“To Attach or Detach”
As I slowly grew weary and tired of my regular and predictable schedule, I couldn’t help but wonder, when will I be ready for change? My 9 to 5 or in this case 12 to 4, usually consists of going to school, going to the gym, sometimes a right turn at the movie house, and eventually ending the day at home, checking my email and exercising. Usually, I’d be done with my workout by 9, but for the past few days, I’ve been getting apathetic and lethargic, ending my workout as early as 7:30. It made me think and question my motives for going to the gym. As one of my friends transparently stated, I clinged on to the gym because I needed something to help me clear my mind and get everything that was bothering me out, or in short, it was my way of avoiding reality and seeing past the anxieties and helping my wounded ego return to its old self. It was sort of like my “ego alarm system-slash-nurse”, but recently for the past two to three weeks, no alarms and no bandages were sounded or wrapped around me because I’ve been emotionally balanced and particularly happy, and I didn’t really feel the need or the urge to attach so much of my time to the gym. And then it struck me, when we attach ourselves to something or someone, eventually in the end, what we’ve attached ourselves to, will become too homely or too predictable that we won’t have a choice but to detach ourselves once more for our new needs and new wants to be met. And if that is the case, is life just one big endless process of attaching and detaching?

As my philosophy teacher endlessly said, for us, the ego, to be independent from whatever we’re in need of, we first have to be dependent of it. And so I questioned him, is life really just supposed to be that impermanent and unstable, and sadly, he said yes. It made wonder and reflect about the needs and wants in a relationship. When those wants and those needs are met, is that the time when the relationship will end? Does that mean that everything that they’ve shared means completely nothing to them? And with that point in mind, are relationships just another version of survival of the fittest? Are we just in it for “ourselves” and not for “the two of us”?

As for one of my close friends who recently found her “new half” or her new “the one”, I couldn’t help but to think, what was new with this guy? And through my research and questioning, her new boyfriend was almost the complete opposite of her ex. He had somewhat of a “bad-boy” image as opposed to her “good-boy” ex-boyfriend, who from the point of many people was quite the submissive one. The new “the one” was something she never experienced, something she never had, and something that was foreign and unknown to my friend. From what I know, my friend came from a relationship that had almost or no drama at all, everything that she wanted, she got. And maybe at some point in their relationship, or in anyone’s relationship, we reach a saturation point where everything we need and want is available, and we end up re-analyzing our relationship and questioning our reasons for staying? Is there growth? Is the love enough? Is he/she who I really want? Am I happy? And once these questions are answered, do we still have the will to stay? As for my friend, she gave in to her new needs and he new wants and attached herself to a new man.

When we get into a relationship, it’s always supposed to be about “us” and not about “me”, but why is it that when relationships end, it’s always about “me” or my needs and my wants and not about our needs and our wants. As for my love-sickness partner-slash-confidant, her needs and her wants aren’t or haven’t been met in her relationship, but she has grown attached to the idea of a detached relationship; a relationship where they barely see each other and scarcely feel each other’s warmth and touch. She has grown accustomed to the idea that she doesn’t have a boyfriend, an idea that, in my opinion, has grown to another level. She has gotten used to the distance that they have, even if they’re only a few blocks apart. Torned by the “law”, this post modern Romeo & Juliet is evolving into a Romeo with no Juliet. Their detachment from each other, coming from my friend, has led her to lose some of the love that she has saved for him. It made me wonder, as much as I tell her to break it off with Romeo, since it is unfair to him and to herself, why is she so afraid of losing him, if what she felt for him is no longer there? And she answered me, I still love him, but “ewan ko”. Now, to me, when a person’s emotional being is at stake or on the line, “ewan ko” shouldn’t be the answer. Just question yourself and ask, am I growing from this relationship? Am I getting what I need and is what we have, meeting “my” wants?

