For All the One-Way Chickens in the World!!!

We have no one to blame. There were never any clue – no warning signage mounted on fences, no classless writings threatening us on random walls, no daily notifications sent through our e-mails or cell phones, no bill that has ever passed in the House of Representatives – but the answer is everywhere. History has told us again and again and we have listened. We return to the stories, trying to absorb all that was there, to check on what could we change. We return to the stories, we read them to ourselves, until we slowly realize how the names change. How the names become ours. The story becomes ours.

Robbie Ross for Oscar Wilde, Pip for Estella, Glen Close for Michael Douglas, Takemoto for Hagumi, Gio Alvarez for Jolina Magdangal, and a friend of yours for another –they all have warned us. But we are ever drawn to the light, to the heat, that we know can burn us down. It is maybe a disease everyone must once have but could never be immune from. It is maybe somewhat a rite of passage that life requires us to go through before we actually get to live. It maybe is in our nature to love taking that uncertain road that leads us to that certain destination: the dead end where we linger on even when there’s no reason given for us to stay.

There’s no need discussing the phenomenon that is being unloved. The only next thing universal after being in love is not being loved back. We all know this. We all know the dynamics and the complexities. There is no explanation that is needed or called for; each of us would have different answers anyway. There is no justification that is obliged for us to do or invent; because the victims themselves are pretty good lawyers and the accused ones are much loved to be put in jail. We also can’t get a hold of the evidences because, most probably, they are still too broken and couldn’t make it to court. So forget the trial, screw the judicial system (or the judge if he/she is hot enough), and let us try celebrate the tragedy that has plagued as all. Let us rejoice, because grieving and ranting is old news and pretty pathetic. Let us celebrate because although it might sound stupid, at least we can say we tried handling it the other way.

For loading your cell phone credits just because he/she texted you.
Cheers.
For waiting for hours just to catch a glance of him/her glancing at you.
Cheers.
For them not noticing you had a haircut, a rebond, a new t-shirt or a pair of new shoes.
Cheers.
For them not noticing your presence… or your absence.
Cheers.
For their ability to melt your pride away with even just a toothless smile.
Cheers.
For the either gentle or brutal rejections they have given you just when you finally have had the guts to confess.
Cheers.
For them giving you the “You Are Such a Good Friend” speech.
Cheers.
For the “thank yous” they give you after a heartfelt and sometimes rehearsed sweet monologue you recite.
Cheers.
For the ears of your friends who have gotten tired of you saying his/her name.
Cheers.
For your vocal chords which you practically have abused after numerous teary karaoke sessions.
Cheers.
For whatever out-of your-idea-of-ordinary things that you have done in the name of this “thing”.
Cheers.
For that miraculous morning you wake up to and realize that you have finally moved on.
Cheers.
For that yet faceless and nameless someone who would surprisingly break the curse one unexpected day.
Cheers.
For the heaps and heaps of effortless happiness he/she has given you without him/her knowing about it.
Cheers.

Stupid they may call us for dashing into the fire, or slowly flapping or wings on it despite history’s warnings. We have no one to blame. And there is not one to blame us. Celebrate, folks, for so bravely we have loved and so gallantly have endured the bullshitty things that come with it. Return to the stories. Return to our stories. There is so much to learn from them that history provides, but we actually learn from the stories in which we truly are essentially a part of.

For love.
Cheers.

Sick of ‘Singlehood’ (3rd of 3 parts)

This part covers:

How do people experience the El Niño Phenomenon especially in December?

What is your black hole?

For what reason do we need the mirror for updates?

How do you choose happiness when it’s not on the menu?

Dark clouds for your drought hearts…

You come to find yourself in that moment, after hibernating from the wilderness, where you stare at the person and you say to yourself, shit, here I go again.

