if platonic ain't cool

How many times have you seen yourself stuck in this sticky situation called pseudo relationships? Admit it. More often than not you find yourself wishing that somehow in this already complicated world of ours you could complicate it even more by a single word. COMMITMENT.

What’s with commitment anyway? Isn’t it exciting enough to be with your guy almost 24/7 without strings attached? Or are you the kind of person who wants to get tangled up in the crazy strings of relationships?

Imagine yourself being really close to your guy friend. You share your most intimate secrets with him. Likewise you know his dark hidden secrets too. You both tag along to whoever has his/her gimmicks. You enjoy virtually the same things, dig the same music, watch the same movies, pig out on the same kind of foods. In short, halos magkakabit na ang mga bituka ninyong dalawa. The only thing lacking is the authority you have over him and him over you.

You go out but you don’t “go out”. Do you get it? I don’t. I mean how many times have you gone out with him, but every time it’s almost always on official business. Like an errand to the supermarket, or a trip to the mall to look for a birthday present, or going to the watch repair shop to have your dad’s old watch fixed. Anyways, all these activities makes you spend more and more time with him, and makes it all the more puzzling for both of you. But you don’t fret, heck! You enjoy being with him and that is all that matters at this time.

But honestly is that all that really matters? For the life of you, could you really, absolutely, positively, beyond any cloud of doubt tell yourself that you’re ok with this kind of set up? Naah! You know yourself enough to be easily swept by romanticism and that’s just exactly what is happening. You’re falling for him big time. HELLO! Now the question is: Is he feeling the same thing for you? Ugh! I hate to answer that question. Because what if the answer is no? (Syet!) What if he just sees you as a little sister? (Syeter!) What if he’s gay and just hangs with you to learn more about girlie stuffs? (Syetest!) What if….

But on a positive note, what if the feeling is mutual? How you wish! Would you be prepared to give up the friendship that you have? It would be hard, I know, but to move on to a higher level of a relationship is not as simple as throwing your dirty socks into the laundry bag. It requires a lot of …uuuhm…. a lot of…a lot of what??…I don’t know. All I know is it’s hard……and it’s complicated.

Platonic is my favorite word. Don’t you think that’s cool?

If Platonic ain’t cool, then what is?

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Note: This was inspired by an e-mail piece i got in my inbox sent to me by my friend and reading it was kinda like putting words into my mouth... i practically felt similarly puzzled, confused and in turmoil with these things called pseudo relationships...oh well...

the art of waiting

I am so pissed off. Imagine yourself coming from a busy eight-hour graveyard shift. You haven’t slept, haven’t had your breakfast yet and by the looks of it you wouldn’t have lunch either. Straight from work I made the biggest mistake of trying to do business with a government office. I went to the Department of Foreign Affairs to process my passport, a requirement for my TOEFL and TSE exams that I would be taking this May and June respectively.

Armed with a complete set of important papers, birth certificate, identification cards, my professional license, driver’s license (heck! I even got close to bringing my Video City membership card…), I went to the old decrepit building of the office expecting not a hitch.

I arrived at about a quarter before eight, and saw a long queue of people who had obviously been on the line hours before me, so I had nothing to complain about, me being late and all.

Like in the college days when all one could do was fall in line and practice the art of waiting every enrollment period, I went to the end of the line and reacquainted myself with the noble virtue of patience. Inch by inch the line moved. About an hour later, I was two meters away from where I started. What a feat!

As the hours went by, I amused myself by watching the people and making a mental guess on what country they would be going. A couple of platform shoes wearing girls who were sporting stretched and dyed frizzy hairs and had on big, dangling hoop earrings were (I supposed) going to where else but Japan. Their appearance was a giveaway. A Muslim family who were taking their turns on the line would be going to fulfill their religious task of making a pilgrimage to Mecca. A bunch of young men in uniform sweats and jog pants, (featherweight boxers I guess) were out to defend or get a title somewhere in a boxing arena abroad. This activity kept me awake for only about 15 minutes. By the time my boredom hit me, I was already midway through the line.

