Your doormat no more.
Now is the time for me to be more confrontational, to be braver, to say what I don’t like when I feel like it without bothering much about what the other might feel and to say NO when I have to even if it means disappointing others and I have to learn to be SUSPICIOUS of others’ intentions in me and learn to be A LITTLE LESS TRUSTING. I have to stop being goody two-shoes, I have to stop being naive, I have to stop being too polite and respectful, I have to stop being obsequious, I have to stop believing in what Socrates said–that all people are INHERENTLY GOOD (now I want to tell that ancient soul, come on, who are you kidding?)…for if I don’t, people will keep on abusing my being kind–they mistake my kindness for WEAKNESS, NAIVITY, GULLIBILITY and VULNERABILITY!
I have to do this in a world full of traitors, immoral, indecent people who drape themselves with good values only to disguise who they really are! I guess I better be HATED but RESPECTED than be LOVED but ABUSED.
So to all those who’ve abused (instead of appreciating) the kindness I extended to them, don’t think that I will still be your doormat! Never will I allow you to exploit and take advantage of me…EVER AGAIN!!!
Be brave, girl, be brave!
______________________________________________________________
"I think the whole problem was letting too many people into my life…You never know another person’s intentions or what another person wants…I have had to cut so many people out of my life."–BRITNEY SPEARS
For the first time, I agree with Britney Spears. And I’ll do what she has just done–no, not the pantiless faux pas! I’ll dispose of people who I deem to be not worthy to be present in my life.
Unconditional love? Too idealistic to exist in this world!
I feel devastated upon learning that some people who I thought could appreciate the achievements I try to garner every time do not actually even feel glad about them.
I’m the type of person who likes to share the everyday going-ons in my life with the people I love not for the sake of talking about myself…but (I thought) to make them feel that they are important to me. I share my life with them because I value them greatly. It’s just so frustrating that they don’t see it that way. They think I’m too cocky and thus should be despised.
No one can love us unconditionally (contrary to what the cliche saying tells us).
Dreams, Nightmare and Bloodshed.
For the past few weeks, there was never a time I woke up without a shocked, frozen, expressionless face. I’ve been having weird, quite distrubing dreams (this morning, I dreamt of witnessing a shoot out and I saw someone kill himself and another drowned himself in a muddy river. I saw so much blood).
I don’t know if they’re just the manifestation of my current worry: GRADES! AAH! But I certainly hope that they’re not referring to my grades!
Or maybe it’s just my cluttered head. It needs cleaning.
BUMMER. Hmph.
Blake Lewis didn’t win. Somebody cheer me up.
A Serendipitously Pleasant Meeting with Old Friends, a Shocking Encounter with a Hermaphroditic Official and a Conversation with a Socialite who Grammatically Murdered Me.
THE FIRST VISIT
I accompanied my younger sister for her enrollment in FEU last Monday and yesterday and the visit turned out to be filled with lots of pleasant surprises!
First, I got to see my best friend, Paula, and my little Baby Chuckie, Lynette and it was all just a coincidence! When I was just minutes away from the school, Paula the Bruha texted me and said she was there with Lynette, getting a copy of their TOR. I suddenly got all excited because I haven’t seen them in a while so I told them to wait for me for I was just about 117 steps away. We did a little how-are-you-how-was-your-vacation talk and then proceeded to visit one of our favorite professors in FEU–Sir Reynold Agnes! Oh, it was wonderful seeing him again! We had a long talk; we laughed, we reminisced the good old days when we were still clad in that green-and-gold plaid skirt, and then we laughed some more!
We went home after that; Paula had to be with her other friends. "It’s OK," I said. "You have a prior appointment with them and our meeting today resulted from pure coincidence!"
It was really nice seeing those people who left such an unfathomable impact in my own little storybook. 
THE SECOND VISIT
The second day I went to FEU was as full of surprises as the first one–only this time the surprises were quite shocking and disconcerting!
