Sleeping and Sniffling : Why Pinay hates A-holes

You know why I hate assholes?

Because they make me lose sleep and they make me smoke so much that I get sick the next day.

And for what? Because they broke someone else's heart! Unfortunately the someone else I am talking about is a "soulmate" of mine.

I think I have mentioned this several times. There are friends and acquaintances that I tolerate but then there are people I call my "soulmates". These are the people who I would run to when they call me or text me their "I am desparate" message. It could be anything from "Let's have coffee." to "Are you in Makati?" But I just know that it's one message or call that I can't ignore.

So I transform and fly to where they are. Figuratively speaking that is.

Then there is what I would like to refer to as the "spinning record mode". We all know what this is. All you are supposed to do at this point is be quiet and listen. I am, of course, incapable of shutting up so I tend to bug my friends with segues when they are talking about their problem. They both love and hate me for this. The love came when they realized that I can't change this side of me.

Then comes the "white noise Nina mode" where I have to talk and say random normal and abnormal things that would occupy their mind so that they don't stab themselves with chopsticks or call the bastard who caused the whole breakdown to begin with.

And I always hear the same words.

"It hurts. Make it stop. How come I still love him?"

And I can't make the pain stop.
I don't have an answer to this question except,

"You just do. Bear with it and get the closure that you need."

Because at the end of the day we are the ones who are supposed to hold our happiness in our hands. We can't ask someone else to handle it let alone trust them to not destroy our happiness.

I know this to be a fact. Men can't handle their own happiness and letting them handle ours would lead to chaos and catastrophic pain.

We can love ourselves. And the excess can be directed towards them. Otherwise we become an empty husk when they drain us of our self-love. And it would take a lifetime to get it all back.

I hurt my friend when I told her that I didn't like the guy that she likes then and then again when I told her I would not talk to her again if they got back together. Now that she is still miserably loving him, I know how it feels but I have to detach myself from it. Since I know that the man would be bad news for her. I know that many of the people other people date are bad for them. And not because they are still together and/or tied the knot that things were able to work out. But they never listen, so it's up to them to mess it up and clean up after themselves.

Sometimes, people just have nowhere else to go and have noone else they can blindside into loving them. But the misery of not being with the man you love is not as bad as the misery of knowing that the man or person that you think you loved is not that person who is with you. You just thought that he was like that guy. But he isn't and now you're stuck.

I would rather risk my heart to be alone than to be stuck with someone who makes me both stupid and miserable.

My Curly Tops Valentine

http://www.flickr.com/photos/randyblu/sets/72157624452668753/with/4472327611/

I made notes for my teammates and gave them Curly Tops. ^.^ I wanted to give them one box each but I blew my Valentine's budget when I went to Elbi. ^.^ I decided to give a box to Miss L, Sam, Liz and of course, Twilightboy. ^.^ I don't know if Pandabear would want chocolates but I'll be meeting up with him in SM Mega later to go to MOA. I promised to train him to check who are desperately paired or those who are really happy on this Hearts' Day.

Let's just call Pandabear as my love apprentice and I am his surrogate Valentine. But I am sure this kid has the potential to be a great boyfriend. We just need to train him to be a lot less gullible when it comes to women.

As for Twilightboy, I hope he shares the curly tops and that I don't get into any trouble asking someone to give it to him. This ends my crush rush. I hope.

Onto the next crush. Who knows, while teaching Pandabear, I might just stumble upon a new crush? MOA is a big place, right? I wouldn't mind wandering into someone's heart. ^.^

I refuse to consider this year as Happy S.A.D.! (single awareness day) I consider this year as Curly Tops V-day. It's not all the time that I have a crush rush and a love apprentice on the same Valentine's day. ^.^ I don't need to have a boyfriend to have fun and to give love on this day. This way is a little bit more kilig actually.

