You keep me up with your silence

You take me down with your quiet
Of all the weapons you fight with
Your silence is the most violent

– Tell Me How, Paramore 

* * * * * *

I used to think that people were so lucky to have friends to spend time with (because I hardly have any) but lately I’ve noticed that even for people with many friends, their relationships have become more and more fragile and fragmented. It’s so easy to cancel a date, so easy to keep messaging “Let’s get together sometime,” telling yourself that you’re doing your part to maintain the relationship, and just never actually show up.

I have no idea what we’re all supposed to do about this. I do know that this is very, very bad news for all of us, and probably the main contributor to anxiety and depression. Uncertainty = anxiety. When the world is telling you that your generation is a failure, when the job market is telling you that your hard-earned skills are useless, when advertising is shitting on your values and repackaging your most precious emotional experiences to sell you laundry powder, what truth and worth is left in life except the love and trust that we have in our relationships? And how are we supposed to feel when it turns out that we can’t trust each other to be there when we say we will? How many of us can honestly say that love exists in our relationships – even in the ones where it did exist before?

the fucking laundry powder

I’m tired of getting over it
And starting something new again
I’m getting sick of the beginnings

By the way – it should go without saying that I rely on my girlfriend for human company and that I’d be totally isolated without her.

I think this is why having a significant other has become virtually a necessity in our social landscape. It’s evident simply from the sheer number of articles discussing why you don’t need a significant other – why must you deny it if the pressure wasn’t so strong to begin with? – and if it affected you so, it must be something you feel internally, too. I’d even go so far as to say that the pressure to have a significant other is a personal desire that is projected onto others as an external, societal pressure, so that you don’t have to face the fact that it is something you desperately want. Nobody shames people for not having a boyfriend or a girlfriend – that just isn’t a thing that happens.

SO’s are a necessity now because the monogamous romantic relationship has become the only type of relationship wherein one person can be reasonably expected to reliably be there for the other; it is the only relationship wherein it is acceptable to demand to be a priority, to demand that the other keep his or her commitments and not make excuses. This is something that most people seem to have become uncomfortable in asking even from close friends and family members. There is the fear of being labeled “clingy,” the shame experienced in the perception of having fallen down the list of another person’s priorities, and the pride involved in the unwillingness to admit that you value their presence enough that your feelings were hurt by their absence – if it is apparent that they don’t feel the same about you, how could you admit to the way you feel?

I can’t call you a stranger
But I can’t call you
I know you think that I erased you
You forgot me but I can’t forget you
And I won’t replace you

There is this need to keep up the illusion that our own lives are filled with exciting experiences and opportunities. Our real relationships are sacrificed at the altar of the illusion. Why should you feel bad about someone failing to show up at your apartment for a quiet night in, when you could just as easily go over to four clubs in one night and meet a dozen hot strangers? Maybe: because you and your friend missed an important conversation about your problems, your fears, and your plans, and instead you wrecked your liver with shots, your lungs with cigarette smoke and your eardrums with a hundred decibels of awful DJ’ing; and you met a dozen strangers who will never mean anything to you, and that you will never see again apart from the next nights of irresponsibility and running away from the pain of disconnection (if that).

I feel like I may have asked too many rhetorical questions in the course of writing this.

I’m procrastinating about my paper right now. I know this is the only ticket to getting out of here. And even then it’s more like standby booking than sure seating. But still…

When I think about this disconnection, I think about you. It makes no difference in the grand scheme of things, and the things I’ve described are true even if I had never met you… but the truth is that I think about this because of you and the hope you gave me that things could be different. For a short while, they were. It was all the difference in the world.

And now you’re gone. Yes, you’re still around. But your face is like a bolted door. And you don’t smile anymore. How do you do that? How do you close yourself off so completely? How did you learn not to need anyone (except your girlfriend, I suppose – though I suspect you could get by without her just fine if you had to)? I want to know, because sometimes this pain is almost more than I can bear.

The truth is that need you in my life. And this is as absurd as any ridiculous crush I’ve ever had, even if I now only want you as a friend. Even more absurd – a crush people can understand, but to want a friend so desperately? How much of a loser can you be?

