Another day...I just want another day

Caprichosa

Another day,

I just want another day.

So little time,

So much I want,

Do I want too much?

Can I have that much?

Caprichosa, Fussy girl.

friends joke, poking fun

At my spoiled youth,

Every joke has a

String of truth

Laugh it up, I say…

I know what I want,

What I deserve -     

and What I don’t,

What I aspire to

That’s all you need,

All you need to do

Can I live like this?

Mama, don’t worry me

I’ll find a way -

If I see MY way of life

Really isn’t the way

Never worked a job, I say,

In this harsh world today,
Just like the cynic said,

He survives - I’m dead.

My Heart in my throat,

My Hands in the dirt,

Scared as hell,

Can you tell?

My entire life

I had it made...

Daddy, concern in your voice

Makes me afraid.

What I would do

for another day,

Before everything

is taken away

…taken away

I’ll take it back

It’s what I want,

I want a lot,

My want, my work

It’s all I’ve got

It’s all I’ve got.

All I’ve got.

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to my Daddy and Lolo, 

who have always been present father figures in my life!  There hasn't been a time when you haven't been there for me, and for that 

I love you both with all my heart!

Long Distance Relationships: Think Positive

I am thoroughly enjoying my time at home.  I flew in a few days ago and got to see my family for the first time since...May?  I've been away from them for quite a while, some instances longer than others, but it seems that the second i'm back together with them, it's as if I never left.  I have to say how much I love my family and am thankful for every minute I get to spend with them.  I also have to say that I appreciate their trust and their support of me, even as I venture out on my own away from them, away from home.  At times I have felt distanced from them, but I have come to realize that those feelings are normal and that my family and I have a strong enough bond that nothing - not even physical separation could break us apart.  Should I hold other relationships I have to the same, or similar standards?  

Questioning the Ideology of Closeness 

Being a former military child, I have had a lot of experience with Long distance relationships (LDRs).  I have had to make and maintain friends at a distance.  Every three years or so, friends would move away, as would I, forcing me to either lose them or keep them.  I chose to keep my relationships with my friends growing up.  It may be different than keeping a proximal relationship with someone, but to me, it is just as good.

As Sahlstein (2004)  states, “Distance of any kind is certainly not perceived as indicative of a good relationship and is more likely to be viewed as problematic, Long-distance relationships are typically viewed as negative, abnormal, or doomed.”

But long distance relationships have had to become a big part of my life and I can see that I am able to maintain relationships.  Thanks to modern technology and other people who don’t feel it necessary to always be connected at the hip to maintain a relationship with someone, I am able to have a “normal” life, full of relationships, without having to be face to face with over half of the people I hold a close relationship with, be them friends, family, or a romantic partner.

I think that Long distance relationships are particularly problematic when one or more of the individuals in the relationship are extremely against the idea of a long distance relationship or Long distance dating relationship (LDDRs). Is it normal to disagree with the other person because we are forced to be apart, having to be put in the situation of having to studying and/or working in different locations?  The situation and solution seems easy and rather straightforward to me, if the issue ever would come up.  I would think, we would visit maybe 4 times a year.  We could talk on skype.  We would share some days, but naturally not every minute of our time or anything close to that.  However, I imagine for my partner, this would seem extremely abnormal and he would probably ask when and how we could live in the same place again.  This is the sentiment I get from many other people when I talk about a scenario like this, though I never thought living in the same location was ever necessary to have a relationship.  I guess that is where many other people and I differ.  The way they see it is that we are not getting any younger, we're changing, distance isn’t bringing us any closer, and probably that the most important thing is to live close by. I do think this physical closeness is important to have a life together, but not at all times, and not necessarily now.

If LDRs are just constantly compared to proximal relationships, they may seem complicated, abnormal, and overly difficult.  However, maybe it’s not as difficult as we make it out to be, as long as intimate interaction between the partners still takes place.  The real issue is how the individuals deal with a LDR until they meet face to face again.  I believe that if for the duration of the pair's time apart, the fact of how “abnormal” an LDR is becomes the couple’s mindset, the situation may become some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.  The relationship will be very difficult, the relationship will seem negative, and it will most likely fail.

LDRs could work, with the right attitude, and the acceptance that one doesn’t necessarily NEED the other person to live their life.  I think it is actually better if the people look at themselves as individuals who experience different things to bring back to the relationship.  Here, we see a sense of Autonomy and Connection.  For example, in a relationship, the other person might feel more together than the other.  But like me, being with someone all the time tends to makes me feel as if I lose myself.  After spending so much time with someone, when I’m alone again, I tend to feel like I can’t be alone, as if I am not the person I really am, unless that other person is present.  This is a horrible feeling, to not feel independent, the sense that to feel good, I need another person.  This is ironic because this sense of “togetherness” is what many people characterize as being true love, or true friendship - when you can’t live without another person by your side.