So, finally, the search is over. Our drought hearts finally find themselves under furious clouds of gray. So these barren lands, longing for flowers to bloom upon them, thirstily hang their mouths open, waiting for one single drop to start the downpour. And then later on, as that single drop of kindness, of empathy, of compassion, of concern, of flirtation reaches our drooling selves, we get ourselves ready for the most-awaited event: the end of famine. We, with all hope and eyes closed, stupidly offer ourselves to the coming rain only to find out once we have opened our eyes that the dark clouds that seemed to promise us rain are bound to pour the blessings on another land.

Assume makes an “ass” out of “u” and “me”. – Vicka

The biggest problem with people who have had their hearts in hiatus for a long time is their gullibility from anything remotely close to the affection they have so long awaited, been deprived of. One kind gesture, one exhibition of interest, one act of appreciation, we find ourselves draining into a black hole of retarded false hopes we ourselves created. Sometimes we aren’t even really in love with these people. Sometimes we are just in love with the idea of finally being in love. However, thinking that you are in love for quite some time actually gets you to truly being in love and that trouble is, as we all know, harder to get out of.

Apparently, the unconscious part of our brains is more powerful, because our conscious selves, though desperately trying to move on, are still stagnant. Hope is not volitional, hope is unconscious, hope is inevitable. And no matter how many times we tell our prying-but-beloved friends that we are no more expecting anything in return, hope lies beneath our lines. It is there. And as long as we love, we are sheltering the hope that is keeping us from taking our medications and reaching our recovery.

So we continue to twirl, tumbling around the black hole. Trying to fly, trying to swim, and trying to climb out of the situation, but still unable to return to the surface. And once we hit the infinite darkness of the situation, our hearts get broken – their shattered pieces floating throughout space – and we feel so damn stupid for the hole we have dug for a supposedly blossoming flower turns into the grave in which we have pushed ourselves into.

Kingdom Broken Hearts

And so once again, we enter the realms of the kingdom for the unloved ones, where the townspeople are mostly great alcohol drinkers, many are writers (who use their wrists as paper, Gillette shaving blades as their pen), and of course, die-hard fans of Typecast – whose members have been knighted by the king (cue: ‘The Infatuation is Always There’).

As much as you, and even I, are tired of this subject, we cannot help but talk about this because it is a global experience. The next thing universal after falling in love is being unloved. Happy endings are for no one but the people who have nothing else to hold on to but a little hope from Walt Disney. We all have to be unloved to truly appreciate what it’s like to be loved. However, no matter how we need this experience of getting shit in exchange of the love we offer and give, it is human nature to long and wish for reciprocation. And this wish and longing is a hundred fold greater if you are one of those who have been singular for God knows how long. Because when you are in the clearance sale section of the department store and still haven’t found a buyer, whether you are a signature jacket or a Pikachu printed t-shirt, you will find your ego all the way to the basement parking area.

But then again, when it all comes down to it, lovers are not measured for how much they have been loved. We are measured for how much we have loved. So, as much as we’d love to be loved, we must realize that the greatness of one’s love is not determined by how long and much you have been loved. When it comes to love, how much you love or you have loved overtakes any other criterion any other person could tell you to consider. (Do you realize how much I have repeated the word love in this paragraph? Disgusting.)

Because there are many fish in the sea…

However, (such things have an infinite number of “howevers”) we owe ourselves something: happiness. After a long wait and/or search for someone to love and to love you, and failing to find the latter, okay, love as long as you love (or you can love). But the thing is, your love for someone doesn’t entitle that person to have you imprisoned in your love for him/her, nor does it prohibit you from continuing the search for someone who can return the grand favor. That is not fooling yourself nor being unfair to the next one. That is being mature enough to embrace the truth that in this world, there are just some people who cannot love you, but their inability to do so does not make them any less human or you, any less deserving. (But please feel free to check the mirror for updates.)

