Stop the Wedding!
“[Mistress], you’re late. Everybody’s in church for the rehearsal.”
I hurriedly dressed up in the simple black dress my mother handed me. As I put on the 3-inch sling backs on my well-manicured toes, she began ranting off a litany of things that she had to do for the day.
“I already told your sister that you’re on your way. Everybody’s waiting for you in church. I think the seamstress has a problem with your dress. But I think one of your bridesmaids has already talked to her. I think you should try to get in touch with her anyway. I still have to go to the printers because I need to have a few more invitations printed up since your groom had additional guests he had to invite at the last minute. And your father’s busy with the caterers so he can’t do it himself.”
Wait. What the F—. “Excuse me? Mom? What is this all about?”
My mother rolled her eyes at me. “Your wedding, iha. Please don’t joke with me right now. I am soo not in the mood.
I plopped down on the bed ungracefully. Did I just hear her right?
MY. WEDDING.
“My wedding? With whom?”
She looked at me exasperatingly. “Iha, this is not the time to dilly-dally. Now, chop-chop. Hurry. Everybody’s waiting for you.”
I felt like I was going through the motions as I rode the car that was bringing me to church for the rehearsal dinner. I vaguely remember hearing myself ask her again and again who I was getting married to but she took my lack of knowledge of the man I was getting married to as another one of my well-known cinematic ploys to joke and make fun of her.
“Can I take a look at the invitation, Mom?”
Maybe I can take a peep at this mystery man that I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with.
“I don’t have a copy of it. We ran out of invitations, that’s why I have to go to the printers to have an additional batch reprinted in the first place.”
“Ma, who is this mystery groom? This isn’t a parental kind of thing, is it?”
She rolled her eyes at me again. “Oh, you! Why should I set you up with a parental? We’re not even Muslim. Stop playing these silly games with me, iha! I don’t have time to deal with this right now!”
God. I’m getting married tomorrow.
And to some stranger I don’t even know.
I tried desperately to search through my memory for my so-called groom. The most that I got was a medium-height well-built faceless guy in a black coat and tie. When my mother dropped me off at the church, I saw the line of men and women, mostly friends and relatives, waiting for my arrival. Several orange and purple flowered topiaries were lined in one side of the church. I cringed, hoping against hope that somebody will tell me that those are not for my wedding. SexyMama, one of my highschool classmates, approached me right away.
“[Mistress], there’s a problem with your dress. I’m so sorry. I’ve already talked to them and they said they can’t get you the dress you asked for to be ready by tomorrow. I know it’s my fault since I was the one who recommended you to them in the first place but they are willing though to have my old wedding dress resized to fit you and they’ll be able to deliver it to you as early as tomorrow morning.”
I just looked at her blankly. SexyMama was tall and extremely lanky. I, on the other hand, was petite and more curvy. It would take the best darn seamstress in the entire city to make me fit into her wedding gown. “I’m going to be wearing someone else’s wedding gown on my own wedding day?”
She smiled sheepishly. “Y-Yes…”
I have dreamed of my wedding my whole life and now, I’m going to be wearing someone else’s hand me down? “SexyMama, are you fuckin’ kidding me?”
“I am SO sorry. The dressmakers totally underestimated the time it will take them to get all the beads and embroidery sewn into the dress. I think they only got the embroideries today so they still had to saw up the whole thing and your actual wedding dress will not be finished by tomorrow.”
“Okay…” As if I had a choice. I sighed in exasperation. “Ahmmm, SexyMama?”
“Yes?”
“Who am I marrying tomorrow?”
SexyMama rolled her eyes at me. “Stop it, [mistress]. That’s not funny. The two of you have been dating for almost two years. Don’t tell me you’ve somehow conveniently forgotten who you’re marrying tomorrow!”
Seeing that I wasn’t going to get any dish from her, I grabbed my sister’s arm as she was about to walk past us. She was busy trying to set up the entrance of the bridal entourage.
“Hey, you’re here,” my sister, SisterJ, exclaimed. “Finally, we can start the rehearsal. Places, p—“
“SisterJ, who’s my groom?”
“Oh, don’t be coy, [mistress]. We’re all too busy to go along with your lousy pre-wedding humor.”
“What the— I have no idea who I’m marrying! Can’t you just get me a copy of the invitation so that I at least know the name of this guy I’m supposed to be spending my life with, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health?”
I was freaking out, obviously. But I didn’t care.
SisterJ slapped me on the cheek. “Stop it! Get your act together. This is all just pre-wedding jitters. Why don’t you just go there and stand at the end of the line and wait for your turn to march. We’ve been waiting for you for almost an hour! We’ll start with the rehearsals. Now!”
The sting from her slap was like a cold bucket of iced water spilled on my entire body. It calmed me, yes, enough so that I was able to go through the motions of walking towards the end of the bridal entourage and waiting for my turn to march. I vaguely remember saying thanks to the friends around me who congratulated me for my wedding tomorrow.
“You must be so excited!” exclaimed Darna.
“You’ve been waiting for this all your life!” Janedoe remarked giddily.