You don’t have to tell me
If you ever think of me
You don’t have to tell me, I can still believe

A Few Questions

1. Where do the wild and lonely thoughts that come alive late at night go to sleep in the morning light?

2. When is a prison not a prison?

Spoiler: when it’s a VIP room in Bilibid

3. Why do literary theorists love so much to repeat words in such a fashion: “both fatal and fated to die,”* “both castrated and castrating?”** Perhaps it’s something they’re taught to do in school

4. Is the sudden and exponential rise of interest in large musical productions such as stadium concerts and music festivals a manifestation of the perennial human yearning to belong to something bigger than just oneself? For at these times the mass of humanity moves as one, even if it’s just to uselessly jump up and down like excited infants, or panicking interns

I am definitely missing out

5. I wonder if I could be able to go to the park every day and play there, and if my kitten can go with me.

6. Wonder what my kitten’s doing right now?

7. Why am I on so many medications?

8. So many famous historical figures, especially artists, were (or would have been) diagnosed with mental illness. Who’s to say what’s a mental illness, anyway? The DSM changes like a teenager’s mind about what to do with her life. How many of today’s would-be great artists are being medicated into stupors

9. Continuing that thought, I’d be the last person to say that one should preserve a clear illness just to maintain an artistic productivity. What I’m trying to say is that I wonder how many of the people diagnosed today with a mental illness actually just contain an excess of emotional and physical energy that would find a glorious outlet through an art form? With guidance and encouragement?

10. So much of modern life has to do with finding ways to trigger release of dopamine into people’s brains. There are infinite ways to do this. Phone apps are one of them. Every crop grown, row of jewels matched, like or heart triggers a release. What I wonder is, could the anxiety from being deprived of these things be as strong as actual withdrawal from a drug

11. When will everyone see that the transition of the economy into a renting economy needs more regulation? For as of now, companies involved in the renting industry take massive advantage of renters and rentees alike. (Airbnb of homeowners, Uber of car owners, Spotify of musicians, Steam of game developers, etc. etc.)

12. Why does this house make me so sleepy?

13. Will I be able to trade my board for another with different screw positionings?

14. Hmmm.

15. Why is MØ so emotional that her saddest songs bring a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes?

16. Could it be that a mastery of bokeh is the secret to successful and popular modern photography?

nothing could be better

17. How much of my hatred for popular culture is borne of jealousy and the bitterness of being forever an outsider?

My internal expression forever?

*John Weir,

**David Rudd, University of Boston

Featured image by Leonid Tishkov, from a series about a man who fell in love with the moon and spent the rest of his life with her (Private Moon).

 

Kill Bill: An Ode to Parenthood

This is the training we all got. In the context of the narcissism of today, meaningless acts become exciting and meaningful acts are obscured. – TLP 

I. Why the Story of Kill Bill Had To Be Told In Two Volumes 

In Kill Bill Volume 1, Beatrix Kiddo (aka The Bride, aka Uma Thurman, aka That Yellow Suit) kills a lot of people in a terrifying manner.

In Kill Bill Volume 2, Uma Thurman kills a few people, then she snuggles with her baby daughter.

 

Without the denouement of the story in Volume 2, the violence in Volume 1 (the violence dealt to Beatrix Kiddo and the violence dealt back by her) makes no sense. Yes, you understand that it is for revenge, but that doesn’t explain why she doesn’t just kamikaze Bill, and how she chooses whom she kills and whom she spares.

Here is the denouement, for your convenience, though you really should watch the whole of the second volume:

Beatrix is ready to kill Bill. What she is entirely unready for is that, upon bursting into Bill’s home, she finds that her child (whom she thought had been killed in the massacre which she survived) is alive, and being cared for by Bill. Bill has orchestrated a play scene with the child to make her think that this is all entirely normal, and Beatrix plays along. After dinner and a movie together, Beatrix leaves her sleeping child and begins the climactic scene with Bill. 

Beatrix: Do you remember the last assignment you sent me on?

Bill: Of course.

Beatrix: That morning, I was sick. I threw up on the plane. Then I started thinking: Maybe I was pregnant. [So I took a pregnancy test.]…

Before that line turned blue, I was a woman, I was your woman. I was a killer who killed for you. Before that line turned blue, I would have jumped a motorcycle onto a speeding train. For you. But after that line turned blue, I could no longer do any of these things. Because I was gonna be a mother.

Bill: Why didn’t you tell me?

Beatrix: Once you found out, you’d claim her. And I didn’t want that. She would have been born into a world she shouldn’t have.

Bill: Not your decision to make.

Beatrix: I know. But it was the right decision, and I made it for my daughter. I had to choose. I chose her.

Got it? Bill owned her. He’s referred to as her “master”, literally, at one point in the movie. Many people in the world now can’t even turn away from a freaking box of doughnuts even though they know full well that their arteries are already filled with gunk and their pants don’t fit anymore. Each person has a certain thing, an addiction or obsession or love,  for which they would do ANYTHING. Hers was Bill, until it was her daughter.

Remember, this is all before she ever saw or held her daughter. Her decision was made the moment she found out she was pregnant. In that moment, she decided to change her whole life and give up her obsession.

And then Bill tried to kill her and her unborn daughter.

That’s the reason for her revenge. Not because of her life, but because she thought her daughter was dead. This is why she stops her “roaring rampage of revenge” when she realizes that her daughter is alive. The ending statement is: “The mother lioness is reunited with her cub, and all is well in the jungle.”