We owe ourselves the happiness we keep on looking for from someone else. Many people say that happiness is a choice, and some are strong enough to live by that belief. But I will choose to stay in the gray area. We can choose happiness, yes, but only to a certain extent. People can be self-supporting but never self-sufficing. There will come a time when we will need someone to provide a different happiness – the kind that we cannot give to ourselves.

I have once asked in one of my blog posts, “How do you choose happiness when it’s not on the menu?” Now I thought, no matter how much you love a restaurant there is no point in staying for far too long and waste your precious time on some place that can never give you what you are asking for. There will come a time when we need to give up on something to face something that could potentially give us what we want. It doesn’t make us failures, it makes us mature. If you don’t succeed, you don’t really fail unless you refuse to learn anything from the experience. So now that I ask myself this same question, I think I finally have a valid answer. How do you choose happiness when it’s not on the menu? Okay. Pay your bill, give the waiter a tip if you want to, get on your feet, get to the door and find another place that’s serving it.

(We can do this, hooray!)JMRS

Sick of ‘Singlehood’ (2nd of 3 parts)

This part covers:

Do you drink or have casual sex when you are heartbroken?

If time wounded you, what else is there to heal you?

What is the most obscene metaphor for waiting ever written on a blog entry?

Does it even make sense, or is it just the writer’s desperate attempt on witticism?

Are you self-supporting?

(The opening questions are meant to warn you: this post is superbly emo.)

When you are in love with someone who cannot and will not love you back, your share of happiness mostly comes with bottles of beer shared with friends, or 3-hour stays in motels where you – of course – check in and out… and in and out. And those moments, we always wish to prolong them – through skipping shots or muscle control, usually – so they will hover long enough for us to believe. Believe the superficial world where the person with whom you want to share your happiness but gives you otherwise does not exist, or if that person does, the barrier you’ve created is impenetrable by that stupid person who cannot see your worth (or finds it gross to even look at you). The world is yours, and with you are the ones you think have made it worth preserving. But not for long.

Eventually, the world you’ve created trembles (leaving you wasted or exhausted). Demons appear from beneath the earth and they come to haunt you, clothed in your secrets and your memories. They will torment you, as someone throws up on your pants or the bellboy knocks on your door, and your impenetrable barrier finally pops broken leaving you more fragile than ever. So it is then that you realize the moment is gone, reality has resurfaced and it has made a punching bag out of your face, loser.

Pendulum swings…

The world that we are in is a world composed of people who have been exposed to too much influence that there already is a scarcity of originality. Our lives are cliches. History has made it clear. We are following paths people in the past have already created, already mapped out. Hence, I will start this segment with the line: time heals all wounds. (Because we are in dire need of originality.)

For the what-is-your-motto part, kids write on their slum books “time is gold” because they don’t want to waste time, while grown-ups engrave on their heads “time heals all wounds” because they don’t feel like they have the time to waste. [Cut to: love being the context] So if we spend time on nothing or no one, we would definitely like to think that it’s for the best – that it’s for recovery.

After a terrible heart-break, we try to condition ourselves that every moment we spend is another chance for our hearts to heal. And as much as that cliche has become too used to use, damn, it never will become obsolete. If it does, to what else can we hold on to give us hope? Invent another cliche? No. So, we have to believe it because not believing it is too damn hard! But what if the pendulum sharpens and becomes the one that gets you wounded. Time heals all wounds, sure, but what if time has wounded you? What else is there to heal you?

Waiting. It is developing calluses after several months of celibacy. You can’t just do nothing,(or no one, for that matter) so you do “it” because you have no choice. You become self-supporting but not self-sufficing (people are never self-sufficing). We can succeed and become able to create or do something out of the nothingness that we are in. However, one day, you will get too tired of the nothingness despite your “something-ness” and find in yourself that the nonexistence of someone who could potentially hurt you or satisfy you, never satisfies you and actually hurts you. Boredom is excruciating, pain is entertainment. Go ’round them circles.