However, I beg to differ and I think that the real true love or friendship prevails through all time and distance.  Even though I do believe you can't just expect to maintain your relationships without working on them, if reasonable contact and intimacy is held, the relationship should triumph over lack of constant physical closeness.  I think the best relationships (at least in my experience) are taken with a bit of distance.  Actually, I prefer it that way.  This may sound extreme to some people, but I do appreciate being away from those that I love and care about.  Sure, we change, things happen to us while we’re away from each other, and they're not going to be present for all of it, but when we come together again and share our experiences, we will feel more fulfilled, more happy that we don’t spend every second with one another - that our entire lives aren’t totally in relation to the presence of another person.  That is how we grow as individuals.  I think it is the same for dating relationships as well.  Too much closeness can actually ruin things, and the “ideology of closeness” should definitely be questioned.


A Poem about LDDRs

Invisible Boys

There or not,

To others, he is real or imagined

with each passing day,

I’m more indifferent or saddened

Invisible boys, invisible men

I decide when they exist or not, then.

I’m where I want to be, like clicking my heels

Running, disappearing, free as I feel

Skipping down a yellow brick road alone

Skipping the dinners, dates, calls on the phone

Skipping his presence in my physical days

- It just feels more natural that way

Invisible, they haunt my days

There - yet they’re not,

There when I want

They are with me - but they are not

Love and lust, a support from a distance

A relation across this sea of resistance

Hurting and trust from across saltwater space

So tired of this saltwater dripping down my face

Learn to be strong

Learn not to cry

When I cant see your face

With my naked eye

Learn not to feel,

Learn not to doubt

Remember that there aint nobody

You can’t live without

Feeling them out, talking about

Day after day, a day he’s away

Maybe he’ll appear

Or else just fade away

Invisible boys

Invisible, where?

Alive in my mind,

But still never there

Should I marry an invisible man

As being with him allows me to be free?

Should I choose an invisible man,

Or should I learn to be with a man I can see? 

Broken Bonds: In the Name of Biology

A few days ago, during a conversation about relationships, a friend of mine recalled a time when her ex-boyfriend had cheated on her.  Surprisingly, she spoke about the occurrence with a humorous tone as she described his affair with a good-looking girl in her sophomore English class in college.   She played down the mishap as an understandable occurrence as she told me “Well, what can you do? He’s just a man, and she’s just attractive.”  Her lack of expression surprised me, although, I began to think that deep down inside, under her submissive facade, she must have been hurt – really hurt.  Being cheated on must be a horrible experience, a breach of trust on behalf of someone who should be one of your closest confidants, an individual to whom you have dedicated much emotional energy.  I imagine for her, the experience must have gathered a little bit more attention and emotion than what she let on, which is why I feel even worse that my friend felt it necessary to justify her man’s wandering behavior by citing his biological make-up. Needless to say, I then proceeded to try and convince my friend that infidelity is a communication issue, not so much a gender one, as she made it out to be.

They say women are emotional - men are stone cold, pleasure seeking, and animalistic.  We’ve heard it all before.  Men are supposed to be these brutish visual creatures who are vying to spread their “seed” to as many women as they can.  In a society where we claim that women are more equal to men than ever, it is still being pushed upon us that if we as women wish to have a working relationship with men, we had better start learning to deal with a man’s “biological” urges. Right.

This “biological” view reinforces certain gender roles, as does the famous book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, by John Gray (1992).  The idea I gathered from reading this source is that women (Venetians) would naturally act a certain way and men (Martians) are inclined to act another certain way. Therefore, they would interact in this particular way and have these certain foreseeable problems.  It almost seems too mechanical, too predictable like a math equation, as if man plus woman always equaled these set of problems such as women nagging too much, men not expressing their feelings enough, women wanting to start a family too soon, and men leaving the toilet seat up.  These kinds of messages, although, made in an attempt to bridge the communicational gap between man and woman, have helped create another monster altogether in the form of assigned and fixed roles for men and women which come off as god-given and unchangeable.

But behavior can always be changed.  There is no doubt that infidelity happens and I agree with Tafoya and Spitzberg about probable justifications for cheating: Jealousy, Sex, and Revenge.  However, these motives are present in and applicable to both male and female counterparts and the consequences and the implications ideally should not be looked upon acceptably for only males, as there is no basis as to why men would be biologically more prone to infidelity.  Actually there is research that supports fidelity among partners, as Sesardic (2002) says, “there are significant socioevolutionary advantages to assuring long-term mateships.  The male’s genetic paternity, and the female’s access to paternal resource investment, is better assured through exclusive sexual pair bonding.  It is in the best evolutionary interest for couples to pair bond, in turn increasing the chance of offspring survival.”

