A hashtag to remember

Two weeks past and my mood goes extreme—points lead to highest and lowest—depending on the trigger. I’m going 21 but my maturity level places me back at 15. All the while I thought I have become matured, yet my slip in mood the past days tells me otherwise. Well, maybe I’m having my time. A bad time that is.

As far as personal events are concerned, I have no reason to feel this way. I’m really blessed with encounters.

The 21st century has brought people from different backgrounds and geography exchange ideas and aspirations in ways previous generations have failed to enjoy. We breathe modernity. We throw out ideas in real-time. We question phenomena and dissect them as it happens. Welcome to the Generation Y (Why?).

And so I ask, why?

I met a guy on Twitter while monitoring #harapan, the hashtag for ABS-CBN’s heated forum on vice-presidentiables in time for the May 10 polls. Netizens’ insights were even ten- folds direct and harsh than that of the candidates trading barbs with one another. I followed him during the forum, and he followed me back days after. Judging on his tweets and link shares, we share the same interests and insights. I befriended him on Facebook and learned that we have more common grounds than I have imagined. I’m beginning to admire the guy.

We attended the same school, share the same views and sport mutual interests. We exchanged (as he puts it) long talks over Facebook and Yahoo! Messenger and 140-ish replies on Twitter—chatting about politics, principles and personal thoughts—all in a matter of days.

And I remembered reading about ambient awareness some time ago. The term was first coined in a New York Times Sunday magazine. Social scientists define it as, “…very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye.” This “digital intimacy” now throws cold water out of my consciousness. Am I becoming “digitally intimate” with him? I meant with a guy.

Apparently, this digital intimacy has reached my mom’s awareness. I have been telling mom about him as a champion of his family, as a good son to his mother, and as a nephew to a Scleroderma patient; a disease mom has got to have. This guy was even instrumental to my inches-more closeness to mom the previous days. I had the guts to tell my mom I love her in her face after reading “Mardita”, a note he wrote to his mother.

I suddenly made a stop to this intimacy. I suddenly halted while thinking that he’s maybe not into it. I’m clueless on where this “intimacy” would lead us, but I fear one gets violated.

He is a rare find. His idealism, passion and sensibility could launch a visionary. I don’t want to let go of him yet should I be a bad mix on his potential, I’m crying inside but this too shall pass. Unless he rekindles.