But hardly anyone talks about this because it’s so much better to talk about the yellow suit and how it’s so cool when the blood spurts.

 

II. Why You Are Your Parents

A similar trope of deadly-warrior-turned-loving-parent occurs in Spy Kids (one of my most favorite movies, which suffers from terrible design, though I don’t see how it could have been made any better except with a higher budget). This is the story in a nutshell: There are two top-level secret agents who meet when they are sent on missions to kill each other.

Her mission was to [kill him]. You have to understand that these were dark and confusing times of enormous turmoil between countries. But when she got there, she couldn’t do it. He was different than she expected. And she began to wonder if years of detached, emotionless violence had taken its toll. So they kept in contact…

[Later on], they decided to marry. 

On the day of her wedding, she felt like she would rather brave a thousand deadly missions than go through what she was about to do: the difficulties of staying together and raising a family. But when she saw him, standing there, with no doubt whatsoever – she took his hand, looked deep into his eyes, and said the two most trusting, most dangerous words you could ever say to anyone: 

“I do.” 

Fast forward several years later, they have two children. One night, they are discussing their children:

I: I spoke to their principal. Carmen’s been skipping school twice a month. 

G: Why? 

I: I don’t know. And those friends Junie talks about? 

G: What about them? 

I: They don’t exist. He has no friends. They’re keeping secrets from us, Gregorio. And I think it’s our fault. They’ve gotten this from us. 

Hardly any parent is smart enough to make this observation or big enough to admit it: That their children’s problems are their fault. That whatever bad characteristics their children have were picked up from them. It’s our fault. They’ve gotten this from us. 

Nope, never that. It’s from their friends at school. It’s from television. It’s from video games. It’s from listening to the rap music. It can’t be us – after all, they only spent all their formative years with us, picking up our bad habits, or in neglect.

“But Trinity,” says my audience which is probably nonexistent at this point, “This sounds like you’re saying that everything you are is because of your parents?”

Yep. EVERYONE I know is like their parents, including myself. Sara Duterte is a fair and effective leader like Rodrigo Duterte. Brian Llamanzares is an entitled prick like Grace Poe. My friend Red tends to be tempestuous and sharp like her mom, with moments of unexpected tenderness. My friend P. has this live-and-let-live attitude like his mom and dad, with a bit more of the democratic and permanent annoyance for mankind in general that his dad has. My parents are basically misers, critical and cruel and mostly friendless, just like their parents.

And me? Critical, cruel and friendless as well, but I’m working on changing that.

III. Okay, Back to Kill Bill; or Why Most of Us Are So Fucked Up 

Given that your child inevitably becomes whatever you are*, it is then imperative to get your shit together before you even think about getting knocked up  / getting someone knocked up. What does this mean? This means basically that you have to address all your emotional issues and secure your finances. A child cannot be exposed to adult issues that they cannot understand and are powerless to help with, because this will create issues inside them and they will grow into fucked-up adults.

This is why Bill orchestrated the play scene for when Beatrix saw her child for the first time. He knew that Beatrix would be emotional and he had to set the stage for her to demonstrate emotion in a way that would not make the child think that there was anything wrong or unexpected.

This is why Beatrix put her child to sleep before she went to talk with Bill and have their final battle.

This is why after she killed Bill, she lay on the floor sobbing pitifully and then walked out, all smiles, to watch cartoons with her child.

Most parents now don’t have the decency nor the strength to pretend for their child, to put on a show when doing so would be to the benefit of their child and not doing so would be detrimental to their child. Can’t pretend that they don’t want to rip their partner’s guts out. Can’t pretend that vegetables taste delicious. Can’t pretend that they respect the law.

If you’re not perfect, you’ll have to pretend, and they can’t even do that.

IV. Back To Me Me Me Me

Yesterday I drove my girlfriend’s family around so that they could save money. The only car we could afford was a shitty manual and I was having a really, really, really hard time with it. I was ready to cry and sleep. But it was late at night and the house was very far so I did not say anything because I didn’t want anyone to worry about me. When we got home I went in a room, closed the door and cried.

In the morning the eye infection that had been starting up the previous day swelled up so much that I could hardly open my eye anymore. Luckily, there was a doctor nearby. I drove the shitty car there. I walked in with my eye swollen shut and oozing slimy tears. I had an appointment, but I noticed a mother with her child so I let them go first because I thought it wouldn’t take too long. I was wrong. About half an hour in, I started crying quietly, without a sound, from the pain and the tiredness.

My girlfriend hasn’t been treating me very well because I have gotten very good at hiding my pain. I was always good at it, but even more so now. I am practicing because I want to become a person who will do whatever it is it that needs to be done, delivers what I promise, and doesn’t make unnecessary complaints. However, people are so used to others making random excuses and demands that they think a person can’t possibly be in need unless they make a scene. So we have been in trouble. But we’re talking about it.

