14:
Love comes to you in many ways. I knew that it had to come from me first, and after a self-depreciating rut with a relationship going nowhere, I knew I had to cultivate it from within.
The end of a love relationship is always a difficult process, even when you’re the one who initiates the break. It took me five years to figure out this house, this furniture, this stuff, this job and this traditional man was not for me. Slowly suffocating my being, I cried every night. Not just for him, and this life we had built that I was leaving. But for me, and for the woman I was about to become. Who was I, really? Where would this new chapter take me? Amidst my broken self-confidence, crying stupor and blurred vision came a soft clarity that I didn’t expect. A whispered thought that seemed to come from outside of myself. An intuition.
Go to the Philippines, it said, gently.
Throughout the year, the whisper grew stronger until it became a chant, and then a loud cheer. All I could do was follow.
Growing up, I’ve been teased for being different. Bullied for being not-white, and for having a funny accent. I tortured my own demons with a shattered self confidence and grew up hating being Asian. I called myself an Atheist because how could I ever believe in God if I couldn’t even believe in myself?
Seeing differences and comparing myself to others did nothing to nurture self-love or confidence. Love and hate are always tightroping a fine line; intertwining and dancing together up on the live wire, waiting to see which one falls first. Hate no longer served me. It was time to find Love. To celebrate similarities in humanity, in the global world, and in my own motherland. It was time to get back to my roots. Soar my self-confidence until it had wings and find God from within. For the first time, I understood the meaning of “God is Love”.
God met me when I was ready to love myself.
They say love comes when you least expect it. When I started a blog, found a community to ease my break-up, and a special blogger who would teach me more about myself and my spiritual journey than anyone ever has in my life, was a big impetus for my travels, and is the only person I have ever been able to flirt so naturally with, will that become love?
When I found an old flame the day after I broke up with the love of my life and we connected over superficial things (like graphic design degrees and martial arts) and the important things too (like lifestyles, values, and spirituality), met in person and connected over chemistry, and found our lives paralleling in year-plus long solo adventures in Asia with the hopes to meet again soon, will that become love?
When I entered the monastery, shaved my head because I wasn’t trying to impress anybody and love was the least thing on my mind, found myself connecting with a newfound friend whom I strangely felt would be important in my life, will that become love?
Maybe it is all Love. Now. A bundle of joy kept for no one in particular but everyone that I encounter; celebrating similarities as my love for self becomes stronger by each life-affirming experience.
Sometimes, I want someone to share my life with, because I have so much life to give, and giving and sharing are loving qualities. But romantic love seems so small. Unstable. Like grains of sand, the tighter you hold on to it, the easier it falls through your grasp. It’s not about finding love. It’s about being love and choosing your best life, your friends, and maybe even your life partner.
I don’t know why my intuition told me to come to the Philippines, but I know it has something to do with love, learning and being. Because life is a love story if you let it be.
21:
Photo by Jessica Caisse
By the time you read this entry, I will be in India volunteering at an orphanage in New Delhi. If you’re here through LiLu’s TMI Thursday, Hi, Hello. This story is a personal journey. It is a vulnerable one. And I will be back on February 8th to let you know how my journey to India went; blogging from a new place in Asia. The rest of 2010 will be spent in the Philippines. Hope you’ll stick around to read my accounts in different cultures.
* * *
These scars measure me. Define me. Give me wings like I am reborn or stones to drown me.
I’d like to say they have some amazing story behind them, but not really. I was nine years old when I got the chicken pox, and I itched the itchy spots. I was compulsive. I was impulsive. Whatever. It just itched. And no one told me I shouldn’t scratch.
When I realized the three most sensitive spots became permanent I was mortified. One on my chest, one on my left shoulder, and the biggest one on my upper back. Countless times I recounted in my notebook journals. Me, age 11. No one will ever love me! I wrote. God, how can anyone love someone so ugly? God, if you’re there, why me!?
