topsy-turvy

I’ve been having flashbacks of my first time to step foot in Trinoma, for a gaming company’s event, where my former bestfriend hosted. It was bright and confusing, but at that moment, everything was great and clear and exciting. It was one of those moments when I treasured having someone to call a “Bes”. Someone to support, and someone who needed me.

******

It’s one of those days when I know my feelings are valid, because I’m sure I’m not experiencing PMS, and I have pretty good evidence that these things are real and I’m not just hyperbolic.

I’m feeling topsy-turvy. My former bestfriend is getting married in a week, and or course, the RSVP needs to be filled out, not only for her, but for the rest of our friends as well. I’ve been saying for a year that I won’t go: after all, it was this decision to marry that nailed the lid to the coffin of our long-suffering friendship. It’s not that I’m sour-graping; I may not support the union, but I’m glad she has found her soulmate, and seems to be heading for a blissful if naive life ahead of her.

The reason I opt not to go is that I know it will be weird. It will be emotional for me, to not even be asked to be on her entourage, after 8 years of friendship. I don’t want it to be about me, but knowing myself, I would not be able to help it. That she’s getting married without my help or nor even a little of involvement, or even knowledge of what she went through in the wedding preparations, that stings. I try to let it slide off my back, but it really really hurts. She did not need me. I was cut off my bestfriend’s life without remorse. It was that easy.

I don’t want to taint what is to be the “happiest day of her life” with a bitterness I can’t help but feel. Can’t I even pretend to be supportive? I am supportive. I know she doesn’t want to hear anything from me so I’ve shut up and quietly slinked off her life. Sure, we chat sometimes, and I still can’t help updating her occasionally of my life-swirling troubles, but as far as we’re both concerned, our friendship is in limbo. We’re fair-weather friends. We are not close.

I could easily say that this was the biggest loss in my life. To lose a friend not to death but to life circumstances. The pain resonates deep within me that even if I try to hide it and bury it beneath reason and logic and other relationship templates, it still hurts.

I’ve long made up my mind to not be at her wedding. But now, my ex bestfriend has hinted on giving me the physical invite for her wedding, and I have to tell her pointblank that I’m not going. Also, friends have appealed that I go, because I owed it to the whole group to be there for each other if not for Mitch.

I don’t know what to feel about that. But I guess I won’t make a final final decision until I’ve talked to Mitch about it. I owe her that at least.

*************

It’s become more frequent that I feel overwhelmed by this thing they call falling in love.

It’s not that I hate it, but it is an inconvenience, especially to rational thinking. This is something I cannot explain, because I still believe I have no business falling in love this hard and this fast.

This is cannonballing into a heartbreak.

Still, knowing he loves me makes every loss bearable.

-It’s a terrible, terrible mistake, Chubs,

but you turn out to be the fucking love of my life.

Love Actually (2003)

Dear lover,

Just in case you’re reading my blog though i asked you not to (because I know you’re makulit),

I love you. :*

dude, I’m a girlfriend???

wow. WOW.

I would really be crass if I posted the entire conversation here, but I really really want to. Just to share my happiness.

Ok, maybe happiness is not the right term yet. It really hasn’t dawned on me. It’s more of a crying-fest right before the actual ‘officialization’, and the buzz in knowing that someone loves me.

Oh gosh, I even get the thrill down my spine at the thought. Someone loves me. Actually loves me. I find it really really strange. I can make someone happy by just existing. And wonder of wonders, I feel the same!

Now I understand when they say that your heart is jumping in your chest.

Blabber.

Now see here.

I am very aware of the fact that no matter how many times I look at your Facebook profile, or read the stuff you litter the web with, you shall not fall in love with me. No matter how much I stalk you online, there is no way you shall like me that way.

No matter how long I stare at your picture.

No matter how many ways I imagine us together.

No matter how many reasons I come up with to justify this unsettling feeling.

No matter how much “evidence” I present on your maybe liking me a bit.

Reality is, you still would not like me that way.

And honestly, I’m fine with it. I’m just not fine with this useless overthinking; like chewing a gum that has long past lost its flavor. It gives me a headache.

But I can’t seem to stop my mind from going at it. It’s worse during times when there is no reason for me to remember you; but I do. You come out from nowhere and your face would flash before my eyes, clouding everything else. I’d suddenly remember your smile, something you said, something you did, something connected with you, no matter how vague and indirect. And I’d smile. Or I’d laugh, even when I’m alone. Or even when I’m not alone, which makes the laugh even more awkward.

I can’t believe I like you, when you don’t even fulfill the first few tenets of my standards. Maybe this is just me being flattered by the attention, but really. You’re bothering me more than I would like.