No, being single is not that bad. Your time is all yours. Your money is all yours. You can sleep around because even your genitals are all yours. So being single does not suck as much as this entry has made it sound. The problem is preference, choice. The problem is the ever-powerful human longing for intimacy, for that unfathomable connection, for love. That’s why, although many of us enjoy being single, most people bellow to have a love life. And then this clamoring over their drought hearts leads people to a search. The search that brings everyone’s lives to the height of excitement, and to the height of pain. Go ’round them circles… [Evil laugh.]JMRS

S.o.S: Sick of Singlehood (1/2)

For those who have been straying all around the same place for quite a long time.
(Okay. This should be weird, coming from a consistent late-comer.)

If I were to write a Things-We-People-Should-Get-Used-To list, I think I will have Waiting on the number one slot. Let us face it. Waiting is one thing we know so well, we loathe as much. We wait, everyday of our lives, for the littlest of things up to those with life-changing magnitude. Girls wait for their nails to dry after a manicure, and for the princes who will tell them they would like another shade of pink better(and then offer to do their nails regularly himself… yeah). Boys wait for their parents to go out so that they can play their fathers’ latest porn flick, and for the girls who will let them mimic the exhibitions they have grown very fond of(only to find themselves doing “it” with a Basketball teammate… yeah).

The number of times that we will get to wait is probably more than the days we will ever get to live. And the sum of all the time we spend on waiting(for anything) could be just as much as the time we have to spend alive. Waiting preys on time. Time preys on us. And maybe, that is why we hate waiting so much. Because we somehow know that, as waiting kills time, waiting kills us with it.

Yes, for the nth time, this is about love! Or, should I say, lack thereof…

We are killing time, through the process that kills us with it. We endure every cruel second with despair, welcome every unfolding moment with hope. “The waiting will soon be over, soon be over.” And as we bore ourselves with the stagnant state that we are in, we come to know ourselves better, realize things we were never really aware of. We ponder on those that have hurt us in the past and think of the time we spend on waiting as, paradoxically, the IV pole for our comatose hearts.

So as our hearts lie on their ICU beds, fed intravenously by mundane distractions or friends’ nights out, we, as if worried parents, peek through the glass window and check every development – every throb, every movement that seemed to be a sign of a potential reawakening, a potential new life. And everytime we are proven wrong, stupidly hopeful as we are, we still manage to tell ourselves the old, classic cliche about time being able to heal everything to make ourselves believe that we, actually, are healing. And again, we peek by the window, where we see our hearts still in their vegetative state.

“Hello!? Do you know what TIME is it!?”

Morgan Freeman, as God in “Evan Almighty”, said that if you wish to have patience, do not expect Him to make you patient, but give you an opportunity to be patient instead. Well, I don’t have issues with the writer/s of “Evan Almighty”(I don’t know who they are, don’t even know if they are, er, “plural”) or Morgan Freeman(we are not that close) or God Himself(I shouldn’t have even dragged His name into this), but in behalf of everyone who has been having this “opportunity” for too long that “persecution” already is the more appropriate term for it, I must say this(If you are one of them, please read the following line with feelings):
ARE WE NOT PATIENT ENOUGH!? WaterFetcher

(End of Part One)

The Bitterness Induced by Happy Exes

For those who got back on their feet… last.

“Mukha siyang saging(He looked like a banana)“, I told my friend when she asked me how he looked like. My answer was very abrupt that I didn’t even realize what I said until she chuckled and replied, “Bitter”. It was like my head was in auto-pilot mode. It did the only thing it can do in my situation: verbally rapture the person that is now very happy elsewhere… with someone I used to be happy with – here.

