The Hills Rumination

(another late post)

Another rainy day at home means getting stuck in bed, having all the sleep the semester deprived me of, and forcing my lids to open up when they start to feel so heavy for being shut for too long. That’s when boredom starts to disturb me. I like doing nothing. I like staring at nothing. But sometimes, I do it too much that it gets tiring too. And my first option: pirated DVDs of my favourite TV series.

That’s what exactly happened to me yesterday until earlier today. The only difference is, instead of playing DVDs of my most trusted selection of series, I opted to try something else. I had long been meaning to watch The Hills, and yesterday, I was able to buy the first three seasons of it.

At first it could be really boring, monotonous. It even put me to sleep after watching the first few episodes. But after waking up again, I decided to just pick up. And then, it turned out to be interesting, and well, it was good. I mean, I still wouldn’t line it up with Grey’s, OTH, and others, it wouldn’t even fall into my Top 5, but I definitely am buying the next season and I’ll catch up with the happenings.

So anyway, this entry’s not meant to do a review of The Hills, or whatsoever. I just realised something about me while I was watching it.

I thought that I am similar to Lauren in one way particularly – I am in no control of reminding and instructing my friends when it comes to matters of the heart, and I do it overly.

I was not like this then. I was always the one who would tell my friend that despite the guy’s offensiveness, it was okay as long as she was happy with him. And that I was just as happy as she was. And when I said that, a hundred times, I was never pretending; every word I said was pulled out fresh from the bottom of my heart. I was always the first one to defend her when people constantly told her what a fool she was for hurting herself.

But now, a few years later, I turned into someone to oppose friends who become excessively giving, without getting a bit of what they deserve. Whenever a friend comes to me and tells me how stupid she has just been, I tactlessly underscore her being stupid for the wrong person, for the wrong reasons. I heartlessly tell her that doing another act of self-sacrifice will just leave her damaged as a person. I lectured and instruct that I sometimes step out of the line. I become irritating already for giving unsolicited advices.

What caused this change in me? It’s finding true love.

It wasn’t that easy, finding my true love. I stumbled upon a couple of, I don’t know how I should call them now, wrong persons I shall say. In one way or another, I lost fragments of myself. I had a great deal of time misspent. And I also had my share of ridiculous acts of misconstrued love. Despite those, I am intact, I am whole. Because I understood that there was such thing as enough. I was a few steps away from the line, good thing that I was brave enough to refuse to stay unsighted. Otherwise, I would have never seen it, and it could have been difficult to pull myself back.

This is the reason why I sometimes appear all-knowing. I am just willing to see for people who decline to see. My careless talking is ironically a caution for my friends who are almost stepping off the line. I get very scared, because I have seen people who hastily walked past the line and they ended up not having that one thing they thought was worth everything. They ended up being insecure and doubtful. They ended up being the least of what they were then. And I wouldn’t want my friends to be one of them, ever.

Now that I found my one true love, I speak with authority. Not because I am arrogant or because I fail to understand. But because I have finally known how exactly every woman is supposed to be treated, and what exactly she deserves.

I wish writing this would make me feel a little better.

Having new friends is good. But not having been able to keep the old ones is, I don’t know, how do I even put it? Unacceptable. Perhaps.

I could not even count and name all the friends I had for the whole twenty years of my life. You can tell, I had plenty of them. But how many among them have I been keeping in touch with? If keeping in touch is exchanging a few text messages once in a couple of weeks, or not forgetting to send birthday greetings on Friendster, then I guess I am keeping in touch. But if it means taking a minute to call and check how they are doing every once in a while, or if it means having to actually free myself to run to their places and personally greet them on their birthdays, then go ahead and curse me. I think I am keeping in touch with nobody. I guess that makes me the least perfect friend, not even a good friend. Give me something not worse than a bad friend, but less than a good friend. I fall somewhere in between that. If you probably ask one of my good old friends on how much of a friend I am, she would probably tell you, ‘sakto lang’. God, ‘sakto lang’ is never good, right? It feels so awful but it’s no one else’s fault, just mine.

A friend of mine is currently going through one of the worsts you could imagine. I didn’t know about it until recently. The thing is, she wasn’t the one who told me and I am not allowed to tell my friend or anyone else that I know something. It’s sad because she is a great friend to me, she is actually one of my best friends and she’s not telling me anything. But the sadder part is, I could not be there for her, help her carry her luggage.

I tried several times to get her to talk to me about what she’s going through, but she said nothing. She pretended to be okay. It hurts because I know that I would understand, and I would support her no matter what, and she could hang on to me all the way. But it hurts more that, through the years, it didn’t seem like I would. Because I stopped being a good friend when we reached the end of something and the start of another thing. We parted ways. I could have left her the assurance that the sudden change would not alter our friendship; that our bodies may have gone so far away from each other but my presence would always be felt. I could have. But I didn’t.

Everyday, I think about her. Everyday, I think about how I could have made her feel much better. If only I kept in touch. If only I bothered to check on her. If only I have been a good friend, the best friend that I used to be.

I don’t want to make the same mistake again. I have such great friends and I want to be as great as they already are. I want to be someone they can run to, someone they will call first. Not only through lucky and happy times, but also when the going gets tough.

As to my friend, I wish the ‘better late then never’ applies. To rescuing our friendship. To my being there for you. Just please let me be a friend to you this time. Let me be there for you.

Traffic News

I’ve been running away from writing for weeks now. In my previous entries, I was telling about how much I had wanted to go back to writing, but after a little while, I was nowhere in sight again. I’ve been avoiding writing as if it’s some kind of plague. Not that I lack the time because I actually have plenty of it. It wasn’t also a writer’s block, definitely not. Neither did my appetite for public writing die out.

Maybe, because I was pretty sure that I would just madden myself by filling my entries up with stories about annoying people, things, and what-have-yous; or maybe, I was just stopping myself from further ruminations while I write, because in the end I would just realize what a wasted man I am; or maybe, I was just musing on whether I should go back to livejournal for the one silly reason that I miss those delightful emoticons, or transfer to wordpress cause it breathes some classiness and style for me, or just stay for the my old entries’ sake even if blogspot’s already boring me.

Or maybe, because of all these reasons. Oh, kill me. I am over-analyzing again. Whatever the reason of my sudden, and over again and again halt is, I’m happy that writing this f*cked up entry has somewhat made my day. Talk about writing as therapeutic.

Whether the red light has shut down for good or not, I cannot tell and I cannot promise. But while the green light is brightly flashing, then I wish to be charged of over speeding.