On Emotional Diabetes, Regrets and Star Stuff

"The need for love is akin to emotional diabetes. Who needs another when you can produce insulin yourself?"

-Pao Soriano

Last night was supposed to be “SAKITAN NIGHT”, an event that happens every Monday in Good Earth Roasts, Rockwell with my closest friends in law school, just because a live band plays emo songs and we are reminded of our stupid mistakes in the past. True to its form, there were painful moments, especially when you are put on the hot seat and are made to realize that you’ve been doing it all wrong. With some twist of fate, Paopao, my source of joy in law school, was in the area, and he became our very able guest for the night. In the words of Jason, he was our “neutral”, especially because they’ve decided to dub me as the negative thinker and they, with much protest from me, are the optimistic ones.

I don’t know if it was the alcohol (which I would assume, Joan and Paopao will not agree with since they only consumed sugar), or the fact that we, once in a while, long for meaningful conversations that hit the spot, but hell we were talk show productive. We started with the question, “When did you realize that you are smarter than the others?” went on discussing more mundane stuff like using the statement, “Then he inserted his manhood to her pussy vagina vulva.” in answering the bar exam, and enthusiastically discussed the question, “Can you live with the possibility that you will, in fact, die alone?” The consensus was that it’s okay to be alone, it’s just hard to accept that in your moment of death, no one will be there to celebrate the life that you thought you lived. Paopao was envy-worthy, always the sound one and always reminding us of how we should ideally live. He didn’t care about being alone, was oblivious of the fact that he is smarter than a lot of us, and cannot seem to grasp our positive answer to the question, “Despite our celebration of singlehood, if somebody comes along, would you be willing to love?”

I mean, I’ve always believed in the mantra that “I am happy now, but I know I can be happier in the future.” But he challenges my stand by asking, “But if you are happy now? Why does happy have to compete with happier?” Then he concluded that it would seem like I live on being goal-oriented and that if there is no goal, there is no point in living. I wholeheartedly agree. And it boils down to human want, our nature to want more after getting one thing, the testimony to the toast, “May you get everything you want, except for one, so that you’ll still have something to look forward to.”

Then there was the question of, “Do you attribute who you are now to fate or decision?” We were united in saying that of course, it was us. There was that turning point, when you decided, “This is how I will live my life.” And the rest, as they say, is history.

Then we got to that never outdated issue that is LOVE. It was inevitable, really, I mean, most of the bad decisions that we’ve made are relationships-wise. We’ve gotten everything we’ve hoped for already (except for financial freedom… but we’re getting there too.), and with love, we just can’t fucking seem to get it right. Paopao asked, “Would you rather that you don’t need food? Or that you need it, but you can enjoy eating it in the process?” And I said, ideally, you don’t want to need anything. Self-sufficiency is the perfect scenario. But that is not to say, that maybe, enjoying eating is so much worth being needy for. Oh and then we got to discuss the hierarchy of our basic needs and got stopped with the dilemma of which is higher, the need for clothing or the need for sex? Because admittedly, one need can be enjoyed without the other, right? :D

So everything has been open-ended, except for the acceptance that we all are star stuff, or in the context of Big Bang Theory, we all are made of nuclear waste and sooner or later, we will have to face the need to explode. What needs to be done is to stop welcoming misery-generating things in our lives. Stop being in a situation that will create regret.

Our fear of denial is stopping us from knowing and having the opportunity to move on. We’d rather be turned down than spend our whole lives thinking of what might have been. Being passive aggressive didn’t work the first, second and nth time, it will not work now. Just do it. Or err, do him. No day but today. And when you get turned down, you don’t turn back. You smile, shrug your shoulders and carry on, because “We are young. Heartache to heartache we stand. No promises, no demand. LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD.”

Seriously, at the end of the day, you just want to be with people whom you can share bad ass conversations with, laugh about life with and will accept you, no matter what your cup size is. Believe us, Katy Perry has it right when she said, “No regrets. Just Love.”

The Blooming with(out) You

So, let me be resigned

With this path of happiness

That does not need

You

Who break my heart

Everytime you can.

It cannot break anymore

For you and with you.

It refuses to.

Take your flowers
with you. Like our love,
it will never bloom, too.

ANO RAW?

Friend: E kayo, kelan kayo magpapakasal ng boyfriend mo?
Girl: Ewan ko ba dun. Sabi nya pag hindi raw nag end of the world ng 2012.
Friend: Paano kung nag-end of the world?
Girl: Edi wala. End of the world na diba?

ANG LABO!

Overheard in Agave, Serendra

SOMETHING BORROWED: A Discussion

"We need to discuss."

That was the definite conclusion that we all came up with after watching the very divisive movie that is Something Borrowed. We can outline it into a number of chapters, in my mind the issues at hand are the following:

1. Is he or is he not into you.
2. Would you REALLY fall for your best friend’s guy?
3. Should a girl tell a guy how she feels at the risk of being too aggressive?
4. Should you fall for a really good friend at the risk of losing the friendship?

Let’s start with issue number one…

CHAPTER ONE

Is he or is he not into you? A.K.A. It shouldn’t be that hard to figure out.

