https://www.istorya.net/forums/blog.php?36409-cokefloat_f en Sun, 17 May 2026 02:50:43 GMT vBulletin 300 https://www.istorya.net/forums/images/metro/blue/misc/rss.jpg https://www.istorya.net/forums/blog.php?36409-cokefloat_f https://www.istorya.net/forums/entry.php?330-the-myth-of-the-one-who-got-away%21 Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:12:45 GMT Something about the rain always makes me feel meloncholic. may be it's the way everything suddenly turns grey. Just last night, the plants esp. the leaves" (hehehe) and the city lights outside my friend's car --- let me correct that, the fabulous leaves and the city lights outide chad's car --- was filled with color. The grass had finally turned awesome green, no longer dusty from long summer days. The bromeliads were out in full regalia, and the white blossoms were all at attention. And then, The rain came down, and washed all the colors away.
These grey days come with their own sense of ritual. Gone are shades, sexy tank tops, interesting flip flops, seasonal white trousers, the lingering iced coffee dates in air-conditioned coffee shops, and conversations about plans and dreams and all the things that can possibly be. possibilities seem part of the spirit of summer. Instead, we have raincoats, umbrellas, vitamin C, rubber shoes, seaming tea in the same cooffee shops, and this time, conversations about all the could have been, but can no longer be. Regret and reminiscences seem part of the spirit of the rainy season.

It is in this kind of weather that met up with "The One Who Got Away." You know who I'm talking about, right? The one we could have married; the one that could have lasted forever; the one you thought was the one. (The people who love us sometimes call him "the mistake," or "The proof of God's mercy.") We all have, hopefully, one of those lying around in our memory banks.

We had planned to meet for some time because I was in the area and had something to give back to him. Before I had to meet him, I stood in front of the mirror, and found myself curling my eyelashes. I knew why I was curling my eyelashes: more than anyhing, I wanted to look beautiful; I wanted him to sigh at the end of the day and whisper to himself, "There's the one who got away." As I curled the eyelashes om my right eye, I wondered: "Why would I want him to think i have gotten away? After all, wasn't I infinitely grateful that i had gotten away?" And as I curled the eyelashes on my left eye, I wondered, "And why would I think he had gone away? After all, It would never, ever have worked."

I live and function in a relationship that is, by all definition, beautiful. I have meaningful commitments and wonderful relationships. It is almost brazen to want more out of life. And yet, these rainy days, "more" looks quite appealing. I go back to my old love stories and recall how i felt when i was younger and in love. An old song comes to me: "I remember the boy, but i don't remember the feeling anymore." In my situation, it all seems reversed. I don't remember the boy, but i remember (and miss) the feeling more and more.

I remember my elementary years --- writer's guild. They asked me to talk about how they could write creative nonfiction. I said yes, because i really love writting, and I love helping people articulate themselves through writing.I talkes about how important the activity of "wondering" is. and blablabla.... The experience tells me that this particular wondering might be a human need, a need to mythologize the one who got away.

Myths are actually ordinary stories that have happened to us. They become elevated into a myth because they remain in our memory in spite the passage of time. They become repeated in conversation. They become myths because they explain why we are what we are. Think of what stories get repeated at your family reunions. Aren't the most repeated atories also the most fantastic(One of our family stories includes a lolo who can disappear from family albums!) They beacome myths by the way we embroider the original story to make it look more like fiction than fact.

In fact, The One Who Got Away was a first-class jerk who broke my heart because he never saw the real me. In myth, The One Who Got Away suffered when he lost me. In myth, he was not really a jerk but rather than a lost soul afraid to love me. In myth, the truth becomes easy to live with.

More interestingly, I have come to the conclusion that we keep the myth of The One Who Got Away, not because we want to run away from the one we are with, but rather because --- and i need you to hang on to your chair before i say this --- because we are afraid of losing our youth. This myth should actually be called the eternal foundation of youth.