It went well at the earlier part of the visit…Lynette was there too (again) for her TOR. We had talked under the bushy trees that adorn the sprawling grounds of the Freedom Park while we waited for my sister. I also met some old friends and some people I only know by face or short encounters…and people I do not know but quite interestingly, they know me (I don’t mean that in a diva-ish way).
The most distressing and deplorable part of the visit, though, was meeting an important official of the university (I had to talk to her as my sister’s guardian). I do not wish to name the office she holds lest she might read this and sue me for libel!
Well, what’s so shocking about her? SHE HAS A MOUSTACHE!!! I swear to God I’m not making this up! I might have a reputation for writing fictitious funny characters but this one is real! For a moment, I thought she was a HE (worse, a transvestite with some chest transplant)…I surveyed every visible part of her and I couldn’t come up with any other conclusion other than that she’s a REAL WOMAN with a very bad facial problem! I even scrutinized her chest (no, not to check if she has killer racks) and thank God I didn’t see any bushy, curling chest hair. EEW.
I couldn’t look at her as she talked to me because for sure, I would give out a huge, huge laugh in her face! I didn’t want to be rude so I looked elsewhere as we conversed. She might have taken that as somewhat rude—not looking at her while we talked—but she would be grateful that I did that instead of what I could have done had I looked into her face.
Another disastrous encounter was with a higher, more prominent university official. And what is it this time that shocked me? No, she’s not sporting a long beard, somewhat like that of Noah. She’s prim and proper alright, well-groomed and socialite-looking. But I just wished at the very moment I was talking to her that she would just shut up and smile! WHY? She had a terrible grammar problem and all my grammar bones were screaming, “GET US OUT OF HERE! GET US OUT OF HERE OR WE’LL BE NO MORE!”
OK, I don’t mean to be judgmental or anything…I know about the truism that nobody’s perfect. But with her handling such a high academic position, is it too cruel and inhumane to expect her not to violate VERY BASIC grammar rules?
Throughout the conversation, she wounded my ears, caused blood to gush out my nose and broke my grammar bones with the following:
“DID you TOOK…?”
“DID you WENT…?”
“DID you SAW…?”
Oh, the list can go on forever!
By the time we left her office, I was already clinically grammar dead.
Despite all the disturbing, dreadful and appalling encounters I had during the visit to my beloved green-and-gold alma mater, it was still one enjoyable, delightful, pleasant visit…it’s always good to come back home once in a while, is it not?
LESSON FOR THE GRAMMATICALLY CHALLENGED
I am not an expert on correct English grammar but one of the most common cardinal, unforgivable grammar sins that people commit is the usage of the verb DO and the tense of the verb that follows it. So once and for all, I’ll settle it for you.
1.) When you use the verb DO in whatever tense (DO, DOES, DID) to ask a question or for emphasis, the verb that follows it IS ALWAYS IN ITS SIMPLE FORM.
Thus,
DID you EAT? and not DID you ATE?
DO you KNOW? and not
DO you KNOWS/KNEW?
DOES she DANCE and not
DOES she DANCES?
“You DID not SEE me make out with my 86-year-old neighbor, did you?” asked Shyla anxiously. “Yes, I DID SEE you two, lying on the freshly mowed lawn, naked and basking under the scorching heat of the sun, his creased, sagging skin rubbing softly against your glowing, youthful, olive skin! I enjoyed it, don’t worry. It was a good visual indulgence, I must say,” Nesrin said with a sheepishly mischievous smile on her face.
He DID DIE yesterday of eating raw, salmonella-containing chicken and not
He DID DIED of loss of blood caused by grammar-error wounds committed by his best pal.
If you get the chance to read this post and you talk to me, still rapidly firing me with the same grammar boo-boo, please…JUST BURY ME ALIVE.
Burned out.
*
Didn’t I say that one of these days, I’d very likely write something which goes somewhat like this: I will miss my summer vacation? Well, I guess this is the post.
There are just a couple of days left and it’s school again. I’m thrilled to be back to school, really, but I’ll surely miss bumming around! I guess I just have to be patient and perseverant for three more years (and one year for the bar exams) and all this will be over, Inshaallah. By then I hope all my hopes and dreams for myself and my family will be within the bounds of reality.
