negative pride
For the past month, my pride has gone down from twenty to zero. Today, I think it hit the -40 mark.
All because of this stupid expat dream.
Fucking shit. I can't believe I inflicted this upon myself.
4:29 PM
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
the wait is killing me.
I know I should be jumping for joy. Well I already did. Except I had to suspend my jump in mid-air because I can't be rejoicing completely. Not yet. It's that so-near-yet-still-far feeling I've been bearing for the past two weeks. I know two weeks isn't long compared to a woman waiting for her husband to come back from battle. Or a couple waiting for 9 months to see whether they're having a normal and healthy offspring. But still, two weeks is long if you're in my situation.
Unfortunately, I cannot disclose any information about this matter. Not yet. Because like what I said, it's almost there, but not quite. Sigh. Please arrive already. My patience has been tested rigorously the past few months, man. From waiting for July to visit Philippines to waiting for Tatoff to visit me on August. I've taken it one day at a time, just so I won't be so anxious. I've looked forward to sunsets, which means one day less on my calendar.
But this two weeks has been torturous, if I may add. And loved ones asking you about it every single day doesn't help at all. It's frustrating to have no definite waiting time, not knowing if the 'deadline' is this week, or the next. I just have to keep waiting and waiting til it comes, until it sets me free.
Although I know waiting for Tatoff to stay here for good is more uncertain, there's something about it that has kept me calm. Maybe after buckets of tears and words of encouragement from one another, both of us have learned to accept that this 'waiting time' will be good for our relationship in the long run. It will test our commitment and loyalty, as well as our commitment to our goals together. It's easier said than done, obviously. I've learned that nothing can ever test a relationship so much than distance. And nothing else can strengthen it more.
And so it is. We let each day go by, holding on to our strength and our Creator's, hoping that one day, we'll forget we ever waited.
For now, my indefinite waiting for that important turning point is still on. I swear, my patience is being tested to high heavens. And I'm absolutely failing it. You should've seen me walk from home to the MRT station this morning because I refused to wait for the bus. Then seconds after, I see the bus driving past me.
Oh well, such is life. Maybe I should just let it go and forget about it for a while. And I guess the first step is to stop writing about it.
5:28 PM
Monday, July 30, 2007
dahil ang daming nagpapakasal at ayaw magpakasal.
Just wanted to share the most realistic and rational article on marriage I've read by far. Written by a famous terror Philosophy teacher from Ateneo. A must-read for everyone! :-)
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PARTNERS AND MARRIAGE
By Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz
I have never met a man who didn't want to be loved. But I have seldom met a man who didn't fear marriage. Something about the closure seems constricting, not enabling. Marriage seems easier to understand for what it cuts out of our lives than for what it makes possible within our lives.
When I was younger this fear immobilized me. I did not want to make a mistake. I saw my friends get married for reasons of social acceptability, or sexual fever, or just because they thought it was the logical thing to do. Then I watched, as they and their partners became embittered and petty in their dealings with each other.
I looked at older couples and saw, at best, mutual toleration of each other. I imagined a lifetime of loveless nights and bickering days and could not imagine subjecting myself or someone else to such a fate. And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old couples who somehow seemed to glow in each other's presence. They seemed really in love, not just dependent upon each other and tolerant of each other's foibles.
It was an astounding sight, and it seemed impossible. How, I asked myself, can they have survived so many years of sameness, so much irritation at the others habits? What keeps love alive in them, when most of us seem unable to even stay together, much less love each other?
The central secret seems to be in choosing well. There is something to the claim of fundamental compatibility. Good people can create a bad relationship, even though they both dearly want the relationship to succeed. It is important to find someone with whom you can create a good relationship from the outset. Unfortunately, it is hard to see clearly in the early stages.
Sexual hunger draws you to each other and colors the way you see yourselves together. It blinds you to the thousands of little things by which relationships eventually survive or fail. You need to find a way to see beyond this initial overwhelming sexual fascination. Some people choose to involve themselves sexually and ride out the most heated period of sexual attraction in order to see what is on the other side.
This can work, but it can also leave a trail of wounded hearts. Others deny the sexual side altogether in an attempt to get to know each other apart from their sexuality. But they cannot see clearly, because the presence of unfulfilled sexual desire looms so large that it keeps them from having any normal perception of what life would be like together.
The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to become long-time friends before they realize they are attracted to each other. They get to know each other's laughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They see each other at their worst and at their best. They share time together before they get swept up into the entangling intimacy of their sexuality.
This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall under the spell of your sexual attraction immediately, you need to look beyond it for other keys to compatibility. One of these is laughter. Laughter tells you how much you will enjoy each others company over the long term.