In the story of what-might-have-been, we are eternally young. We never age in these stories when we tell them. In the story we have chosen to be in, we have become sons and daughters, workers, students and real people. We have become grown up and, even worse, we have become our parents. In the myth, however we are frozen in time, and the recklessness and possibility of wonder and excitement forever exist. Oh, in the past, in the imagines past, the possibilities remain endless. (Just look at what happens to the world when they tell us stories about their old loves!) We keep this myth and trot it out every once in a while, not because we are in love with someone in the past and regret our choices (although that does happen); but rather we are in love with our selves in the past where we elude aging. It is the old me that i wish to revisit.

If this in any way resonates with you, let us all wish together for the rain to go away quickly and clear all our fantasies away. ]]> cokefloat_f https://www.istorya.net/forums/entry.php?330-the-myth-of-the-one-who-got-away%21 https://www.istorya.net/forums/entry.php?218-How-Paris-Hilton-saved-fashion-for-me Sat, 07 Feb 2009 11:57:09 GMT In high school, people would pick fights with me, solely for the grand and dramatic reason that I had changed. "You’ve changed!" they would huff at me, like I was a bigger bigot than Mel Gibson. What’s so wrong with changing? Do I really want to be the naïve albeit nice pansy that I was 10 years ago? I mean, I’ve been changing since I was changing diapers! I’ve switched teams (from hating boys to loving them a bit too much) lowered my IQ throughout the years, compromised my morals more and more each year and become a bit more of an angry irrational person as each birthday comes along. (Senility is just around the corner.) Kidding, I’d like to think that I have a more esoteric personality. Sure, I’m now much more discriminating with my circle of friends, but that’s the reason that I avoid the very thing "changing" seems to mean to these people —i.e. being plastic.

Some people also can’t get that just because you can’t be chums like you used to be, you’re now evil. A monster with a heart of chrome. I mean, people offer their shoulders for you to cry on when you break up with your boyfriend, but if you break up with a friend, it gets very tricky. You become the kind of person who can’t keep friends, because you’re too good for friends. People grow out of each other all the time; it’s an ugly and unsentimental fact of life. Although, like with any breakup, always make sure you’re not the jerk. Like, if you drop people because you think you’re too cool for them. Or maybe you think that they just have no place in your sleek new life.

It’s time to go back to the sandbox, because that’s probably where we belong. But in many cases, well-meaning people just lose touch and grow apart. It’s better than trying to force a friendship that is held together by the very thin twine of the past. It’s like a bad marriage.(opinion of a 20 year old angel)lol

Sometimes I bump into old classmates who say, in mid-sneer, "you’ve changed" the less cavalier ones resort to good old-fashioned backstabbing. "Oh, she’s changed…" they confide with one another, like I’ve invented a new torture chamber that kills kittens.

A friend once told me that some of our high school cohorts were discussing who had changed among our batch and who had not. You would have thought that the winners in this inferno version of the view would be the ones who had moved on and got themselves questionable lovers and unexpected pregnancies. But the shape shifters of our batch were branded one by one as bitches (me included… sniff) by the panel, for the very specific and damning reason that we "had changed." My spy told me that all these girls have still been dating the same guys, have remained at the same "jobs" since we graduated(high school) and still wear baggy clothes(not as in volume, I mean Dawson’s Creek baggy).

So, if only to avoid being damned to wear gross ’90s slacks, I’d rather be the bitch in hungkera(how do you spell that again?). lol. I mean I’m really a completely different person now. For example the old me never cared about clothes — fast forward to now. I literally would starve myself to buy the newest Fendi bag. Yeah, so I’m not better now than I was before, just different. But at least I don’t give in to peer pressure anymore like I used to (I was the doormat-next-door in my academic years. I mean high school!) And cave in to eating lasagna in the afternoon or drinking regular soda instead of diet, just because everybody was doing it.

