The Relationship With My Country

On this blog, I have explored facets of my identity as a woman, as a Filipino, and as an American. In my moments of exploration, I have had ups and downs about my value and worth as a citizen and my responsibility as an educator. I have measured myself and my citizenship with standards of "White" America. Recent events in the past two weeks have made me rethink my identity as a person of color, not as an Asian-American. I have reflected recently about my relationship with Black America. This might sound racist, but it isn't. I see it as breaking up with one boyfriend and moving on with a new one. A new relationship is going to make me see myself differently. I have reread some of my old posts, and they need to updated or qualified, given that I have grown and developed again. I've had some pretty major life changes since my last post in 2014, and my experiences have made me rethink and review my identity, my values, and my loyalty to a country. These past two weeks have been painful, but also eye-opening. Renewal is not easy, but it feels good to start on the road to healing.

Closure

When I was in high school, I didn't believe in staying friends after a relationship ended. How do you go back to platonic after vulnerability has been revealed? I wanted to be away from ex-boyfriends when the relationships were over--even better if we never spoke. For years, this philosophy has served me well. Then five years ago, one ex-boyfriend made me face the fact that we roamed the same circles and we could not avoid each other. From him, I learned exes can be civil and platonic again. Three years ago, one ex proved to be a good friend. Now that we were not in a relationship, we can think objectively and logically about what went wrong. We even joke about our past relationship. Slowly, my ideas of post-relationship began to change, and I'm even grateful that my relationships with ex-boyfriends have changed into something new for both of us.

But there's always one that just ended and you don't know why. And because there is no friendship, the relationship is entirely over. There's always that one relationship where a person thinks any one or all of these things:
That's the one that got away.
In a different lifetime, we would have worked out.
The timing wasn't right.
What went wrong?
What's wrong with me?
He/she is perfect; why am I not into him/her?
Can we still be friends?
This is not how it's supposed to end.
I need closure.

There is one relationship that impacted my perspective for all other men I have dated in my life. He did not set the standard for all future relationships, for he was far from perfect. From his flaws and imperfections, it pushed me to discover myself--my emotional limitations, my tolerance and patience, and most importantly, my values and self-worth--in a relationship and separately as an individual. Being with him was the most trying time of my life, emotionally and logically. And I learned so much about partnerships and about myself when our relationship ended.

Of all the thoughts listed above, I kept thinking that we would have worked out but the timing was just all wrong for us. I walked out on that relationship without a goodbye or an official "we're over." I walked out one night and never turned back. For months afterwards, I thought I wasn't being fair to him and didn't give him closure, when in my mind, I had all the closure I needed: I walked out. I had reached my limits, and I needed to get out before I lost myself.

Since that night, I never thought badly of him and hoped he was happy with whatever he was doing in life. Yes, I did imagine awkward moments of "What if we bumped into each other at the same restaurant?" and I wouldn't know what to say. Would he hate me because I never gave him closure? Would he assume that I never wanted anything to do with him anymore because I walked out? Or would we just say hi and turn the other away? Whatever the scenario, I would be content if he was happy in life, for I am happy and fulfilled in mine. Yes, I always wondered if he was doing well. Unlike my other ex-boyfriends, I do not have the luxury of friendship with him to ask him outright. It was just assumed that we have no right to each other's business anymore.

Whatever the impetus, he emailed me recently. I was surprised to see his name in my INBOX, and seeing his email nearly made my heart stop. After all these years, he decided to make contact with me. In short, he admitted his flaws and his shortcomings in our relationship, and he asked for my forgiveness for putting me through his emotional burdens. He sought closure. I had no grudges, so I forgave him.

Whether this recent contact means we may be friends again or not, I know we both have closure on one aspect of our lives... and I'm okay with that.

Cutting the Dead Weight

After nearly a month of silence, I was invited to lunch to visit a friend, only to have him tell me that he was mad at me. We had it out, and neither one of us apologized. This was a colleague, and we have (or had) been friends for about five years. He accused me of valuing my job more than our friendship. I never thought of it that way before, but now that he brought it up: I think it's true, and so I admit it: I am a selfish person, even when it comes to friendship.