To all my friends who are celebrating as a pair or solo, Happy Puso!

sarang he oppa!~

Wisdom and Folly of Talking to an Ex

My college bestfriend and roommate warned me against doing it. Another college bestfriend said that it's okay as long as you don't feel giddy. So that settles it. It's not a bad thing to talk to my exes. It does make them uncomfortable sometimes that I seemingly forgot the pain or bitterness that they might have put me through. One of them continues to carry it like shackles. I don't take it personally since he carries a lot of weight around that doesn't have anything to do with little ol' me. So I figured it's just his personality and mine lightly clashing when it comes to the idea of letting go. Because in my case, over the years, I have learned that you can let people go. But you don't necessarily have to strip yourself of the happiness or the happy memories that they brought into your life.
Isn't that were most couples and exes end up ruining everything? They believe or feel that if they still think of the other person fondly, that means they are not over their romantic love for those people. I am believer that love is never gone, it's like an energy that is dispersed and changes form or kind. I learned in SciMath club that energy is like that. So since Love for me is an energy that can do so many good and bad things, it can also be dispersed but never really undone.
I talked to Mark this morning and the day before that. There were things that I asked him that he couldn't answer very well. We are not on the same page after all. Somehow he is still in the last few pages of the chapter that had me and him in it. He keeps it thumbmarked and he goes back there frequently even as the pages of the rest of our lives are being written. In my case, I just try to remember what is in my head. I don't go back to read everything. It's called selective amnesia, I think. ^^ I don't remember the times that I cried or was depressed over everything. I remember the lessons that I learned and that the most important contribution that Mark had in my life is to merge my hopeless romantic self with my rational self. I was a cynic despite being a former hopeless romantic. I thought that if a person chased after the idea or the ideal guy then she is doomed to ignore all other worthy lovers. So I tried to be an altruist. But now, like I told him, I find myself the  right amount of ready and practical. I am ready to love and ready to do what must be done to keep a love strong.
I asked him if I would've made a good wife had his circumstances been different. He said yes. I knew he would say yes. I was afraid of those answers before but I knew he meant it. Of course he said that it was mainly because he would probably gonna do every household chore since I suck at doing them. I literally laughed out loud at that one. It was probably true. I told him that I would have made him a really bad wife since that time I was really immature (still kinda am) and I didn't know how to love people correctly. Yes, I am honestly saying that, even after all I put myself through, I am convinced that although I loved all my exes very much, I didn't really love them the way I wanted to truly love them.
So that is why for my next beloved, I would have to learn how to do household chores well and hopefully cook something that wouldn't poison him and my future spawn. That is if I would be able to reproduce at all.
We talked about how I should follow what my mom said and my fears that if I work in Batangas, inevitably, I would see a parade of men who my relatives think is good enough for me to marry. I told him about it and his old self kind of came up. He still feels a bit defensive when I talk about the future that I would have with someone else. I don't assume that he still loves me the way that he did but I think that he clings to those memories because for him he was really happy during those times. So much so that he basically elevated those memories to something that seemed to have happened inside a dream. I don't really know and I don't want to poke the dragon all that much. I can say as much as me wanting to find a guy just like him minus the drama and he says there is only one like him.
I believe myself to have a type in men. It's just that my type of men almost always turn out to be liars. So I want the guys I met before their good points and some tolerable bad points to merge with honesty and offer me that man as an able-bodied member of society. Cooking and fighting skills sold separately. ^^
I really don't want to be the kind of woman who only talks to my exes when they are already paired up with someone or they are already dying. I want to forgive them way sooner than that. I want to share my life with them without having to explain to anyone why I feel justified to be friends with them. Because these people, regardless of what they did in the end of it, made me feel human love. They were those, who saw me without any mask. Even my friends see me wearing a mask all the time. I was stripped of all that when I was with them. Although I will never trust them with my heart again (yes, I am unforgiving in that sense) I know that I can trust them with secrets and even to tell me when I am making an ass of myself. They knew a different me from who I want to be or who I am now so I know that they can tell the difference. And because they were lovers in the past, then can tell me what I did do right or wrong when I was still loving them. That is something not even my closest friends can come close to being experts on.
I will always love the people that I loved before. But as a student of Love without being with that person, I have graduated from thinking that the impossible can be done through love. Love is an energy and it has many limitations. The vessel from which love comes from or stays is also limited and frail. So I can't play with this energy and my vessel of energy but trying every frequency or wave. I need to open it and wait for the right voltage to hit me once again.
Like Mark said, like all my friends and well-meaning strangers said, "it will happen if it's meant to happen". I am still young. (and even if I wasn't) I should just focus on making a better me then he would come along and figure something that the others didn't. That I am a keeper.

