Of Self Worth and Being Your Own Number One Fan

image from Tumblr

“You always act like you don’t deserve to be loved, or even be liked by the other person. Hence, the pep talk.”

It struck a chord in the guitar that is my heart. Looking back at how my (non)romantic life has taken shape through the years, I must say that I have always had very low self esteem in terms of loving and more importantly, in terms of being loved by another. I don’t exactly know when and how it happened, I may have an inkling why, but I always find myself believing that I have fallen for someone out of my league. It may be a question of not knowing my self worth, or the challenge of fully believing in my capability to make someone fall head over heels in love with me, but every time I begin to acknowledge that I might be falling for someone, I get scared.

How can one not be scared, really? Knowing that when you love, you should be able to share yourself to the other with the hope that what you share can be deemed valuable is such an overwhelming thought. If you really know me, you know that when I love, I love with everything I have, sometimes forgetting that pain should not be a constant. What am I trying to make up for?

It could be because I have tried almost every possible way to find love. I have experienced subtle, passive and even full on rejection and sometimes, I am on the verge of believing that I will never find him. I am trying to make up for my wrong choices, my lapses in judgment and the fear that my wounded heart can never be healed again. I am making up for the possibility that I might have emotionally disabled myself.

People can be too hard on themselves. I know I am. I tend to always look inward when something goes wrong and I don’t see anything wrong with it. I think everyone should. I’d like to think that I am always partly responsible, if not fully, for whatever has befallen me up to this point. However, the Facebook timeline reminded me that beyond my failures, I am in a way better place now than where I was months, years or even decades ago.

I have come too far to survive life and there is nothing wrong with accepting that I am worth it, that I deserve to love and be loved in return. If I can commit to being someone’s number one fan, I do not see why no one will find it worthy to make the same commitment to me and for me.  Anything less than “I believe in you.” can no longer be good enough.

During a cab ride home, my friend asked me, “I don’t understand why I can’t seem to find him. I know I have so much to offer.” I didn’t know why, at that time, but now I know.

Maybe it’s not about finding him anymore but about believing that somewhere, someone is also trying to find you. That if with some inexplicable magic, you find yourself bumping into that person, you’ll realize that he recognizes you, because you are what he’s been praying for and dreaming of, too. Maybe it’s about knowing that if someone finally finds you, he is the luckiest person on earth.  

Maybe it’s less about finding someone but more about finding yourself.

 

The Honor in Pain

image from ThingsWeForget

“I wake up, feeling nothing. At one point, I was looking forward to seeing him with another woman so I can feel again, but when I did, that thing that I was scared of happened. I felt nothing.” (7 September 2011)


Last night, after a wonderfully challenging Quiz Night in Capricciosa, Greenbelt 3, three of my friends and I opted to end the night with a round of alcohol. Yes, we do one rounds, surprisingly and we are capable of doing a post game analysis of a Quiz Night pretty well, too. Naturally, after what seemed like a never ending round of jokes oozing with sarcasm and a plan to organize THE party of the century, we got into a discussion of our mutual status of WALANG WALA (totally nothing). It all started with a realization of my and another friend’s inability to write again. If you know me, you will understand the frustration that I am feeling for being unable to write anything. I am pretty passionate about capturing raw emotions and writing about them in my blog. I feel that through that exercise, I am able to treasure extraordinary memories so I can look back someday with a contented look in my eyes.

Something must be wrong. A Eunice that does not feel is not the real Eunice. I am able to extract feelings by merely looking at a stupid chair, how can I not feel anything about something?

I have been wondering for the past months about what state I am currently in. I’ve been running around this city and a few cities outside, doing everything and nothing. I go home late, feeling happy about what I have accomplished and drifting to sleep with a smile on my face. Yet, when I wake up, I feel that nagging feeling of emptiness. It’s like I am complete but someone or something has taken away a part of me that I can never get back. Then I get dressed and that fleeting feeling of emptiness disappears, magically and alarmingly.

Then, Kris Aquino dragged me to hell, err reality. While I was preparing to go to work this morning, I was half watching, half deciding what to wear, when Melissa Ricks began to talk about her breakup with her long term non-boyfriend who recently announced that the breakup was mutual only to be refuted by Melissa’s silence when asked to confirm that declaration. Kris said, and I quote, “Boy always tells me that you have to honor your pain.”

CRAP. You have to honor your pain. And just like that, everything became clear. It actually is true. Although the happiness that I feel with the people I spend my time with, I believe, is genuine –and I’d like to think that their happiness is, too… almost all of us are actually in pain. We talk about it, jokingly, sometimes with a hint of wisdom but we never really dwell on them. May it be the pain of not being able to love, to the pain of not being loved back, the pain of doing something that you’d rather not do, the pain of not doing anything, the pain of doing everything and not being recognized for your everything - we all are in different levels and categories of pain.

We are not honoring our pain. We are looking past them, like they are informal settlers being concealed by pretentious colorful walls along a main highway. We know they exist but we’d rather ignore them because honestly, it scares the shit out of us.

I remember writing about living with pain and I said, “One thing I learned about living is that, “Pain is inevitable.” The moment you are able to come to terms with that, you realize that pain, really, is just a wonderful front act. You get hurt, once in a while, with some periods more painful than the others.”

Therefore, I take it back, once in a while, you have to let pain get to you. You have to sometimes honor your pain, dwell on your weakness and allow others to be strong for you, instead. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have anything to look forward to.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again –“Live with pain but don’t live IN it.” Honor your pain so you can honor happiness more. A real victory is not won from beginning to end. A real victory is being hurt, injured, and scarred for most of the battle but emerging as the survivor. A real victory takes away everything from you only to give back everything and so much more.

A real victory honors pain but lives through it so stories may be told and memories may be passed on. A real victory looks at pain through its mocking eyes and says to its face, “I honor you but, bring it on, motherfucker.”