Sliding Doors

Just like in the movie of the same title, do you ever wonder how life is turning out in your parallel universe? I have long given up normal. Since I was a college student in UP Diliman, I have been fully aware of the duality of my personality. Here or there? Economics or Creative Writing? Staying or migrating? Him? or him?

Along the way, I have made decisions, based on the binary code. 1 or 0. On or off. This or that. Forward always forward. Always choosing the more complicated option. Why did I choose to make life more complicated? Because just like the book Choose Your Own Adventure, I thought you could always flip back to the crossroad if you didn't like the outcome. But in life, I learned, there was no flipping back. It was forward, always forward. It wasn't quite like the labyrinth wherein you could retrace your steps and find the right way out.

Numbers were always my comfort zone. I can recall the exact moment I was allowed by my parents to travel from Manila to Toronto all by myself. I was a senior in high school then and for reading material in the plane, I brought my College Algebra textbook. I love traveling but I hate airports. I think they are the loneliest of places in the world. Why do I always have to go, why am I always the one leaving? When there were no answers, math made sense. No matter how simple or complex your steps were in coming up with the solution, the answer never changed. One plus one will always be two.

When I was a college freshman, my Math 11 professor had marked one of my answers wrong because I had no solution. She couldn't believe I got the correct answer my own way. She had accused me of copying from someone else. I who never let anyone copy from my bluebook. Who wrote microscopically that anyone who even wanted to copy from me wouldn't have been able to do so. I was furious but I was also shocked. That was the point when I started doubting my instincts. Because I stared back at my bluebook and I couldn't recall how I did come up with the answer through a shortcut. That was when I began thinking that maybe the obvious solution isn't always the right way to go.

Marketing was always the challenge. Even in college, I had always tried to get a slot in a marketing class but was always bumped out by the other business administration and business economics majors. So what. If I didn't make it to Ad School, I landed an AE job for a graphic design shop. It turned out to be my most inspiring job. In that job was the first and last time I felt that lust for work, the kind that drove you out of bed in the morning. But I left that job eventually. Numbers were always my default setting. Why didn't I get that then? I should have known that when you click on my reset to factory settings button, I always went back to numbers.

It was the lure and tug of the marketing unicorn that would always call me out from the depths of my excel sheets and budgeting workshops. Just when I was easing back into autopilot mode, it called out saying, "Come play with me."

So one day, I did. Through sheer luck and serendipity. A marketing post was offered to me on a silver platter. On day minus one I met Him. On day zero I met him. At first it was a temporary post, then it became mine eventually. Day One meant career was foremost and the boys were just for breaks when I found time away from working. I started seeing him. His flipside world made me think seemingly beyond logic. Always challenging borders, boundaries and conventions. It was like being on drugs without the side effects. Or was it?

My career took a different direction. I wasn't too brave in advertising, but I flourished in activation, which meant events, direct marketing, and sales from the ground up. I might have stepped on a few toes and egos along the way. I can't say I'm proud of that. But I did my job well. I enjoyed meeting people and making friends. Others called it networking. I called it expanding my world. There was only a thin line between professional and personal. It was my personality, I suppose. But it was very exhausting especially when work extended after hours, when meetings and night-outs merged. There were no breaks except in sleep. This phase lasted for years. I bowed out of my last marketing job, as the Brand Manager of a car magazine, two years ago. If I were to redesign my resume as a brochure, it would have two parts: my finance jobs and my marketing jobs.

And Him. We stayed friends across time, across countries and time zones. He was my saving grace, my anchor. Little did I know, he was my reset button.

The obvious solution was always in numbers. He who makes me smile always reminds me that life shouldn't be complicated. (It doesn't necessarily mean he practices what he preaches. But that is a different story for a different day.) But I listen, at least of recent past. Over a year ago, a door opened for a finance job and I reluctantly took it. Because it was a real grown-up job. It has been an uphill climb since. A lot of sleepless nights like tonight. Unlike in algebra where solutions aren't always obvious, I find myself going back to the logical tools in high school geometry. The solution was always obvious because it was already there, staring right in front of me.

There is a reason I keep coming back to numbers. There is a reason for the numerous aptitude tests. We need to discover our talents so that we can make the maximum difference in even the smallest of space that we live in. It didn't matter whether the world was big or small, it mattered that we were being the best version of ourselves. Wasn't that the obvious solution all along?

I am back to day minus one of a different direction. I no longer call it a career. Just my life's work, in preparation for settling down and retirement.

I found a scrapbook I hid some seven years ago. I knew then what I chose to ignore all this time. He who makes me smile inspires me to be me. It doesn't matter if I have become the constant term in his quadratic equation. (That pesteng ahem in his life maybe.) He has become more than that to me. I am finding ways of becoming the best version of myself because of him. I wrote on the page, "He is my True North." How did I know it back then?

Writer's Block

This is my longest dry spell. Could it be that I have finally ran out of things to write about?

I feel
I see
I love
But I cannot speak it or write it
I am physically frozen and emotionally paralyzed.