There is nothing wrong with spending time with coworkers outside of the workplace, but when I discover things about a person that could intrude with his professional life, I can't lie for him when he gets into trouble. And yes, I may even lose respect for that person. So if I value MY job more than his job and our friendship, then it's a loss I'm willing to live with.

Enlisted

In the past week, my world has been rocked and chaos has entered my life. But it's nothing tragic, nothing depressing. Quite the contrary, I've been on an emotional roller coaster that has been nothing but positive; I’m riding the clouds of teddy bears and hearts. I feel like I'm in high school again. Butterflies flip inside my stomach, smiles appear randomly, and affectionate words have made their way beyond the journal and into tangible forms for him to cherish.

I got cherries and peanut sprinkles this time.

I Didn't Ask

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

I am very careful when I ask for someone's opinion, especially when I ask about myself. I often ask for objective opinions from friends when my own thoughts obscure self-reflection and inner musings. It is not everyday that I ask for others' opinions, so those moments are rare, but it is annoying when someone just has to share their observations--even when I never asked.

Friendships--no matter how close or distant-- still hang on delicate balances. In the past, I know I have offended friends when I opened my mouth and said something. I took it for granted that friends would forgive me because I was being honest and truthful. But just because what I had to say was honest or truthful does not mean it has to be said openly. Most times, people do not want to hear truth out loud. Spoken words are like the knells of church bells, announcing truth to everyone.

I grew more conscious about this as years passed, and I am more careful about the things I say when I am around anyone--whether they are close friends or new acquaintances. No one wants to hear things said about themselves.

Recently a friend emailed me... a long dogmatic email, of which I do not know what prompted such a response. He just had to tell me his observations about me over the past four years--when I never asked. I grew irked that he had nothing to do but keep mental notes about me. Not only that, everything this individual shared was stuff I already knew (because I am self-reflective that way). Did he think he was doing me a favor by telling me this? Did he think he was enlightening me? What was the point, other than to share what he thought about my life and career like it was a casual intellectual discussion one can have about Tolstoy.

I was annoyed. I never asked for his opinion; he just had to share. Nothing he said was hurtful, nor did it make me feel inferior, but I guess I am more annoyed because he was analyzing me all this time. Ugh.

My bottom line thought: Reflect on your own life, not on mine.

It's Not Flattery To Me

In the past two weeks, I've been strangely hit on by men. I say "strangely" because I don't really consider myself a magnet for the male eye. Actually, I don't even pay attention if the opposite sex is paying attention to me. A few times in the past, male friends had to tell me that some guys were trying to pick me up because I was too naive to notice anything beyond the "Hey, how you doing?" greeting.

In truth, being picked up on is not something I consider flattery or complimentary. I don't know whether I am being complimented or just being ogled. Other times, harmless questions are an invasion of privacy. Take the two men who tried to hit on me the past two weeks: both have asked, in some indirect and elliptical manner, if I was involved with someone. The cable guy who came to repair the internet asked if I lived alone or with a boyfriend; while a new colleague at work (under the guise of trying to get to know me), asked if spend my freetime with anyone. Then he complimented my body type--whatever!

In both cases, I find it to be an invasion of privacy. Cable guy: you came to fix my internet. I don't care about small talk. New colleague: I don't date coworkers, and neither should you try to use the workplace to pick up anyone else. I believe being hit on or being picked up must be at a place that is appropriate for social gathering--either a bar or a coffee shop or a restaurant. Maybe even in random place that instigates conversation, like a bookstore (not a library) or concert hall. But never while someone is at work or is working. Cable guy should not have asked about my living situation while trying to work on wires around my apartment, and new colleague should not have complimented my body while I was doing inventory. In both situations, I was not in the mood to be hit on. That's the key: I have to be in the mood. Here are other examples of places where I was hit on, and I was actually turned off:

