Retrograde

It was the lies that hurt the most.

It was when he'd say something when in fact it wasn't true.
It's him omitting the details, not telling me things, and what was really going on.
Like his failure to tell me that he was still seeing her. Or the others.
When he said they have no contact, that they don’t see each other anymore.
He lies about being over his ex when he's not, then proceeds to ask how my day went.

I Will Carry On

I’ve been blogging since the early noughties. Those years were the heydays; there was more freedom then. I can talk about anything without much concern about correctness whether it’s political, grammatical, or contextual. There’s not much to filter—I say what I want to say how I would say it. Nothing was ever vapid, mediocre and frivolous. I can talk about anything from an elevator incident, my list of sexiest men, a hilarious interaction, my frustrations over a colleague at work, my day-to-day activities—down to every embarrassing incident, heartbreak and unrequited love. It was pure, fun and almost cathartic.

When I first got into this, it was never my intention to have a readership. Looking back, it was never my goal. Before the internet age, I’ve always been into writing stuff on my notebooks (stories, anecdotes, one-liners, quotes) and I don’t think I ever intend for someone to read it. It’s more about me encapsulating feelings and memories. Even now that I’m accessible, sometimes I still get conscious knowing that this blog and its content is open to scrutiny.

Someone Might Be Watching

There’s this Pinoy joke that if the guy who’s giving you obsessive attention is good-looking, then you can call him a “secret admirer”. Otherwise, he’s a “stalker”.

Box-office movie Kita Kita (2017), some people think this movie romanticizes stalking.

The first time the term “stalker” was actually used to me was when I was in my early 20s. Every day when I come home from my former office, I would see this guy who looked slightly older than me, dressed in work clothes, waiting by the central terminal. After some time I noticed him following me, with his expressionless face, from work till I get home. I never thought much of it at first other than it was a coincidence until I decided to do some “experiment”. I changed my route by getting off the jeepney where we were and then getting on another ⁠⁠— and he did the same! In a panic, I hurriedly went to my older brother’s office. There, after telling him what happened, his female officemate said to me, “Huyyy, may stalker ka.”

Stalker? Why would someone even stalk me? Aren’t stalkers only for celebrities and high-profile people? (I’ve seen the movie The Fan, where my obscure childhood crush Michael Biehn played a deranged fan who stalked a stage actress played by Lauren Bacall, and that’s how I came to know what a stalker is.)