Left Behind

Somehow, someway, my last entry apparently made someone I’ve regarded as a friend sad. I reread my entry and reread this person’s comment over and over again, but couldn’t quite understand. It was a happy entry. What happened? Did this person prefer me to be miserable?

At this point, I just need to get things off my chest, and so I opt to whip out my negativity card.

I confronted this person, and it basically boiled down to unmet expectations. Geesh, of course, that’s just like me, not to be able to live up to expectations. Of course I needed to be reminded yet again. I guess I’m just not too good at this friend thing.

Friends. I don’t seem to have very much of such thing. No barkada to speak of. I seem to have left everyone behind. You maybe be wondering why that is, and trust me, I wonder that too. So, let’s wonder together.

Back in primary school, I do recall having one best friend, who became such, mostly because our moms were best friends. He lived just a hop, a skip and a jump away from my grandmother’s place before, and so, on weekends we’d play with toy cars and robots, which he had a lot of.

I think our fallout came when my elder brother started joining us on our play dates, and I’d get ganged up on by my brother and my supposed best friend. I guess I was just too much of a sissy. And though just part of being kids, I remember being pissed off when I found out we were still going to be schoolmates up till secondary school. I was just ready to leave him behind.

In high school, I was just usually with whomever I happened to be with in a class at the time. Year in and year out, new sections were formed, which meant new sets of friends. Maybe I just panicked too much. So again, left with little time to build bonds, I easily left people behind in my motions of moving on.

In college, though I did carry over some familiar faces from high school to the university and the course that I chose, it was my academic organization that was the key. I became extremely active with the group, and it became the outlet that I was looking for – where I think I was really able to find myself and be appreciated for who I was, even down to the imperfect, silly, and crazy parts.

I was the thorn among of a barkada of roses, who called themselves the Powerpuff Girls, but I didn’t mind having to wonder whether I was the Professor, the Mayor or the Mojo Jojo of the group. Apparently, that didn’t strike anyone as such a gay thing, as there was even a point where people just thought I was so chickboy of me to be so comfortable hanging out with females.

It was also at that time that I was discovering my sexuality as well, and I found myself building a friendship – a platonic one – with one of my org-mates, a guy who openly and flamboyantly declared himself as silahis. I found such comfort in him that, one evening over dinner, I admitted to him that I was venturing into dating someone of the same gender. His reaction to that disclosure of mine was pretty vague, so I just brushed it off as shock. But the next couple of days of him avoiding me told me otherwise.

The next thing I knew, one of my Powerpuff Girls approached me and asked me if the news about me was true. News? What news? Complete, with the name, the date, the location, and a word for word account, news of my coming out was apparently going around. I neither confirmed nor denied, and just told her I’d need to find out where the news was coming from first.

After vehemently denying, but with no other possible source but him, he finally admitted to telling others about it, apparently for the reason that “he could not handle the news himself”. I was dumbfounded. You’re a homo yourself, how could you not understand? Maybe I was just too gay. He never apologized for what he did. Needless to say, that was the end of our friendship. He made all the effort himself to avoid me after that.

As for the rest of the world at that time, I just distanced myself from everyone, no longer interested in knowing who thought what about me. I needed to leave everyone behind and start anew – alone again. Up to this day, I see from afar that my Powerpuff Girls are still together, still complete, even without me. Might this be what I’ve summed up to for them? Something negligible? It honestly breaks my heart a bit that they seem to have hardly noticed that I used to be walking alongside them.

Even now as I walk with a new group again, mostly the people who I’ve been working with for the past years. But facing this new secret that I keep scares me. Will I be too HIV-positive? Will I inevitably be forced to leave them behind again? Or have I been fooling myself? Have I been the one being left behind? And am I going to be left behind again?

And then of course there are those of you who’ve known me to be the HIV-positive bitch. Let this serve as a warning to you. That’s what kind of a friend I am. Don't set expectations of me too high, because I will fail... miserably. I know nothing more than to be myself. I will eventually turn out to be too much of a sissy, too panicky, too gay, too HIV-positive, too insensitive, too stupid, too bitchy, or whatever other flaw you might see in me. So if you bank on me being something which I am incapable of being, then take caution now. Go ahead and walk away. I’m nothing more than a glass half-empty.