Emotionless Reencounter

Two years ago, my dating life went into shambles. As the song goes first cut is the deepest. This is not a one-date, chat a bit and you never met again scenario. It's a multiple dates on my probably few dating experience in a body that should have the ability to absorb the negative effects of dating such as rejection, ghosting and any other forms of telling you that you are unwanted, disliked, etc.

I tried everything I could probably think of, I guess even sought psychiatric help in navigating through the situation. As I try to find ways to heal myself and move forward from the situation, I was also looking forward on embarking a new path that I had never set foot before. Well I think as you have read my previous blogs, I met him there as I try to move forward somehow trying to forget about him and what he did against me. It's like a ghost came into real life and it shows up on a rainy afternoon and not on an evening where they were the most prominent based on the ancient story or horror genres.

I'll be lying to myself if I said that I should have gotten the said closure, I mean it is what it is whatever he said and like what one of the organizers said, he was in a compromising position wherein he was forced to interact with me, or else people would think that either I did something wrong to him (which I did not) or something horrible happened that it's better not to see face to face about it (which could be true).

I think I already got the closure last year when I joined the Fil-Chi Catholic Community that has probably been floating around for as long as I could remember but they weren't existent in my lifetime then. It's like making me realize that I had to experience that pain because the pleasure in terms of what my heart was yearning for was finally answered and as I told the story to the one of the new found friends I made, I told her, I think God answered two prayers at the same time. A community where we have the same upbringing and culture, but at the same time sharing the same goal which is to hopefully find our respective spouses. Then a community where it would allow me to practice Catholicism in a place where you are also of the same culture that wouldn't require you to give up one or the other just for sake of belongingness.

Fast forward to 22 months from the time I saw him the first time after he ghosted me, I had a sort of inkling that the event that I was about to go to, he would also be there too. As my new found friends had told me, he was usually present there. Still, I opted to go there because I wanted to know what the Grand Family Association was all about and the fee was cheap for a mooncake dice game so why not?

True enough, he was there as one of the organizers from another group pointed to me that he was there even if I wasn't aggressively searching for him (I am focused on filling out my human bingo card alright only to find out you are not supposed to start filling it out until the hosts told you so). So fast forward a bit, a part of me felt like it's so awkward trying to dodge or not mind someone just because logically they did something to you OR some people might say past is past OR what some people say since they knew that they were at fault, they would just depend on the one who got hurt to approach them. I mean after all, I think it's really harder to approach someone who you hurt than approaching someone who hurt you. I admit there is a tiny bit of nervousness, but I felt like why should I? I wasn't expecting anything in return, it's just that after all whether he chose to put it on the back of his mind to forget about it (aka Inside Out 2) or not wasn't my problem at all and I know for myself it's very awkward in dodging someone. Like I know they said for pride, like or dignity or maybe they said they want to banish you into their timeline, but you know that was not my problem. That's their problem. Who knows maybe they have those device the Men in Black were using just so your memories will be erased and they totally forget about you. Maybe if such device exists in real-life, we can opt to forget the pain by eliminating it from our memory.

In the end, I was quite fortunate that my mom's former co-teacher and my schoolmate (even if she was batches lower than me) was sitting on the same table as him. So I just talked with this said schoolmate first then gave him a quick hi as they are just one seat apart. After that, I immediately went back to talking to her.

You know what, when I said hi, and he somehow responded back, I didn't feel anything at all. There's no pain, no sort of happiness - or even anger (which is the leading emotion that should be taking over at the moment). Like nothing, well if there was, it's disdain or like disbelief and I said to myself 'what happened to his face?'. I know looks are subjective and he is good-looking in the eyes of our community, which is true but I guess for me I wasn't physically attracted to him in the first place so it would be easier for me to get turned off by his looks especially if things ended on sour note. It happened that my online friend from the US was online and I immediately messaged him that I saw the one who ghosted me at the event and told him what I did and how I felt, he responded saying that "cause I know my worth".

If I could compare myself from how I reacted from 22 months ago vs now, I could not believe that I felt like I was on a 360-degree turn on how I approach the same situation. Like what one of the organizers from another group said, she felt that I was healed and moved on already. I then responded to her and said I realized that they kept on saying that time heals all wounds. It was true to a certain extent, but time can only do so much if we do not do anything about it. It was our decision whether we heal that wound or not. Like one of my colleague said to me before some questions doesn't always have the answer, but you just have to move forward and take it as it is. However for me, I knew I'm blessed that God allowed me to have clarity in the situation that I was going through. To make me realize that He has to do it even if He knows it would hurt me so badly because He knows that He is going to be there with me during the hard times. It allowed me to grow and maybe mature as a person. Similar to how a parent allow you to fail and fall when you're young as you try to embark on the things that you've never done before, because they knew that if they don't allow you to experience those things, you'll never learn and you would forever become scared on something that was supposed to be peanuts at that point in time.

Who knows what would happen next or if there would still be another next time, but all I can say at that moment was that I didn't feel any emotions especially the negative ones, in fact I was so calm and peaceful after that encounter. Like the previous me 22 months ago would be in disbelief on what had just happened and how I reacted when the situation happened again, but it is what it is. I think I'm okay, because deep down I knew it has to happen and God just used him in order for it to happen. Similar to how God probably used us as His instruments in order to either help someone grow, a key to someone else's answers or healing or probably someone to save us from imminent danger that we are unaware of.

Before I forget, after we did our Pilgrimage at Landmark Makati, my mom told me to shop for shoes as I was shopping, we met another of my mom's co-teacher and we met her son (who was supposed to get paired with me that time but it was just that I'm still studying in college when they attempted to do that so they scraped it off). So I learned that this guy and I sought help to the same matchmaker and it just that his worked out with his now wife and they told us that each of them paid the matchmaker 150 thousand pesos each.

Looking back, since we're talking about the matchmaker who happened to introduce me to someone who eventually ghosted me, I realized I probably dodged a major bullet. Imagine you have to endure paying the matchmaker 150 thousand pesos for the burden that he would give you for the rest of your life? I really think that is not worth paying for.