yes, i'm a TV addict. no, you're not allowed to mock.

there was a time when TV shows made a whole lot of sense to me than the "real" world.

reality no longer disappoints and disgusts me (that much), but it's still laughable how fictional characters, regardless of whether they're played convincingly or not, could sometimes affect me and make me think about myself like actual people i know have failed (and sometimes still fail) to do.

my very first day in school, i was dumbfounded by all the other kids in class crying and clinging to their parents or yayas. me, i sat where i was told to sit and didn't even look back at mommy until it was time to go home. unlike my sister, who used to start crying for our mom five minutes into the north expressway, i never had any trouble going to pampanga with just my grandparents. on graduation days when schoolmates cried out their goodbyes, i honestly didn't understand what the big deal was about since i knew i would still be spending time with the people i cared about anyway. and while i teared up at all those despedida parties and when people came to see me off when i left, it was more out of appreciation for all the kindness and affection my friends and family were showing me rather than the thought of moving to a place so far away from all of them (there were occassions of torrential crying, but those were mostly alcohol-induced. the genuine despair for home and familiar faces will come much later, at that period which i will fondly remember as the "dark ages".).

it wasn't because i didn't care for my parents, or the rest of my family, or my friends, or my schoolmates (all of whom i actually sort of miss, even the ones who i barely talked with) - how much i cared for a person didn't really factor in. dark ages aside (which were so terrible, i'm surprised i didn't get the bubonic plague), i just found it easy to dissociate myself from whatever was happening and go on with life somehow.

which makes it all the more ironic that one season finale and one series finale have left me so unsettled.

maybe i've grown soft with age, i don't know. but saying goodbye is not as easy for me as it once was. i get distressed when friendships undergo the inevitable changes, i hurt when i see relationships (whether i'm in it or not) being severed, i find myself weeping over the good old days when everybody i know belonged with the friends and lovers they were with when i first got to know them.

i realize that sometimes change could be good. necessary, even. there are times, though, that i can't help but wish that things could just stay the way they are.

if only the writers of "the OC and "will and grace" could have realized that...

...

as much as i find it hard to let go of things and people, i am still able to write people off completely and not even be tempted to look back.

being sentimental is worlds apart from being completely mental, after all.