You can’t expect me to be happy about this! (sobs)

Breaking up is like death. Not that it can kill you (and not that it can’t). The self just goes through the same processes after it. One, Denial or the “You’re just kidding, right?” Stage. Two (some prefer to skip this), Pleading or the “Don’t leave me. No one else could ever love you like I do” Stage. Three, Anger or the “I hope you conceive monkeys in the future, bitch!” Stage.  Four, Acceptance or the “Okay, I am setting you free but please know that I love you” Stage. Five, Grieving or the “I am so emo now and you can’t do anything about it” Stage. Six, Moving On or the “Oh, hi! How are you!?” Stage. (panting)

But quite unlike death, where if ever something new has begun, we don’t get to see it unless we choose to follow, in breaking up there are instances where the Moving On Stage gives way for a stage that is very… upstaging. Bitterness. The stage where most people get stuck in, especially if their exes has stuck with someone else.

The “You looked better when you were still with me” Stage.

OH, YES, it is hard to be the ones to get up last. Because we are the ones who have to endure the piercing look of everyone who has heard the news. We are the ones who need to experience every friend’s hand on our shoulder – while they assure us everything’s going to be okay and make us remember that we are the miserable ones. We are the ones cursed to enjoy every sunset reminiscing and face reality as the sun finally disappears and the darkness fetches us to where we rightfully belong. And then we get to think – how stupid we were to think we were actually happy and how we still unavoidably hope that that person will finally see the light and come knocking on our doors asking us for a second chance.

Fairy tale! When we are left with nothing but the misery and they are in a cheap motel, or the mall, or the SUNKEN f***ing GARDEN, doing “the old in-out-in-out” or simply ‘texting’ love quotes that we composed ourselves, I suggest that we go bitter about it guys! You know you want to…

Be bitter about it and have a better life! It is definitely not our obligation to tell them or wish for them to be happy. Besides, they will love “f**k yourselves” better. Sometimes people try to be very good lovers – generous and kind – to the point that they try to forget how much they are hurting. Let us not tolerate the pain. Let us retaliate with the only weapon we have. Let us be bitter and then we will find in our words how much love we have for ourselves. (Evil grin here.)

Rant! Let us not keep our friends out of this, give them something to be tired about. Or if you want to, go throw things, break things! Scream! Curse your ex! Tell the world how bad the smell of his feet can get or how she has sandpaper-like armpits! That’s okay. No one will judge you. They will know just how bitter you are. And maybe, when you finally realize the value of the love you have given and remember how it has been refused, we can find ourselves stopping.

Maybe.

The reason why we can’t help but become bitter is because we can’t stop hurting. This is love in its most rued phase. This is love in its unbearable reaping. So how can we resist the pain? How can we choose happiness when it is not on the menu? And how do we accept the fact that the one thing that made us feel so alive in the past is the very thing that is killing us now? How do we defy love? How do we fight the hurt caused by something as powerful as that? And finally, how do you fight something that resides in your heart without having to break it yourself?

Bitterness is a double-edged knife… or not.

If there is one thing about this ‘thing’ that people keep on telling themselves, it is “I have to stop someday”. There are many things that we are uncertain of, but the end is a constant. There is no stopping the end. And when you are consumed by an astounding sadness that binds you with a devouring bitterness, the least thing you can do is to hold on to that belief – the end is coming and not even your love can stop it.

The thing I hate most about bitterness though, is how it falsifies happiness. We really can feel better if we choose to be bitter; a very powerful anesthesia. But for how long can we stay out of this pain? When we are hurt, our friends can tell us they understand our pain, but we are the only ones who really know that pain and thus the only ones who have the right to decide how to mend it. And the popular way is the path we don’t really decide to take. It’s like we’re sleepwalking; the unconscious takes over, and we become bitter.

And so, many of us cannot help but become bitter, cannot wake from their dream(or nightmare). Our not-really-chosen way of shielding ourselves from the crowd’s painful glances, from our own pain-inflicting memoirs. However, one day, the bitterness – it has got to stop. We have got to stop. Because the truth about bitterness that sucks the most will always creep on us at night. The truth, that no matter how embittered we are, how much cursing we do, how many dirty secret of our exes we post on our blogs or how many needles we pierce on our named-after-my-ex voodoo dolls, it doesn’t change our situations. They are the happy ones. We are the ones left languishing. So where does bitterness take us? Where do you find yourself now?