Such is the melodrama of prepubescent growing pains.
My parents encouraged me to get them removed. A particularly mortifying visit to the doctor told me otherwise. No way was I going to trust the doc. No way in hell. He took one look at me, one look at them, and said “yeah, they’re ugly”.
Fuck you.
11 year old impressionable psyche. My face burned a deep red. I had my back toward him and I could feel his eyes digging into my skin. My eyes filled to tears. I just cried and cried. You might as well have told a fat girl “yeah, you’re fat.” I mean, do you have to tell me the obvious?
Fuck you.
Watch your manners, Floreta, Mom would say. Don’t use those words.
I didn’t get them removed because frankly, I’m a big wuss. I knew they involved painful cortisone shots to the scar tissue itself and I hated needles. The things I learned about these scars-these foreign invaders on my body-were that there were no guarantees of removing them successfully. They could actually get worse with treatment. No way was I going to risk something like that. No way in hell.
Somewhere in the back of my head, I guess I felt that this was my body, and I should learn to live with it. I mean, they happened for a reason, right? Everything happens for a reason… As tough as I knew it would be, I was going to love myself. I had to. There’s no turning back what happened. I was going to love myself and someone will love me too. I had to believe that. 13 year old psyche. I had to believe I was still lovable. God, how could I go on if I wasn’t? How could I be so shallow; how could anyone? And if they are, they don’t deserve me.
My parents kept telling me to get them “taken care of”. Did they not love me? Did they not accept me? Did they deserve me?
I cried some more. Cried for the perfect skin I will never have. Cried for the demons of self-acceptance that I couldn’t quite grasp.
I went all through high-school without dating. It was very hard for me to be so vulnerable to anyone, let alone naked. I grew very self-conscious. Never wearing sleeveless shirts, bathing suits, or anything strapless. I still don’t really. But I’m the closest to accepting myself as I’ll ever be.
My first boyfriend dumped me the day after he saw me naked and I had given him my first blow job. Perfect timing. And by perfect, I mean fucking lousy.
I cried for months. We only dated for 6 months and it took me that long or longer to get over him. He didn’t deserve my tears.
Being naked in front of men was a struggle for me. I was never comfortable or confident. By the time I settled into a long-term relationship-the one I’d be in for five years-I felt more at ease but still, I would try hard never to face my back to him. I was always conscious of where I was in proximity to where he was in proximity to where they were; my scars. I began to slowly accept them as part of me, yet I still had that mentality.
See, I decided back in middle school that these scars would be a test. A test for myself and a test for my lovers. I knew that while I didn’t feel strong now, it would help me become stronger later. If I wasn’t comfortable, then they weren’t right for me, and I wasn’t “ready” to love another because I still had work to do. And if they didn’t accept me? Of course they weren’t right for me. These scars were a physical measure of what everyone goes through: acceptance, love, comfort, finding “the one”. I’m not sure if I believe in “the one”, but I’m sure I believe in settling down with one. I convinced myself it’d be a good thing, because I would be that much more aware of an incongruous situation, and of how far I have come to be comfortable in my own skin.
As I get older, I continue to grow more comfortable in my own skin. I don’t know what it is, or how I got here. I’m by no means perfect, and my scars tell me so. But all I know is that each new lover feels more and more comfortable. The last man to see me naked, a month ago, was the most comfortable I’ve ever felt. I don’t know if it’s me. Or him. Or me and him combined. But I felt beautiful. And comfortable with my back turned towards him on the bed, and my sleepy eyes drifting to sleep with a slight smile on my face. That doesn’t mean he’s “the one”, or even one (I’m not jumping to bold conclusions), but it means I’m closer to truly accepting myself and my imperfections.
Today, my scars do not sink me; they give me wings like I am reborn. I choose to fly. Everything I do is because I want to be better. I want to respect myself, believe in myself, and most importantly, love myself. My scars aren’t something separate from me, they are a part of me. They grow and change as I grow and change. They mold to who I am. They tell stories of learning to love, and travail. And I am stronger because of it.