In some ways, I understand my friend. She’s afraid of detaching herself from something that she has attached herself so tightly to without another hand to immediately save her from the fall. The fear of falling down that endless skyscraper and later finding out that in the end it ultimately ends and we’ll end up all bloody and messed up on the 6’oclock news, terrorizes us. Realizing that when we lose grip or let go of our loved one’s hands, the question that bothers and troubles everyone’s mind is that, is there another hand that will save us from falling? As I see it, when we let go, we have to fall first. We have to experience falling down those 20 to 30 or even 40 floors to fully absorb and take in the idea and the actual hurt that was brought unto us, but when we see that arm extending to stop our petrifying fall, the seemingly never-ending drop would have been all worth it. And again, as we try to get back on our feet and get ourselves together, we journey back to the top of our endless skyscrapers, but this time, we hold on more tightly, we walk more safely, we secure every step, we question things more than before, and we assure everything we do, making sure that this time, we won’t fall as hard and as painful as before...

- posted by Cy Ynares @ 3:15 PM

 
"Burberry On The Rebound"
As I searched the net for the price of the Burberry bucket hat that I’m thinking of purchasing, (since www.burberry.com had no hats available) I couldn’t help but notice all the fake and imitation hats that are out there. It made me wonder, if I bid on a product on E-Bay or Bidshot.com, what guarantees that it is authentic? What certifies that it is actually Burberry? And if that is the case, is the seller’s word ever enough for us? When it comes to relationships and moving on, it makes me wonder, what do we have to do to certify and prove that our love and happiness is genuine and not artificial?

Though many people might disagree and violently attest to my claims, my time of grieving for my ex has long been over. My sorrow isn’t really about her anymore, but about the thought of me living my life alone. The recent anxiety attacks that I’ve been incurring is somewhat due to the diet pills that I’ve been taking and not about “her”, as some people have blatantly implied. Genuinely, I’m happy, and though I wish some things could be different, I don’t regret anything anymore. An experience makes us stronger, and though it takes ample time to be authentically and completely over someone or something, the outcome of the period of misery would have been all worth it. But as the seller and a fellow buyer, we all know, that words are never enough. As they say, actions speak louder than words, or in this case, seeing is believing. But when we do see it, do we actually and truly believe it? With the several fake imitation hats out there, how easy is it to spot the fake from the real?

As for a friend of mine, though her shopping skills is quite intact, her eye for spotting what was real and what was not needed some sharpening. Her ex-boyfriend told her to move on because he wasn’t “in-love” with her anymore, and that is exactly what my rebounding heart broken friend did. As much I warned her to take her time and deal with the break up correctly, she found a mighty expensive fake Burberry bucket hat that suited her. After a few days of false happiness, her ex came back saying that he still loved her and that he wanted her back. As expected, she returned “the imitation” and bought back her old and genuine Burberry hat. The two had their talks and agreed that the ill-feelings were gone, but as authentic as it sounded, the ill-feelings were still there, shadowed by the amazingly similar stitching and the comparable cloth quality and texture, or in this case, the powerful love and the intense memories that they shared. But as we all know, love by any means is never enough, and as much as we’d like to think otherwise, love cannot sustain and manage a relationship alone. So there she was, faced with the fact that her boyfriend couldn’t truly and genuinely accept the idea that she found another hat to quickly cover the emptiness and shield her from the cold drafts that slowly and emotionally destroyed her. Eventually, my friend had no choice but to let her priceless and greatly cherished hat go, even if it meant leaving a costly and unsettled debt on her heart.

As for another friend, seeing what was real and what was fake wasn’t the issue, but it was more on accepting the facts and moving past the denial stage. She had her a “relationship” with “the gorgeous model” guy, but couldn’t grasp the concept that he wasn’t in it for a relationship. There she was wearing the hat, modestly and humbly flaunting the accessory, and dismissing any thought whatsoever that it was some fake imitation from Canal Street or Greenhills, while in fact it had “cheap knock-off” boldly written all over it. Though I give her much props for hooking a guy with that rep, living a fantasy and seeing reality are two different worlds. As some might agree, sooner or later the flaws and defects in any replica will pop up and ultimately, it will show its true colors, or as for my friend, “the gorgeous model” guy’s intentions. And as predicted, it did. The hat faded and fell apart, and though not much harm was done, nor anything was invested into the hat, a little part of my friend secretly wished that it was real.