Not that it’s your fault you’re always on my mind. It’s not your fault that my first instinct on whatever you do is to pretend that it’s about me, even when it’s not. It’s not your fault I’m a frickin’ ashumera bitch, that hopes and hopes that you like me that way too (and secretly thinks that you WERE jealous and that flatters me and gives me hope as well, but it’s really useless to think about it; it just pops out of my brain.)

But you don’t. And I know that. Because there is no sense in you liking me. You’re too cute and everyone wants you (which I know is not fair. It’s like there’s a pressure for you to choose and be in a relationship, when in reality you could opt to not be in one. It’s a frickin’ free country.) and I cannot compete with all of them. Somewhere you have met someone like me, so there is no chance of my ever impressing you, so I try not to even bother.

Plus, you flatter everyone anyway. You’re a huge flirt: which is not bad at all, but really, it confuses girls (especially ones like me, whose lovelife and self-confidence are very malnourished). When you text me, or when you say things that don’t really sound so platonic, part of me goes all happy and giddy, while the other part is cursing you for doing this, and not meaning it.

I can go over and over with my girlfriends  all the things you did, and all the things you said, and still it would not mean that you like me.

None of it means anything until you tell me you do.

wait. what?

Oh no you did not.

You did not just say those words to me. Those words that go straight to my brain to be oscillated and decoded and stripped of their non-meaning. You did not just place a seed of doubt and panic and possibility of joy in my mind, to be sucked down to my heart and used to plant that seed of destruction.

I draw the line at your saying something that obtuse. Actions and small affectations, I can forgive. That would be just me interpreting things wrongly. But you saying this?! It is completely unacceptable.

Because who could answer that? Who could answer that without being mollified and shocked and rocked out of her little bubble of non-feeling? “What does it take for you to like me?”

What. The. Effing. Fuck.

Please wait while I pick up my brain. It shattered all over the place.

++++++++++++

Note to self: Denice, please write down your shit when you’re having your periodic Illusions of Grandeur. Just so the rest of your moods can remember, and maybe learn something from it.

As far as the above rant is concerned, I understand that you are very much rattled and your imagination has already flown off distant islands. Still, come back to earth. He doesn’t like you that way. He’s just saying things.

I don’t love you/ I’m just passing the time/

You could love me if I knew how to lie/

But who could love me/ I am out of my mind/

Throwing the line out to sea/

To see if I can catch a dream

-She Had The World, Panic at the Disco

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on looking at it differently.

So I’m back from the Karting event, and I brought home a hell of a bruise on my inner thigh as a souvenir. Yay!

The event was at the scene of the crime, which actually, is a whole lot less sinister than I expected. It’s not as if I hated the place. Knowing me though, I braced myself for the onslaught of delayed bitterness as I came back to the place after a year. I still remembered the spots, I still remember how it all looked like then, but the expected bitterness did not come. Probably it helped that the atmosphere was different, and that I was making new memories with people I actually like.

It was funny, actually. It did not feel very much different this morning. I was admittedly apprehensive, even thought of begging off the trip with the excuse that I was too sick, too cough-y to go. I figured that was lame though; plus, how will my boys ever get on without me? (This is what I love about my new team. I feel like such a girl around them. But I digress.)

So I did go. It wasn’t much different  from how I remembered it before, but I was saved from reminiscing by constant chatter from the twins, and gratefully distracting conversation. I did not remember last year.

Well, not not remember. At least, I remembered the events, but all the feelings and emotions were gone. I can talk about it without the snideness and sarcasm and bitterness.

According to Robert Greene’s The Art of Seduction, you should bring your target to an a) isolated place, away from the banality of everyday life, and b) a place that is perfect for regression– a sort of coming back to the time in your childhood when trusting was very easy, and joys were very simple. That place is perfect for that.

It was perfect place to heal too. Each ride, each new experience opened up to me was something my brain resisted (it kept screaming in my head what an utterly foolish and dangerous activity the current ride was, and the only reason my body did not obey the screaming was the thought that I couldn’t leave the ride anyway even if I wanted to. So I shut up and didn’t let on how effing afraid I was. But I digress.), yet my heart accepted everything with a sort of relieved gratefulness. It told me I am not brave, but I am strong. I’d live through anything.

emotional tissue

After littering plurk with vague allusions to my current state and such, I realized what a prick I’m being so I might as well write a complete blog about it, rather than chuck bits of emotional tissue at unsuspecting plurkmates.