The reason I’ve been so quiet is because I’ve been busy. I should be sleeping now, but my eye hurts so much that I can’t sleep. I’ve already watched Kill Bill Vol 2 for the 4th time and finished The Lost World and listened to my Korean tutorial audio tapes so there’s nothing else to do lying down with just one eye. And now I’m done with this so again I don’t know what to do.

 

 

*note that these are the fundamentals – for example, a loving Christian can end up raising a loving atheist, or a hateful atheist can raise a hateful Christian, but a completely loving atheist cannot possibly raise a hateful Christian and a completely hateful Christian cannot raise a loving atheist.

 

 

Where Pedophilia Comes From

I. ANECDOTE TO LEGITIMIZE MY OPINIONS / MAKE YOU FEEL SORRY FOR ME

My [redacted] and [redacted] both made sexual advances for me around the same time when I was a kid (about 9-10 years old). I had nightmares while that was going on. In the most vivid one, I dreamed that I was on a bed and struggling against [redacted]’s grasp; my nails were dug into the skin of his arm as I pushed him away from me. I woke up suddenly and my actual nails were dug into my twisted sheets.

It was years and years before I told my [redacted]. Out of curiosity, I asked her what she thought would have happened if I had told her when I was still a kid. She said, “Your [redacted] might have murdered him.” I said, “Yeah, I thought something like that might happen.”

II. CHILDREN ARE IRRESISTIBLE

Once you begin to see people, really see people, it’s impossible not to love most children. They’re helpless, cute, eager to please. Like dogs. I can’t resist dogs. Most people can’t either. Even though dogs will slobber on you and steal your shoes and pee on your things.

But it’s a “thing” to love dogs – it’s not a thing to love children. You don’t accuse a person of bestiality when they say they’re in love with a dog; but the automatic assumption when you say you’re in love with a child is that you’re a pedophile.

“Well, I can say that you look pretty. You turn my legs into spaghetti. You set my heart on fire.” – Dillon, Thirteen Thirtyfive 

“Take me down to the bridge, where you know that I’ve always loved you… You look so beautiful it hurts me.” – Eisley, Golly Sandra 

The context of these lyrics is a parent-child relationship. But in your mind it doesn’t fit, does it? Because you don’t think an adult could ever feel intensely for a child unless it was pedophilia. There are boxes in your mind: all things INTENSE go into the box labeled SEXUAL. There isn’t any box for INTENSE NON-SEXUAL FEELINGS, aka LOVE, because no one taught you all about love, you know so very little when there is so much to know about it…

III. THEY REPRESS IT UNTIL THEY CAN’T REPRESS IT ANYMORE 

One of the results of this lack of knowledge about love is pedophilia. A parent – a father, about 99.9% of the time, I’d estimate – feels strongly for their child, and they don’t know where to put that feeling. They don’t recognize what they’re really feeling and how to express it, and so a natural, healthy affection becomes perverted into a pathological sexual desire.

They feel intensely, and because society says they can’t feel that way for a child, they repress it. Until they can’t repress it anymore.

IV. SUBLIMATION

It’s not wrong to feel that way for a child, but there are so many different ways to express it, to channel that energy, and sex is NOT one of those ways.

“What are the ways, then, for a parent?” Stop drinking so much. Do your work more efficiently so that you can come home early and check her homework. Buy her a guitar. Improve your relationship with her mother. Start working out. Become a better person. It’s hard work. Now you have your motivation.

There are so many things you can do. Just, for God’s sake, don’t try to have sex with her.

Victim Blaming vs. Victim Responsibility pt. 1

 

this is gonna make him stop when he’s got his dick out

Buried this for a long time because I am having a lot of trouble polishing this concept but I’ve seen a recent resurgence in anti-slut-shaming whatevers online and I’m going to rush this series to help sort out this issue, before lots of girls decide to join y’alls in your hallucinatory world where real rapists can be fended off with catchy slogans.

Concept introduced to me by Jason Pargin.

* * * * * * *

I. Definition and Examples

Blame is an accusation leveled against a person for some undesirable situation (whether true or untrue). Blame implies guilt; that the person has done something wrong and should be punished for it. For example, if a thief broke into your house and stole your stuff, he is to blame for the crime.

Responsibility is an obligation for someone who has the ability to prevent some undesirable situation, or to bring about a desirable situation. Someone can only be held responsible if they have the ability to take action. For example, if a thief broke into your house and stole your stuff because you didn’t lock your door, you wouldn’t go to jail for it. You didn’t commit a crime. But you will still bear the consequences of your irresponsibility. If he is caught, you might be inconvenienced by the legal process of prosecuting him. If he isn’t caught, say goodbye to your stuff.