No, but really. I’m proud of every change that I have made in my life. I’m not going to apologize for who I am. I’ll be lost in retro land anyway with the bad boyfriends in noisy cars and catty women who don’t wear nail polish. I mean, why be a Japanese spitz (a dying and endangered breed form the ’80s) when you can be au courant mixed breed like a poogle (poodle and beagle)? Change is good and don’t ever let anyone in ugly baggy slacks tell you otherwise.

-maeryl d. ]]> cokefloat_f https://www.istorya.net/forums/entry.php?218-How-Paris-Hilton-saved-fashion-for-me https://www.istorya.net/forums/entry.php?212-Maybe-the-problem-was-me Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:18:51 GMT He was crying again. I could not believe he was crying. My boyfriend. I will always remember those eyes, longing to smile behind all the problems I thought he would solve with determination, strength and maturity. The love of my life— I knew it each time he played the guitar and with every word he spoke (that I had to later on look up in the dictionary, while we wasn’t looking), the one who said that he would brave each of the tremendous obstacles that distance can possibly inflict on true love—was crying. I didn’t know what to say. We just had an argument. I fought back. I shouted, I cursed and eventually hung up the phone on him. Later on, I called him back to apologize, knowing that women of an aggressive nature like myself oftentimes tend to be dramatic and irrational. My boyfriend, my prince, and my angel… the idiot was crying. Let me tell you that there is no experience that makes me more uncomfortable than seeing (or hearing, on that specific occasion) a grown man forced to tears. By this, I don’t mean the single dignified teardrop that slowly rolls down a gentleman’s cheek in the movies, I mean uncontrollable weeping, sobbing and wailing. Men being hysterical, emotional and hypersensitive give me a headache. But what was I supposed to do in that situation—listening to my boyfriend completely transform into this helpless, pitiable person? I couldn’t hang up again, nor could I say, “sorry, babe. I love you, but I just can’t be bothered with this.” After doing my absolute best to resolve the argument we had, I hung up the phone wondering why I felt so revolted by the conversation. I tried to come up with some intricate explanation as to why I was so disturbed by the petty squabble, until I finally realized that the answer was simple: it was because he cried. I tried to tell myself that this is what I asked for, that I had always imagined the great love of my life to be an artist as such — someone who was very open about his emotions and completely unafraid to express them. It was much too late when I realized that this whole time, I had been digging myself a hole, wishing for a pansy! Upon this realization, I began to reevaluate my past relationships, all the men I had dated before were precisely my failed attempts to fulfill my yearning for the stereotypical “sensitive” man, the results of which were nothing more than bad poetry and junk food binges that were fueled by memories of excessively dramatic experiences. What on earth had I been thinking? All this time I had been so certain of what exactly “my type” was, and all the man who fit the profile had turned out to be great disappointments. I began to wonder, when did sensitive men become everyone’s darlings, anyway? Do women seriously still find these effeminate character attributes sexy? I personally believe that the phenomenon of the sensitive male is way past its expiration date. The weepy boyfriend eventually became my ex-boyfriend, and to celebrate my newfound freedom, I immediately resolved to find myself someone who would be his total antithesis and thus finally engage in a relationship with someone man enough to be with a woman like myself. I needed someone whose emotional stability would not crumble beneath my strong personality, someone who didn’t take himself seriously, someone who didn’t cry so darn easily! I went through a list of criteria in my head, determined not to end up with another pansy like the last one. Foreign. Intelligent. Ridiculously good looking and coveted by many other females. No interest in a serious commitment. No artistic ability whatsoever. Preferably a jock. It then dawned on me that maybe the problem was me. Was I truly such an unbearable woman that every one of my partners would not be able to sustain any semblance of a healthy relationship with me? Bear in mind that my extreme confusion did not by any means become an excuse to surrender myself to defeat. I was not going to let something like existential anguish degrade me into an emotional sack of nerves! I was determined and would not indulge myself in mood swings, vanity, or hysteria. I decided that I was through searching for the right man, I’ m now waiting … I smiled to myself… perhaps it is time to get off my rant and come back to earth. Perhaps not everything was as complicated as I made it out to be. Perhaps the right amount of sensitivity is, In fact, a lovely quality for men to have, in which case, I need not behave like such a difficult woman after all. He was crying again. I could not believe he was crying. My boyfriend. I will always remember those eyes, longing to smile behind all the problems I thought he would solve with determination, strength and maturity. The love of my life— I knew it each time he played the guitar and with every word he spoke (that I had to later on look up in the dictionary, while we wasn’t looking), the one who said that he would brave each of the tremendous obstacles that distance can possibly inflict on true love—was crying. I didn’t know what to say. We just had an argument. I fought back. I shouted, I cursed and eventually hung up the phone on him. Later on, I called him back to apologize, knowing that women of an aggressive nature like myself oftentimes tend to be dramatic and irrational. My boyfriend, my prince, and my angel… the idiot was crying. Let me tell you that there is no experience that makes me more uncomfortable than seeing (or hearing, on that specific occasion) a grown man forced to tears. By this, I don’t mean the single dignified teardrop that slowly rolls down a gentleman’s cheek in the movies, I mean uncontrollable weeping, sobbing and wailing.