So yes. My plan of sloshing myself with alcohol the weekend after the BIG BREAK was a huge fail, drunkeness-wise. Still, it was an enlightening evening/really early morning on the phone, with the last person I would have counted on to Listen, but of whom I shouldn’t have been surprised. At that time, he was what I needed. I needed to be scolded, to be told I was wrong, to be analyzed without all the bullshit I justify myself with. So, if you’re bored and you’re reading this, I want to say this: THANK YOU. You are wonderful. Surprisingly.

The morning after, though, I wake up with a stinging feeling at the back of my throat, and my nasal cavities assailed by the dreaded colds. Colds usually come and go this season, but the inflamed tonsil was an omen of speechlessness to come. True enough, I am currently relying on a blasted Mickey Mouse whiteboard in order to communicate.

How ironic that I have spent months and months of not being able to Talk, and when I finally did, my voice decides to take a vacation to the far off island of Tonsilitis and Disease. It’s like being told cosmically: You’ve said your piece. Now shut up.

I love, though, that my silence now is tempered with a sense of meditation. That conversation last night shook me up, and allowed me to settle so I can find my center. It enlightened me to my actual motivations, instead of the shit I keep telling myself (see, that’s the danger of talking to yourself. You always tend to agree with each other). It showed me how the other person might have felt, and told me plainly what my fault was. Yes, I’ve been too emotional. Yes, I have abused my victim card. Yes, I was petty and bitter and I was resisting change.

Add all of that to the unfortunate Circumstance, and it was an inevitable disaster.

One thing he kept telling me, that guy on the phone, was that for someone who is supposedly open, I had a hard time transferring the “relationship template” to other people, especially when my current templateurs are moving to other directions. Yes, that is very true. Somehow, I layer my friendships. There are categories. There are very high expectations (which reminds me of someone else telling me that I am too intense.) There are definitions.

But I forgot one thing. Friendship cannot be defined. It is a free-flowing thing, you do not force it. By labeling it with categories and assigning expectations to it, I sullied the thought of unconditional love friends give freely, not to mention just bringing myself misery and inevitable disappointment.

I find it funny though, because I thought I was the last person who expected anything from anybody. I am pretty passive, I could easily adapt to whatever your plans are. Then I figure: I am demanding in lots of other ways, which is worse, because I go passive-aggressive on your ass about it.

Passive-aggressivity makes all my bitterness volatile, my grudges longer to bear, and my spite blow up to the point where I could make a very good villainess. Not the type to conquer the world, mind you, but the type who would exact revenge cold and with enough torture.

It is that passive-aggressive reaction to conflict that I must let go of.

*end of tissue roll*

**********

In other news, I have just finished Robert Greene’s Art of Seduction. I don’t really remember what drove me to search for the pdf, but I read it and found it engaging. It was interesting enough that even though I do not subscribe to some tenets of it, I get the urge to try. As a book, it is also very seductive. However, if it were ever a subject in school, I would have passed the Lec, and failed the Lab. Dismally.

I’ve told some people that I have decided to seduce someone, but in reality, I’m just too lazy to do so. I would be regretful of the effort I would have to exert. It’s fun, yes, but at the end of the day, I know I don’t like that person enough anyway. It’s too much energy for a goddamn whistle.

***********

oh, what do you call that again? Oh yes. Angst.

“Why do the best things in life sometimes come at the wrong time, when the only options are grab it now, or never have it again?”

So says a text message from my guy bestfriend. As much as I do not really like texted quotes (I have a very limited inbox in my crappy crappy phone), I found that I cannot delete this message. I agreed with it. Truly, the best things come by when you know that the wise thing to do is to just say no, and risk it to be gone forever.

But  isn’t that exactly the point? Temptation is no good unless it’s something you really really desire. To be able to say no to it is what builds your character; to be able to make that hard decision is what makes you great.  To not succumb to what is easy and frivolous is truly a very difficult predicament. But that is exactly the point. You will not build muscle unless you are given resistance.

*****

The past week had not been particularly hellish, but it was a huge struggle. For some reason, I cannot drum up enough energy to work properly, which in turn, screwed up my sense of urgency. I found my patience to be lower, and my appetite swung from being ravenous one minute, and everything-tastes-like-cardboard the next.

So. Classic sign of an impending painful period. Check.

Now that I am not so emotional though, I found that there were some points I am grateful for in retrospective.

It was Tuesday night that the previously dormant parent-daughter shouting match had been risen and wrecked havoc on all of Asia. Well, this dot of Marikina anyway. And the point of the argument: eating while working on their PC.
It was petty, but as parent-daughter shouting matches go, it escalated to topics I am not even sure what the point was. Overall though, daughter came out as the worst specimen in the world.

