Is It Cliche To Start With Dear Pilosopotasya?

Beautiful Mess

It started with a silly first crush story.

So there we were, my friends and I, having a spontaneous picnic day in the cemetery. It's one of those private resting places where bermuda grass fills the entire place, with the strategically situated benches around the trees. We were there because I love cemeteries--peaceful, and it's where I usually become even more aware of my transience and mortality. Plus, that's where dad's buried. It was a perfect day, not too sultry, with the occasional breeze.

My guy friends were surreptitiously glancing at me to make sure I was ok. To think that it's already been months since the cheating fiasco. I wanted to get annoyed, but I know they're just looking out for me. I don't know how it began, but suddenly we started talking about our first crushes. It ranged from the innocent preschool years , to, believe it or not, college days. Daniel was sharing how his first crush was this girl named Joan whom he met when they were in 4th grade. He said she was the biggest, ugliest girl in class, but since she lets him copy off of her homework, he just knew he liked her. He told us how he wrote her a Valentine's day card coupled with the plastic rose he found in his brother's room and the only chocolates he could afford--Choc-nut. But when she read it, she thanked him and calmly said, "I want to be a nun when I grow up."

John's first crush was his neighbor. They were five years old, and she had the prettiest hair, he said. He only liked her because she confessed to liking him first, with matching messy first kiss. But she broke up with him the next day, saying that she doesn't want complications in life. At five years old! The rest also shared theirs.

I thought really hard about the first guys had a crush on.  I think I was in 4th year high school. During art class, our prof decided we should head outside to the grassland on the other side of the oval. We're supposed to get an inspiration on what to paint. I'm quite good at art stuff, so I was really thrilled. I was sitting with eight other girls who I'm best friends with at the time, (right now I'm only bff's with just five of them even though they're scattered all over the globe) and we were teasing each other about our works.  Then four college guys walked by, one looking utterly familiar. Our high school campus is just right next to the college and elementary ones. This familiar dude was staring at me, and I think we remembered who the other was at the same moment. He smiled, and his whole face lit up, then he raised his hand in salute. I laughed, because salutes were overrated. He was one of my eldest brother's childhood friends, and they used to hang out at home when I was still a toddler. He came to where I was, leaving his friends behind, and inspected my artwork. "You're pretty talented," he cheerfully said. "Draw me next." Naturally, I turned him down.

Deep inside, I found it very amusing that this dude, whom I haven't seen for almost a decade, could act so comfortable around me while surrounded by my giggling, female friends. Plus, his eyes were really dark, and broody in a mesmerizing way. That was the start of my admiration. And almost every day since that afternoon, he would come to sit with me and my friends, and tease me nonstop. My friends on the other hand were all giddy and attracted to him. Until that moment when I saw him heading to our usual spot in the grassland, walking hand in hand with a lady, who, it turned out, was his classmate. 'I'm too young for him. Not to mention too ugly,' I grumbled to my self. 'Why on earth would he like me?' My immature and inexperienced heart fractured into bits for the first time.

"Why would you even think of yourself as ugly? He's stupid. He was definitely just stringing you along, basking in the attention of the younger females." These were my guy friends' sentiments. Then BJ changed the mood by grumpily saying, "That's why they leave you. Hilig kasi sa gwapo, buti nga sayo." I was stunned, and everyone looked at him, taken aback as well. Christian 1 tried to lighten up the mood by joking, but I was really hurt by BJ's outburst. He was the introvert in the bunch, the one who speaks only when needed, and we all listen because he's always very sensible. For him to say that, he must really mean it. I stood up with an excuse of having to go to the restroom, and walked away to get a breather. I then heard footsteps behind me, which, it turned out, belonged to BJ.  (Cue any kdrama ost haha)