Ode to Myself

However counterintuitive it may be, the many traits I profoundly dislike about myself don’t hold me back from loving myself, and that’s all that matters.

All the pain I’ve gone through in spite of my privileges, and all the effort I’ve put into becoming worthy of my own love and respect, they all have to count for something, and they surely do.

I say, I’m smitten with my quirkiness—my behaviour and way of thinking, the way I smile and chortle, and the sounds I make when I’m nervous or livid; the way I empathize with others, the helping hands I’ve lent, how I repress outbursts of profanity, only to let it all out in a stream of impotence; the scars on my skin, the missing parts of my body, my unaligned spine and crooked fingers, all the sinister and archaic terminology I’ve obstinately internalized, only to fail to name commonplace objects; the occasional stuttering, the frequent cracking of my bones, the strength I muster up to overcome my tinnitus day after day, and the endless stimming that mollifies my soul; my voice, hair, and toes, my eyes and eyelashes, and all the moles scattered throughout my body.

I’m deeply in love with how I deal with my mild OCD, ADHD, and possible Asperger’s, as I am the way I internally control my tantrums, which oftentimes are at odds with the circumstances.
I’m absolutely enraptured by my compersion for others; how affectionate and kindhearted I am, the good friend that I am, the loving and thoughtful partner I am, who cares too much about everything but fails to pull himself together in a few key moments as a result of being overly overwhelmed.

I love my words, my accent, and my articulation. I love my naiveté that gets me in trouble every time I socialize, and I also love my softness and femininity that permeate my musical and literary preferences.

And, after all this, all I can think of is how much my awesomeness far outweighs my flaws, and how much more fascinated rather than repulsed by myself I am.
So, during gloomy days like today, remember these words—your words—, embrace and celebrate your identity, and please never cease to stay true to yourself.

Unconditional love

Suffice it to say, we all yearn such kind of love, regardless of whether we’ve felt it or not. It’s a deep-seated unmet need we all seem to possess—or should I say, endure—and we often let it set up our parameters for social interaction, bonding, and love. And thus, unconditional love has become a quality of virtue—you’re good so long as you love your kids, spouse, sister or friends, unconditionally.

I want someone to love me just the way I am, no matter what—that premise seems to be in the back of our minds; however, do we really grasp the significance of such need? Or, better put, do we actually intend to receive unconditional love from someone or to love them unconditionally?

Here are some thoughts you might want to factor in. The first one is simply understanding what unconditional means: indeed, it’s basically something not limited in any way, without conditions, ergo, consequences. So what unconditional love really means is loving—or being loved—void of boundaries, in spite of anything deeply hurtful or otherwise unacceptable. It could very well mean to opt out of falling in conflict when you should fall in conflict. Considering the whole range of the spectrum of the phenomenon, it can also mean to sabotage yourself or someone by not doing anything when you or someone feels undignified.

That doesn’t sound reasonable, does it?

Wanting unconditional love from a person means to not want any pressure or expectations on you. On that note, it may not be actually love what you’re looking for; rather, validation and acceptance, as loving is more convoluted than validating or approving of someone— love equals actions, not merely interpretations—. To want unconditional love translates into craving an unconditional relationship, and to truly love someone means to recognize conditions of both parts.

When it is about a committed relationship of two people alike, laying down the conditions and standing by them over time may be a smooth process, but when two people have opposite values; i.e., lifestyles, personalities, priorities, it gets extremely challenging to maintain an equilibrium. That means low compatibility averts the possibility of staying together in the same relationship configuration and be fulfilled. Conversely, high compatibility ensures that what you are, in overall, benefits the other person.

Truth be told, your primary parter may be the least person you’d get unconditional love from, as much counterintuitive as it may sound, on the grounds that they are the person who has the most skin in the game—the person who is more directly affected by the decisions you make for yourself; what you are, say, or do. For someone to love you unconditionally, they’d have to disconnect themself from you and not feel threatened by any misbehaviour that breaches one or many of their established conditions, which would not be a healthy deal.

A primary relationship will always be a cocktail of pressure, joy, expectations, and commitment, and as much disheartening as it may be at first, the idea of loving conditionally actually paves the road for a healthy relationship—if your conditions align with your partner’s conditions, you’ll both feel respected, appreciated, validated, accepted, and ultimately loved, which is what you initially signed up for.

Hi?

Sometimes I feel as though living is just en endless array of possibilities for you to reminisce about your childhood, to replay every treasured memory, every scent, every look, sentiment, even pain. If you were lucky enough to have had a wonderful childhood, like I did, adulthood is nonexistent, and I don’t mean it like Peter-Pan syndrome, I just truly believe the associations you establish as a child are the most prominent and pungent ones, and you either wish you could go back in time to breathe all that in for one more time, or change everything and have a better shot at life.

And bewildered, I just keep on longing for my young parents, depression-free sister, missed dogs, arcane melodies, and the state of being at peace to come back to me. To say hi to me and hug me.

I miss my innocence, perfect health, uncrooked fingers and soul. No tinnitus, no anxiety, no solitude, no self-loathing. I want to go back in time and smile, run, watch cartoons, learn and create. I want freedom, my friends, soccer, my whole future ahead of me. I want magical chocolate bars, start over, my first crush, being seven.
I want that
I want me.

Who is me?
I miss me.
Day in and day out.
Perhaps I can find him on a Gilmore Girls episode, or underneath my barefeet walking on asphalt.

Wait… I think I just saw him.
I think I just saw him.
I-I think I just…
Saw him…

Friend zone

We need to come to terms with the fact that unrequited love exists in spite of how painful it is. We just have to embrace it and deal with it. Nonetheless, as much as ‘friend zone’ and non-reciprocated love are similar in meaning, the former one is nuanced by an inappropriate demand from the person put at a disadvantage, wittingly or unwittingly, explicitly or implicitly, that has to do with their wish to have their love reciprocated, even though they’ve been repeatedly told it’s not and will never be, but somehow they keep on hoping that it might be returned down the road if they behave accordingly, and at that blurry moment you pass from enduring a natural, healthy unrequited love to becoming diseased in the friend zone.

People are not vending machines you put friendship tokens in until sex pops out, either, as movies make them out to be. No one owes anybody anything in the love or sex department. It seems obvious, but sometimes you must restate the obvious.