Whatever After

         Emma Jane has tied the knot. After years of dilly-dallying, she finally decided to settle down. To the chagrin of her high school classmates who still couldn’t make up their - our - minds whether to take that leap into the great unknown, she forced us to grapple with the dread question: secure yet in fetters, or free but alone?

         Unlike her we know better, and, being made of sterner stuff, our resolve is firmer. Or so we think.

The question whether to marry or not is at best irritating, at worst something that gives you nightmares about limbs breaking. It is annoying when parents and friends pester you with queries about your “long-term” plans, unnerving when you have to decide in front of the gravid girl’s burly cousins. As you grow older, the physical threat loses its menace, but the tormentors become more persistent, their questions blunter and more inane. Eventually, the ones you thought would stick it out with you to the very end succumb to the pressure one by one, until you find yourself all by yourself – without a partner, bereft of allies.

For Emma Jane, the choice was clear. We were not getting any younger, so might as well buckle down for the future before snaring someone becomes an exercise in improbability. We respect her decision, and though saddened by the loss of an erstwhile kindred soul, we are glad she made it, since we can never really bear the thought of her going at it on her own years from now. We can’t be there for her all the time, so it’s just right that at last she has somebody who will always be, at least in theory, by her side when the going gets cold and lonely. She deserves it.

Time flies. Not too long ago we were just kids messing around, trying our best to elude the Religious of Virgin Mary nuns who were hell-bent on seeing to it that we pass high school chaste and untainted by the wicked ways of the world. Back then the boys didn’t give Emma Jane much heed, for despite her charms she stood just a tad taller than a troll and looked as if all she ate were Chippy and yoghurt. One of my buddies did spot her and made a move. We gleefully cheered him on (I even volunteered to write his letters), and they hit it off for a while. Their puerile relationship didn’t last long, but we suspect that it left some deep marks on the poor chap because he skipped her wedding even if we had threatened to talk about nothing but him at the banquet if he didn’t show up.

First love never dies? Ah, but love - be it first, middle or last - is always a good excuse for anything, too good in fact that smooth-talking vamps tuck it up their sleeves for when they need to mutter mush in gullible ears. It’s overused and abused, overrated and outdated. And it doesn’t conquer all at all, otherwise Sawi, the eternally lovelorn poet of the English department of Silliman University, would have snagged his muse by now.

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our personal essays, and this thing called love is one of them. It is so elusive and unwieldy, so obscure and abstract and complicated that some of us can’t help but duck for cover or run to the hills at the slightest hint of its coming. Since only a very thin line runs between bravery and folly, between astuteness and madness, only time will tell whether Emma Jane had made a wise decision.

She looked so happy that day that we couldn’t help but root for her. She was beaming like sunshine after a sudden summer rain, nervous like mist awaiting the break of dawn, tense like a bow before the release of the arrow. If she ends up as another sorry character in the endless trail of tragicomic marital tales, at least she has that moment to look back to. For her, my minions and I cross our fingers.

We hope she finds comfort in numbers now that she’s on the side of the majority. We bid her well and wish her all the good stuff marriage is supposed to foster. May she never encounter the things that give us the willies – the blights that have kept us from taking the road well trodden. May she never confirm our worst fears and instead prove us wrong. May she never come running back to our fold.

Those of us who remain adamant in the face of the madding (well, marrying) crowd plow on like derailed freight trains, heedless of what other people think or expect of us, ignoring their insensitivity and ill will. Rushing headlong in our singular quests, we chase rainbows and tilt at windmills, ride into the sunset and go where angels fear to flutter, all the while shrugging off speculations that perhaps something is wrong with us, or that maybe we come from Mars. We don’t mind petty minds that label us freaks of a kind, wild blossoms that bloom in unbeaten paths or shapeshifters from another dimension, the ones who don’t have what it takes to be just like everyone.

       Am I being cynical? Am I being a wiseass? Or perhaps I’m just having a nasty fit of sour grapes, jealous that our classmate found the courage to jump over the edge while I cling to the ledge, too afraid to let go and lose control. Or maybe I’m just trying to better understand life as it unfolds for me and my friends, to figure out the complex essence of existence, to find my niche in the overall scheme of things. Perhaps I’m just living up to my curse as a sentient being: forever trying to glimpse the inner workings of an indifferent universe.

            Whatever.