Five years ago, I would never have posed topless to photograph my scars, but at the tail end of 2009, I did. I am proud of how far I’ve come. And I’m sharing it with you now.
Today, I am the closest to ever loving myself since, well, ever. And I continue to journey into self-acceptance. I am a work in progress, we all are, but I am closer to finding “the one”; and she’s not something outside of me, but within my own self.
* * *
What scars do you have? How do you measure love?
05:
As for me, all I know is that I know nothing. – Socrates
I don’t claim to have it all figured out, you know. Not a Goddamn thing. The way people are. The way love is. Communication break downs. That’s all I know. I know that the sun rises and sets and that the moon shines its moon-sun reflection on cold, wintery nights. I know that when my parents hem and haw and hover over computer screens like spacecrafts, under low voices and hushed tones while dad indulges in online affairs and mom tries to control him, that my stomach crawls on the inside and I have a harder time loving. I’m an alien here, and I want to fly away.
Once, I think I walked in on my mom masturbating; just a quick glimpse of fingers underneath silk nightgown, nothing graphic, but enough to put a scowl on my face and walk off, trying to shake the image away.
I’m a walking contradiction on most days. A cynical romantic. A slutty prude. An Agnostic that prays to God for hope. The conflicts in my life are minimal; all in my head. But they are enough to show me my mortality. No more enlightened than Buddha or Christ. I am only human after all.
So, when the topic of love comes along, I just want to hide in the recesses of my own cocoon. And whisper, I’m not ready, I’m not ready, I’m not ready. Entanglements of the heart by my track record leave me codependent, and hovering like spacecrafts over computer screens. Like mother like daughter, they say. The similarities sicken me. I don’t want that. I don’t want this. I’m not ready.
The way an ex lover and I said goodbye was on my hands and knees and doggy style. Backdoor. I screamed loud. The loudest I’ve ever screamed. Top of my lungs, back of my throat, guttural screams. Not because it felt so good, but because it didn’t feel like anything at all, except maybe hurt. Void of emotion. I screamed to make me feel; to make the fake seem real. Communication break downs. That’s all I know.
Despite it all, I still have Hope. Hope that I won’t end up with someone like dad, who has a tranny fetish and a penchant for porn, online relationships, escorts. Hope that there’s something better for this cynic who freezes at the thought of marriage, because why cage a freebird, but wants a life partner just like the best of them? Hope for something healthy.
In twenty-ten, I will love myself, continuing on the barrel of self improvement that was 2009. If 2009 was sworn celibacy then twenty-ten will be openness for opportunities and new experiences; a meditation on impermanence, of the sexy kind. I will unravel spirituality through sexuality by cherishing those magic moments and letting go of attachments. Like me on all fours, screaming at the top of my lungs. Letting go. One big exhale. I will unravel layers of love.
No, I don’t like casual, but I am determined to find that love doesn’t have to come in boxes; in things called “relationships” and “commitment” and “romance”. Maybe I am too broken. I don’t know. But it’s all I can handle for now and I want to learn about love. The healthy kind. Not the codependence. Not the meaningless sex, but somewhere in the middle. I’m not sure what that looks like, how far my boundaries can go. Is it merely friendship? Friends with benefits? I don’t know. Is it blow jobs and practicing deep throat and strap-ons? Is it wrestling and choke holds and martial art moves? 2am sex after an amazing day learning how to swim, hiking to hot springs, and sharing a banana leaf umbrella under tropical storms? Or maybe just a good ear, belly laughs, and mango ice cream? I don’t know.
And so I write. Write my fantasies. Write my life. Write somewhere in the middle.
I’m willing to find out. Live my conflict. Like a bohemian, changing and bending. Never set in one way. It’s all I know. That I don’t know.