ARE YOU IN LOVE WITH A FRIEND? (3/3)

“In friendship, as in love, we are often more happy
from the things we are ignorant of than from those we are acquainted with.”
- Francois de la Rochefoucauld

This friendship is based in honesty… but omitting little facts is not lying, right?

A lot of things has been written and said about the truth. In the film “Y tu Mama Tambien”, a character said that the truth is great but unattainable; a teacher of mine once said that sometimes, it is just matter of consensus; the less imaginative -but nonetheless correct- ones say that it hurts and will set us free. As for me, as far as loving a friend in secret is concern, the truth is like America during Philippine’s post-Hispanic era – it leads our short lived independence to a World War II.

“Honesty is the best policy” says Cervantes, but “honesty is such a lonely word” counters Billy Joel (try to get the sense out of it, haha). “Everyone is so untrue”, he continues singing his heart out with the veins on his neck protruding like swollen spaghetti. We know what hinders the truth from coming out in any situation – pride and/or fear. Even when it comes to loving a friend, the same two things exist. They are the greatest impediments to everyone’s happy ending, and the ultimate barrier against heart-shattering, self-destroying, catatonia-inducing and soul-wrecking beloved friends. (insert a fake smile here)

So with pride and fear, we continue a not-false-just-not-transparent bond with our I-turn-your-heart-into-a-giant-sub woofer friends, cherishing every moment. Loving them as long as we love them. Being a friend as long as they permit as to be a friend. Secretly smelling their fragrant hair while their looking at the other way. Willingly running to them when they are temporarily paralyzed. Or writing incredibly pathetic blog entries, like this (Ouch, that hurt). And when we feel the urge to vomit the truth, we realize how much of a giveaway our actions are and decide to play a little “hard to get”. There may be pride or fear in our hearts, but, those do not stop us from loving them. We give and show them love beyond words, minus the magic words. But love, without the saying the word love, is love nonetheless. What change can pride and fear do about that?

Oh. I forgot. We are human beings. The most intelligent and most dense of all creatures. Our own and our own kind’s not-so-common common sense interferes with the conversation of our actions. That makes it harder, I guess. Somehow, we are obliged to say the words as if it is the password to the kingdom of heaven. Like saying those words is a prerequisite for happiness. Well, in this aspect, I see no point in complaining. Let us be fair, fellow “club” members. We all want to hear, don’t we? Because assuming is never, as in N-E-V-E-R, healthy and the words, if they are ever speakable by our “friends”, they are too damn good music that we cannot bear not to hear.

It is truly a relief, being able to say something that has pierced our hearts and strayed in our throats for so long. Especially, if it concerns someone as special as a friend. A friend deserves honesty. And I believe, that friendship requires sharing the truth even without having to wait for the other party to ask questions. Moreover, I think that real friendship is strong enough to understand and accept the truths -and consequences- that this bond requires. But in love, there really is no such thing as absolutely right, is there? Besides, we may be part of the same club, but we still have different hearts that languish for different pains. However, if there’s one thing I myself, believe about the truth, this is it: The truth is powerful enough to see to it that, in time, it will be able to reveal itself. And when it does, who cares if a World War comes with it, when we all know that a tortured but still beating heart is very well trained for one hell of an action!

(I’m trying to be very optimistic here.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

When the siren is too loud to ignore…

I started writing about this kind, our kind, of unrequited love with somewhat a disgust for our stupidity.  Our choice of who to love. Friends? What choice could get “more stupider” than that? (I’m not going to take that back.) But, in love we (1) could get really stupid, (2) realize that we are being stupid but refuse to do anything about it – making us undoubtedly stupid and (3)  realize that stupidity in love is a global tragedy and is almost acceptable. Okay, I’m starting to sound stupid. Gosh. I am so in love right now. Ugh!