What's that noise?

There is a lot about me that NO ONE in their right mind would want in their girlfriend.

For the superficial part, I am not pretty. Not in a demure sweet long-haired Pinay way that men of this country find so enticing. I cut my hair short and it was both for convenience and for the main and oh so selfish reason that I feel sexier with short hair.

Then there is the thing about me being tall. Some of the guys that I like are either shorter than me or as tall as me. Because of years of liking military training, I realized that I like to straighten my back more when I walk. Having boobs is not something I particulary like, but I am sure that they would nourish someone someday so I have decided to keep them. ^_^ But because of this habit of mine of keeping my back straight when I walk, I appear taller than I already am. I have let go of the notion of heels since I am afraid of heights and they hurt like a moderfkr. And that is something that men also don't like about women like me. S'much as I like how they look, when I put them on, I have this eerie feeling that I would never feel or see my toes happy again. So I avoid them.

My legs are chicken legs that turned into softball player legs. They look like soccer player legs only less likely to cause someone to break a bone if I kick them with it. Still they are not feminine at all. Furthermore, by some freak accident, my little sister was born...kidding...my sister had this skin condition that lay dormant in the family. When she was old enough to get it, all the other kids started showing signs of it. So my otherwise unscared legs and feet are now tainted. The last man to see them white and long was Mark. But I plan to make them more attractive in the near future so as to prepare for my second and last great love. ^_^

Then there is my mouth. I can do wonders with it. But I can also rip you a new arsehole with it. I am to say it planly, a brutally frank person. I have once tried to prevent curses from coming out of my mouth. I usually do that when I am in Batangas (cursing is not allowed in our home, raised voices yes, curses no) And I felt like I had one of those things they put on rabid dogs. So when I talk to that man now, having changed the status of our relationship from lovers to testy friends, I have unleashed the real me on him. And boy, does he hate the tongue that is on this once pleasurable and docile lover. I am, more than anyone, very happy that I now can curse and rant at him without feeling the least bit guilty that his ears are bleeding. Men do not like loud women. And ask my friends, I think I still owe them earplugs.

I can't cook. I can fry. I can boil things. I can cut things. I can peel. But I don't know how to cook sinigang na baboy. I can't even make a decent salad. But I love to eat, judging from my post-lover weight. I do love to eat. ^_^ Food is love.

What else? I came from schools that taught me to be proud of learning new things. I came from teachers who told me to never stop learning, to never stop leaving your mark on other people. Mine might have been more like bruises, but they're there. And they won't be going anywhere. They'll remember that I hit 'em, bit them, scratched them or brew blood. The scars would remind them of the pain and the pleasure of knowing me, of having me in their lives. There are just people like that. We are not famous but you know who we are. And once you get to know a girl like me, like any of my friends, we stick. We would be there in the last flashes of your life. I am sure of it.

