The Accident
I walked into the Clerk’s Quarters and found her waiting for me, her doe-like eyes unable to mask her current inner turmoil.
I nodded to her. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you.”
“I was told by one of the nurses to write a couple of discharge notes before I left the ward. Why? What’s wrong?” I asked her nonchalantly as I rested my weary back on one of the beds… Ahhh… paradise… The muscle spasm in my back wanted to sing praises.
“[Mistress], I’m late.”
I sat up straight from bed. “WHAT?”
She was known for her paranoia. Prior to every exam, she’s right there wailing about how she wasn’t prepared for the exam since she apparently didn’t study at all. As we waited for a few days for the results of each exam, she’s halfway to throwing herself off the bridge with all her exclamations of woe that she was going to fail. And she almost always turns out to get one of the highest grades in every examination.
We were one of the smart girls in class. We were the ones who occasionally studied but managed to pass every exam. We were also the Bad Girls, the Drinkers-slash-Smokers. She was the flirt who always goes after what she wants, I was the more conservative slut.
As such, she frequently finds herself in situations that constantly brings her panic and because she can be such a drama queen, her problems become magnified to one hundred thousand times its value. Of course, she would constantly have to drag me in and help her find a solution that will fix her problems once and for all.
Which is pretty much futile considering that she never listens to me.
Truth is, I have finally accepted the fact that even if she tells me that I help her fix her problems, the actual role I play in her life is a soundboard, since I’m the only one who has the patience to listen to her and everybody else has gotten tired of listening to her same-old rantings.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“And to think you’ve slept with your boyfriend for so long, but one time with Alvin and you’re pregnant? Oh, come on!”
“I just know it’s Alvin’s. I wasn’t quite that safe back then.”
I sighed. Two weeks ago, she had slept with one of the interns she had a fancy for. Forget that I told her not to do anything because he didn’t seem that into her. Forget that Alvin, an intern, was currently courting one of our other co-clerks. Forget that she had a long-time boyfriend studying far away. She wanted Alvin and she made it extremely clear to him.
And you know what they say about worms in the proximity of any chicken…
They get eaten.
So, one fateful night during one of her 24-hour duties, she climbed into bed with him at the Intern’s Quarters and they slept together, the bulkiness of her sleeping bag, their only cover to the lascivious acts that they were doing under the mattress.
As I pondered on what she had told me, other clerks began pouring into the quarters. There obviously wasn’t anymore privacy so we decided to talk outside. As we sat on one of the benches, she buried her face in her face. “God, what am I gonna do? My boyfriend will kill me.”
“Maybe you’re just panicking too much. Stress can delay your menstrual cycle, you know. I mean, with all these work, the papers and the duties, our cycles are bound to screw up. Plus, we both know you’ve been incredibly stressed out after you slept with Alvin. Maybe that had something to do with this delay.”
“But what if I am? God, what am I gonna do, [mistress]? I cannot be pregnant.”
“Okay, wait. Let’s look at this as rationally as we can. First of all, you could just be delayed. It’s only what, five days? You are bound to have some irregularity in your cycle because of all the things that are currently occupying your mind.”
“But I’m very regular… How about if I take a pregnancy test now?”
“And waste your money? No. You’re probably just delayed for a few days. Why don’t you just wait for it? Besides, it’s not as if a month has actually passed since that time you had sex with him.”
“I want to bleed now, [mistress]. What do you think can I take? How about I buy some MTX now?”
“Seriously, how are you going to buy one? We both know they ask license numbers for that in almost every pharmacy in this city. And I don’t think they accept pers.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I can ask from one of the doctors in Internal Medicine for a pre-signed prescription and pretend I’ll be using it for something important. Then I’ll just fill in the rest using my own handwriting.”
“Come on. This is crazy… I mean, what if you take MTX and you start seriously bleeding? You can’t tell your aunt and I’d have to be the one to bring you to the hospital. I don’t have any money to put down as deposit in case you need to be admitted, by the way,” I told her as I tried to make light of the situation.
“I want to start menstruating now, [mistress]. So I can finally decide what I’m supposed to do. How about those herbal medicine thingies they sell near City Hall? Do you think those are effective?”
“The ones whose leaves or treebark you have to boil and then drink? I don’t know… You seriously can’t imagine the two of us going there and trying to buy one?”
“Well… I… ahmmm…,” she started, staring at me angelically.
“NO,” I told her, before the first word ever left his mouth.
“What about any other drugs? Do you know of any other drugs that I can take? I told Alvin I was late and he gave me the name of some progesterone-based pill. Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t progesterone supposed to increase your threshold for uterine contractions and make the fetus attach itself more to the uterine linings? I kept thinking, God, what if this guy actually wants me to bear his child? Ewwww!”
I laughed. “Progesterone? Didn’t we use progesterone-based drugs for those with threatened abortion?”
“I know! That’s what I thought too!” she chimed in.
I remembered something I read from the Internet before. “Hey, I heard something before about overdosing on Vitamin C as an effective abortifacient. I think you have to take about 6,000 to 10,000 milligrams in one day or something. And you have take as little water as you can or else the vitamins just gets washed out with your urine. I’m not quite sure with the dosage but I’ll check the Internet when I get home later. It sounded very effective. I mean, there were these written testimonials and all about it.”