“Who would have thought you’ll actually get married before you turn 30?” Funnyboy interrupted. “We used to think you weren’t interested in marriage until you’ve finally saturated your desire for your single blessedness.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I heard myself say to them. Like a robot. I still had no idea who I was marrying. And then I thought, They are right. I have been waiting for this for almost my entire life. Even if I somehow gave them the impression that I was okay with the relatively short durations of my many past relationships because I was still enjoying being single, at the back of my mind, I secretly longed for the long-term relationships that most of my friends had. I worried that I might become a spinster for the rest of my life. I feared that I may not get the happily ever after I’ve been dreaming of.
And then I thought, What the hell?! What girl in her right mind marries someone she doesn’t know?
So in the middle of my wedding rehearsal march, I stopped and I screamed at the top of my lungs:
“Itigil ang kasal!” (Stop the wedding!)
And then I finally woke up. It was just a really bad dream after all. Thank God.
* Parental – A Muslim custom of fixing up the marriage of one’s child to another child of another family after an agreement between the parents of both families, which includes the settlement of a certain amount of money or dowry that will be exchanged from the family of the groom to that of the bride’s in exchange for the services rendered in rearing the bride.
Badly In Need of Listerine
TheRider and I knew each other from the same hospital where I used to work. He was a friend of HotVolunteer. Despite the fact that we have seen each other occasionally around the hospital, he had never approached me personally, except for the occasional “Hi, doc” at the Dietary. He started out as JaneDoe’s textmate and when she obviously wasn’t into him, as boys were in the popular custom of passing cellphone numbers of cute girls they knew, my cellphone number was passed from HotVolunteer to ShyVolunteer then finally, into the hands of TheRider.
He didn’t have HotNurse’s hotness nor flirting charisma. In fact, TheRider was a very shy guy, quiet most of the time, and he was one of those guys who were into constant texting, the type who goes:
Hav u eaten? Iv eatn alredy. Dis rice & fish s gud. Im dun eating. How bout u? WUD? How bout now, wud? Im toking w frends. U? Wud? Im hir @ d 2nd flor of d hospi. Now Im hir @ d 3rd flor of d hosp. Now Im in d 4th flor. Wat bout u, WUD? [Mistress]? R u bz? Its 7 pm, hav u eaten alrdy? Im havin chcken. Im dun now. WUD? Wat bout now, wud?
I had just gotten out of a severely confusing and unrewarding relationship and found him to be the most convenient rebound guy. Hence, when he started courting me, I went for it, thinking, Hey, what the hell. He seems like a nice guy. I know he’ll treat me well.
As all nice guys go, it takes some time for them to be comfortable enough around girls. I was in the throes of another new love so I looked very much forward to that first kiss with him. I remembered one particular time when I wanted him to kiss me but I ended up annoyed with him, looking up at the sky instead and watching the clouds change colors, as he was not making his moves. AT ALL.
Until one day, I finally told him that it’s about time that he should start kissing me.
The dam broke.
As he slowly brought his head down to mine and his lips finally parted, I sensed that something was off. It wasn’t his technique. It wasn’t the way he rolled his tongue. It wasn’t the way he lapped on my lower lips. It was something else.
Out of all the five senses, it was that of my olfactory that was viciously waving the red flag.
He had HALITOSIS.
Now, as a doctor, I know that most people who have bad breath do not realize that they suffer from this disease because the stench most frequently originates from the back of one’s throat. A simple round of brushing cannot eliminate the offensive odor easily since this is usually a result of a combination of decaying teeth and chronic neglect of deep gargling as well as brushing at the frequently neglected posterior and undersides of one’s tongue.
I, at first, thought that maybe it was me. And was I mortified!
So, I immediately headed to my dentist, had my teeth cleaned and my aching molars removed, regularly gargled and brushed my teeth, including all sides and crevices of my tongue. Thousands of pesos later, I was finally confident that there was no way that the kissing offense was going to happen.
Until of course, I ended up making out again with TheRider.
It was HIM alright.
He was the one who had bad breath. He was the one who was making me gag as I pretended to be seriously enjoying the Frenchkissing. He was the one who didn’t brush his teeth or gargled often enough.
After the said incident, I started noticing small things about TheRider which used to be insignificant enough for me to take notice, like how he never brushes his teeth after a meal even when we’re at his own house and we just had a meal together, or how he wasn’t conscious about his breath even after we’ve just spent two hours not speaking to each other during a movie at a cinemahouse, or that sometimes, there’d be actual food stuck in his teeth.
The stupid things we ignore when we’re inlove.
When he decided that he wanted to break up because of certain reasons that had nothing to do with me (he apparently wanted to save me from being involved in some scandal he was involved in), I simply let him.
No regrets, no drama, no crying nor pleading infront of him.
I was finally free of him.
I was just relieved that I can finally enjoy breathing fresh air again.
*** UPDATE – TheRider did try to get back with me but halitosis aside, a guy who thinks he’s being a hero by dumping you to save you from the rumors? That’s just being cowardly. I want a man who can stand up for me. Throughout our relationship, I felt like I was settling for something less than I deserved simply because I was afraid of growing old alone. Besides, how long will I be able to stand kissing him before I end up telling him that I wasn’t enjoying the bad breath all? I mean, seriously, guys. Brush your teeth regularly and use mouthwash, for God’s sake!
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)