A few more hours and what do you know? I was already shooed in by the guard inside the main office. Thank heavens! I immediately prepared all the documents needed and waited for my number to be called.

103……..104…….zzzzz I thought I heard myself snoring…..105……106……107…

107! Wait! Did I hear it right? My number was finally called. I approached the lady behind the counter and gave her all the papers. After a few seconds of checking the papers, the lady shoved them to me and asked me to come back later with another passport sized picture.

“Why?” I asked puzzled. Wasn’t my smile in the picture enough? I mentally asked myself.

“Naka side-view ka miss.” The lady replied tartly.

Now that is stupid. Who on her right mind would pose side view on a passport picture? I could very well hear my younger sister say: YOU! But her opinion doesn’t count here. The picture just seems and looks like it was taken on a lateral view because of the one length hair I’m sporting.

“Of course not.” I said trying to keep my cool.

“Side view yan!” came her answer as she peeled off from the application form the picture, which I so carefully pasted.

I have this weird belief that you cannot argue with a government employee on a lunch hour, so I snatched the form from her and left, sleepy, hungry and totally pissed off. All the hours I spent waiting was to no avail.

All the way home I was looking at my passport picture and was more convinced that my pose was not side view at all, the same way I was convinced that in the art of waiting, I’m no pro.
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Notes:
I wrote this upon reaching home just after the long hours of waiting at that blasted office. It was supposed to precede the two blogs below but I forgot where I saved it. Now that I found it, I’m having second thoughts of having it published here because I think it’s already late (hey! I already took the exams…) but what the heck, ‘san ba ako di na-late?

the greener mile

Coming home from a busy graveyard shift, I was doing some revisions in the resume` I was making and wondered how many of the hundreds of muscles in my body would ache from sheer over use? How many hours of sleep would I be getting today? How busy will the ward be when I resume my duty tonight? Will my liver cirrhotic patient still be there in room 5? Has the leaking faucet in the medication room been fixed? Will we ever get our hazard pay? These are just some of the questions an underpaid, overworked staff nurse of a government hospital entertains, when there is nothing left to do but ask.

Having been employed as a nurse in a government hospital here in our city, people say that I am lucky. The pay is good (at least compared to the private hospitals). I guess so. My college classmates would envy me for being fortunate enough to have entered a government hospital, amidst all the politics involved in their hiring. Fortunate was an understatement. A miracle would be most likely. You see, before being able to consider yourself a government employee, you have to undergo through a lot of process. In our hospital, they require you to undergo a 6-month volunteer training, and when you say volunteer, it means 6 months of unpaid work. But that’s okay, it’s just a means of adding up to my experience, you philosophize. Besides what is six months compared to the years you spent mastering your course? It just one way of fine tuning your skills.

But wait! After the six months is over, you begin applying for the contractual position, since there are no items available for regular. Lucky you! You were hired as a contractual. So you begin to use your hard earned skills and knowledge into practice, only to find out that the ideal is not really applicable in your set up. You start to get frustrated with the limits brought about by lack of facilities and supplies. You begin to notice the endemic understaffing. The heavy workload starts to push your body to the limits. Your calf muscles begin to hurt like hell, varicose veins pop out like the diagrams of the re-routing schemes of the traffic management control, and sometimes because of being too busy, you forget (on purpose) to eat your lunch, not that you had breakfast that morning!

The problems don’t end there. Not yet. You’ll be pestered by supervisors breathing down your neck, trying to jump on every mistake you’ll make as if their life depended on it (not that I have lots of mistakes). Head nurses could also be a pain in the “you know what”, by giving you lots of requirements making you feel like your inside the classroom once again. The doctors. Oh yes! Those white blazer wearing people who only recognizes your presence as a nurse whenever they want to ask for something, or am I generalizing them? I still hope there are those who are an exception to the rule. All these things, the heavy workload and the small compensation you get adds up to your unsatisfaction with your job.