Another example: Terrorists are to blame for 9/11 because they bombed the towers. The US government is partly responsible for 9/11 because they created international policies that inadvertently made it easier for terrorist groups to form in the Middle East.

Another example you won’t like: Rapists are to blame for rape because they committed the rape. Victims who voluntarily put themselves in vulnerable situations are responsible for their own rape because they had the choice not to, and they did not make that choice.

II. Purpose 

The purpose of outlining responsibility is not to assign fault but to understand what actions are necessary to prevent the situation from happening (again). The alternative is to keep getting your stuff stolen, keep getting your citizens killed, keep getting raped all the time, because the world is cruel and life is unfair.

Sociobiological Factors of Addiction (Or, Why You’ll Never Be Truly Happy) pt. 1

Modern society is built to facilitate addictions, because people who aren’t addicted to anything are hard to control. On the other hand, it’s extremely easy to control a person, or a group of people, who are addicted to something: simply offer them more of the thing they’re addicted to, or threaten to withhold that thing from them. This method of manipulation is currently the basis of most human interaction these days, between everyone; between individuals, institutions, citizens and governments, even between nations.

Examples:

“If you do your homework, I’ll give you a cookie.”

“If you fix the garage door, I’ll give you a blowjob.”

“Stop cutting classes or I’ll downgrade your phone plan from LTE to cans on a string.”

“If we don’t go to war against mostly innocent people, we’re going to lose our oil supply.”

“Sign over your national resources for foreign exploitation or we’ll stop sending you Nutella and overpriced pop stars.”

Addiction is the most powerful method of manipulation, bar none. This is because people who are addicted seem like they are doing it all themselves, of their own personal choice.

Examples:

“I’m going to do my homework because cookies are delicious, not because I am an obese pre-diabetic child and my blood sugar is either always super way up, making me hyper, or super way down, making me sluggish and irritable.”

“I’m going to fix the garage door because I love you and I love having sex with you, not because you would never give me a blowjob otherwise.”

“I’ll stop cutting classes because I want to be a good student and eventually a productive member of society, not because losing access to Twitter for more than an hour at a time causes me to palpitate with anxiety.”

“I’m gonna go to war to defend my country, not because I can’t stand the idea that we might have to start using trains for long-distance travel like those barbaric Europeans with their international high-speed rails.” 

“I’m going to support APEC to facilitate economic progress and trade relations within Asia, not because I believe everything that white people in suits tell me.”

Roles People Play

I.

The question this generation is struggling (and mostly failing) to answer is “Who am I?” – the question of identity. This is because a strong identity is built on only two aspects of a person’s life: their work (the things they accomplish) and their relationships (the people they love and care for). Since most “work” taken up by people these days is useless. and their relationships are weak and shallow, they desperately seek for other things to define them: their favorite music, favorite writers, job title (from doing useless work), clothes, hair, school, social network, etc.

II.

Last week, [redacted] was losing her mind over the stress of planning an org event. Is it an accomplishment to pull off a successful event? Sure. Is it one significant enough to build your identity on? Not unless “event planner” is one of your lifelong goals. That’s perfectly valid. What’s insane is when you want to be “event planner,” and “yoga guru,” and “person who gets the most drunk at every party,” and “dean’s lister.” If you try to be all of those, you’re going to be none of those (except maybe the drunk person).

If pulling off a successful event isn’t a significant enough accomplishment to base your identity upon, then not being able to pull it off shouldn’t be a significant enough failure to undermine your self-perception. If it matters to you that much, then devote your time and effort to it. If you want a reputation as a successful event planner, then actually, you know, plan the event; allot time and delegate tasks. Don’t leave it all to chance then run around at the last minute screaming at people. (Also, don’t commit to planning an event without the assurance that you’ll have all the resources you need. If it’s miraculously successful no one will know or care what you went through to make it happen, and if it’s a failure you’ll look like an incompetent fool).

III.

After her birthday party, which we had thrown at unspeakably tremendous expense, [redacted] called in tears. She had overheard her friends telling each other that another blockmate’s party was way more fun because they had a lot more alcohol. These are her friends – the people she sees every day, tells everything to, spends all her time with. In other words, significant factors of her identity.

Look at their relationships: their pleasure in each other’s company is such that they need to be intoxicated out of their minds to find each other funny / sexy / exciting / not boring as hell. And she trusts them so little that a comment like that could deeply hurt her instead of just annoying her a bit or whatever.

 

IV.

One of the barriers to developing a strong identity is the unwillingness to play roles. This is what people usually mean when they say, “I won’t change who I am,” in response to a circumstance that requires them to do things that they normally wouldn’t do (for example, a guy who refuses to shave his beard to apply for jobs). They are saying, “I refuse to play a different role from what I am comfortable with playing.”