Honestly, I must say, I don’t know much about fake Burberrys, fake Vuittons, or fake Icebergs, but what I do know is that it doesn’t last as long as the real ones. And if ever we do make the decision to buy something fake, since in fact, it is a whole lot cheaper and many of today’s society have grown accustomed to purchasing it, we’d have to be ready to maintain it and be alert of all the possible shortcomings and errors that will come about. Comparing the replica with the real one never hurts, but accepting the fact that what you have is a fake, is a realization that many people have to deal with. As for new relationships and “rebounding” effects, knowing what you can offer and what you expect is never a bad idea, but enforcing what we want and what we demand is unreasonable. Wishing for the old qualities of the old but homely hat, the same fit, the same color coordination, the correct bend, and the outfits that we’d wear it with, will certainly do us no good. It’s a brand new start and a new process of molding our Burberry bucket hat, whether fake or real, to fit our heads in a perfect “buckety” way. But the question that always seems to take over the mind of anyone who’s out there window shopping and searching for their Burberrys, is the question of how long will this hat last? And if that is the case, is the price of the hat ever reasonable?

For several people who just got over a long relationship, the concept of “rebounding” or quickly getting into a new relationship is a sickness that we as “the dumped ones” go through, but in my opinion, impulsively purchasing and quickly wearing the fake duplicate to fulfill the need of the original is never the answer. Dealing with the pain and the heartache and emotionally killing yourself is hard to take and definitely harder to accept, but hastily covering the pain without completely taking out the ill feelings or the attachments from the old hat will leave our heartaches and ours issues unresolved. As for me, I’ll patiently wait for the long-awaited sale at Burberrys or if that doesn’t happen, I’ll save every penny or centavo, for that matter, ‘til I can proudly open that door at Burberrys and try the hat that I’ve been longing for, and say “I’ll take this one.”
- posted by Cy Ynares @ 3:36 AM

 
"Attention Shoppers: Sale on Aisle 12"
When we go shopping, there is always that part of the whole “sport” where we see what we want and imagine ourselves with it. For example, while cruising the mall and indulging in some stimulating window shopping, you come across this Hermés watch that you’ve been dying to get your hands on. You have a choice, to splurge and buy the watch or be practical and realize your constraints and gradually but sadly walk away. If you do make the choice to buy it, there is always that feeling, the feeling of temporary bliss and a hint of hesitation, but it’s there, attached to your wrist, and carrying the respectable and well-known name Hermés, or you could choose to earn for it, and buy it when it’s time. But when it comes to love, when we see the Hermés of loves, are we “splurge-aholics?”

Being an avid member of “Splurge-aholics Anonymous”, I know the feeling of doing too much. I guess it comes naturally when your love for someone goes to the extent that you put them beyond yourself. But at some point or another, I think in nature, we are all “splurge-aholics.” For example, a friend of mine would get into this “dating relationship” and splurge out all his love. He’d do everything, to get the love that he wants. He’d visit them wherever the special someone is, bring them ice cream, buy them flowers, basically make “ligaw”, and ironically, I understood him. Just like everyone else, he’s looking for his Hermés watch, or in this case, his temporary happiness. But, as serious shoppers, we know when there is a good deal and a bad bargain. When we go to the “tiangge”, we make “tawad”, and if the price is still high, we have no choice but to move on to the next stall.

