Hide and Seek

How do you stop being insecure? How do you drown out pessimism? How do you do just that, when all your life, you've been that? How, when you are that?

You see, I hate the feeling of rejection so I do my best to counter it, even if it means acting way before the blow comes. I call it defensive mechanism. Others call it paranoia. Maybe it is. But I have got to do it. I have got to protect myself. I should, of course, especially when there's no one else there who'll protect me.

I remember when I was about 16 years old. I just graduated from high school - salutatorian. (My dad wasn't at all happy. He wanted me to be the best. But I ended up only as second best.) My dad, his assistant, and I went to attend the Easter vigil in our province, Bukidnon. I was feeling quite pretty, with my blue-green chiffon dress and strappy heels. I stayed close to my dad, proud to be the only daughter of a popular public figure in our town.

People greeted him as we made our way to the cathedral's huge doors. I smiled at everyone as we passed, my hand comfortably resting on my dad's arm.

Then we met this middle-aged couple who respectfully greeted my dad. They chatted for a bit, while I stood there by my dad's side, a warm smile on my face. The woman asked my dad who I was. Then it happened.

My dad shifted his feet as if he were a man going through an inquest proceedings. The woman and her husband waited. And stared at me. Ogled, was more like it. My dad said, "My adopted." I froze.

"Ah," the woman replied in the vernacular, "good thing you got a decent looking one. She seems nice enough. You're lucky." Then she turned her back on me and talked to my dad some more.

Somehow, I didn't really notice how I ended up amid a throng of people fighting their way into the church. No, I wasn't elbowing my way into salvation alongside them. I think I just let them walk all over me - literally and otherwise.

Fighting back the tears, hiccuping like there's no tomorrow, I clumsily walked around, looking for Rico, my dad's assistant and, as time has proven, one of my trusted friends. When I did find him, I told him unfeelingly that I'd be sticking with him through the whole religious gathering. (I'm almost tempted to refer to it as "quasi-religious gathering", what with all the hypocrites present. Or should I say "pseudo-religious"?)

I sat through more than an hour's worth of inaudible sermon, preachings I couldn't really understand due to my shallow knowledge of the place's language, and crying babies. And all throughout, I was shifting between trying hard not to cry and cursing the whole damn place - its people included, of course - into oblivion.

I hated my father - yes, my biological father, that same popular public figure who referred to me as his adopted child - for denying me. It wasn't my fault that he accidentally got a woman - my biological mother - pregnant out of wedlock. It wasn't my fault that he couldn't very well tell the world his sins, much less own up to that particular dirty deed even though the finished product has been made available for the physical world to see. It wasn't my fault that he's a bachelor with a baggage, which, if I may add (not for spite but just for further factual matters), he tried to hide for, say, 16 years.

True, I thought to myself while shredding the contribution envelop into strips, he provided for my education (still is), gave me a house to live in, a nanny and two more housekeepers, a driver, and a hefty allowance. But he also deprived me of my mother and a good father, since he shipped me off to Manila "for educational purposes" while he stayed in quiet Bukidnon. And he had the gall to tell people I'm adopted, when in fact, I'm his own flesh and blood.

That, my friends (yes, yes. I only have so many blog readers), has got to be the biggest rejection I had during my adolescent years. And even though I'm okay with my dad now - we don't fight as much, a lot of people know now that I'm his illegitimate but only child, he generally/kinda/somewhat treats me well in public - I haven't really forgotten that event in my young life. Like a scar, it had become attached to me, become a second skin, which also functions as a shield from further damage.

When similar or potentially like situations come my way, I immediately brace myself and my scar does its wonders. It numbs me quickly (maybe that's how drugs work for addicts, too). Like earlier today, I found myself in an elevator with three classmates. My girl classmate was teasing me about someone. Actually, I had swore to her in class that if our professor won't call me for recitation that day, I promise I won't fight with my boyfriend for two whole weeks. She brought that up in the elevator and teased me about it. Our other guy classmate who was also there in the elevator with us rationalized: we (my boyfriend and I) shouldn't be fighting since, in the first place, we weren't together. Yes, because we weren't together. Not a couple. Not romantically affiliated with each other. I froze.

Our girl classmate grew uncomfortable. I think I knew how she felt, by the way. She was torn between telling our guy classmate off and actually entertaining the bit of possibility that, indeed, we weren't a couple, as I had led her to believe, and that my stories were just a dreamy product of my sick imagination. After all, the guy classmate, yes, that guy in the elevator, and my boyfriend were good friends.

All throughout the ordeal, in that cramped elevator, I just stuck with my phony smile and ignored both of them. I fixed my gaze at the fourth passenger, another guy classmate who's as confused as the other two were. I prayed to the Lord, my God, to be saved from another rejection, another probable denial of relations.

It's like this: that part of me has been damaged already that it cannot be damaged some more. All I can do now is to prevent the damage from piling up. I have my scar already and I don't want another scar to settle on top of my existing scar. Thus, the defense.

But then they call it insecurity, paranoia, cynicism, and pessimism. Hell. They call it insanity. I say to myself I don't really care. They can call it anything they want. For me, it's my shield.

But, really, I do care. And I want the "insanity" to stop. I want to revel in the world's beauty, to look at the sunflowers as beautiful creations and not as temporary and useless blooms which will wilt away tomorrow or even later. I want to believe that I can do wonderful things, that I can be happy, that I AM happy, and not anticipate misfortunes and a lifetime of misery. I want to trust people and I want them to trust me, too. I want to be accepted and loved. I want others to feel proud of me. I want to laugh, and mean it.

I don't want to be rejected again and denied by those I care about. Where's a sense of security when I need it the most?