What’s wrong with this viewpoint of identity is that the human character is not made up of one aspect – one “face” – but is a complex conglomeration of many different aspects, each suited for playing a different role. Playing a role does NOT mean you’re “not being yourself”; you are displaying an aspect of yourself – like turning a particular facet of a gem towards the light – that is appropriate for the situation.

V.

If a military sergeant yells her recruits out of their bunks at 5AM, and yells at them all day in field exercises, then goes home and plays pretty pretty princess with her daughter, was she necessarily not being herself at one point or another? What’s the “real” her – the one who forces a recruit to do 50 pushups for an unmade med, or the one who sings “Let It Go” in a fluffy pink tutu?

Answer: They’re both her, because neither of those aspects are incongruous with the other. Like different facets of a single gem, she carries both these attitudes as different aspects of a person who is essentially a responsible one. She’s being responsible for the performance of her recruits. She’s being responsible for the happiness of her daughter. She’s not always going to be a sergeant, and she’s not always going to be the mother of a toddler, but this responsibility for others is who she is, and it will manifest itself in whatever form it needs to take.

(some clarifications to follow, I think)

Why You Can’t Get No Satisfaction

I.

Are you familiar with the law of diminishing marginal utility? It’s a concept usually confined to the field of economics, which is a shame because it’s really a law of life, and one of the most important for achieving happiness and fulfillment.

It’s very simple: the more you get of a certain thing, the less enjoyment (utility) you’ll derive from each additional amount of that thing.

For example. To a fellow wandering in the desert, half-dead of thirst, finding a single bottle of water is going to gratify her immeasurably and possibly save her life. For you, who is never far from a water dispenser or at least a running tap, the idea of clean water obviously doesn’t excite you at all.

Going back to our silly desert traveler who didn’t pack enough water: Say she drinks one bottle. Thirst is quenched, she believes in God again, her life is saved, etc. Great! Let’s give her another bottle. She drank it up just as quickly! Now give her another one. And another one. And another one. Give her twenty. Give her more than she can carry. As she tries to refuse, now start bringing out those huge bottles that sit on top of water coolers. Surround her with them.

She won’t want all this water. None of the successive bottles of water that we gave her made her feel the way the first one did. Why? Because she needed the first one. She didn’t need any of the others quite as badly.

II.

When you’re up to your eyeballs in posssssions, nothing money can buy could possibly excite you at all. This is why things like designer bags, gourmet dishes, country clubs and other absurdly priced and mostly useless purchases exist: for people who have so much that they never lack for anything, and thus always have to look for something to excite them.

Here’s the thing: You can’t be satisfied by consuming something you don’t need. You can’t feel full from eating something when you’re not even hungry.

They’re never hungry, and so they can never feel full.

III.

He had sex on the brain, all the time. He only agreed to come if a hot girl was going to be there. He hung around for a while, but when it became apparent that no one in the room was going to have sex with him, he excused himself to meet a woman outside.

So much money. So much property. So many women, so much sex and drugs -where’s the satisfaction?

IV.

There’s really only two circumstances under which sex can be mind-blowing. Not just good, or great, but mind-blowing, the kind that makes you wander around in a daze afterwards, and relive every moment over and over for days on end.

1. Your hormones are raging
2. You’re in love

In both cases, again, you’re hungry: You lack for it, you want and wane. LDMU: Only when you really need something will you find satisfaction from getting it.

(Obviously, the most mind-blowing sex ever happens when 1 and 2 coincide.)

It can be easy to find fulfillment from meaningless sex when you’re young and no. 1 is in full force. Growing older, you wonder: Why does nothing match that early thrill? New partners, new positions, new guides, porn and / or Cosmo tips piling up on your brain: still nothing. Why isn’t it ever magic anymore?

Sans hormones, you’ll have to No. 2, and that’s hard work. You have to find someone, get to know them, make sure you’re compatible on the fundamentals, make compromises, open yourself up to her, spend time with her, take care of her… it’s exhausting just to think about it. Oh, there’s this hot girl, friend of a friend. And you’ve got some pretty good Tinder matches. Have sex with them, who knows? Maybe she’ll be good, maybe she’s the magic you’re looking for.

How To Be Alone – Whether Or Not You’re Single (A Movie Review)

Quick preface – The Borderline vs. Narcissist (in terms of identity):

A borderline is a person whose identity is derived from the dominant personality in her life (usually a romantic partner). When this person says, “There’s no me without you,” she means it quite literally. Think Bella Swan, her derivative Anastasia, Halsey and Lana del Rey’s creative personas, and other intense, needy characters.

A narcissist is a person who derives her identity from outward indicators, such as appearance, public associations (“I’m friends with [celebrity],” “I’m from UST and I’ll cut you if you say anything negative about it,”), pop culture tastes (“Adele is the greatest singer ever and I’ll murder anyone who says differently!”), possessions and others’ perception of them (as opposed to innate abilities).

