I used to have a crush on this guy for a long time. It was one-sided, so no one, including the guy, knew. Or so I thought.

One day, I overheard him talk about me with one of my close friends(!) I forgot what he said exactly, but it was something about me being shallow, unsophisticated, easy. He didn’t think I would pass for a casual date, let alone a girlfriend.

The feminist in me screamed: “fuck you!”, but the girl in me sighed and got upset, for days on end.

I wrote this after that.

I’m the kind of person who is “vãi ruột", in mom's words. That means, I’m one who would leave valuables unattended to go to the bathroom and never check if the waitress has given me enough change; be so blinded by love to the point of accusing parents of “being petty”; assume people are nice first until they prove me otherwise; refuse to step on the scale and try my best to avoid confrontation.

Choosing to be the happy person in the room does have its costs.

For one thing, people rarely take you seriously. “She must have it so easy” — they say. Happiness is naïve, shallow or simply ignorant, it is sadness that requires some actual depth of character.

Second, people bond over sadness, not happiness. It makes everyone more real, more vulnerable, and strangely enough, more likeable. One very wise person used to ask me: Do you know who is the happiest person on Earth when you fail? I didn’t. He then said: your best friend!

Third, the world is super fucked-up, everyone and their mother knows that. Why so happy-go-lucky, when you are capable of understanding the injustice and ridiculousness that happen on a daily basis all around? You must be an idiot.

As biologically made possible, the human brain is wired to pay more attention to negatives, skepticisms and bad experiences. We become the “survival of the fittest” for being careful when facing enemies, not for trusting them. We pay attention in case our alert system gives us warnings so as we can choose to flight or fight.

Naturally, the media picks up on this and bombards you with news about how the world is going down. People use sarcasm as defence mechanism and in many cases humor (I’m looking at you Chandler!) And as for me, I annoy the fuck out of people sometimes simply for being “too happy”.

Here’s how I see it: take it or leave it, I will always see the glass as half-full. Sometimes it might not be, but so what? I believe in the law of attraction — that is, if you believe in something strongly enough, the universe makes it happen. The worst case scenario is you fail, or the world fails you, but so what? You get to experience, learn from the mistake, and move on. What is so bad about that?

“Shit could be worse” — that is the 4-word sentence I live by. It embarrasses the hell out of me whenever I give a public presentation somewhere, for it serves as my screen saver. But life is too short to worry about that kind of shiz anyway.