But seriously, I find stupidity as one very unsound argument for this thing we’re in. We feel stupid, yes. But I don’t think we really are. Because we are not in control. “Love is a force of nature*.” And it is not in the nature of love to be totally rational. And in love, when it comes to to whom we give our love, we don’t really get to choose. We just get to love. And that is enough.
Every secret, they say, is bound to be out in the open. Perhaps, on a less conscious level, we, the Oh-I-Love-You-My-Friend-More-Than-I’m-F***ing-Supposed-To Club, are not only aware, but believers of this theory, too. It is impossible that the thought of confessing our oh-so-consummated-but-not-identified love never crossed our mind. In fact, we always have the urge to spill everything and come clean. Whoever wants skeletons in their closet? But maybe, just like a kid who keeps on hanging a sock every Christmas Eve, we are hoping that if we hold on long enough to our secrets, even though we know that Santa Claus already got himself fossilized in the North Pole, there might be someone who would sneak in while we are buried in our dreams to put little goodies inside and fill up that dusty piece of sock that has been empty for so long. JMRS

(End of Part Three)

P.S.
We really are in deep sh*t guys.

*Tagline of the movie “Brokeback Mountain”

ARE YOU IN LOVE WITH A FRIEND? (2/3)

For those who are stupid enough to cross that line, relish everything. BWAHA.

Pros and Cons… maybe just cons.

If there is one advantage falling for a friend has, that is the absence of distance. We have complimentary tickets to their dramas. Front and center. We can smell sweat – or whatever unpleasant smelling fluids! We have direct access to classified information without having to show our FBI identification cards. And for some, a chance to get a little physical (holding hands, hugs, kisses, or sleepovers) and convince everyone that what you have is purely Platonic.

They are also relatively comfortable doing and showing things they would not let anyone “unimportant” to see and know. They won’t hesitate farting in front of us. Picking their nose and rolling the cakes with their fingertips around us. When they’re about to throw up, they choose us to come with them and do the cheering. We see them as they are. Black and white and fuzzy grays. And that makes us genuine lovers.

Imagine, abiding rule number two (see Part One), we get to spend more time with the ones we love and we have every opportunity to help them every step of the way(you can take this seriously during those drunken nights). How is that for generosity, huh! We do things with them any stalker they have could only dream of! So in spite of the secret that we hide from them, we find happiness in the idea of just being really with them without the hassle of having lover’s quarrels.

(insert a heavy sigh here)

But then, after a night out with our friends, after the laughs and the goofing-around, we come to our own dark corners and find ourselves more alone than ever. And even after how many paragraphs I write glorifying our positions as the great privileged ones, when the shadows of our situations emerge in solitude, comes the backfire.

We are not privileged – or at least that’s not how we really feel. We feel deprived. Deprived of something we feel we are so deserving to have – their love. Because at the end of the day, when the truth dawns in to reap the facade, our reality resurfaces. We maybe close to – or even intimate with – the ones we love, but we are as remote as any spectator to our relationship with them is. Because they don’t know a big heap of who we are. The part where we might get a chance to be called traitors in the future. Even more, it is the idea of being there but not being really seen that pedals the isolation into its overdrive mode (a.k.a. emo).

And so we find ourselves back to zero. Considering everything good said about this crappy mess we are in as null and void.The greatest disadvantage of loving a friend is feeling the distance despite the physical absence of it. JMRS

(End of Part Two)

ARE YOU IN LOVE WITH A FRIEND? (1/3)

If you have chosen to read this, I suppose that you are in love, were once in love or having doubts whether or not you are in love with a friend of yours. Yes. This is about it. The never outdated and ever popular tragedy of us human beings who happen to be stupid enough to cross… that… line.
(Siren wailing)

We are the ever loyal companions. The cheerleaders without their pompoms. The groupies of down and out rockstars. The reliable fairies of incredibly insensitive pricks. We are our very own Joe d’ Mango in love with his freakin’ listener! And the worst part is, we are not okay with it… but we choose to live with it. We are, undoubtedly, stupid. And it may be hard to accept, but, yes, we are far more stupid than our friends with whom we share this curse.