In restrospect though, it was good. I admit I have been slacking off, with everything. I had been depressed for a year now, which is probably the longest I’ve gone denying it.  Or not doing anything about it. My favorite therapy had always been bitching, but since there is no one to bitch to, I feel like everything is trapped inside, while trickles of the worst venom seep out and spread over everyone I talk to. Having my parents scream at me for something as inane as snacks next to the PC was partly refreshing, and partly a huge kicking in the balls (theoretically). I didn’t say it wasn’t annoying and stupid, but it did wake me up. You cannot build muscle when you’re slacking off.

Yes, I am grateful for troubles. I may bitch on and on about it, I may say that I don’t want it anymore, I may try to run away especially when I do not know what to do.

But being forced to face reality is what makes you strong. Feeling that weakness and helplessness and fighting it is what makes you great.

The battle is only truly won when you can appreciate what it took to get to the top.

******

I see my contemporaries now, and I know they’re living easy lives. I am living a fairly easy life. We have nothing to fight for. They say fight for democracy but we are so far beyond the reach of actually feeling it that we most of the time do not understand what we say. We don’t feel it, so we do not truly care.

To be honest, I do not truly care. I should, it is my duty. But my life is easy, and my troubles are limited to petty parental shouting matches, trivial work inconveniences, and irrelevant overthinking of a non-existent love life. My caring is limited to slacktivism, as some people now call it. It is frustrating, to have nothing to actually fight for.

I am living a shallow life, a life that is mostly make-believe because I cannot feel anything.

the post that was for last last Friday.

Someone said that celebrating Independence Day in the middle of the Con-Ass controversy is irrelevant already. I disagree. In truth, Independence Day should be even more celebrated. No matter what farce people say the 1898 Independence was, it was still the first moment in time we as Filipinos have declared that we deserve democracy. We stood up for ourselves that long long time ago. It should be celebrated.

I find it funny that it was Independence Day, but most people are either lamenting or rejoicing the Lakers’ win. Maybe it’s a hypocritical thing to say, as we as Filipinos can’t really help but root for basketball, but it’s amusing for me to watch people argue the Lakers vs. Orlando match. Uh, we’re neither from Florida nor LA. We are spectators, we don’t count in their “we”. We as Filipinos get affected by basketball, sure. But don’t count yourself as part of “them”. “They” don’t even consider you as part of “them”.

***********

Just because you feel an attraction doesn’t mean that you should act on it. There is still the very big consideration on whether it would work out. There is still that big consideration of whether you would actually stay together through thick and thin.

As much as I like this person right now to the point of distraction/madness/stupidity, I must restrain myself. We clearly do not have a future together. We are too alike and too different at the same time, in all the wrong ways. I should not even be thinking about this, much more write about it. But given the fact that I do not have a best friend anymore to use as a sounding board, I don’t think I have much choice but to write it down to ensure my sanity.

It is very difficult, not having a best friend. I’m so used to talking about these things that bother me, of being able to trust that one person in the entire world who can tell what I really feel, who can tell me all the things I didn’t want to hear but had to. I miss my best friend, but through some unknown reason, she’s done with me. And while people I know will tell me to talk it out with her, I can’t because she doesn’t want to speak to me. If it is an ever again kind of thing, I don’t know; but I do know that it hurt and I should just console myself by pretending not to care. I should just go on living my life, which by the way is rockin’ right now. No matter what a bitch work is, I am still pretty much fulfilled and happy. Except when I remember that part.

Funny, I lost two friends this year already. I must be doing something awful, and I must not be that great friend I always thought I was.

(well, we talked, but not enough. See, outwardly we seem OK, but that’s exactly the thing. We never ‘talk’ anymore. And there is no room for it too. But hey. My expertise is in my supposed moving on.)

***************

“There is no such thing as ready,” she says. “There’s just willing.” – Toni, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist

It hit me with a dull thud that ensured the onslaught of a rather long shock. I am almost 25. I live with my parents, and I do not have a penny to my name. I work my ass off for a company that is probably exploiting me, but I am too scared to actually figure out if they are. I love what I do, but everyday makes me feel like a huge fraud. I am an awful driver, and my love life is limited to imagined situations that I conjure up in order to fall asleep at night.

I am such a loser.

I don’t think I will ever be ready for adulthood. The thing is, if there will be any time in the future that I shall be willing, this would have been it.

What I wouldn’t give to be an actual responsible adult capable of handling herself? I still have to build my true self-esteem, and stop relying on the confidence that I fake. I want to be able to say exactly what I want, and be sure that it is what I wanted.