Therefore, from this we can gather that since infidelity is not purely biologically ingrained, it can never be an accident.  It is then, intentional, and consequently very hurtful to the other partner.  Now that we can start looking at infidelity as a communication issue, and not a biological one for men, I would like to explore the components of the myths surrounding the common “wild, cheating, and wandering man.”

Earlier, while scanning a dating advice forum, I came across an online relationship advice professional, Dr.Diana Kirschner.  Someone had asked her about the right way to react when catching her man’s eyes wandering to other women.  Her advice?  Realize it is YOUR fault if you’re not flirting enough or aren’t aesthetically interesting enough to him that YOU cause HIM to look at other women in the first place.  She states:

 “If you’re not carrying on with him like that, his eye is going to stray to other women.  If you’re not looking beautiful, his eye will stray to other women.  Now I know that sounds pretty charged, and you may be a feminist and you may be offended and take issue with what I’m saying, but what I’m telling you is biology. You want to either ignore biology and pay the price or acknowledge biology? Men are visual creatures, so you need to understand that and you need to work with that and create much more action in your marriage.”

Whatever truth there is to her statement has been completely overshadowed by the unrealistic expectations and responsibilities she puts on women to ensure our men are not cheating.  We are told, wrongfully, to expect this kind of behavior because he is made this way by nature and if we want a man in our lives, we need to be beautiful, we must keep a man stimulated at all times by constantly flirting, wearing attractive clothing, and always carrying on interesting conversation.  I can only hope that in the future, through some means, the traces of these lingering expectations will change, for the argument of biology only contradicts so many principles we have tried to build up in the study of relationship development.  We rub out relationships built on emotional bonds, love, and cooperation based on interests and common experiences, only to push them down and compact our relationships into the mere physical realm, because we are taught to develop irrational fears of false biological inclinations of the opposite sex.

Temporary Roles: Hookups and Media Messages

In mainstream western society, hookups appear to be commonplace and accepted.  It no longer seems to carry the taboo it carried in many of our parents’ more traditional society and value systems.  Now, the subject of “hooking up” gets much more coverage in love advice columns and forums in dating sites, as well as women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan, while traditional morals are somewhat ridiculed and eclipsed with mainstream media like Sex and the City, Gossip Girl, and Desperate housewives, that take hookups and relationships with “no strings attached” lightheartedly.

The media portrayals of hookups reflect very simply on the way hookups work in an Action-Consequence manner.  Hooking up being the action, its consequences including but not limiting to: unwanted pregnancy, friend drama, betrayal, awkwardness, and abandonment.  (When the cases don’t end up this way, the encounter is no longer classified as a hookup.)

Additionally, to those on the outside, individuals who engage in these hookups tend to seem either metaphorically “blind”, juvenile, or impulsive – especially to adults who fall beyond the age groups that generally partake in hookups.

However fun and thrilling a hookup might seem to you, hooking up really doesn’t demonstrate many positive rewards for someone whose goal is to develop a stable, long-term, intimate relationship. Apparently, a hookup is a negatively reflected upon action, yet the widespread occurrences of hookups support the view that people are drawn to the danger, the thrill, as Paul, Wenze, and Harvey suggest.  The negativity in the action supports the danger and excitement factor of hookups, but we also see that danger does not significantly aid in developing long-term intimate relationships.  Rather, up to a certain point, it would do the opposite and would lead to termination of a relationship.

The way a hookup may be portrayed in the mainstream media, as in popular shows and music videos, might be clouded by the thrill of the moment of the individual in the experience, yet still, the underlying message of the action seems to reflect rather negatively on hookups.  What is amazing is that despite so many negative reflections we are being bombarded with about hookups, we still seem to do it anyway – and think nothing of it.  It doesn’t seem strange to talk about hookups if you’ve hooked up with someone.  It is not a shushed subject.  Many people strongly believe that the more hookups you have, the better your future relationships will be.  In a way, a hookup has become the not-so-forbidden but poisonous apple that people think is making them (and their relationships) healthier!  Why do we partake in such an act we are constantly told will hurt us and ruin our relationships (or prospective ones, for that matter)?

I’ll take a couple of examples from magazines and dating advice “gurus” online.  On a women’s magazineCosmopolitan cover, it said in big bold type: “How to Tell if He Likes You or if it’s Just a Fling.”  I won’t go into detail about the actual article itself, but the very title tells us something very important which is that HE DOESN’T REALLY LIKE YOU IF HE WANTS A FLING, or if you are hooking up.