Oh, and there is that severe sense of what is mine should JUST be mine. This is something that I thought I gave up once. I thought I could share. But I can't. I really can't. There are men who can love two women at the same time. There are women who can deceive two men that she is both for them and in love with them. One thing I know about myself for sure, I don't fall in love easily. It takes me a long time to fall in love. People keep asking me if I believe in destiny, in fate or in love at first sight. I don't. I think love is something that grows. Sparks is just our evolved need to mate. But I have been in love before. I wanted him to be all mine. I would have pushed him so far off his own ability to love had I not been raised as well as I have been by my parents. You see, my mother is my father's and my father is my mother's. There would never be any DOUBT that those two belong to each other. They say you can't own people. But you see, people can give themselves to each other. And that person who claims them, and never lets them go...that person is the luckiest and unluckiest in the planet. They have to give up everybody else to just have that one person. I am now very much willing to give everybody up. Before I chose my parents. I chose myself. I chose socially acceptable love. I'm not saying I won't do it again, but I will give everybody up for you. Yes, you. The one who can accept all those listed above. Because you know what, there is something I forgot to mention.

I never stop loving people that I have loved. If you can learn to accept that, then you will be the keeper of my heart.
If you can dish out the truth, EVEN IF YOU THINK IT WOULD CUT ME,
If you can hold me through thunderstorms, earthquakes and death of a loved one,
If you can be the kind of father mine was, reliable, funny and an honest and loving husband,
If you are a man who cares for family, for friends but never forces them to be anything else than who they are and supporting them in whatever is good for them,
If you can look at a house and recognize that it is a place where you would want to weather storms, sit and read, hold and love, cherish and remember,
Then YOU are exactly what I am looking for.
Because you know what, there is a space in my heart. It's not empty, but there's space. I pushed others in the archives of my heart, there where the blood that doesn't have oxygen go. On the other side, there is a place for you, next to my father, my family and my dearest soulmates of friends. You don't have to push anyone away, there is already a seat for you at my table. You just need to have the appitite to eat through the layers of time and routine to find me waiting here, impatiently of course, because that is who I am.

That girl, who became a woman who is impatiently waiting for love. ^_^ Can you hear that tapping, that's my feet.

Follow the tapping.

My version of forever

I don't believe in the romantic notion that is forever.
But I have seen it in reality in the marriage of my parents. They have that version of forever most married couples could only dream of. But for us women "in healing" this kind of forever is hard to come by. I don't blame the men nor do I blame the women...but yeah...I sometimes blame romantic novels.

You see, in a novel, love always conquers all. This is true for romantic novels of the Filipino kind. The woman always gets the man she deserves at the end of the story. Her life is changed to this perfect version of it and it is always because this man was a part of her life.
It plays on the weakness of all women to be protected and taken care of. The concept of "The one" and "forever" are overplayed and always a part of the equation.

In my life, I believe in something else. Something that puts most of my boyfriend's nose out of place when I talk to them about it.

My version of forever is the collection of moments that I spent with the person that I love...at that moment.

Of course I had to make a spin of sweet nothings directed at them after that. This statement reeks of my commitment-phobia, I know. But it's true for me.
This isn't something that I would recommend for anyone. Some women were made to pair-up with someone who are suitable for them. The problem and heartbreak then lies on whether the man was made to be paired up with them.

I met a man who made me believe that forever was possible despite the fact that I know that it's an elusive dream.
I told him once

My version of forever, are the moments that we spent with each other.

I know it still sounds wary but if you knew what I had to work with you would say that I was being a hopeless romantic. It was true and I had to undo this feeling after so many years because I outgrew my sense of delusion.
I know that love like what my parents have is rare. But I plan to pursue that love with a fervor of a madman. ^_^ Because I know a love like that is something that even sluts like me deserve.
And if I fall short of my search, it would not be one of my regrets but a silent hope that my sister would inherit that kind of love.

So I say this to all of my romance-challenged friends,

Forever is just a word but it can cut through walls that took years to build, so be gentle with it.

NEVER PROMISE FOREVER SINCE IT DOESN'T EXIST. Promise fidelity, promise love but never forever. It's beyond your human hands to make that be.
Promise warmth and security but never unconditional love. Because you might just end up choking on your own words and making another cynic. 

To the man who taught me love and fidelity,

Salamat...'Tay. ^_^