How to Become Disillusioned with Finding Love

Watch Hollywood romantic movies.  Believe that everyone has a one true love.  Etch into your soul the conviction that you will find that one guy who will inevitably accept you for everything that you are.  Who will love you unconditionally and without question.

Create a list of the qualities the love of your life must have. Set high standards.  Reach for the stars.  He must be tall, handsome, brooding and mysterious.  Intelligent and quirky.  Wealthy.  He must go to the gym regularly. He must have dimples dotting his face when he smiles. His hair must fall a certain way all the time.  

Envision showing him off to your friends and telling them how you fell in love with him because of his lovable personality, or because of how good a person he is.  How you fell in love with the way he laughed.   Or touched your hand.  Or played with your baby sister. Or any other quirky little habit that remind people of how cute he is. Subtly insert a few anecdotes that show how great in the sack he can be.  

Know that you don’t need to tell them how impossibly handsome, intelligent, and wealthy he is; they would see that for themselves. Imagine seeing your friends’ eyes widen with envy.

Stamp down any notion that there might be something wrong with you.  That’s impossible. Remind yourself that you are perfect, or as close to it as anyone can be.  You deserve this, and you deserve someone like him. Cosmopolitan said so, and it can’t be wrong.

Go out on date after date after date.  Constantly be disappointed. Rejection, both rejecting and being rejected, makes you cynical. Build up walls. Surround yourself with the emotional equivalent of a moat. Insult people, and point out how they can never live up to your standards.  Stop dating. Or date with the knowledge that these people will only prove why you are better off single in the first place.

Watch Hollywood romantic movies only so you can make contemptuous comments on the stupidity of their plot. Smile patronizingly at friends who believe in a one true love.  Remind yourself that it doesn’t exist.  That it couldn’t exist. That its existence would imply that there might be something wrong with you.  And that couldn’t be true.   Convince yourself that you like being alone.  No, that you love being alone.  That you don’t feel lonely, and that whatever hole you feel in your life can be filled up by friends and family.  Sleep at night with the nagging sentiment that you are missing something, and hope for the best that things will be better in the morning.

War Paint

You start with the eyes, because they say those are the windows to the soul.  A touch of mascara perhaps, some eyeliner, and slight dark eye powder to give you that smoky look.

Then the cheeks. Bronzer, right on the cheekbones, to highlight (or create) sharper angles.  A little red coloring, to mimic (or fake) a schoolgirl blush.

Don't forget the lips. Full lips, but not red since you don't want to appear like a whore.  A neutral brownish, reddish hue perhaps, just to emphasize its voluptuousness.

Then Spanx, to create curves where there was none before. A push-up bra, to lift sagging breasts, and to create the illusion of heft.  Over which you throw the ubiquitous LBD, which effectively showcases your apparent feminine sensuality. Five inch pointy heels that can double as a lethal weapon.

You look in the mirror and smile.  With a flip of your hair, you turn, ready to conquer the world. Game face on.

A Letter Regarding A Few, Unimportant Things

Image taken here.

Dear Fickle Cattle,

I came across your blog a week ago. I cannot remember how exactly. What I do remember is that part where you said you "love email." I smiled at that line, thinking about how I, too, am fond of emails. I decided then to write you one when I get the time and when I sense a need to talk to someone. Are you wondering now why I opted to talk to a stranger instead of a friend? Do you know Rainer Maria Rilke, the German poet? As I write this, a line from one of his letters echoes in my mind. He was saying something about solitude, its difficulties and pains, and how there are moments when one is solitary when one would feel the strongest urge to close one's distance from people, break the silence and talk to anyone, usually the most undeserving. Well, this is one such moment, although there is a number of discrepancies. One, you and I are definitely distant from each other (I'm guessing you are not one of the three guys I share this flat with). Two, I do not think you are most undeserving.

If I wrote this email immediately after I read your blog entries, it most probably would have contained effusive sentiments on how touched I was by some of them. Actually, I can visit your blog now and perhaps discuss the things I liked in it (not without citations) the way I would write a review of related lit as part of the many school requirements I've had, but I do not have the energy to do so. Nonetheless, I congratulate you for having achieved this -- I write because I hope, someone, somewhere, would read what I wrote and think, "yes, he's right, I get it," and understand me. Well, obviously I had to copy-paste that from your blog. I guess I had the energy after all. Anyway, I did think "you're right, I get it" and that, I'm sure, is the reason why I decided to write you.

What do I want to talk to you about, anyway?

I feel terribly lonely. I woke up at 5 am this morning and read about typhoon signals. I was almost certain I would receive a text about a class suspension albeit late. I slowly and lazily planned my day -- maybe I'll study that chapter on mycology or read about heart pathology, I should watch First Love, that Thai film a friend told me about, I will definitely read Norwegian Wood. I went over these things and then some while the winds outside slowly gained pace. I had to check if my window and my curtain were properly angled and aligned to allow for the cold to enter and to prevent my desk from getting soaked.

