Growing Pains

I am now in manila. I must say I am shocked by the culture here, in Ermita at least. The bars everywhere and the booze and the women. Although the oppurtunities are high, people are too caught up in stereotypes and the status quo. It is sometimes funny, at other times just nothing short of insulting.

I am slowly adjusting. Perhaps it is too slow, it might have been easier if I were alone and had not to think about how that adjustment moods might affect my one and only. Sometimes I'm so down, sometimes so alone in my world. I have newly met some "acquaintances". I can't say we have much in common, except that we have a foreigner for a boyfriend or a husband. Would it have been easier dealing with people around if I had been renting a bedspace or so. A place where I can come home and feel really cozy whether by myself or with some company, a homey place where I don't expect anybody esle to be around to see how down or how up I am that moment.

The bars are not my life and can never be. It is not becuase I don't enjoy it, actually I do, just not all the time. It seems the acquiantances I meet there are rather superficial. I would probably be more fulfilled helping people in a refugee camp. There I would genuinely be appreciated for who I am. I don't think I mean anything at all to people I meet in the bars. Right now, they "accept" me because I have a foreigner for a boyfriend. I hate that feeling. In retrospect, I think I can give those superficial friendships a chance, who knows, some might turn out to be genuine and sincere. Not that I go to the bars every night or so. I just don't want to play fake.

Sometimes, it is a bit sad for me though. I just see how my one and only is so very happy and enjoying in those places. One time, I doubted so much if I can give him the same enjoyment. We had a misunderstanding because of that. He could not get why I felt a bit down. It is just the thought that I cannot make him happy as his new friends can. They have something in common, they can stay out in a bar until the wee hours of the morning. I can do that, but not as often as they. Who am I to stop him from what he enjoys so immensely? When I tried to talk to him about it he simply could not get what I mean, he needed some examples for it. Well, I don't take notes about the specific days so I cannot give him any.

Last evening he forcefully says to me... "I got my own life too, huh".

Yup, that is right, he does have his own. Does that mean he doesn't want to be part of mine? Then what in the world am I doing in manila?

It is just tough hearing that from a person who happens to be my only reason for coming to a place I am still really trying to like.

Sometimes, I do like Ermita (manila for that matter). If you have the money, you will never get bored here. And then that is just it, things seem too superficial. It's like a jungle, you don't know if the mammals come to you for curiosity or company, OR if they want to bite you because you're so juicy for the moment.

Tonight, the options were either, we watch a movie and then go to juri's or we have dinner at a korean joint. A few minutes before that, an sms from a filipina married to a belgian guy came, asking what was the plan tonight. She is my potential new friend, but for her to be that friend for me, I prefer to meet her somewhere "neutral", not in the night scene where she has all the comfort levels already while I still have to give "double effort" to earn some respect.

Nat had wanted to sleep. We thought we would wait an hour and then go to a movie then maybe to Juri's. Well as it turns out Lex, me and my one and only were a bit too late for the movie. The only option left was go to a movie and miss around ten minutes of that start and then go to Juri's after. OR just go to Juri's. I know, if we go to Juri's we'd end around the wee hours of the morning again. There was no option to stay home.

And if I had proposed it, that was just tantamount to keeping him from his enjoyment. I want him to be happy. Besides, it is the last evening for Alex and Nat in the Philippines, tomorrow evening, they go home to NL. If only my one and only saw himself tonight, how "excited" he was that he was going to Juri's. I had to mention to him that I can see his feet almost wants to run.

God, what I would give to see him just as excited as that, to be just home with me.


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The least of things with a meaning are worth more in life
than the greatest of things without it. -Carl Jung-
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