nothing like Harry Potter after living in London for just a little over a year. Not only that, I have a grandma who believes that her dreams determine the fate of the world (or at least, mine), the latest of which had something to do with me being in jail in Thailand, complete with iron clamps ’round the ankles.

Even The Boyfriend is no different. The man actually drags me off jeepneys when they dilly-dally too long in Country Mall trying to get passengers. He even makes me fight for the P0.50 rollback fare cut, not for the money, but (to use his words) “for the principle of the matter.”

It’s only inevitable that my friends are strange creatures, as well. One of my best friends lived with her Dutch boyfriend for months and never – and I mean, NEVER – slept with him once. Another one ‘borrowed’ my travel pictures a year ago and passed them off as her own in Friendster (even if we don’t look anything alike) to make her cheating ex jealous of her ‘wanderings’ – and they’re still there to this day. And let’s not forget my best friend who has lost so many marbles over the years that whoever found them probably now has a full set (Peace, Lhen!).

But I do have friends who are quite normal – that is, until they exhibit undeniably crazy behavior. Take Chin for example. At first glance, she’s this cute little thing with a family just as cute that they may as well be in one of those soy sauce adverts. Possibly the most ridiculous thing that she’s ever done was set me up with a guy who believed he looked like Van Damme when he just looked, well, goddamned (for lack of better words), and write an article on hair when she’s meant to be writing about nails. Nope, nothing strange there at all.

It’s amazing, however, how one’s grief over a computer that crashed with no warning, taking with it file after file of written articles, can drive one to a drunken stupor so severe that one quite suddenly discovers a hidden talent in bongo-playing, which just has to be unveiled in that very bar on the very night of one’s epiphany – as what can be seen here:

Love the dress, love the shoes, but most of all, love the uber smug look.

Ahhh, yes. My friends are strange, indeed. Thank heavens for that, or I wouldn’t be laughing so much on a regular basis.

When you love someone, you deify him. To what degree is relative to the extent of your passion. Nevertheless, to you he becomes a god, giving him the power to lord it over you should he so choose. For the most part, a good man wouldn’t – at least, not consciously or maliciously. But almost inevitably, he will, as men are wont to do upon attaining the esteemed status of pseudo-godship – all because he is loved.

How does one deify a mere mortal? One builds him up; first in one’s head, then in the heads of all and sundry who care to listen. And though the latter might not embrace such worship with even half the same ardor that you devote to it, you do. You only see the good that evokes your passion, and never the bad that could actually make you see sense. And what a folly that is because that is where your downfall begins.

When you love someone, you strive to become compatible. And because you’ve been told that you can never change your lover, you endeavor to change yourself. Indeed, there is no harm in such a cause, especially if it is for the good of, not just your love, but of yourself. And so you find yourself giving up this and sacrificing that until one day you wake up and you don’t know yourself anymore. You don’t know what you’ve become, how you got there, or even why; all because such a drastic overhaul of your “self”, of your “being” was achieved for the wrong reasons: not for yourself, but for the pseudo-god who you so desperately wanted to please, but who, more than likely, would never ever be pleased.

Nothing is more guaranteed to wake you up out of your rose-colored stupor than a stranger looking back at you in the mirror, and you start to realize that if you were so wrong about yourself, then perhaps you were also wrong about the lover you have come to hold in such high regard. And then you look back and realize that the pseudo-god isn’t quite as divine as you thought. You start to grasp the magnitude of his indifference – the indifference that was always there the entire time, but you deemed it natural in his seeming superiority to you; a superiority, I might add, that you bestowed upon him in the first place. You start to see the disregard, the disrespect, the dishonesty, and all other manner of painful truths that only the most honest of relationships can discern. You see them all, and suddenly you’re disillusioned and jaded, and you don’t know what to make of it.