With these scenario in our minds, and with the kind of compensation we get, I do not wonder why I see lots of nurses jumping on every opportunity they see to get out of this predicament. With the nursing profession back in business (abroad, that is!) thousands of Filipino nurses will be flying to United Kingdom, migrating in the US, going for greener pastures to be exact. In our hospital alone, a number of nurses have already made the decision to cross over the greener mile, where opportunities are better and compensation is good.

This reminds me of what I said during my interview for the regular position in our hospital. “Satisfaction in one’s job begins within yourself, if you try to love your work, then it becomes less of a work for you to do your duties….” Thinking about it now I could have kicked myself for being too idealistic I realized that there’s a limit to every person’s satisfaction. Even if you’re quite satisfied with the way things are right now, there will really come a time when you’ll eventually seek for more and reach for more, and if our government is not ready to give us that, where else will we look for it but in foreign lands? Now, where is that resume` I was making?

collecting zzzz's

I should be sleeping by now. I should be way past my REM stage. But no, I am still wide awake trying to complete this blasted crossword puzzle, which had been slaving me around for hours now.

Sleep they say is important for growing children. I am not a child anymore (but I still act like one at times) but I still think that it is important for me, sleep that is. I realized this after spending a lot of sleepless nights lately. I happen to have this weird sleeping habit I acquired maybe because I don’t have a regular sleeping time. I sometimes sleep at 3 am even if I still have work the following day, which starts at 7 am. Imagine the ordeal I have to go through every time I’m on a morning shift. Trying not to look like a zombie with bloodshot eyes.

I know it’s not a healthy habit, but hey I can’t help it. I have read somewhere before (during one of those times when I really can’t make myself doze off into dreamland), that if a person is deprived of an hour of sleep a certain number of that person’s brain cells dies. Now that's terrible, and that’s the reason why I’m ending this thing I’m doing right now. I better catch myself some zzzz’s and save some brain cells on the process.

mcbealism

“Some people meet that somebody that they can never stop loving, no matter how hard they try. I don’t expect you to understand that, or even believe it, but trust me, there are some loves that don’t go away. And maybe that makes them crazy, but we should all be lucky to end up with that somebody who has a little of that insanity. Somebody who never lets go……… Somebody who cherishes you forever.” --- Ally Mc Beal


It’s really hard letting go of a person, especially if that person is one whom you have shared a good deal of time with. With this modern and liberated world of ours, I can see a number of eyebrows shooting up for that one, and I would agree with them. Letting go can really be the hardest thing to do in a relationship, but we can’t help it if at one point in our lives, a strong enough reason would meet us in the face and prompt us to say goodbye.

Throwing it all away just like that is never easy. It would often bring us close to tears once we find ourselves on our rewind playback mode. Trying to remember the times you’ve spent together is such a pain, but we can’t help it. For me, it feels like an important part of the weaning process (weaning from the relationship, that is). It somehow helps you get through one of your most trying times. I mean how could you forget all the happenings you both had together. The long drives and traffic jams you both had to endure, the errands to the mall, the computer lessons he gives you, the breakfasts at fastfood chains, the laughters… the fights…

All these things added up together would make you stop and think a million more times about calling it quits. But even it pains you so much to see him go, there’s nothing you can do but to let go, especially if the relationship itself is already affected. No matter how hard you try to hold on, when there’s nothing more left to bind your love with, it just wouldn’t work the way you would want it to. You just have to give it up (the love I mean), lest you want the pain to be a little bit more in need of analgesia. In other words, the more you hold on to something you know is not really meant for you, the more you put yourself at risk of being hurt.

