The Case of Being an Asshole

Maricel Repunte4 Comments

I have hurt someone and now, I feel extremely terrible.

In a previous post, I talked about being cautious with my words and actions with regards to how I deal with people. But last night was different. Last night was the night I became a total asshole.

If you can see the irony of this post from the previous one posted, you may perhaps loathe me.

I hurt a special person because I was being careless, to a degree of being cocky… conceited. One slip that ruined the friendship the person and I built for months. Just one mistake was what it takes to make me realize perhaps, I’ve been doing this with all others as well, which I am just unaware of.

Time won’t turn back before last night. It’s impossible to undo what time has already claimed. Everything– words, actions, how you made the other person feel, is irreversible. Mistakes happen. If you are lucky, you get another chance to patch things up, if not to just ask for an apology.

Others were not, like in my case.

We embrace the truth that people come and go. There’s no getting around that truth. But today felt different and very disappointing because it was the first time I parted ways with someone who I would never had the chance to apologize for my mistake.

Perhaps when time and fate permit, we will meet each other again… and I can only hope the other person has the heart to forgive me when that time comes.

Please forgive me if in one way or another I did hurt anyone. Trust me, that’s the least I’d ever want to consider doing to another human being. And please tell me if I do, so I am aware.

I know I have not served my purpose. I was being a hypocrite for saying one and doing another. And worst, I hurt people unconsciously.

I will learn from this, I promise.

 

Is it time to go?

Maricel Repunte6 Comments

Social media have become a significant part of my life over the years. Since I had my first taste of internet addiction in High school, my definition of being social has dramatically changed.

Back then, the distinct face of social media that I remember was only Friendster. Fast forward almost a couple of decades later, I now have Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as my main media for voicing out my opinions, while I use Whatsapp, Facebook messenger, WeChat and Viber’s chat service to keep in touch with family, friends and even business partners from around the globe. I also blog in WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr. Writing in these 3 platforms have helped me see life in a different perspective. I’ve met decent, driven and some of the most sensible people I’ve ever come across with through writing. I’ve also had accounts in Google+ along with Google Hangouts, Youtube, Telegram and Signal which I use very rarely. I also use LinkedIn for my professional connections. I used to have Skype. Actually, I still have it but I no longer use it for a long time now for some reason.

We all have our reasons why we keep a separate life/s outside the real life we have at the moment. Needless to say that I don’t see the need to have one. I personally would have chosen to never involve myself into this hullabaloo of social media frenzy.

But I have now. In fact, it’s been going on for years. And whether I am happy with it or not is still a thing I am trying to contemplate. True enough, I was happy at times by keeping it, especially with the people I met over the years that have helped shape me into the woman I am now. But on other days I realize, this is not what is all there is to life.

My reasons for keeping up these accounts had been clear to me the moment I signed up and hit the agree button in each terms and conditions I aimlessly tried to read and absorb into my brain: That I need a voice for when my mouth decides to shut up. And that voice is to affect in a positive way, in any way I can, with whomever I came to connect with through this medium.

Being introverted in a world that extols the opposite leaves me feeling an outcast. In the real world, I am often seen very aloof with people. That I kept myself in a secluded world away from the big and noisy crowd, distancing myself, absorbing and observing the world unfolding in front of me. And often, that is being interpreted as something negative.

But who’s to blame when you find talking to a complete stranger about how life had been for him more rewarding than listening to friends talk about the latest TV show? Or when you’d rather sneak up in bed with your book or laptop doing you know is going to help you with moving your life forward than going out on Friday night?

I crave genuine human connection. In real life as it is online, this has become a struggle we face in our daily interaction.

At this phase in my life, I already know where I stand. I respect everyone who may never get to understand why I am doing things my way or just why I am like this. I was designed this way. And others also were made differently. I understand that my silent demeanor is sometimes looked upon as a negative trait. However as humans, we have core needs  that connect us with one another, despite how we seem to be drifting apart in some aspects of our mental, emotional and spiritual being. I respect that everyone is made differently. And that uniqueness is something I often see as a challenge in terms of how I, as the silent and observant person, bring about the bridge and seal that gap with my noisy comrades. How I can still continue to be me and function as the person I was destined to be whilst bringing out the best in every person I met or circumstances I get to be at.

Contemplating about how my life changed since Facebook, I do not know if my goal had been met and if what I’ve been doing was helping me with being true to that goal. I believe I’ve been trying real hard to be positive and to stay that way with my online interactions. The responsibility to take care of what comes out of my mind is something I take very seriously. However, there had also been instances where you would read my posts and think I was on my sixth shot of tequila. Being sober in a world that is drunk in social recognition and validation is difficult. But is still achievable.

I’ve known people who have stayed away from this superficial world and are doing great in real life, without the need for the world to validate their successes, or even their existence. I knew some who put some limit to the frequency of using social media and they could be living quiet but fulfilled lives. Who knows?

But then, it all boils down to individual choices and preferences.

I’ve had intermittent use of mainstream social media the past months. I purposely stayed away for personal reasons. I let a couple hundred of people go to maintain order. There were big things that came up that surely did not need to be told to the world. And I don’t have to right now. I think with the right mind conditioning and clear purpose, I could leave all this social media accounts for good. I may not be able to delete my footprints on the net as if I never existed in this space once, but I think I could cut my internet life short, or perhaps go completely anonymous.

