the gal pal

I love holidays. I love days when there aren’t so many people in the metro and you literally could learn how to skateboard on the highway. I love the deserted feeling of EDSA and the dim April rain of this morning. I love how today doesn’t feel like any other day, that today, albeit I haven’t been to church and won’t be in it today (work, ekh), it does feel special. Of course I’m sad that I’m gonna miss the Last Supper tradition for the 2nd year in a row, but I’m glad that according to my body calendar, it is still a special day.

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Spent Saturday with unlikely highschool buddies. Everyone knows Brian and I have been friends for a very long time (sometimes I think it’s longer than it really is) and wherever Bri is, JM is also there. So the three of us, plus their respective girlfriends, celebrated Brian’s graduation (finally!) in a swimming “party” at the Vista Al Ciudad up there in the secluded areas of Marikina Heights.

Yep, again I was the fifth wheel. Didn’t mind though, I like hanging out with their girlfriends. It’s just that, of course, they had their moments and I was left to swim alone. I don’t mind being alone, I just don’t like an audience to my singledom. I probably was the only virgin within a hundred mile radius, but that doesn’t mean I wanted it broadcast. This misery didn’t want company, thank you very much.

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Then on Sunday, I got a call from Nyep whom I haven’t seen since he got his brain tumors removed. Until now I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing (I mean, he is crazy enough at it is!). And of course, I again played the part of the gal pal. Sometimes I feel like it’s a stereotype already. I don’t mean that I don’t like being friends to lots of guys, actually I enjoy it. I enjoy being able to tell them off and joke around with them and boss them around occasionally. A lot of people have nicknamed me a boy magnet because of it. But as it applies to me, it doesn’t mean that they are attracted, it just means that I am the one they run to when they are in need of a “friend”. That, in so many areas, had screwed me over.

I really don’t mind that people see me as a friend they can run to. It’s just that when Nyep said, “Tignan mo tayo, wala man lang ka hint-hint na romantic (Look at us, there is not even a hint of romance.)” I was slighted. Believe me, I don’t have a thing for Nyep nor have or will I ever, but somehow that statement seemed to span several other relationships. It’s like he wasn’t just talking about our friendship, but also of my relationship with several other people who, despite of my complete trust that they love me, are never in love with me. And never will be. I’m just a friend.

I treasure these guy friends for reasons too many to mention. It means a lot when a guy’s lungs are finally relieved with that very very huge sigh of relief when he learns that you are finally free of that destructive relationship, or when he constantly checks on you to see if you’re still alive. They care for me, yes. I am very thankful for that. It’s not fair to hope for something more (especially since I don’t feel anything remotely romantic towards them either) and to push it would be first of all, incest, and secondly, completely unnecessary. Not to mention a very very big EW usually reserved for big brothers. I don’t want them to fall in love with me. I want them to treat me like a girl.

I find a constant urge to remind my guy friends that I am a girl. I needed to be made to feel special from time to time. Even the most gentleman-ly of them often forget that I am female, that I sometimes want to be the object of affection, that sometimes, I want them to be ashamed to say something just because I was in the room, and I am a girl.

From time to time, I do not want to be that lone swimmer at one end of the pool just so she won’t feel awkward as her friends and their partners get it on. I don’t want to be that girl who hears all the sexcapade stories because in her friends’ eyes, she is asexual. I don’t want to be dismissed when it comes to chivalry because I am too much ‘one of the boys’. As much as I know that we ‘only roast those we love’, in reality, you don’t do that to girls you find attractive. You don’t do that to girls you fall in love with.

This isn’t how it works Samantha! You can’t force or… or torture someone into liking you!

-Chris, Just Friends (2005)

~ by denice on 5 April, 2007.