If your laughter together is good and healthy, and not at the expense of others, then you have a healthy relationship to the world. Laughter is the child of surprise. If you can make each other laugh, you can always surprise each other. And if you can always surprise each other, you can always keep the world around you new.
Beware of a relationship in which there is no laughter. Even the most intimate relationships based only on seriousness have a tendency to turn sour. Over time, sharing a common serious viewpoint on the world tends to turn you against those who do not share the same viewpoint, and your relationship can become based on being critical together.
After laughter, look for a partner who deals with the world in a way you respect. When two people first get together, they tend to see their relationship as existing only in the space between the two of them. They find each other endlessly fascinating, and the overwhelming power of the emotions they are sharing obscures the outside world. As the relationship ages and grows, the outside world becomes important again.
If your partner treats people or circumstances in a way you can't accept, you will inevitably come to grief. Look at the way she cares for others and deals with the daily affairs of life. If that makes you love her more, your love will grow. If it does not, be careful. If you do not respect the way you each deal with the world around you, eventually the two of you will not respect each other.
Look also at how your partner confronts the mysteries of life. We live on the cusp of poetry and practicality, and the real life of the heart resides in the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected by the mystery of the unseen in life and relationships, while the other is drawn only to the literal and the practical, you must take care that the distance does not become an unbridgeable gap that leaves you each feeling isolated and misunderstood.
There are many other keys, but you must find them by yourself. We all have unchangeable parts of our hearts that we will not betray and private commitments to a vision of life that we will not deny. If you fall in love with someone who cannot nourish those inviolable parts of you, or if you cannot nourish them in her, you will find yourselves growing further apart until you live in separate worlds where you share the business of life, but never touch each other where the heart lives and dreams. From there it is only a small leap to the cataloging of petty hurts and daily failures that leaves so many couples bitter and unsatisfied with their mates.
So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will have chosen a partner with whom you can grow, and then the real miracle of marriage can take place in your hearts. I pick my words carefully when I speak of a miracle. But I think it is not too strong a word. There is a miracle in marriage. It is called transformation. Transformation is one of the most common events of nature. The seed becomes the flower. The cocoon becomes the butterfly. Winter becomes spring and love becomes a child. We never question these, because we see them around us every day. To us they are not miracles, though if we did not know them they would be impossible to believe.
Marriage is a transformation we choose to make. Our love is planted like a seed, and in time it begins to flower. We cannot know the flower that will blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom will come. If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the bloom will be good. If you have chosen poorly or for the wrong reason, the bloom will be flawed. We are quite willing to accept the reality of negative transformation in a marriage. It was negative transformation that always had me terrified of the bitter marriages that I feared when I was younger. It never occurred to me to question the dark miracle that transformed love into harshness and bitterness. Yet I was unable to accept the possibility that the first heat of love could be transformed into something positive that was actually deeper and more meaningful than the heat of fresh passion. All I could believe in was the power of this passion and the fear that when it cooled I would be left with something lesser and bitter.
But there is positive transformation as well. Like negative transformation, it results from a slow accretion of little things. But instead of death by a thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand touches of love. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings, two separate presence, two separate consciousness come together and share a view of life that passes before them. They remain separate, but they also become one.
There is an expansion of awareness, not a closure and a constriction, as I had once feared. This is not to say that there is not tension and there are not traps. Tension and traps are part of every choice of life, from celibate to monogamous to having multiple lovers. Each choice contains within it the lingering doubt that the road not taken somehow more fruitful and exciting, and each becomes dulled to the richness that it alone contains.
But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand and be leavened by the knowledge that two have chosen, against all odds, to become one. Those who live together without marriage can know the pleasure of shared company, but there is a specific gravity in the marriage commitment that deepens that experience into something richer and more complex.
So do not fear marriage, just as you should not rush into it for the wrong reasons. It is an act of faith and it contains within it the power of transformation. If you believe in your heart that you have found someone with whom you are able to grow, if you have sufficient faith that you can resist the endless attraction of the road not taken and the partner not chosen, if you have the strength of heart to embrace the cycles and seasons that your love will experience, then you may be ready to seek the miracle that marriage offers. If not, then wait. The easy grace of a marriage well made is worth your patience. When the time comes, a thousand flowers will bloom... endlessly.