Now, on to the review.

How To Be Single revolves around a borderline named Alice (whose actress, interestingly, also portrays the very borderline Anastasia from 50 Shades), who decides that she’s had enough of being a borderline.

(Note: borderlines who’ve had enough of being borderlines often turn into narcissists.)

She leaves her boyfriend of 3 years, a narcissist who has this to say to her right before she goes: “Can’t you just fuck one of my friends?” and “I’ll miss your boobs.” Nothing about negotiating staying together on her terms, or asking what he could have done differently, or even a simple “I love you and I’ll miss you.”

(Note: Borderlines seek out narcissists to have relationships with, since they require someone else’s dominant personality to give them identity.)

Perhaps fearful of losing a safety net, she tells him vaguely, “This is not a breakup, it’s just a break. I need to know who I am.”

Perhaps partial nudity will help

Off she goes somewhere in the heart of NYC, the perfect breeding ground for narcissists / meeting place for borderlines and narcissists, and lands right in the lap of another narcissist: Robin, played by Rebel Wilson (whom I incidentally love as an actress, but that’s not relevant here).

The narcissist / borderline dynamic between them is thrown into sharp relief by the contrast to Alice’s relationship with her sister, a neurotic, baby-crazed workaholic who’s nevertheless not a narcissist. Despite being much closer to her sister than Robin, Alice does not turn into a neurotic, baby-crazed workaholic; instead she turns into a slut like Robin. Why? Because borderlines do not take on the identities of anyone else except narcissists. Non-narcissists (such as people with secure identities, and other borderlines) usually will not permit another person to derive their identity from them. Narcissists, on the other hand, enjoy and encourage borderlines to copy their identity.

Pictured: true friendship

What Alice really wants to do is to fuck a bunch of guys, but she can’t even articulate nor follow through that desire on her own. Robin provides the excuse: “Well, my friend made me come over here…” Alice makes several cringe-inducingly awkward passes at guys in bars and functions, before she eventually gets some emotionally closed-off dude to start dating her. He’s not a narcissist, though; he’s just silently traumatized from his wife’s death. Thus he isn’t dominant enough for her, and when he starts being all weird and closed off, she gives up on him right away.

One especially overt narcissist in the movie is a guy named Tom, whose narcissism isn’t the kind that makes him wish to dominate one woman, but to use many women. Therefore they can’t be in a relationship. They do have sex, though. Again, the desire is not expressed by Alice, but the excuse is provided indirectly by Robin.

Robin had informed her of an apparently iron rule that a girl can’t drink more than 11 drinks alone with a male friend without having sex with him. Naturally, they accidentally surpass the number, and Alice has no choice but to jump on his dick. (I think this one is literal, she jumped onto his dick right after discovering the 11th bottle.)

The turning point of the movie, supposedly when Alice finds redemption from her needy ways, is when she and Robin start yelling at each other at Alice’s birthday party where Robin invited all the men Alice had been fucking so they could confront each other and she could watch the fun. This is the face-off: Borderline Vs. Narcissist.

– Alice, (mocking Robin’s Aussie accent) complains that Robin pushed her into fucking a bunch of guys.

– Robin, who obviously can’t directly defend herself against this fact, obliquely counters that Alice falls all over guys; criticizing her for getting emotionally attached to the people she fucks, instead of immediately forgetting all their names like Robin does.

“Did we have sex? Even though I’m not gay and you’re clearly a doctor and thus would know better than to have sex with a tramp who most definitely has at least one incurable STD?”

Furthermore, Robin says triumphantly, “I know who the fuck I am.” Newsflash: Knowing who you are isn’t a step up from not knowing who you are if the identity you’ve chosen is a rotten one. At least a person whose identity hasn’t yet cemented into cankerous degradation can still choose to become somebody good.

After that, A. isolates herself from everyone, which necessitates building some odd machine to unzip her dresses by herself (because she’s proven herself throughout the movie to be incapable of unzipping her dresses with nothing but her own two hands). She also learns how to cook and hike, I think.

At the end of the movie, it’s unclear whether A. managed the transformation from borderline to narcissist. Certainly she did not become a person with a secure identity, who knows how to love and accept love, as the movie would like you to believe.

In the closing scene, she hikes up to the Grand Canyon, which she expressed at the start she’d always wanted to do. Her voiceover muses:

You should enjoy the time you get to be alone… because before you know it, it’s gone.

That’s the illogical sentiment of a narcissist who’s planning to dominate her next partner, or a borderline who’s planning to lose herself in her next partner. It isn’t the joy of a person who likes being single, nor the yearning of a person who wants to be in a loving relationship: That’s a person who’s torn between being fiercely alone and being swallowed up in a relationship.