Still, when you love someone, you try to make it work. So every time there’s a problem (and at this point, you’re already honest with yourself enough to admit that there are indeed problems), you find yourself conceding to keep the peace, to keep the status quo intact. This is because even though in your eyes he is now just a man and no longer a pseudo-god, you still do not love him any less. If anything, you might even love him more in this newfound attainability.

So you concede, and all is peaceful until the next conflict when you will concede again and again and again in a never ending cycle of concession for the sake of love and harmony, regardless of who is in the wrong. But when you really think about it, how long can you concede? How long can you give in? How long can you keep apologizing for wrongs that you did not do? Everything – and everyone – has a limit. Surely your ability to concede is no exception.

So now you’re faced with a dilemma. If you continue to concede until every drop of concession is wrung from your body and until every smidgen of apology is no more, the time will come when you’ll have nothing more to give. Inevitably, you can do no more than watch the demise of the relationship that you so painstakingly built.

On the other hand, you can resist taking the path of least resistance and fight for what you believe is right. You can attempt to make him face his inadequacies, instead of mollycoddling him and pointing out your own to make him feel good about himself. You can endeavor to put your lover in his place when he’s done you wrong, and force him into submission for you to finally receive the apology or the appreciation that you so deserve. This is risky because though there is a slight chance that you will accomplish your objective, it is exactly that – slight – and you may invariably do more harm than good, leading to an even earlier demise of the relationship. Is there even a path that doesn’t lead to the relationship’s demise? I do not believe so, for even those who stay together for the rest of their lives eventually die and become no more.

When you love someone, you give him the power to destroy you. And until you start to accept love as it is – fleeting – you will find yourself constantly destroyed throughout your lifetime. You will only emerge whole when you stop believing in forever and start accepting that nothing lasts forever.

Indeed, when you love someone, make every moment count because that’s all you’re ever really going to get – moments.

Note: This was inspired by the movie ‘Becoming Jane’, an adaptation of the life of Jane Austen; hence, the slightly Victorian undertone (I imagine).

They say bad things come in three’s. If that’s true, then it looks like we might have one more to go.

On our way home from dinner, the boyfriend and I were waiting for our songthaew to turn up in our usual bus stop. This stop has a bench where we usually settle in for the long wait as the songthaews in this particular route tend to be few and far between. Behind the bench, there’s also one of those wooden platform-cum-beds where motorcycle taxi drivers rest during the day in between trips. Tonight, however, there were no taxi drivers. Instead, there were two bums lolling around on the “bed”, both drunk or stoned or both.

I was a bit wary with having them behind us, but they seemed lost in their own world, so we pretty much just ignored them. We must have been waiting for about 30 minutes when a songthaew across the street unloaded a gang of little boys, probably aged between 9-11. These weren’t nice little boys, mind you, but rather khlongies, a term the boyfriend made up to refer to those awfully grubby people who squat beside the khlongs (canals) and their generally tacky, obtuse, and rude behavior. These little misfits ran across to where we were sitting and started horsing around, disturbing the bums from their chemically-induced stupor.

Next thing we knew, one of the bums was chasing them around, waving around a whiskey bottle, trying to drive the kids away. While the others were running around and laughing their heads off, tormenting the bum in question, one awful little boy stood right in front of – you guessed it! – ME, staring. The boyfriend sort of waved him away. The boy then hollered at the bum and pointed at – you guessed it again! – ME. For no reason. He spoke something in Thai to the bum. I imagine he was trying to get the bum to mug us, or something worse. Thankfully, as the bum advanced on us, bottle in hand, our songthaew turned up. We hurriedly got on.

I shudder to think what could’ve happened if we were there for another minute more. After the “beat-age” a little over a week ago and now this, I’m completely scared to death of dodgy-looking Thai men, and even khlongie children. I will definitely be picking up a can of mace as soon as humanly possible. Or, one of those taser guns. Or, better yet, a cattle prodder. I don’t think I can survive this place on my wolf charm alone.

I find myself hating this place more and more. Fuck, mai pen rai.