If you were to choose between your family and your man, who would you choose?
I wasn’t able to answer this question once, nor at least answer it with a rational comeback; not until I was stuck in a situation wherein I, myself have to.
Indeed, every girl has to experience a teenage love affair. It’s not a must-have, but it’s a part of growing up—getting hurt and being in loved. There are those who have experienced having a boyfriend and ended up like nothing had happened. Maybe they’re just pretending not to care and hide the pain through their smiles, or maybe it really is, just a stupid break up for no apparent reason. Unlike them, there are those who have experienced having a boyfriend and ended up like nothing has been left to them; like their whole world came crashing down their feet. Unfortunately, I was able to feel this kind of sentiment. Tragic, indeed, it was like portraying Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, this time, in real life. Not that I killed myself after knowing that my Romeo is dead, but because of their parents who are against their relationship.
Of course, every ending has a beginning. It’s not always a scene that you dreamed of or watched in movies, like walking on a street full of cherry blossom trees, carrying a lot of stuffs, imagining how sweet life can be, then at a sudden, a boy accidentally bumped you causing your stuffs to scatter on the ground. Then, he will pick it all up for you, will apologize for his bad, will ask for your name, and will eventually fall in love with you so on and so forth. But, that’s not how the way my story began.
It started with what was supposedly an ordinary day but turned out to be a heart stopping and nerve cracking day. Still ordinary for some, but for us Junior high school students, who will set on stage and compete for the Nutrition Month Celebration’s Jingle making and singing contest, it was the worst day of our lives! Not because of nervousness, and stage fright, nor brought by having four hours of sleep the night before the contest, but because of our costumes that were still on the tailoring shop. How odd is that? It was an hour or two before the contest started when our costumes was delivered. Thank God we did not perform wearing our school uniforms.
The moment of truth came, we were the first ones to perform and we did a great job on stage. After all the contestants have performed, the judges announced the winner and whoever wins, will compete on the municipal level. Luckily, we were the ones who won the contest and that was the best feeling ever!
After the never ending chats and greetings from our teachers, we decided to go home. Heading straight to the gates, we walked slowly and noisily, still talking about our performance a while ago like there’s no tomorrow. In a noisy environment like this, something had caught my attention. Along the sidewalk, two boys were pushing each other and starring at me, like they have something to say but doesn’t know which of them should talk about it. One of them was tall, dark, and looks familiar to me, the other has the same height, fair, and he looks “gwapo” (handsome) but, I didn’t know him. Its awkward how my eyes met the other boy’s eyes, but then, after noticing how long our eyes have met, I looked away immediately, embarrassed, but don’t know why.
Still curious about the other boy’s identity, another boy had caught my sight again. It was Kevin, my “gay friend” who approached us. We then, stopped walking and chit-chat a little.
