You know its your birthday when

*Everyone around you seems to be possesed by some sort of a benevolent spirit. Letting you get away with minor transgressions like commenting on your friend's hair (your hair looks as if it would sit up and beg for peanuts) and karate kicking a neigbor on a whim. Everyone becomes a laugh whore, doubling over at your corniest jokes, even if they are the ones you are poking fun at. You are beyond reproach.

*You wake up with 44 messages in your inbox,and since your birthday coincides with christmas, you automatically skip those generic ones and focus on the more personal sms. This is a critical moment because as a self professed sociopath, this is the time of the year when you determine real friends from phoneys, thus weeding out considerable number of people from your life. Im sorry, but REAL friends can be out of sorts at times, but they just NEVER forget ocassions like this.

*Your phone rings like nuts. More than half of it comes from half way around the world. You know that it costs 250,000 dongs for a 30minute call from Vietnam, and a remarkably stingy friend from Singapore who contemplates for a month whether to buy a new tie and ends up going to a thrift shop, a friend from Madrid who is doing 4 jobs while attending some aviation safety training -these are the gestures that just floor you and render you at a loss for a better word to say, you're vocabulary is reduced to two words- THANK YOU.

*Cash finds their way into your wallet. And since you were born during Christmas day- a highly anticipated holiday for kids and for those who resist growing up, cash just pays a flying visit to your wallet and immediately make a bee line for the pockets of your godsons and god daughters. It is always like this, A grandson will knock on your door, accompanied by one dozen entourage, each expecting some kindness induced by holiday spirit. Hiding is not an option, because these kids have an unfortunate habit of mercilessly haunting you. You end up joining the statistics of 'Maralitang Pilipino".

Old Flame

It is said that in every relationship, there is always that someone who loves more. They cant stay equally in love, because, as what happened to Romeo and Juliet, They will cancel each other out. Something's gotta give.
In my previous relationships, It was always I who loved less. It must have been my cocky assurance or in retrospect, I can owe it to my gaucheness brought by immaturity. I loved, but I just didn't know how to measure up to their love, because theirs was the overwhelming type. Its funny how we get too close to comfort when we know we are loved. We become so lax and nonchalant because we go under the impression that eventhough we lapse sometimes, they are just there, at our beck and call. With open arms.
But I learned that there was also this concept of 'too late'.
They are all gone now, probably totally exorcised everything that has to do with me out of their lives forever. Sometimes I miss them, each with a varying degree of sense of loss, each with a differing kind of sting that kicks me from the inside when spurred by the slightest memory. It is like this, you go to a place where you once have been with the old flame and the memories start flooding back, People around start asking if everything is okay, and you force a lie out of you mouth. "yeah, everything is fine".
But inwardly, provoked by that de javu-like state, you start reliving the moment, the laughter, the smile and every piddling detail. "this is where I brought my old flame, we sat over there, I ordered this, my old flame that." Every second of the recollection was a splinter inside you.

I guess there is no use letting my old flames know that I'm as sentient as anyone else, and during their times of great pain, I also suffered losing a part of me the moment they walked out of the door. I also cried like a baby.

How can you smile and cry at the same time?
And how can you accuse someone of defiling a place, and at the same time relishing every second of it?

I wish I'd never walked with you around town but I also wish I could still walk with you around town. I wish you'd reconsider and I wishI'd forget.