“That sounds plausible. How much does one bottle of vitamins cost?”
“I don’t know really. But I imagine it wouldn’t cost as much as MTX… Do you even have any money?”
“I still have some left… How about a pregnancy kit?”
“No. This is probably all just stress-related delay.”
“God, how could I have gotten myself into such a mess!” she wailed again and again, burying her face again in her hands.
“Hey, relax. This is probably just nothing. Today, you’ll go buy those vitamin meds and start taking the customary grams per hour. If after a week, your menstruation still hasn’t arrive, we’ll go buy a pregnancy kit already… Don’t worry, okay?” I tried to reassure her as her eyes started tearing up.
She smiled, albeit forced.
We giggled like highschoolers as we made fun of Alvin’s receding hairline. I was glad that I was able to make her calm down for a while. That afternoon, we bought the vitamins and she started taking them right away starting that night.
I wanted to strangle her.
So much for making ME panic along with her.
JaneDoe’s Story
As a single and dating 20-something soon-to-be professional, I have learned that labeling yourself as “single” does not particularly increase your chances of finding Mr. Right nor the Mr. Maybes. It turns out that in order to do so, one has to first, be happy that he or she is single.
What? Happy to be single? You look at me with one eyebrow raised in suspicion.
You cross your arms and stare at me in disbelief. If singlehood is so darn wonderful, then why do we all want to date and get ourselves a boyfriend or a girlfriend?
Simple. Because most of us equate the singleness with loneliness.
When that should not be the case.
I have a petite bestfriend named JaneDoe (with 6-pack abs to die for) who frequently laments about her “singleness”. She has been with this guy, Chauvinistic Asshole Who Thinks He’s God’s Gift to Women or CAWTHGGTW (but I think we’ll call him CAW, for short), on and off for eight years and she wants to finally get out of the relationship that continually sucks her every being. CAW admits to her that she is not the only girlfriend in his life (he is also in a serious relationship with two other women who don’t have any idea that the other girls existed), has the nerve to compare her to all his other present girlfriends to her face, belittles her infront of his family to the point that CAW’s mother doesn’t like JaneDoe at all, actually throws a bar of chocolate to her face one time, demands to accompany him to places even when she is at her most busiest, and bestows her daily with borderline emotional, verbal and physical abuse.
He ignores her 100 calls and text messages when he’s chatting through YM and replies to her, only when he needed something from her.
He asks her to take a million pictures of them together but refuses to post a single one of the ones with the two of them together in his Friendster profile.
He borrows money from her even when she doesn’t have any, so she is forced to borrow money that she’s supposed to lend him from her own friends.
So JaneDoe decides to stop the stupidity and break up with him. The catch is, she will only do so IF she finds someone better first. So, she broke things off with him, tried being single for some time and of course, failed in every aspect. Thus, she got back with CAW and until now, she’s still letting him screw her and destroy what measly number of neurons she has left.
Because JaneDoe enjoys spending most of our time together, analyzing why she is such a loser when it comes to love (Trust me. She actually enjoys this things), this is basically what I came up with.
Being single did not work for her because she failed to take advantage of her situation.
In order to make other people notice that you are date-able, you have to create your own inertia and momentum by having a life, being sociable, taking care of your own interests. When I was in between boyfriends, I always tried to have positive disposition, studied harder to get fantastic grades, enrolled in a gym to look better and feel better, took up new hobbies like blogging, kept myself busy etc. The more I had going for me, the more people notice and the more they became attracted. You start emanating a certain kind of energy that people of the opposite sex will simply gravitate to. People now have to work harder to catch up with you… because you have become to them, a challenge. Suddenly people notice that you’re a catch! People know somehow that you’re not willing to just settle for something, that you’re willing to walk away from a situation that doesn’t work out for you – and that willingness to walk away says everything they need to hear about how you view your self-worth. That confidence translates into respect. And a man only respects a woman who respects himself.
JaneDoe did none of that.
She felt embarrassed about being single and analyzed everything to death, never allowing herself the feeling of single-hood completely, never truly enjoying the happiness of being single. She was afraid of being alone, of not getting married by the age of 30, of losing someone that good-looking. She was contented to fill the void with nostalgic memories of how he used to love her and transfer the love-that-was into the emotional emptiness that his selfish love-for-now could only give. She attracted only a limited number of prospects and half-heartedly entertained them, frequently finding fault in every guy, comparing him to the perfection that was CAW, shoting down one prospect after another before he even started. She sticks it out with CAW, bearing the scars of war well, the emotional bruises, the constant pain, the tears she held back. She chose to stay in a relationship that does not even make her happy anymore, for she felt that it was better to be with someone who only used to love her than to not be with him at all.
I don’t wanna say that JaneDoe has completely lost respect for herself by being unable to walk away from CAW and for continually letting her world revolve around him. I don’t really blame her. I think that at some point or another, the fear of being single and alone engulfs us so badly that we choose to stay immobilized in situations that do not particularly make us happy.It’s not easy to take that first step and conquer that fear.
But once you have and you give yourself the chance to learn to be at peace with your “single-hood,” it doesn’t really take long for others to notice and revoke your status from “Single” to “In A Relationship” once again.
Just speaking from experience =)
- 12 Simple Steps to be Happy and Single -
—- Certain parts taken from Dating Dummy’s What I’ve Learned (So Far)
