Zi was weird. In a good way though.
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| Something like it... |
He was older than me and my peers, but not too old that he crossed from kuya into Tito status. Over the years, particularly after I started college, he became an occasional paper clip in my life; he wasn't like a staple, wasn't there through every sheet of my existence, but he got the cliffnotes version through letters that we'd send each other about every other week.
"You know there's this really cool invention called e-mail right?" I joked when he insisted that I should write to him.
"It's more personal," He reasoned with me, completely ignoring my sarcasm. "It's what you want to say right then and there...there's nothing you can edit."
He went on to say some poetic thing about how letters touch so many lives...literally; from one mail employee to another to another to another. If you ignored the likelihood of catching the common cold from just one postal worker who spent Sunday night out in the freezing cold for a football game, it was very inspiring. And so we wrote, and wrote and wrote, up until I got a letter from Zi essentially saying,
"I'm going to pursue my life dream of becoming a doctor. Wish me luck."
...granted, he'd told me the news before the letter came, but still. And while I was awed by his determination and almost exasperated at the suddenness of the declaration, I was equal parts of sad and jealous. Sad, because I'd be losing contact with someone whose company I actually enjoyed (apparently mail is hard to deliver in third-world countries) and jealous because, well, I'm not sure I'd have the balls to do the same.
When I say that Zi is living my dream, I mean that he's found his purpose in life and is pursuing it heads-on whereas I'm still here, floating about like that damn plastic bag Katy Perry opens up Fireworks with (totally ripped from American Beauty btw).
"Don't be in a rush," He told me while I stared at shoes and attempted to will them into telling me if I should buy them or not. "You just got a job. Enjoy it."
I tried to reason with him that, "I am." I stare at more shoes because I just remembered that I don't usually shop because I have the fashion taste of dental floss. "I just want more."
Zi tells me not to be so impatient, that I'm bound to fail if I don't slow down once in a while. I know what he's saying is true, but it doesn't stop me from having what I recognize to be my quarter-life crisis.
See, whereas your mid-life crisis is all about how you're not as amazing of a person as you thought you would be, my quarter-life crisis is all about how I'm going to fail at life in the long run because I suck at interpersonal relationships and because boys can't seem to be satisfied with just me in their lives.
"I'm going to die alone." I wailed to Nicky later on that evening over a Double Chocolaty Chip frappucino that tasted like watered down chocolate milk shake while we gawked at the god-awful shirts children under 14 were wearing. "I clearly can't keep a man and I can't even be a crazy cat lady because I'm allergic to anything with fur. I'm going to die alone and it'll take them 3 weeks to realize that I'm even dead."
Nicky stared at me, sipped her caramel iced tea and enthusiastically replied, "I'll get you a bird." She reasons a little too happily, "We can teach it how to talk so it can dial for 9-1-1 when you die so that someone can find your dead body."
I want to throw my extremely diluted frap at her until I remember that I drank the entire thing even though it tasted like shit because I paid over $4 for it.
"I don't want to be alone," I told Zi. "But I think it's going to happen."
Zi gave me that look that you usually reserve for the five year olds that ask you if babies really do come from storks. He pointed out that boys in their 20s aren't really ideal people to seek long-lasting relationships with. I totally agreed...but it doesn't give me much hope for the future. Once again,
"Be patient." He insists, the words suggesting that what I want is waiting to happen; that it's in the wings of my stage just waiting for the right cue, the right line, the right notes to step into the spotlight.
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| A guitar would be a plus |
Written 4.4.11
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