As for a person who I hold close to my heart, her window shopping days have grown long and weary. Being in her early twenties and never experiencing the joy of love from that special someone, she has learned to stop shopping and decided to sit back and let life take its course. Though many would say that she isn’t missing much, I would have to disagree. The feeling of your first kiss, your first time falling in love, and definitely, your first broken heart, is irreplaceable and definitely memorable. Though I must admit that her roaming days are no where near extinction, I don’t agree with the idea to wait for happiness to come. Like a catalog, you have to order the product before it arrives. The girl is out there, sometimes discreetly checking out possible prospects, but usually ending up with a flaw that leads to her disliking. Though we all have the perfect image of what we want in a person, unlike a watch, we can’t get it custom-made. We have to take what life gives us and work around it. Physical appearance is definitely the first thing we look at, but by the third and fourth date, personality is what matters.

Picking the perfect watch that will go with your character and personality is without a doubt one of the hardest choices any watch fanatic would make. Square-faced? Silver Bezel? Automatic? Diamonds? Etc… And when it comes to picking the perfect mate, same rules apply. Tall? Skinny? Dark? Long hair? Funny? Snobby? Etc… But as frequent shoppers with many tastes would say, we shouldn’t limit ourselves to our norms or what we usually purchase, experiment and try new styles. Don’t discriminate, instead keep an open-mind, and see what happens. As for me, I’d usually shop at this particular store, but recently, I’ve shifted gear and decided to settle for something else. Something unconventional, yet practical. Though I’m not yet daring (nor do I ever think I will be) enough to wear the flower pattern shirts from Kenneth Cole or Paul Smith, I am ready for the simple plain shirts that I always thought made me look generic, generic in a sense that it’s plain and lifeless. But what I’ve realized is that something so plain, something so simple, can make anyone look so classic and so timeless, it just takes a little work and a little time. Before, I always thought, wearing these branded clothes would make me feel so secure and in a way, separate me from the rest, but what life has shown me, is that, it doesn’t matter what you have or what you can have, it’s what’s inside that matters the most. And as cliché as that might sound, it does have depth and makes plenty of sense.

As for relationships, picking the perfect person is never a bad idea. No one can go wrong with the perfect person right? But how rare is it to come across that perfect person? If you think about it, everyone that’s ever been in a relationship changed to fit their partner’s wants and needs. It’s their splurge. It’s what they’re willing to give up to get what they want. It could be smoking, alcohol, dating, drugs, and so forth. In my opinion, no one really ends up with the perfect idea of the perfect person, they shift, they evolve and they change their partner to fit their needs and wants. As for me, I’ve gone a long way from the “baggy-jeans-timberland-boot-wearing-fake-me-out-nigga-wannabe” to the little white boy image that I give out now. But slowly, I changed. Not because, it was enforced upon me, but because I knew that was what she wanted. I knew, that was what I had to do, to keep what I wanted around me. As I said, splurging would always be just temporary happiness, because as we all know, nothing stays the same. And just like shopping, when we run out of cash and our credit cards are all maxed out, we have no choice but to save and earn until we’re once again ready to splurge and purchase the next item on our shopping list.

- posted by Cy Ynares @ 4:50 AM

 
"Over The Rainbow and Past The Storm"
While letting out my sadness and depression in the gym, I got to thinking about break ups and moving on. I’ve considered or at least thought of myself as being over my “ghost”. I thought I was genuinely happy and ready to move on with life and patiently wait for the next person in line, but eventually, the shell or the barrier that I created, hiding me from the boogey-monster under my bed or the ogres and trolls that endlessly haunts my life, cracked. It was unexpected and definitely unwanted. I wanted to forget, I wanted to be emotionless, but most of all, I wanted to move on. As much as I believed that I was at the rainbow, I couldn’t help but to think, what comes after? A new storm? Another rainbow?