• Library: I was studying for a final, and I was stressed out trying to write a paper. Some dude tried talking to me in Tagalog--which I don't even speak. Then he tried asking for my phone number. I was stressed. I was studying. I wanted a quiet place. No, I was not in the mood.
• Lecture hall at a university: I was waiting for friends. I was drawing, then I was reading. Some guy asked to see my drawing and tried to talk to me. Conversation was going nowhere. It made me uncomfortable. I fled as soon as I spotted my friends.
• Wedding: Weddings are a great place to meet people, but not after the guy reveals he impregnated his history teacher at sixteen years old. As a teacher, I was appalled and disgusted. It not only killed the mood, he gave me the heebeejeebees the rest of the evening.
• In my own home: repairmen should just come and fix whatever they need to fix. Don't try to check me or my place out. In addition, you're not hot when you're all sweaty and dirty.
• At work: I'm too preoccupied with kids and work. Ninety percent of the time, I will not be in the mood to talk about my personal life. The other ten percent, I'm too preoccupied with my students' personal lives.

Not to say that dating a coworker is taboo; as long as people know the differences of personal and professional boundaries. I've known plenty of friends and other coworkers who have met spouses through work. Maybe I would be more open to talk about my personal life outside and off campus, while I'm hanging out with coworkers in a more relaxed setting, but never on campus when other people could be listening or get the wrong message. And I certainly would not want to get anyone else into trouble while they were working.

I have pretty much knocked out all the places where one could be picked up, but there have been ideal places where men have spoken to me in a friendly way and I was engaged in conversation. Although numbers were never exchanged, that's the beauty of it: I never felt like he was ogling me or trying to pick me up. It's nice to just have a conversation and expect nothing out of it:

• CD shop: some guy translated a French title for me and we started talking about traveling.
• bookstore: some guy recommended a vampire novel, so I recommended one for him, too. We had a great conversation about books.
• geek convention: some guy didn't have a camera and asked if I could take a picture of him and the celebrity we were in line to see; we exchanged email addresses, and we're still friends to this day.
• on an airplane (50/50 luck with who you sit next to): the guy who sat next to me was an engineer, and he initiated conversation by saying hello. I asked how planes fly, and in laymen's terms, he talked about lift, air molecules, drag, wing curvature, etc. Physics was my favorite science. Academic nerd talk can be quite stimulating.
• museum: I was in Japan when this happened. An elderly gentlemen offered to take me into the Tokyo National Museum when he saw me heading in, because he could go in free with a guest. With the little English he knew, and the little Japanese I knew, we strolled through the medieval wooden print exhibition and talked about each other's cultures.

In these places, I never felt ogled or threatened. Intellectual conversation certainly helps to move things along. If any of these men asked had asked for my phone number, I would have been inclined to give it. Only one asked for my email, but even then, we turned out be good friends. None of these men asked about my personal life or if I was attached to anyone. Good conversation hooked me in, and I would have talked about anything once I got comfortable. I find it flattering the most when a guy notices I'm smart first, sexy second.

Photographs

An old friend and I recently reconnected after a long dry spell of silence in our friendship. There has been a flood of emails as we reminisce about the time we spent together and laugh over one-liners. In the midst of conversation, we try to seek evidence of shameful moments to share more laughs, and then we remind ourselves that we will look for the photographs and the letters in our parents' homes.

I had the advantage this evening, as I was already at my parents' home for a weekend visit, and immediately retrieved the letters and the photo albums. Even though I am a writer, it is much to my own shame that we did not write more than ten letters between us. I thought having a penpal would be fun, but we didn't really write as much as we emailed each other. Internet was gaining popularity in the mid-90s, and computers suddenly replaced the traditional way of communicating with a penpal. And who thought of keeping emails back then? They are disposal like little memos on a post-it note. The emails are lost now, but the letters I still had were a fun read.

Then there were the photographs. There is something special about them. In fact, there is something special about photos and pictures that were taken and developed the old-fashioned away: by film. Digital photos allow people to perfect and edit pictures as soon as they are taken. People change the composition of a picture before having them printed. Red-eye can be retouched, crooked pictures can be cropped, teeth can be whitened a little more, certain people in the background can be removed--all these tiny things really take away the personality of a picture. It takes away the element of surprise when you open up that envelope and laugh at a candid shot that you did not know existed. Of course, I like the perfect photo, too, but I appreciate a random photo of myself that turned out pretty decent. A perfect photo enhanced through manipulation is just as fake as getting plastic surgery.

