r.s.v.p. for one

one day you wake up and realize that you're old(er). it's not a bad feeling, but you wonder if you've made an impact, that those past years were not worthless, not frivolous, not obscure.

i am a single woman blithely soaring through life. most women my age have settled into their happily-ever-afters and raising 2.5 children in white-picket-fenced cottages or rented townhouses. case in point, the week i just spent in manila.

my childhood friends and i flew to the big city to attend another friend's wedding. said friend and hubby already had their civil wedding in the US. but like most pinoy weddings, a marriage isn't truly celebrated if without a grand shebang, hence wedding number two.

we decided to stay on for a few more days since it was a chance for some girl-bonding and my friends and i rarely traveled together. but they were mommies & wives foremost, so while they were sharing mushy i-wuv-yous with hubby and kids, i was on a text marathon with The Boylet. (yep, virginia, the boylet lives! haha!)

malling for them means shopping for the toddler while for me it means biding my time before rushing off to meet a client at yet another mall.

hanging out at the coffee shop involves dishing out the hottest gossip and invariably, the my-kid-did-the-darnedest-thing stories--all of which i love hearing but have nothing to contribute to. somehow, my ang-weird-ng-pamangkin-ko stories cannot equate.

during the wedding, we had to quickly revise the usual bouquet and garter ceremonies upon realizing that there was no single, marriageable person left...apart from me! i was giddy with relief that i did not have to suffer through that wedding ritual, haha!

which brings me back to my muni-muni. my friends and i have been like peas in a pod growing up, but at a certain point i veered off to a different direction. the friendship, thank God, is still there, but i know that fundamentally i am no longer in the same pod as them.

i see their contentment and i feel my restlessness. they are eagerly looking forward to the trip home the same way half of me is eager to go back to the office while the other half is itching to stay. they chose home and hearth, i chose a sturdy suitcase. so what's wrong with this picture?

nothing, absolutely nothing. after often being put into a defensive position for my choices, i have learned to accept that being me is okay. God and i have an understanding. i know what He wants for me and He knows me. that is all there is to it.

and as for impact...what do you think?