“I didn't think someone like you could like someone like me,” -Rachel, Something Borrowed

We’ve seen it happen a million of times before. You spend time with a person, really have fun and spend those precious moments before you sleep, thinking, “Hey, he could really be into me too!” But that only consumes a few minutes, heck, a few seconds of your thinking time. For the rest of the night, you over exhaust yourself rationalizing and keeping your feet, and your heart pretty grounded. You start to think of reasons why he can’t like you. I mean, for a logical and emotionally beaten up person, you can think of an infinitely many reasons why he is only being a friend. Plus, this whole self esteem issue just can’t be shaken off, completely. I mean, for a woman lawyer, it is true that we have such high standards. Although we’d always dismiss this hypothesis by saying that we only want to end up with a decent guy, how we define this decent guy is a totally different story.

So, that’s where the problem starts, for someone who has high standards, we rarely get attracted to regular guys, and these non-regular guys, we feel, may be out of our league.  When we feel a connection, or when we feel that it may be safe to start assuming that there could be mutual attraction, you can depend on the fact that we have already jumped the gun by being our suspicious selves. We work hard to be THE GOOD FRIEND. Yes, we find safety in that not-so-comfortable net that is being in the FRIEND ZONE.

Then, a hot girl comes along, the fun, free-spirited one - she may be a friend, an acquaintance who just happens to be there to constantly remind us geeks that well, our guy can do better. I will let you in on a little secret - we also are easily discouraged. When we feel that the object of our affection has turned his attention to a hot woman, even for a millisecond, we act like it’s absolutely okay, like we never are offended or hurt – but believe you me, hell breaks loose in our hearts and minds. That’s when we start withdrawing ourselves from the conversation and let the hotter woman take center stage. We can be the most competitive bunch in a legal court, but we are such sissies in that court that is ruled by the heart.

Then we let it pass. We move on thinking that it was not worth fighting for in the first place. I mean, really, wouldn’t a guy do everything, and I mean everything to make the woman that he likes know that he likes her? There shouldn’t be any “Are you okay with this?”-like questions. If he really liked me, and even if I let him talk freely with the hotter girl, he should have reached for my hand to at least assure me that it is me whom he’d want to talk with. He should have sat beside me and poured all his attention on me, despite the hotter girl’s persistence.

In the ideal world, I guess. 

This is why you should never, ever get your hopes up. This is why you should see the glass as half empty. So when the whole thing spills, you aren’t as devastated."— Emily Giffin (Something Borrowed)

-To be continued-

The Proposal

And without any word, he knelt with one knee,

Offering what would seem like an engagement

Ring to the one he loves. His eyes, shining

With tears and his lips, quivering

In anticipation of her uncertain reply.

“I love you, please let me love you more.”
She took the ring, looked into the eyes

of the boy who has turned into a man

right before her very eyes and said,

“Ang arte  mo.”

He knew. It

was her answer

to his non-question.

Of Turning Tables, Eleven Minutes and Breakfast at Tiffany's

Keeping passion at bay or surrendering blindly to it – which of these two attitudes is the least destructive? I don’t know.

-Eleven Minutes

Let me talk about that thin line between being insensitive and careful. When I was younger, I must say that I did not have restraint. I will assume wholeheartedly, fall in love fully, and get my heart broken carelessly. But that’s just it, right? In the end, I realized that you break your heart when you’re careless, when you do not protect yourself above all, and when you allow yourself to freefall, not knowing what lies beneath.

What do they expect? Having chosen adventure, shouldn’t they be prepared to go the whole way? Or do they think that the intelligent thing to do would be to avoid the ups and downs and spend all their time on a carousel, going round and round on the spot?

-Eleven Minutes

Through the years, I have learned the art of being suspicious, of finding the security of friendship and companionship more logical to seek over wild and no holds barred love, and have mastered the game of not giving meaning to things that in the past might happily make me jump into the conclusion that someone is into me. I have, at present, acquired the label of being insensitive, or more appropriately, of being “manhid.” I don’t mind, really. It’s more peaceful this way. Yet, there is a catch. Look where it got me. It may be summed up with one statement that has been a constant running joke in our wee hour conversations, and drinking sprees, “Sinong mag-isa ngayon?”

You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.  -Breakfast at Tiffany’s

So now, I am at a crossroad. I don’t think I can ever go back to being careless, especially since at this point in my life, I cannot commit as many mistakes as I could when what was at stake was at a minimum. On the other hand, it sometimes makes me wonder if this path of “kamanhidan” (insensitivity) suits me well, or has just created more problems instead of resolving past issues. The only wonderful thing is that I don’t get hurt anymore.

Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just a part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back where I came from because I didn’t have the courage to say “yes” to life?

-Eleven Minutes

It could be why I like Adele’s Turning Tables, the first time I heard it. I can relate. I don’t let anyone close enough to hurt me anymore. And in the process, I don’t let anyone close enough to love me too. So, the questions remain…

Is it really time to say goodbye to turning tables? Or should we just go ahead and make the most out of them?

Really important meetings are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other. Generally speaking, these meetings occur when we reach a limit, when we need to die and be reborn emotionally. These meetings are waiting for us, but more often than not, we avoid them happening. If we are desperate, though, if we have nothing to lose, or if we are full of enthusiasm for life, then the unknown reveals itself, and our universe changes direction.

-Eleven Minutes

Life's a Beach.

"Waves are selfish entities, they push and pull you,without thought or regard. You are my wave. Carry me away."


“Miss is a funny word, one moment it can mean longing when in the next it can mean never.”