**
I feel lost, most of the time, about striking a balance between work and play. (It’s ironic that I wrote an essay in my high school newsletter entitled Life: A Symmetry of Work and Play, which basically posits that, yeah, life should neither be all work nor all play. I thought I knew things well.) Everyone tells me I work too hard (in law school) and that I need to take a break, take things slowly. But the satisfaction and pleasure I get from seeing the results of my hard work pushes me to strive even harder. Most of the time, I feel like I’m not doing enough so I push myself to do more. And when I don’t get what I expect from myself, I get disappointed…and curse myself. UGH.
When I do take some time off, I feel so useless and rotten. And so I go back to working my arse off again.
I know working hard isn’t that bad but I’m just worried I might be missing a lot of the more important things in life, that I might be engrossing and immersing myself in things that will not matter in the future after all. I’m quite in a mess. I don’t know how to figure things out but I hope that I’m doing the right thing…that I won’t regret working hard in law school when I leaf through the pages of my life.
BLAKE LEWIS!!!
As Ryan Seacrest lined up the three contestants (Melinda, Blake and Jordin), I was all ready to hear what I thought was certain–that Blake Lewis was going home. But when Seacrest said that the almost 60 million votes decided that "it is the end of the road for you (referring to Melinda)" I literally jumped out of my seat and screamed! My Mom had to quiet me down but I didn’t care about how much nuisance and disturbance I was making at the expense of the neighbors. Hehehe.
Blake Lewis deserves to WIN! He’s very original, he takes risks all the time and he doesn’t care if he gets bad reviews from the judges–all that matters to him is that he tries something new, something which he takes from an original material and molds it into his own. He’s a true artist and a contemporary rebel! I think AI fans need to see a different, unique winner this time. We’ve all had enough of divas, belting out mushy ballads and all that jazz.
Way to go Blake!!! Wohoo!
A Tribute To All Mummies.
Motherhood. Every woman who has been a mother would say that it’s the most difficult yet fulfilling job in the whole world. Though I’m not a mother (I just look like one, perhaps! Haha!), I can attest to the truth of what they say about motherhood. I’ve seen my own Mom take care of my younger siblings and the household. I’ve seen my older sister take care of her then one-year-old kid. And I think that if I were to undertake such a heavy responsibility which entails a great deal of patience, I’d end up losing my sanity after just one week!
I admire all mothers in the world, especially those who were able to bring up their children to be great, successful people, those who were able to mold their kids to become good members of society, kids who can contribute to the weal of the society. But even if they weren’t able to hone their child to become somebody great, prominent or positively influential, I still laud them for bringing life into this world–the birthing process has been described to me a lot of times by friends who’re already mothers as "it’s a million fold painful than constipation." Ouch. Kudos to you all for bearing such kind of horribly excruciating pain. *shudders*
I don’t think I’ll ever get to experience motherhood–well, aside from the fact that I shudder at the very idea of becoming a mother, in my family, it’s always been spoken of pretty much as a taboo. It’s been depicted as something to be despised. But I’m totally grateful that the whole clan sees it that way because it has made me decide that I should never become one and just be a modern, career-oriented woman. I think a motherhood role is not for me; I would certainly play it very badly. I guess society will have better use of me if I contribute to children’s development in some other way…like put in the forefront education as the most important issue to be resolved especially in this country. I would love to follow the footsteps of Korina Sanchez and Oprah Winfrey.
Or should I decide to try it, I’ll surely do it the unnatural way: adopt. I just hope that if ever I would do so, I would be able to mold the child into someone that I could be very proud of. I hope that he wouldn’t hate me in the future for making his life hellish. I hope he wouldn’t blame me for how miserable his life would turn out. I hope he would attribute his every success in life to me. I hope that when he grows up, I’d have the courage to let him go and explore the world on his own…and he would still come back to me without being asked to do so. I hope that when he gets older, he wouldn’t try to look for every way possible to stay away from me (because he just hates me for being such a tremendoulsy terrible mother). I hope that he would be proud of the fact that I am the one who brought him up and brag to his friends that I’m the coolest Mom in the whole world–even after he hits his 30s. I hope he’d see me as his Mommy, not a mummy that he would fear and hate eventually! If I would fail and just end up creating a monster or a total bum, I’d rather not try motherhood at all. I’d rather fail in other aspects of my life–at work, for example–than bring a child in this world who’s full of anger and hatred, who can’t stand on his own two feet, who’s so helpless that he’d still live with me when he’s 53.
