Revenge is Sweet but the Aftermath is Bitter.

Cheerleader Captain, member of the Official Dance Club of my High School, Vice President of my class. Popular. Yes, I was all of these. But it wasn't how they normally portray it in the movies. I never dated in High School. I wasn't one of those sizzling hot gorgeous cheerleader. I was very picky with my friends (still am) to the point that people think I am a big time snob. I hardly ever smiled when I was in High School really. All I cared about was dancing and being a good cheerleader which is probably a good thing because boys didn't like me.

When I was 15 I got hooked into chatting online. I told people I was 17 or 18, depending on who I was talking to. At first it was just curiosity but as I met more people in the AOL chat rooms my little teenager mind has formulated a love story for me - I have dreamt to meet my future husband online and he will travel halfway around the world to meet me and we will live happily ever after! It was much, much later that I will realise that there are more twats and pervs online rather than Prince Charmings.

This online curiosity has taught me how many cute men there are but unfortunately so are empty brain what comes with each of them. At that point in time I knew that my type in men is someone who can hold a funny and interesting conversation with me and that was not easy to find in chat rooms. Until I met this guy, Chris. He wasn't in the category of Hot Men. In fact he wasn't a winner in the physical department at all. But he had a lot of opinion on a lot of things and nothing can beat an attractive mind. At that time we didn't have internet connection in our house so I spent most of my days at this Internet Cafe where a friend worked and he let me pay only an hour's fee instead of eight.

Several weeks and a few months of daily online conversations later I realised that I had fallen for Chris. I wrote him post mails, sent him postcards, emailed him every day, sent him messages on his beeper, left him offline IMs on AIM and sent him text messages on his mobile phone. He never sent me a post mail back and hardly responded to my messages. But this didn't deter me. On his 19th birthday, I phoned him but he was very unfriendly and dismissive of me. It was when he outright told me to stop talking to him and when I said 'I can't because I like you', all he said was "DON'T" and he logged out. This incident inspired me to write so many poems - the most I ever written in a short period of time. I think I have a full notebook of poems which I still have up to this moment. Well actually I left it in the Philippines and my mother is looking after it for me.

A few months short of seven years later, I got an IM from Chris. Nothing major, just a simple hello actually. I thought it was polite to say hello as well but that lead to us speaking again. We were no longer teenagers but we were the same people. He was the same person. Exactly that same person who broke my heart over and over. I was overwhelmed with emotions from the past and I promised myself that this time around it will not be me who will fall in love and have her heart broken. True enough he did fall for me and I got him to purchase flight tickets to go see me in the Philippines. After that I stopped talking to him just like that. Of course there were days when I thought I should meet him but I realised they were days when my marriage was so unstable because of the frustrations and problems that came between James and me. I was satisfied that I had my revenge with the help of James I was able to make it look to Chris that my marriage sucks. His flight tickets cost him a good $1500 which for someone who worked as an assistant in an Internet Cafe is a lot. I didn't care. For breaking my heart that is not even enough.

I had the last laugh.