"I hate the fact you are all fine and dandy, while I struggle to juggle between my self-identity and this damn drama character. It's engulfing me by the days. How can you block it all out? Are you so effing dense or is your heart made of marble?"
**...
I awoke in the middle of the night, slothfully stretching my arms and legs to the sides while remaining in bed, wistfully smiling. It was that gentle dream about us again, Korn.
Apparently, the after-effects of filming Bad Romance and Together With Me are lasting longer than I had anticipated. TWM had finished airing since last October. Our latest joint fan meeting in Manila was also since April 8th this year. But for the past 14 weeks and 5 days, I kept seeing us in my sleep. Perhaps, the on-going but intermittent filming for TWM: The Next Chapter has also added to this problem.
There was nothing evocative in the dream, just our ever so seemingly instinctive embrace when we stood together, a hearty smile when our eyes met, or a gentle hair stroke full of teammate affection. Sometimes, I helped adjust your crooked shirt collar. Other times, you handed me water as my voice started to crack from speaking too much at a reality TV show. Really, nothing out of the ordinary life that we had lived for months on sets of the two series.
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I frequently chuckled at myself wondering why those images would persistently enter my first REM sleep stage, just to slyly wake me up around minute 99th. This prevents my bone and muscle growth, dude! Why not the freaking last REM?
For all other nights, I would easily fall right back to sleep. But somehow it feels different tonight.
Tonight, Korn, I am starting to grasp the peculiarity of my dreaming about us. It is probably very unusual for an actor to have lingering sentiments for so long after a filming project, let alone of a MALE acting partner. Am I just too severely stimulated by the thrill of playing a gay role in a BL series? Perhaps, it is all because I had to force myself to envision us often in order to overcome the awkwardness of those intimate kisses and perpetual hot scene retakes. And it just so happened that my own mental game has successfully tricked my limbic system, fooling my amygdala into "believing" that those emotions are real. If that is the case, the troubled me may need to seek help from a psychotherapist. I guess there is such thing as "occupational disease" in the filming industry after all. I hope you haven't contracted it.
02:24 AM, July 22nd, 2018 - Bangkok
I shook myself out from sleep, sat up quickly in one motion while breathing heavily in sweat. What was that dream about? Frightened, I reached over to turn on the night lamp, then rushed to the kitchen for some cold water, hoping that a big gulp of it would calm me down. I can still feel your soft, burning lips, Korn. It was such a vivid dream. Too vivid that I am still quivering. I quaffed the remaining water in the glass, sat down on a chair with both elbows on the dinning table, repeatedly running fingers through my hair. I am truly perplexed.