Alright, enough about me. This is supposed to be a tribute to mothers as the title indicates, isn’t it?
HAPPY MOTHERS DAY TO ALL…MOTHERS IN THE WORLD!
Beautiful Tragedy
I’ve been morbid for the past few weeks. I’ve been obsessionally hooked to anything that has to do with death. I’ve been reading novels in which the protagonist dies in the end and it’s never failed to paint a smile on my face. I’m not suffering from any mental illness, God forbid, but I just think that death is a beautiful tragedy. It makes people sad and cry and grieve and engulfs their sky in grey but I think that there is beauty to the fact that the one who has departed is relieved of all secular troubles and pain. There is beauty in how it can affect the living, the ones left behind. Sometimes, death can bring people together and unite them after a long-term disintegration; sometimes, it can trigger violence, chaos and war. There is beauty too in the fact that the faithfully departed is bound somewhere unknown, a place where no live being has ever treaded. It’s a beautiful mystery. There’s so much god-damned beauty in it and I don’t understand why people can’t see that.
I recently watched with my sister Le Chiavi di Casa (The Keys to the House), an Italian movie about a young father who met for the first time his mentally- and physically-challenged teenage son. My sister and I argued a bit about the ending of the movie because I remarked that "it would have been better if the father drowned his son. It would have been more beautifully shocking and repulsive. It might appear that his act of killing his son is inhumane and might even make people think that he hates his son, but the audience would realize in the end that he did it purely out of love…he just wanted to free his son from suffering, from the pain that this wicked world has brought him." She argued that the ending was perfect and it need not be changed. (At the end of the movie, father and son were driving off to the former’s home. And then his son had a sudden mood swing and he kept on pressing the horn. His father was irked by this so he pulled over, got out of the car, sat on a large rock by the lake. His son went to him, consoled him and told him not to cry because "it’s no way to behave". I was really hoping that he would drown him [his son] but the screen dimmed without me having seen anything of how I wanted it to end.) I still stand by what I believe would have been a better ending for the movie. (But my sister and I were unanimous about the actor [Kim Rossi Stuart] who played the father of the kid–he is a colonel hottie, drop-dead gorgeous and I don’t want anything changed in him because he is outright perfect-looking! Hahaha!)
Some readers might think I’ve gone lunatic; some will hate me for showing so much morbidity; and few will agree with me that death is a beautiful tragedy, as beautiful as when another life is brought to this world, as beautiful as living life itself.
We shouldn’t fear death, should we? It’s part of living.
We’re born, we live and we die…
What if I die tonight?
What if I die tonight?
Would I have done enough
To be remembered?
To make some cry
Or even make others smile?
What if tonight…I die?
Would you speak of me greatly
Or choose to blacken my memory?
Would my Mother grieve
Or would she be relieved?
Would my Father think I’ve been a good daughter
Or would he rather think that I’ve been a disgrace
And grimance at the thought of having defamed his name?
Would my sisters remember
What good sister I have been
Or would they rather remember
The days when we couldn’t understand each other?
Would my brothers bare themselves
Of their pretentious machoism and shed a tear
Or would they laugh, speak of me lowly…perhaps, smear?
Would my friends remember
What I’ve been to them?
Or would they think of me
As someone who, at one point in their lives,
Came and never left a permanent mark?
Would my death leave peace and unity
In my disintegrated family?
Or would they fall apart into fragments
Worse than before I left?
If it would bring the former
Then God, take me away…
I am all yours.
———————-
An afterthought:
What if I die tonight?
Would God lead me to His promised paradise
Or would He roast me in His furnace of hungry, angry Fires?