Love: universal and abstract, pleasure and pain, yin and yang. Love is the only phenomenon that reconciles everything opposite. And should we want to fall in this unfathomable abyss, I believe that there are three things we should remember. One, always value yourself and acknowledge your worth. Two, when in love, be generously in love. Three, it is inevitable that we forget number one.

I am pretty sure that on a less conscious level, people who are in love with their friends are aware of these three things. Because if not, why do they seem to have imposed number three so much on themselves?! Why do they seem to be such masochists?! They are too masochistic actually that they even invented number four! And it goes like this: if it is a friend of yours you are dealing with, read number two again.

Try confessing. And ruin everything later.

The happily-ever-after best friends.

Bujoy and Ned.
Palits and Bru.
Emmy and Vince.
Jenny and Nonoy.

They are actually characters from Star Cinema films*. They are the ones who had the balls (and the stomach) to confess and not care if everything gets all ruined up later. They are the ones who could not fight their feelings anymore and “BOOM!”, ruined years of friendship. But, because it’s Star Cinema, because it’s Jolina-Marvin and John Lloyd-Bea, of course they were able to fix the mess and end up in what most of us could only dream of: their share of happy ending.

So why don’t we just blurt out the truth and let everything break a fall when there’s the possibility of being happy? Why don’t we take the risk? I may be no master of this crap, but I believe I know enough. And this I know: we are simply afraid.

We are not afraid of love. We are afraid because we love. And when you love a friend, you value everything twice as much. You examine every inch, every possibility, with fascinatingly careful senses. Because when you love a friend, you are also more aware. And awareness of the situation in this case is understanding that what we are handling, although pillars that have been standing for ages, are far more delicate than glass.

So we try to distract ourselves with other people. We try, sometimes desperately, indulging into different pleasures. We want to date. We want our other friends to hook us up with someone. We try. Because we feel forbidden. And I believe there’s nothing wrong with trying to get out especially if getting out means putting something very precious to safety. Some people would call it cowardice. Some would call it strength. Others, would go overboard and say we are being noble. But more than anything, it is friendship. JMRS

(End of Part One)
*The Star Cinema flms.
Bujoy(Jolina Magdangal) and Ned(Marvin Agustin) from “Labs Kita Okey Ka Lang?”.
Palits(John Lloyd Cruz) and Bru(Bea Alonzo) from “Close to You”.
Emmy(Sharon Cuneta) and Vince(Aga Muhlach) from “Kung Ako na Lang Sana”.
Jenny(Claudine Barretto) and Nonoy(Mark Anthony Fernandez) from “Mangarap Ka”.

The Waterfetcher’s Thoughtbook Goes Online

I have always had this thing for words. The first time I had used my words to ever create anything was when I was too young to even know how to write. So my mother wrote the poems I made for her for me. She’d always say how I would pick a flower – usually santan – and hand it to her as I murmur words.  I’m sure the “poems”, as my mother would call them, are not really good. And no, I was never featured on a Promil TVC. But if that proved anything, that is my love for words. A love that has stayed and grew humongous in me.

It was in 2nd year high school when I started keeping a thoughtbook. It is where I write everything I feel and think. It is more than a diary. It is more of a companion. And after filling several of these “companions” for several years, of course I won’t let the much “tamer” – but nevertheless promising – words miss having to loiter around the vast fields of modern technology. As I keep the wilder ones in my hands(they are too destructive in a sense), these ones are going to see the light of the cyberspace!

And for my first post here in WordPress, I am assuring my future readers that even though I do not offer flowers with words anymore, the Waterfetcher’s Online Thoughtbook will be one hell of a flower farm.

This is going to be fun.