So I found this photo of my old friend. It is a decent photo that leaves me with just as much wonder as if I were looking at an archival black and white photo of an historic person from the 1800s. He was still in high school, possibly a freshman or sophomore, and he was standing at the foot of the stairs of his home, next to the banister. He wore his high school uniform, and he had quite an arrogant look on his face. As I look at this picture, I wonder about all the little details that compose this photo. He looked arrogant, but that is only my interpretation. Was he turning his head when someone randomly took that photo? Was that expression accidental? Then there is the strange setting: he stood at the foot of the stairs with both hands on one end of the banister, like he was unsure about whether he was going up or down. The photographer took the photo from the far end of a corridor. It's like my friend almost knew his photo was going to be taken; was he trying to escape the lens or did he reluctantly pose? The corridor itself is interesting... the crown molding on the ceiling, a wrapped painting or mirror (some decorative wall ornament) leaned up against the wall, like they didn't have time to hang it. I still can't tell if my friend stood on a gray or green carpet, but I did notice he took off his shoes and his white socks peeked at the bottom of his dark school uniform. His sleeves were rolled up, too. I can only guess he was trying to relax right after school, but the window behind him was dark, leaving me to wonder if the picture was taken in the evening.

He also sent me another picture of himself: a non-digital photo taken at arm's length with a small 35mm camera. The photo came out slightly blurry, and he even admitted that it was not his most flattering photo. We lacked the technology in the past, but he couldn't edit it or change anything about it. Yet there is an "honest" quality of the picture. He still sent it because it was a decent photo.Nowadays, we delete ugly photos of ourselves, afraid that people will find it and use it against us. We change our features to make ourselves more presentable to the world. We remove the details that will distract others' attention away from us. We want that photo of ourselves to be picture perfect, so no one could ever critique it or wonder about it.

But the mystery of photographs is the allure of looking at them. Taking away the details removes the wonder and curiosity. Taking away the curiosity removes the intrigue. A photo's details provides clues to a story. A photo's flaws, like a blur or a crooked frame, reveals something of raw honesty. And if we keep these flawed photos as opposed to trashing them, it shows our tolerance of mistakes--whatever they may be--and our acceptance of the imperfect that may come in our lives.

A random shot taken in a span of a second suddenly captures a whole life.

The Ice Cream Girl

When I was ten, my father came home from military deployment from South Korea and returned with a strange book called “The Melting of the Ice Cream Girl,” which is a how-to novel for novice teenagers dating in high school. This funny how-to manual had a story woven between its technical pages about a boy who had a crush on a girl at his school, but she barely noticed him. She wasn’t a snob at all, but she just had a crush on another boy who didn’t give her the time of day either. She and Boy #1 were in a class together, so they actually became friends, much to Boy #1’s happiness. Throughout the novel, Boy #1 laments as the girl of his dreams longs for popular Boy #2. The girl suddenly realizes that Boy #2 wasn’t worth her time, and then Boy #1 slowly makes his move. He sends her a secret message “IHATCOY” which puzzled her; and he then revealed at the end of the novel that IHATCOY meant “I have a tremendous crush on you.”

That novel seemed to set the standard for my romantic ideal notions of relationships. Girls want the “happily ever after,” but the real work of relationship is after the so-called happy ending. The question is: do we want that post-storybook happy ending?

“The Melting of the Ice Cream Girl” ended when Boy #1 got the girl of his dreams, but there was never a sequel about their lives after. Romance novels are the same way. We all have this notion that love will always be a happy journey of two people who are meant to be together, but as I got older, that notion is blown out of the water.

I hung out with friends about two weeks ago, and we openly discussed our lives—career, latest events… and dating. Sometimes I hate the topic of dating. Talking about dating opens up other topics connected to that, like relationships, ex-significant others, and sex. I don’t have much experience when it comes to any of those, so I still cringe or gasp when friends describe the latest practices of the dating scene: hooking up, breaking up, jerks who play around, ditzy girls who sleep around, dishonesty, hidden truths, and other things that just turn me off.

