THERE WAS once a time I considered placing the following personal ad in Buy and Sell:

"Lonely NGO worker looking for commitment. Must enjoy reading, watching movies, and live music ranging from the Jerks to Rivermaya. Right wing conservatives and military fanatics need not apply."

Such a long ad, however, would cost too much, so I suppose I never will put it out. Never mind the early mornings I wake up, listening to birds chirping, with the sound carried through my window by a soft breeze--and finding myself alone as usual. Never mind the rallies and the forums and the symposia where I constantly am in attendance. During those moments I am bound by principle and by blood to everyone working for genuine social change--never mind the lack of bonding to a significant other.

This cycle continues, as the days stretch out to weeks. Friends call and I can keep up my end of the conversation for hours at a time. I go out at night with my buddies for dinner and inuman, and to watch their sets at Freedom Bar or 70s Bistro. I'm always busy and I can be damned efficient. Yet inside: hollowness and a melancholy that cannot be dispelled.

I've been out of college for two years now, and it's only now I realize how hard it is to meet new people while you're working. When you're still studying, there are so many guys everywhere you can get so sick of all the endless possibility. Nowadays, though, despite having scores of friends and acquaintances, everyone new I meet that I would consider getting involved with is either a) married, b) has a girlfriend, or c) likes men, too!

Maybe it's tough luck on my part. There was something wrong with the last five guys I was interested in last year. Guy #1 lives abroad. Guy #2 is married. Guy #3 is a banker (horrors!) who plays golf (double horrors!). Guy # 4, Frodo Baggins, is fictional and supposedly gay (at least, according to the "Secret Diaries of "The Fellowship of the Ring.") Guy # 5, Harry Potter, is fictional and terribly under aged.

A part of me dislikes this kind of whining intensely. I feel very petty and small-minded when I do it. I know there are people with more problems than me--the dispossessed and the impoverished, the lost and the lumpenic. There are issue-based campaigns to discuss: US military intervention, the internal refugees of the Southern Tagalog region, land-grabbing in Isabela due to the Cassava Project… But really, is it so selfish as to want someone whom I can share all of these things?

My friends often repeat sickening clichés like "hindi hinahanap ang pag-ibig" and "darating din 'yan." Easy to say but harder to live with.

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Annelies Mariano, a lonely NGO worker as she describes herself, is not related to Hesus Mariano of Hesus Rebolusyonaryo.

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