Catholic School Girl Guilt
I occasionally think that maybe I have a destructive personality.
I frequently lament on not having a boyfriend and getting worried that maybe someday I will end up dying alone, but when I do end up in a relationship, I somehow end up mucking things up until it just doesn’t seem to work out for anyone of us that the relationship just has to end.
And the cycle repeats itself.
I say this because I have noted one particular attitude of mine that has most likely brought about the start of the impending destruction in most of the relationships I have been in.
I call it, the Catholic School Girl Guilt.
You know that Golden Rule for Cheating Boys that goes something like, “If you’re ever caught cheating, at all costs, never ever admit to the truth”?
Well, I do the exact opposite.
Even if they have no idea that I had done something wrong, I feel so incredibly guilty that I end up confessing to my boyfriend about it. It probably had something to do with the guilt that has been ingrained far up my cerebrum from my Catholic School upbringing when occasionally, even if you haven’t really done anything wrong, your teachers make you feel like you did. You become unable to look them in the eye and your conscience really eats at you that you eventually end up confessing to a deed which, most of the times, you didn’t even do in the first place.
Case point my freshman year in medical school. I had been seeing Rockstar for more than six months already. I had just started medical school and was starting to make new friends. I loved my new classmates and I was missing my old college buddies terribly. Hence, I wanted the opportunity to get to know my new classmates more. A bunch of the guys were always inviting me out for drinks and night-outs. I always kept telling Rockstar that I wanted to go with them. Rockstar, always feeling threatened by the presence of other guys spending more time with me, forbid me to.
This, of course, does not do well for me.
“No,” Rockstar remarked, for the umpteenth time.
“Come on. We’re always hanging out together. Can’t the two of us go out with them for once?”
He, of course, took this the wrong way. “Why? Are you bored with me?”
“No, I didn’t say that. It’s just that I want to get to know these people too. I would be going to spend the next five years with them after all. As for us, we’ve known each other for six months now and baby, we have a lifetime to get to know each other. Don’t I deserve the chance to be able to hang-out with these people as well?”
“Well, if you loved them so much more than me, then maybe you should break up with me to be with them.”
“You’re totally taking this the wrong way.”
“No, seriously, I mean it.”
“What? I’m being insecure? Is it so bad to be worried that my girlfriend wants to spend time with other guys than her own boyfriend? They’re guys, [mistress]. I know what guys are interested in when they ask out girls their own age. You can’t understand me because you’re a girl and you don’t know these things.”
Rockstar had no concept of a platonic relationship with the opposite sex. His closest female friends have all been either girls he used to court in the past, he used to have a thing with, used to have a thing for him or are just too unattractive to even have a thing with at all. I pouted. “You’re being irrational.”
“Now, I’m irrational? They like you! Is it actually wrong for me to feel threatened that some other guys are interested in you and you actually want to get to know them?”
“They are NOT all attracted to me.”
“Not all? So you mean to say, there are some who actually are.”
This is the point when I should have just kept my mouth shut. But the Catholic School Girl guilt slipped in before I could even stop myself. I was just so pissed off with him that I didn’t even think first before talking my mouth off. “Well, there are a few who seem a little too friendly.”
“WHAT?” If Rockstar was a cartoon character, it would be safe to say that there would be steam coming out of his ears at this point.
But, oh, I had already opened the floodgates and I must have been incredibly stupid that I proceeded to further incriminate myself. “You know, just a little too flirty that maybe misconstrued as a sign of interest. But it’s nothing. They’re probably just being friendly or something.”
“Who?” Rockstar asked me, his expression hard as stone.
“Rockstar!”
“If you’re not going to tell me, I swear I’m going to leave you and walk out of here right now!”
“Seriously, [mistress]!”
“Okay, okay… I think FunnyBoy has a thing for me.”
Before I knew it, he begins this major phone brigade wherein he calls my bestfriend from highschool, EngineerBoy, asks him about FunnyBoy which of course, EngineerBoy does not have any idea about, asks for the number of his girlfriend Darna, who is also one of my classmates in medical school, calls her up and asks her about FunnyBoy as well which she fervently denies, asks her for FunnyBoy’s number, calls him and asks him the most embarrassing question as to whether it is true that FunnyBoy is interested in me.
The whole thing happens with me fuming and pleading him not to proceed with all this embarrassment.
“Rockstar, come on! This is embarrassing to me and to FunnyBoy! For all we know, I’m just imagining things and he’s really just being friendly. What if he’ll start thinking that I’m one of those conceited girls who think every man in the room is in love with her?”
“Stop it! I’m done talking to you!” And he proceeds to talk to FunnyBoy on the phone. FunnyBoy, of course, denies being interested in me and their conversation ends with Rockstar telling him to stop flirting with me because I already have a boyfriend. Somewhat appeased, Rockstar finally relents and drops the argument with me.
Of course, at this point, I was already incredibly humiliated that for the next few weeks, I avoided FunnyBoy as much as I could and just simply couldn’t look him in the eye.
Me and my big mouth.