Men being hysterical, emotional and hypersensitive give me a headache. But what was I supposed to do in that situation—listening to my boyfriend completely transform into this helpless, pitiable person? I couldn’t hang up again, nor could I say, “sorry, babe. I love you, but I just can’t be bothered with this.”

After doing my absolute best to resolve the argument we had, I hung up the phone wondering why I felt so revolted by the conversation. I tried to come up with some intricate explanation as to why I was so disturbed by the petty squabble, until I finally realized that the answer was simple: it was because he cried. I tried to tell myself that this is what I asked for, that I had always imagined the great love of my life to be an artist as such — someone who was very open about his emotions and completely unafraid to express them. It was much too late when I realized that this whole time, I had been digging myself a hole, wishing for a pansy! Upon this realization, I began to reevaluate my past relationships, all the men I had dated before were precisely my failed attempts to fulfill my yearning for the stereotypical “sensitive” man, the results of which were nothing more than bad poetry and junk food binges that were fueled by memories of excessively dramatic experiences. What on earth had I been thinking? All this time I had been so certain of what exactly “my type” was, and all the man who fit the profile had turned out to be great disappointments. I began to wonder, when did sensitive men become everyone’s darlings, anyway?

Do women seriously still find these effeminate character attributes sexy? I personally believe that the phenomenon of the sensitive male is way past its expiration date. The weepy boyfriend eventually became my ex-boyfriend, and to celebrate my newfound freedom, I immediately resolved to find myself someone who would be his total antithesis and thus finally engage in a relationship with someone man enough to be with a woman like myself. I needed someone whose emotional stability would not crumble beneath my strong personality, someone who didn’t take himself seriously, someone who didn’t cry so darn easily! I went through a list of criteria in my head, determined not to end up with another pansy like the last one.

Foreign. Intelligent. Ridiculously good looking and coveted by many other females. No interest in a serious commitment. No artistic ability whatsoever. Preferably a jock.

It then dawned on me that maybe the problem was me. Was I truly such an unbearable woman that every one of my partners would not be able to sustain any semblance of a healthy relationship with me? Bear in mind that my extreme confusion did not by any means become an excuse to surrender myself to defeat. I was not going to let something like existential anguish degrade me into an emotional sack of nerves! I was determined and would not indulge myself in mood swings, vanity, or hysteria. I decided that I was through searching for the right man, I’ m now waiting …

I smiled to myself… perhaps it is time to get off my rant and come back to earth. Perhaps not everything was as complicated as I made it out to be. Perhaps the right amount of sensitivity is, In fact, a lovely quality for men to have, in which case, I need not behave like such a difficult woman after all. ]]> cokefloat_f https://www.istorya.net/forums/entry.php?212-Maybe-the-problem-was-me