Nice to (Re)Meet You

3 | back to the future

✦

3

back to the future

THE THING ABOUT being in your mid-twenties was you could simultaneously feel and not feel that you were in your mid-twenties.

You could feel it because staying up late resulted in a headache you wouldn't usually feel the morning after. You could notice it in the occasions you found yourself celebrating, the events you were attending—from graduation to promotion, from college night parties to formal lunch meetings. You could see it in how your friends and peers had matured, a visible contrast to how they were as teenagers.

But at the same time, you couldn't feel it at all. You didn't feel seasoned or accomplished; you felt just as lost as you did when you were a kid, when you turned eighteen, when you grasped your college diploma. You didn't have all the answers you were looking for; in fact, you had even more questions than before. At this age when the world saw you as an adult and expected you to have everything put together, you still wanted to crawl under your blanket and lean on someone else's shoulder.

This was one of those moments.

After my run-in with the devil's sapling a few hours ago, I'd returned to my apartment, taken care of my groceries, and nestled in my puffy bed. I held a half-gallon of Selecta ice cream in one hand and a spoon in the other, my eyes straining against the light from the TV, only half paying attention to an angsty scene from a famous Filipino telenovela.

I scooped up a mouthful of my ice cream, smiling in spite of myself at how it satisfied my sweet tooth. And then I remembered why I was doing this.

Because I saw him.

I saw him, my high school rival, for the first time in several years, and all I could think about was how nothing had really changed. Standing there, in that grocery store aisle, looking into his inscrutable eyes, I was struck with the reminder of a scene from the past: I'd once bragged to him, with all the confidence and naivety in the world, that at this age, I'd be someone great, seasoned and accomplished.

And like a flash of lightning, I was hit by the stark reality of the present, of the me now—still a nameless cog in the machine, without a fraction of a clue what she wants to do.

I let out a jaded chortle. How was that for existential angst?

Out of nowhere, my eyes, without my own volition, gravitated towards the lonesome small-sized cardboard box at the corner of the room, the one I'd purposely avoided unpacking.

Get real, Yanna, it scolded me, like I was a Disney princess with a knack for talking to inanimate objects, except this inanimate object preferred calling me out on my bullshit instead of coddling my delicate sensibilities. The real reason you're stuffing your face with ice cream is him, Yanna. Not him him, but him.

And it was true. It was because of Pio, because of that damn love song I heard twice today.

My high school rival was just the soured icing on today's spoiled cake.

"Tangina," I cursed under my breath.

Will you get a hold of yourself, Yanna Angeles?

What was the trick to rushing your healing process?

For one whole year—from the moment I got that call about the accident, to the moment I got that call from my ex's ex-turned-girlfriend—my life was suspended in some undefined way. Sure, I'd fallen into the routine of occupying myself with work, watching shows and hanging out with friends, and then going back home to cry myself to sleep. But perhaps none of those moments was spent trying to move on, not really—because I was tethered to the idea, to the hope, that all this would be temporary.