If she wanted to hike the Grand Canyon, what was to stop her, in the beginning, from telling her bf: “I want to climb the Grand Canyon alone”? What was to stop her from doing all the things she wanted to do? She left him because she needed something to blame for her own unhappiness: Oh, it’s because I keep getting in relationships all the time… As if it’s completely impossible to develop yourself within any relationship, regardless of the other person’s willingness to give you time and space.

If you’re unable to love and be happy whether or not you’re in a relationship, the problem isn’t being single or not being single, the problem is you.

Your Sympathy Is Killing People pt. 2

What got me started on this tirade? The other day, of all weird coincidences, I happened to have a long conversation with [redacted], who was close to Bianca Reyes.

There have been several deaths of ADMU students that I’ve been aware of in the past years, all of them under dark circumstances (three suicides and one murder, by my count) but Bianca Reyes’ suicide late last year has been the most publicized. Type “Bianca Reyes” in a Google search, and it auto-completes to “death” and “suicide”.

 

She and I moved within roughly the same social circle, a bunch of intense artist types known for self-destructive behavior including, but not limited to: irresponsible sex, teenage pregnancies, abortions, regular drug use, cheating on their boyfriends and girlfriends, and general stupid fuckery. I say I moved within it – they never really accepted me because I was too awkward and not self-destructive enough. I was close to a few people in that circle, but was never completely absorbed, which is one of the most fortunate things that’s ever happened to me.

Here’s the thing – they helped to kill her.

I suspected this at first when I saw photos of people from this group, out drinking shortly after Bianca’s burial. They were in a bar holding up signs saying things like, “Bianca, this is for you.” It disturbed in a way I couldn’t articulate nor confirm.

Talking with [redacted] confirmed my suspicions. I didn’t go to her wake, so I didn’t know about this:

A lot of her friends – those people – gave speeches, and almost all of them said things like, “I’m glad you’re in a better place,” and “We’re happy that you’ve finally found the peace you’re looking for.”

The family was outraged. One of Bianca’s cousins had to state the obvious to make them stop; that Bianca’s death was not a good thing and nothing to be glad for. It was clear how deranged those people’s view on suicide was. Furthermore, [redacted] said, “They were so loud, it was confusing. They were singing… They almost seemed happy.”

They killed her. They’re killing each other because they create and propagate an environment in which darkness is celebrated. They validate and glorify insanity in each other. This way of thinking is exemplified in the work of musicians like Halsey:

For the record, I enjoy her musical compositions, but all of her lyrics are bizarrely dark like this. 

In this environment, depression isn’t an illness to be treated, but a defining characteristic. Same with addictions. The inability to build happy, healthy relationships isn’t pathetic, it’s poetic.

Ever wondered if it was you who doesn’t know how to love?

 

These are fucking lies. Sure, every creative, intelligent kid is bound to pass through a phase of existential angst; that’s part of growing up, and something that, if handled properly, will absolutely give you more grit and compassion. But prolonging and glorifying that angst without an end in sight is a sure way to remain an adolescent forever. You face the pain of knowing the problems that are in the world so that you have more drive to solve them. You don’t keep dwelling in that pain to the point where it incapacitates you.

One of the main lies of these artist-types (mostly found on Tumblr, I think) is that depression is the only real thing and happiness is fake and for stupid people who refuse to open their eyes to the misery of the world. There’s misery in the world, and there is also joy – seeing only one or the other is blindness.

Another lie that they tell each other is that self-love comes from mantras that you tell yourself over and over again. “You are enough.” “You are worth it.” If you are, why do you feel this way? You wouldn’t have to convince yourself so hard of the existence of something that is obviously true. Self-love, like all love, is made true by actions – not words. Want to love yourself? Then take care of yourself. See a doctor for your depression. Eat better. Get more sleep. Spend time with people who bring out the best in you, instead of encouraging your neuroticisms.

The most dangerous lie of all, and the one that killed Bianca, is that suicide is ever an option. To react to an expression of suicidal thoughts with anything less than outrage provides an amount of validation of the thoughts, however small. And once those thoughts take hold, they become terrifyingly attractive. They begin to seem logical. You’re in pain, the world is terrible, you just make trouble for everyone – why not have it all over with? But the thing is, life runs on love, which is the opposite of logic. If you want to be logical about saving the environment, aren’t natural disasters great? They kill a lot of people, which alleviates overpopulation. Logical – and insane, and evil. Suicide is as insane and evil as the murder of another person. Love is the only thing that will save you. Love for yourself, love for the people in your life and the people who are to come into your life in the future.

They did not love her. Encouraging darkness and inadequacy in a person is not love, even though it may seem like it. If that has become your instinct, fight it. Before you help to kill someone else.