Being convinced that I was out of Hurricane “Princess Ada”, I didn’t find any harm meeting and reuniting with a very close friend of mine, who was always prompt and present in my past. There we were, reminiscing the old times, discreetly avoiding the topic of my “ghost”. My mind forbid the idea of asking and nonchalantly bringing up the topic, but my heart wanted to do the opposite. I couldn’t take it, and lastly, I gave in. Before we parted ways, I heard the line that I never wanted to hear, but needed to fully and finally let go… “she’s dating.” There I was, standing face to face with the reality that I always avoided and immediately brushed off. I expected the rain to come hurl at me at every direction and waited for the punches and the cheap blows to knock me out, and it did. I broke down, and everything that I’ve enclosed myself in for the past 2 months seemed more surreal than it ever did. I always thought that by removing myself from the “haunted house”, I would be able to live a normal and ghost-free life, but as we all know, the past has its way of coming back and biting you in the ass. In this case, it was Nat.

As I see it, rainbows aren’t permanent… they never are. They show up unexpectedly in unexpected places, and just as well, disappear unpredictably. You can never foretell when and where it will appear because surprisingly, out of the blue, out of the storm, it just does. Same goes for break-ups. You can’t set a date and say I’ll be over you by “blah blah and blah blah”, because love is erratic and inconsistent. You’ll never know when you’ll truly be happy and completely and utterly over the fear of your ghost. Unlike relationships, the “ghosts” are forever. It can never be lost nor stolen, only avoided and ignored. Seeing past the colorless transparent ghosts and into the bright and colorful rainbow, our lives can somehow find someway to move on, and enjoy what’s in front of us. As for my friends, their rainbows came in different forms, a summer fling which so far evolved into a 3 month relationship, a time-consuming job which resulted in many friendships, a match made in heaven costing her, her friends, an ocean of happiness, a life devoted to waiting for her first love, a ride on the rollercoaster of trust and honesty, a journey to discover what they really want, and as for me, a new love…

So what does come after the rainbow? What comes after our happiness? Isn’t it quite ironic that right after the happiness, right after the high, we feel the pain and we experience the low? We all know the saying, if life throws us lemons, make lemonade, but have you ever wondered how much work it takes to make the perfect or almost perfect lemonade? Will we settle for something imperfect or something not close to perfect? I don’t think so. In my opinion, that is why we can never be truly happy. When we get what we want, we ask for more, for something better, for something unattainable. When we’ve reached the pot of gold at the end of our rainbow, do we keep the gold or journey on and search for more? Is our life a never-ending search for gold? Or in our case, happiness. If this is the case, when can we truly say, that it is enough?

My search for happiness or at least trying to win it back, had its limits. Though I never expected that I would go on for 7 months, I did. I fought, I struggled, and I did anything and everything that any man fighting to keep the happiness that once inhibited his heart would have done. As they say, the heart has reason, which reason itself does not understand. The heart makes us do crazy things. Things that helps us rid of the “what ifs” and the “what might have beens” that rampantly fills and overflows our heads after a break up.

I see the things that I did as a trail, a long muddy path booby-trapped with quicksands and pits. The harder I struggled, the harder I tried to escape, the quicker and the deeper I sank. I never realized that maybe, I was fighting too much. I never thought about my well-being, ignoring what was in front of me, and only seeing the past. Why do we hold on so hard?

Everyone knows that life is dynamic. Eventually everything will change. As easy as that was to say, how easy is it to accept the changes? Maybe that is why we hold on so hard to the past. We can never fully accept the changes taking place and the modifications occurring. We hold on too hard to what we had and forget that life is moving. The past is our memoirs of happiness. A tempting and sinful enchantment that temporarily satisfies our emotions, but eventually we will be punished for it. Facing the present is frightening. Not knowing what lurks in the corner or what’s in store for us down the road, we try to keep what we had before as a security blanket. The fear of the future and the aching need for the past holds us back. We need to live for the moment and for ourselves because life is a continuous and unending journey. And as I learned it the hard way, life will go on with or without you on board.

- posted by Cy Ynares @ 11:15 AM