These gray days come with their own sense of ritual. Gone are shades, sexy tank tops, interesting flip-flops, seasonal white trousers, the lingering iced coffee dates in air-conditioned coffee shops, and conversations about plans and dreams and all the things that can possibly be. Possibilities seem part of the spirit of summer. Instead, we have raincoats, umbrellas, vitamin C, rubber shoes, steaming tea in the same coffee shops, and this time, conversations about all that could have been, but can no longer be. Regret and reminiscences seem part of the spirit of the rainy season.
It was in this kind of weather that I met up with "The One Who Got Away." You know who I’m talking about, right? The one we could have married; the one that could have lasted forever; the one you thought was the one. (The people who love us sometimes call him "the mistake," or "the proof of God’s mercy.") We all have, hopefully, one of those lying around in our memory banks.
We had planned to meet for some time because I was in the area and had something to give back to him. Before I had to meet him, I stood in front of the mirror, and found myself curling my eyelashes. I knew why I was curling my eyelashes: more than anything, I wanted to look beautiful; I wanted him to sigh at the end of the day and whisper to himself, "There’s the one who got away." As I curled the eyelashes on my right eye, I wondered: "Why would I want him to think I had gotten away? After all, wasn’t I infinitely grateful that I had gotten away?" And as I curled the eyelashes on my left eye, I wondered, "And why would I think he had gotten away? After all, it could never, ever have worked."
I live and function in a marriage that is, by all definition, beautiful. I have children, work, meaningful commitments and wonderful relationships. It is almost brazen to want more out of life. And yet, these rainy days, "more" looks quite appealing. I go back to my old love stories and recall how I felt when I was younger and in love. An old song comes back to me: "I remember the boy, but I don’t remember the feeling anymore." In my situation, it all seems reversed. I don’t remember the boy, but I remember (and miss) the feeling more and more.
Apparently, I am not alone. My Saturday all-girls brunch group attested to the same activity of wanting to go back in time. April admitted that she tends to sleep earlier these days, "so that I can spend a few minutes fantasizing." Pray tell, what do you fantasize about, April-girl? I asked. "Well, I fantasize about Gary, my college boyfriend. I go back to when we broke up and…" And what? I pushed. "I change the ending and not break up with him."
May, the stodgiest and most conventional of us all, surprised us by having the naughtiest look on her face. I had presumed that when I turned to look at her, she would definitely be on her high horse! But she is not, and quickly shared with us her own remembrance of things past. She looked around to make sure no one could hear her and whispered: "I’m worse! I actually sent him a text message to say hello! Out of the blue!" April, June and I screamed in unison. "And then?" It was April’s turn to push. May said, "I think we were flirting via text messages for like five exchanges!"
April, May and June turned to look at me and pounced. They knew I went to meet my One Who Got Away. But there was nothing to share except to say: "I curled my eyelashes before I met up with him." We all giggled like old schoolgirls. Somehow fantasizing, flirting via text and eyelash curling are equivalent to each other. We all sighed in some kind of tacit agreement that, deep down, we were good girls. On the way home, I wondered if thinking and fantasizing about the One Who Got Away was something particular to us as friends; or if it was something many people did. I would soon get my answer.
Last Saturday, I was asked to give a workshop on writing to a company in Pasay City. I was told that this company provided employees for different clubs. Once such club was a writer’s guild. They asked me to talk about how they could write creative nonfiction. I said yes, because I honestly love to talk about writing, and I love helping people articulate themselves through writing.
Anyway, at one part of the workshop, we talked about how important the activity of "wondering" is. I made them make a list of things they normally wonder about. It was hard to do at first, and I needed to give a list of examples of things I often wonder about. Such as, "I wonder how antibiotics can kill a virus?" Or "I wonder what would happen if we could all choose when to die?" Once they got started, however, they wouldn’t stop, and many gave more than five wonderings. They put these on a piece of paper and stuck them on a wall, and we took a look at what they had written. Out of 40 participants, more than 10 wondered about The One Who Got Away. The experience tells me that this particular wondering might be a human need, a need to mythologize the one who got away.
Myths are actually ordinary stories that have happened to us. They become elevated into a myth because they remain in our memory in spite the passage of time. They become myths by the way they become repeated in conversation. They become myth because they explain why we are what we are. Think of what stories get repeated at your family reunions. Aren’t the most repeated stories also the most fantastic? (One of our family stories includes a lolo who can disappear from family albums!) They become myths by the way we embroider the original story to make it look more like fiction than fact.
In fact, The One Who Got Away was a first-class jerk who broke my heart because he never truly saw the real me. In myth, The One Who Got Away suffered when he lost me. In myth, he was not really a jerk but rather a lost soul afraid to love me. In myth, the truth becomes easier to live with.
More interestingly, I have come to the conclusion that we keep the myth of The One Who Got Away, not because we want to run away from the one we are with, but rather because – and I need you to hang on to your chair before I say this – because we are afraid of losing our youth. This myth should actually be called the eternal fountain of youth.
In the story of what-might-have-been, we are eternally young. We never age in these stories when we tell them. In the story we have chosen to be in, we have become mothers, workers and real people. We have become grown up and, even worse, we have become our parents. In the myth, however, we are frozen in time, and the recklessness and possibility of wonder and excitement forever exist. Oh, in the past, in the imagined past, the possibilities remain endless. (Just look at what happens to the old when they tell us stories about their old loves!) We keep this myth and trot it out every once in a while, not because we are in love with someone in the past and regret our choices (although that does happen); but rather we are in love with ourselves in the past where we elude aging. It is the old me that I wish to revisit.
If this in any way resonates with you, let us all wish together for the rain to go away quickly and clear all our fantasies away.