6:46 PM
Monday, July 23, 2007
29th :-)
Signal Fire
by Snow Patrol
The perfect words never crossed my mind,
'cause there was nothing in there but you,
I felt every ounce of me screaming out,
But the sound was trapped deep in me,
All I wanted just sped right past me,
While I was rooted fast to the earth,
I could be stuck here for a thousand years,
Without your arms to drag me out,
There you are standing right in front of me (x2)
All this fear falls away to leave me naked,
Hold me close cause I need you to guide me to safety
No I won't wait forever(2x)
In the confusion and the aftermath,
You are my signal fire,
The only resolution and the only joy,
Is the faint spark of forgiveness in your eyes,
There you are standing right in front of me (x2)
All this fear falls away to leave me naked,
Hold me close cause I need you to guide me to safety,
There you are standing right in front of me (x2)
All this fear falls away to leave me naked,
Hold me close cause I need you to guide me to safety,
No I won't wait forever(x3)
====
I miss you sooo much! Can't wait to be with you again... Love you, bi :-)
yours, jenie
11:48 AM
Sunday, July 22, 2007
OMG OMG OMG!!!
First of all, thank YOU. You've no idea how happy and grateful I am.
Secondly, GOOD LUCK to meee! I really can't screw this up! Seriously. This is a matter of life, and death. Haha. Fuck, I'm damn nervous.
Calling all saints and martyrs! HELP!!!
5:09 PM
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
unang pagbabalik-bayan!
Maraming Salamat sa LAHAT ng mga nakausap, nakasama, nayakap at nakainuman ko sa aking 5 araw ng kalayaan. Hindi nyo alam kung gaano nyo ko napaligaya. :-)
Pinas my love, I miss you already! And everyone in it of course. Waaahhh I'm so torn and confused. Here I go again. Sigh.
Anway, all photos at jeniegab.multiply.com :-)
4:10 PM
Thursday, July 12, 2007
See you tomorrow, Pinas! :-)
Waaaaaahhhh bukas na!!! I can't believe it! I've waited for this since I booked my ticket on April 1, okay?! Three freaking months! Whew. I think I'm gonna shriek from the plane window tomorrow hehe. It's my first time to travel overseas alone too. :) I'm really so excited!!! Sana makatulog pa ko mamayang gabi. Weeeeee happy happy joy joy!!! Yeyeyey!
Okay, must not be too excited til I'm finally there hehe. Can't wait! Pwede bang mamaya na yung flight ko?! Waaahhh! Ilang oras na lang!
6:27 PM
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
banidad blues
If there's one thing I never overcame since puberty, it's my insecurity with my skin. Most of my Pinas friends don't know this, but my skin has gone from not so bad to WORSE since I lived here in Singapore. I've had heat rashes on my forehead, chest and back! And after I suffered my first facial, it even got worse! And after my second, I was still never contented. I thought I needed to fix it before I visit home soon. But no way am I going to to the 'authentic' dermatologist which robs you $125 only for consultation fee! I'm still not vain, maybe. Or I guess I'm just plain kuripot.
Some say it's the weather, maybe the food, some say it's stress, or it maybe purely psychological. But whatever the freaking reason is, I'm just really frustrated. And my frustration has hit rock bottom this weekend when I took matters into my own hands, literally. I have this really bad habit of pricking 'things' on my face. especially when I'm depressed or angry. So here goes my karma. My forehead is now full of scars, it looks like I had chicken pox. I don't think any derma can fix this in two days, or even the thickest layer of concealer. Believe me, I've tried. So I'm left with these options:
1) wear a cap - I don't care if people think I'm pa-cute or pa-porma. I'm sure you'd rather see me wear this, than see my hideous forehead! But i don't think it's cool to be wearing a cap at night. Sigh.
2) have a haircut with those japanese-looking bangs - I tried it to see how it looks and my officemates said I should do it. Thing is, most girls here have that haircut and I know it's gonna make me look more Chinese. I'm also scared I'll get more breakouts after. But it's the best quick fix I can think of right now. Besides, I never had bangs since I was 6 and I haven't had a haircut in 4 months. Maybe it's about time!
3) pray that the Skin Fairy will have mercy on me then wake up on Wednesday morning with flawless skin.
Anyway, I know my friends don't really care about how look like when I visit home, but I do and I hate it. It's my main vanity-slash-insecurity. And whenever I see these mega-kinis Chinese in the MRT without pores or a trace of pimples, I'm reminded of my skin problems. I know it's in their genes, that's why it's even more disappointing. I don't know what my derma will say when she sees me haha. But what the heck, it's not may fault. Well, it sort of is. Although I never really started it! I can't really control all these nasty rashes, can I? Haay. How sad. I'm such a prick. (No pun intended) While some people worry about losing their limbs or life-threatening problems, I worry about this stupid forehead. I know, I'm getting too shallow. But bear with me. I'm just sooo frustrated at how everything is going on with my life right now, and I'd like to think my I can resolve this issue. Obviously, I also can't.
This entry is also supposed to be a warning to all the friends I'll see. I can already here some saying "Anong nangyari sa balat mo?!!" At least now you know the answer.
Weeee 2 tulog na lang!!! I can't wait to see you all soon! Just please don't stare at my forehead! Bwahahaha! :-)
2:56 PM