When friends asked me if I had dated anyone since my last boyfriend, I said no and that I was “done with dating.” Immediately, my three friends cried out, “NO!” Their tone was strange: it wasn’t a “NO!” of incredulity and disbelief, but a “NO!” that meant “some guy will be so deprived if you pull out of the dating pool now!” It was really complimentary how they adamantly tried to give me hope that there is someone out there, but as I've said before: I don’t care anymore.

When I think about the previous relationships I’ve been in and what the dating scene looks like now, I realize that I’m too old-fashioned to try dating the modern way. I’m not ready to settle down, but at my age, I’m not a spontaneous mid-20’s spring chicken either, which means I can be quite boring. There are times when I have that “been there-done that” attitude, but I think that kind of mentality comes with age. I’m not into clubbing, drinking at bars, or wild parties—never have been—yet people suggest that I should find a man in those places. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll find a man who has anything in common with me when he’d rather party and I’d rather stay home to watch a foreign film or cozy up to Earl Grey tea and a good book.

Yet the pressure of finding a mate always looms before me. People constantly ask me why a BITCH (Beautiful Intelligent Talented Caring Helpful) woman like me is still single. I’m pitied because I have a career I love but no Mr. Right, as if my life is incomplete; but I’d still be pitied even if I had a Mr. Right without a meaningful raison d’etre; after all: a modern woman needs something other than her man. Why is life’s success measured by relationships? I could have everything I want, except the trouble of a relationship, but I’m considered a failure just because I’m still single. I know I can’t compare myself to anyone of the cleric, but no one criticizes them for choosing the single life. It’s not a waste when a man or woman of the cloth decides to dedicate his or her life to helping others, but when the common layman decides to do the same, it’s a horse of a different color.

Do I think about spending my life with someone forever and forever? No, not anymore—not when everything I learn about men ruins any idealistic or realistic notion I had. Do I even think that I’ll ever meet the man of my dreams? I don’t wonder anymore; like I’ve said before: I’m resigned. If the man of my dreams enters my life when I’m 50, so be it. Until then, I’m not actively going to search in a club or bar, nor am I going to put myself out there in the booby-trapped jungle of modern dating. If you think I’m just a bitter single feminist, I’m not. I’m a single and very happy semi-feminist. I’m very content with my independence and everything else that I currently have that fulfills me. I always tell my students that my life is ice cream: I’ve already got peanut sprinkles and chocolate syrup. Men are just the cherry on top. Some cherries are just too tart, too soft, rotten, or not ripened enough. At this point in my life, cherries are optional. The ice cream is still good without them.

Resigned

I realized that as I get older, I get more set in my ways. This becomes an obstacle when it comes to relationships and dating.

As I observe young couples, from teenagers to college students, they have an advantage that older couples don't have: flexibility and growth. As these young people grow, they mold and develop their ideas and emotions around people and experiences. In a relationship, there is so much discovery about oneself and about one's partner. They learn to compromise and grow together if they want to stay together.

But as people get older and develop their own ideas and self-worth, it becomes difficult to compromise who you are when someone new comes into your life. This is probably why I am still single. It's becoming difficult to find someone who has anything in common with me. I cannot make someone change, and he cannot make me change. The only thing left is to argue about who is right and who should bend to the other's will.

It never bothered me that I was single for a long time, but it did bother me that it left me to wonder if anyone out there was right for me. I think I am resigned to be single for the rest of my life, and I'm going to stop wondering about Mr. Right. At my age, they are either married or too set in their own ways that we would never work out anyway.

C'est la vie.

Men

Relationships suck, especially with men who think they know you.

A Sad Commentary About Men and Me

I went to a wedding this weekend, and all I did was dance with a couple of gay guys and got hit on by the father-in-law of the bride.

Am I lucky or what?

*rolls eyes*

De-Stress

As I re-acclimatize myself back into my social life, so I won't feel guilty about spending copious amounts of time to myself, I now have a weekly incentive: hanging out with a friend. 

Thanks, Marshmallow. ^_^