Just put it this way: You’ve fallen in love with somebody who means the world to you. He fell for you too, naturally. You both gave it your best shot. But for some reasons destiny just wouldn’t take your side! Destiny has given the both of you an expiration for your relationship. By all means, let go of each other and be thankful for the time that you have shared. Be thankful that at one point in your life, destiny had set a date for both of you to fall in love. Treasure the moments that would forever remind you of him. Learn from the mistakes, be it yours or his, and move on. Try opening your heart to somebody other than him. I know it would be hard, but in time you’ll thank yourself for doing it. However, while the pain is still fresh, try to live with his memories, but always keeping in mind that it’s over between you. He has now become a part of your colorful past. He has added to your library of happy, sad and sometimes painful moments, which you can scan every now and then.

Days would just go by without you knowing it, and who knows along the process of getting over your past relationship, you’ll get to meet someone. A person who’ll be there not just as a reminder of somebody else but a whole new personality with a whole new reason to make you celebrate life. By this time you would have realized that life is fair after all. After spending a part of your life mourning over a lost love, another episode unfolds, this time a lot more promising than the last. (Sigh!) How I wish to see my next episode unfold before me right now… but that would be wishing too much. There’s still a lot of healing to do. In the meantime, I’ll just have to lick my wounds and see them turn to scars by time, and let these scars remind me of a love long lost but will never be forgotten.

signs

Just recently a friend of mine got the biggest rock and pounded it on her head. Don’t even think about it. No, she did not commit suicide, but it’s much more similar to that. She got married, at the age of 24, to her second boyfriend of barely two months who has a history of being a playboy at that. Whoa! Wait a second. “How can she make up an important decision like that at such a short notice?” You may ask. Don’t ask me, I also had the same query.

I’ve always wondered how a person would know if he/she is THE ONE. Would there be signs? If so, how would he/she know that those signs point to him/her. But don’t you think it’s scary if you miss seeing those signs? Or let’s just say you’re lucky enough to see the sign but it would just be a sign to finally let your loved one go. Argh! I hate that thought. If I’m on that kind of situation, I’d rather be blind than see any sign at all.

Speaking of being blind, I don’t believe in that “love is blind” crap. I think it is just an excuse to keep on loving somebody despite the imperfections, which is not at all wrong. People are just so afraid of showing to the world that they love somebody inspite of. That they love somebody who isn’t perfect in the eyes of others, that’s why they resort to saying that love is blind. But it’s not. Let me share to you one text message that I received a long time ago. It says: “Love knows no reason, knows no lies. Love defies all reasons, love has no eyes. But love is not blind—Love sees but it does not mind.” That about sums it all up, don’t you think?

long distance blues

How far is far? How long is long? How do you keep a relationship when miles of oceans separate the two of you? How do you keep the music playing? is what my friend James would ask, and the answer to that is as difficult as creating shortcuts to be with your loved one in just 5 minutes when in reality he is a continent away from you.

Surely there are ways. There is the old fashioned snail mail for example. Even Romeo and Juliet kept their love alive utilizing those, and look where they are now. There’s also the telephone. When Graham Bell thought of it, he must have had the long distance love affairs in mind. Others would include the e-mails, fax machines and the monumental cellular phones which were popularized more by their ability to send short messages known to us as “texting”.

But after the perfumed stationeries have been kept in a shoebox, the smoke of the telephone wires have cleared, the inbox messages on your e-mail have been deleted and the credit balance of your cell phone been reduced to zero, what happens next? Nothing. You still remain apart.

All these excuses for having a long distance relationship obviously miss the point. Receiving a typed “hug” cannot give you the warmth that a real hug from your loved one could provide and the word “mwuah!” on your phone’s LCD screen could not provide you with the tingling sensation a real kiss would normally evoke.

Now why am I writing this? It’s because I am in the same situation as all the crap I’ve mentioned above. What’s difficult is, this whole long distance thing is making me miserable and the only thing that could put me out of my misery is when we would finally be together, for keeps. But that would be far out in the future yet. Meanwhile, I’ll just have to content myself with his voice on the phone, with the e-mails he is sending and with the “hugs” and “mwuahs” I receive from him on my cell phone…