On Seventeen magazine’s site, they give a link to “10 reasons why you should not hook up if you want something serious” meaning that IF YOU WANTED SOMETHING SERIOUS, YOU SHOULD NOT HOOK UP.  Lastly, on yourtango.com’s Youtube advice section, people ask questions like “Will having sex with him make him want to date me?” or “Can my hookup become my boyfriend?”  The advice “gurus” say hold off on sex to build a relationship emotionally first in order to build a stronger relationship. Through their advice, they show the difference between an emotional bond and just a physical bond – one being temporary and superficial (the physical) and the other as stable, strong, and lasting (the emotional). We all know which one they want us to engage in, and I agree with them.

Warning signs are practically staring us in the face from all angles.  If you want something lasting, hookups are not the way to go.  Sex should not be used as a kind of currency to get someone in a relationship, as it is not stable, doesn’t last, and disables you from building a relationship with one person over time, as hookups are just what they sound like:

Hookups are ‘Hook-ups’, One-night-stands are just for ‘one night’, and Flings are ‘occasional’ things (with different partners).

Nothing in the actual sense of these words foreshadows any future long-term relations.

So, as it seems, hookups are still barriers to relationship initiation and intimacy development because they are not positive romantic relationship experiences, but actually the opposite.  Research shows that “positive romantic relationship experiences during adolescence can promote well-being” (Collins, 2003) but since hookups generally don’t give people experience with long-term relationships, they don’t seem like the best ways to start one.

Hookups are far from evil and are just another consensual human experience – later on in life, they may serve to help us explore in retrospect, what we want and don’t want in our actual long-term intimate relationships.  However, hookups themselves cannot sustain an individual’s long-term needs for affection, control, or inclusion and do not foreshadow a long-term relationship between those partaking in the hookup.

yourtango link here

Daydreams and Late Night Streams of Consciousness - Inspired by Modernist Writers

Some Poetry I dug up from last semester...

The Wall Plug

I write them how they are,

No imitation of your beautiful flowers and stars

because I can’t see through your rose pink lens

I find this new, visible beauty beautiful –

because its real, not in my head

Its chipped paint, It’s edges, its loneliness on the big white wall

Like the yellow wallpaper woman, I sit in class – look, the chalk,

the fluorescent lights – in this painted room,

we’re not really trapped like her,

but we must stay, by the threat of dark futures if we don’t,

Then I’ll sit here and look at the wall plug

as I take in the wise man’s words

Blue Squares, Sturdy squared colored structures,

They Frame the bars, where behind the bars, across the street,

Children’s laughter, children screaming, children swinging

How I wish I was a child sometimes

But they are trapped like me -

Looking from within the blue squares, sturdy squared colored structures

To my windowed classroom,

Innocently wishing they were grown like me

Four Walls ‘Round

Four walls, Out the door, four walls more

Room into room, I find no smiles, only silence

The tricky door cracked open – nobody can close it but me

Me and her that used to lie adjacent

2 o’9 A.M. can’t take a Tylenol P.M.

My head hurts but I don’t want to hurt,

Hurt More when I sleep and dream of him

Too bad - over again my mind remakes him

Sleep, try to sleep again,

Write, can I truly write again,

The only thoughts that keep me from sleep

Is about the sleep I’ll never rightfully have again

Stop the play, go to bed, says my mom

Pillow fights with my late night thoughts

Stop the hammers on the keys,

Slow the cogs in your head,

Damn, just go to bed…

Diary

How can I forget, it was shared

Once mine, taken from me

He took it, didn’t ask

He can’t hold it now, but it’s still in his grasp

Over my shoulder, behind my back, I was asleep

Look at the written words once more, you

A penny for my thoughts

My pen marks to your meaning

Picked apart my feelings like a science

He doesn’t know this is art!

Deny he knows a thing about me

How can I attempt to teach him the art of my mind?

Sleeping with one open eye

Writing with half a heart closed

Take your stupid insecurities with you

You can’t touch my words anymore

He can’t see my thoughts, but I’m still afraid

Writing for him, over, over again

I knew I was only really fooling me,

I’m still writing to fool an invisible man.

Trust is hard to regain

He succeeded in taking you away

Though you are still in my hands now

I’ll never write in you the same

Expectations to Succeed...

Pianista

It has been so long

since you touched my fingers.

I ran from your keys

Day and night,

I never saw the world

in your black and white

My family piece, passed on

to my home,

brings back memories

of a metronome.

You kept me on beat,

You kept me off the street,

yet, off the playgrounds too.

Oh, the times I’d cheat,

To keep from playing you.

I hated you,

my parents dreams in you.

Your keys sound, vibrate chords

Vibrate the air, raise my hair.

My parents’ dreams in me,

Dreams for me to be

Their musical child

It has been too long

since you touched my fingers.

I could run to your keys

Day and night,

But I still know

I’ll never see the world

in your black and white