If you must know, I ended up watching and reading but not studying at all. And now I feel sad. It could be because of the movie. I find it funny that a feel-good movie with a decently happy ending would leave me in the brink of depression. Now I was not overly touched by the film. I reserve such honor for tours de force like La vita è bella. Actually, I have always been like this, always exceptionally saddened by stories with that theme (of First Love). Maybe because I have not encountered a thing like that. Or perhaps I'm just upset by the fact that I have let a day go by without catching up with lessons knowing that exams are near. But that's too boring a reason, don't you think?

Minutes before I started this email, I thought of writing in my journal, which I have not done in weeks. I was lying down when I groped for my journal under the bed. It was hard work because in my position, I couldn't extend my hand way under and so I was failing. I was too lazy to go on all fours and reach for it. That's when I thought of writing an email instead. Naturally, I had to get hold of my laptop which was also under the bed, beside my journal. And this time, I did go on all fours to reach for my laptop. Apparently, writing an email was a higher motivation than writing in my journal. Or I'm just fickle and silly that way. Oops, I did not mean to steal your blog's name.

This has become long-winded. Are you tired? I feel that I have not completely communicated everything that stirs in me at the moment. Then again, I don't think we can always completely communicate everything inside us. And when we do succeed in transforming the formless into a meaningful series of words, there's always at least a slight difference from what was originally born within us. Sometimes however, what does come out becomes far more beautiful, but of course what comes out that was not first born within? Nothing.

I hope to hear from you soon. How has your life been?

Sincerely,

Nico

***

Hi Nico,

This is probably one of the most interesting emails I've gotten in a while.  I must say I thoroughly enjoyed reading it; the quirky directions your thoughts suddenly take reveal a particularly sharp mind, and I'm especially grateful it is one owned by someone who actually reads my blog. I'm glad you take some pleasure from it.

I wish I knew how to respond to this email in a manner that is just as witty or as interesting, but I fear I probably won't live up to your expectations, and may just prove to myself that I am as poorly skilled at replying to interesting letters as I imagine.  

But I do understand your point about loneliness.  I experience it too. Sometimes I revel in it.  There is something uniquely, hmm, pleasurable? about taking the time to wallow in one's sadness.  Maybe because, to my mind at least, it gives one the sensation of not being content, therefore, of wanting something more.  Contentment is an overrated thing, one must always strive to be something more, to want something more, until he dies. Otherwise, what is the point of living? To choose contentment, at least, in the most mundane sense of the word, is to choose stagnation.

I'm sorry. I'm rambling. I've just finished writing four pleadings and my brain is starting to fail to function.

Let me end with this.  I want to publish your email in my blog, along with some commentary on my part. Please permit me to do so. I think my readers would find it a very interesting read.

Regards,

Fickle Cattle

P.S.  Your letter reminded me of a short story I once wrote that got published in the Sunday Manila Times. It was entitled "A Few, Unimportant Things". I reposted it as a new tab (Random Fiction).  Please feel free to take a look.

P.S. 2 I decided not to bother with the commentary. Your letter is interesting enough as it is. Thank you.

You Should Date a Writer

Image taken here.

(This is a response to this particularly brilliant piece of writing found here, entitled Never Date a Writer).

You should date a writer. You should date a writer because he will fictionalize everything. He will write about things you have done to him, or things you have never done to him. He will write about the time you held his hand, in the rain, and shared an umbrella. Or said nothing when he cried copiously in a movie theater. He will write, in pure passionate prose, about how, during the time you were together, you came across a stray cat on the street and you cried and you took it home and gave it to him and he fell in love with you for the first time.

You should date a writer. You should date a writer because he will fictionalize everything. He will write about the time you fought, and made up, and made love, and fought again. He will scour the details of your lives, and make from them poetry.  And his words will sing in your head like birds in spring.

You should date a writer.  You should date a writer because he will fictionalize everything.  He will write about things that have happened, or that have not happened.  He will write about the time you broke up, and he broke your heart.  Or the time that he asked you to stay, and you left.  He will write, words bleeding on a page, about love and life and lessons learned.

And you will learn about the time he waited outside your door for hours, not knowing if you were coming home or not. Or about the time he baked you a cake, lopsided and burnt, and threw it away because he did not want to give you a stupid ugly cake on your birthday. Or about the time he woke up at 5am in the morning to get you fresh flowers in the market, because he couldn’t afford the ones they sold at the mall and he knew how much you liked them.

Or about the time when he was sick, and you were there, making sure he was safe and warm. How you skipped work that day, and puttered around his apartment, making more noise than was probably necessary.  And how you kissed him on the forehead when you thought he was asleep, and whispered a promise he dared not believe.

You will learn about the time he stood by your door, and told you he loved you, and how that was the happiest and scariest day of his life.  How nervous and fearful he felt, not knowing if you loved him back.

You should date a writer.  You should date a writer because he will fictionalize everything.  He will immortalize in words, the life you shared, or the time you both laid in bed, and whispered affectionate promises of forever.