The hardest part of this plan would be missing a lot of people who have already become a part of my life, regardless if I know them personally or not. It would be like loving the characters from the book I am reading and when I was finished reading it, placed it on the shelf sealed with a promise never to re-read or turn the pages ever again. You know it’s just there but you also know you can’t reopen that book again, otherwise you’ll get lost in an addiction that you know you would find difficult to get away with. Because you believe that the more you dig deeper or re-read the chapters, you’ll be intoxicated and might never regain the same courage to let go of its characters again… To unlove them.

But really, are you willing to forego people and be content living with just the memories?

I’ve seen the possibility. But I cannot envision the pain.

…

On a stormy night like tonight, while the wind and rain is beating up outside, most often I go melodramatic. Forgive Typhoon Mangkhut, alright?

 

 

The Irony of Pretense

Maricel Repunte7 Comments

 

I know some of you may have grown tired of hearing me talk about my seemingly endless tirade on misery. It’s boring. It’s insignificant knowing it would pale in comparison to all the problems the world is facing at the moment. Trust me, it is not my intention to talk about all these nonsense. It is just at this time, I can do so little to appease the situation. So I have to resort into writing, which is mainly the reason why I am keeping this blog.

This is my outlet~ where others turn into drinking, partying or doing drugs, I pound on my keyboard and scribble my thoughts.

I am not giving any promises but I will tell you this would be the last of its kind~ for now. 🙂

Today, I woke up tired, maybe exhausted after staying late last night doing some online courses. But regardless of the exhaustion, I genuinely felt a sense of peace. I hugged myself for a few minutes before yanking out of bed, thanked her for the things that she has done to not be ruined by these recent storms and told her that I was proud at how she is fighting hard to regain her old self back. Self-hugs are not new to me, so are self-talks. I do it whenever I got the chance to. There has been a research conducted on this subject that suggests the way we cross our arms as in a self-hug actually impairs our brain’s ability to localize tactile stimuli and when the brain is confused, it’s ability to listen to pain signals is reduced. And as you may all know, self-hugs promote self-compassion, so why not?

Be kind to your self whenever possible. It is always possible.

I know this gesture may sound really silly but you know what, more than anyone, we should be grateful for ourselves for the things that we do everyday to better ourselves. We need an affirmation, from ourselves, that we will be fine, that we are beautiful and kind, and that we are strong regardless of everything.

Okay, maybe I am just really weird. 🙂

Based from my personal experience, it helps that I am also good at pretense. Surely, I pretend a lot that I am strong. And when I do that, somehow, I eventually end up believing that I am indeed, strong. I guess it has something to do again with tricking the brain.

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Those times when I was riding the ebb and flow of my own tide, I’ve made a conscious effort to keep myself in focus especially in matters concerning work. I can laud myself for being a well-functioning robot when I am in the office. It’s like I transform into a completely different person outside of time. I had to put a barrier in  between my career and personal life so I could protect my responsibilities and that I could function more than what I was required to do. Let’s talk about multitasking alright~ I can perfectly juggle fires and tsunamis on the palm of my hand without having to give any hint to the people around my circle that I was flailing on the sidelines, except those very few people who I chose to share this part of my journey.

Sometimes, I am just so good at it that I somehow forgot I am also in need of help. The paradoxical superwoman in the midst of chaos and trouble who was clinging only to herself to make it through the other side of the tunnel, well, she was very real. Will she make it through? Of course, just give her time. Even with all the bruises and wounds, she will rise above this eventually.

And when she does, the pain she was trying to drown will become the strength that fuels her to face the unknown.

I cannot affirm whether the way I deal with all the negative stimuli that are putting to risk my emotional stability is appropriate.

Immersing myself in so many activities that will keep my mind off the negatives, how I drown myself in the books and articles I read or the podcasts I listen to, even in the ways I tried to maintain my independence from people, somehow, helped me sustain my confidence that inspite of everything, I am still a capable human being. That I have all the capability to get out of this phase, alone or otherwise.

In a way, instead of using the word “escape”, I will use the word, “build” because these are things I do, not to escape from a painful experience but to build myself up to sustain another pounding.

Perhaps, I just need to continue what I’ve been doing and see if things will go back to normal~ or maybe, I should learn to embrace a new normal. And maybe then, other than becoming stronger than I was, I would discover something different and meaningful about how to live my life, go chase an old dream or dream a new one.

Life indeed, is beautiful.

Into my world

Maricel Repunte2 Comments

I’ve lived quite a sedentary life for six years. Every day, my life would kick off before four in the morning and just to give you an overview of how routinary life has been, here are the things I do before becoming a firefighter in the office every day or becoming a couch potato every weekend.

Weekdays Be Like

3:45AM : waking time

4:00AM : done checking WordPress, IG, Whatsapp, Duolingo, then turn on Youtube.

4:20AM: finish bathing

4:40AM: finish breakfast

5:00AM: leave home

5:10AM: wait for the earliest bus to SM

Beyond these hours, as soon as I got myself on the bus, I return to Duolingo and do the exercises. I once created a club when I signed up in Duo so I check the leaderboard from time to time to see which member is vying to be the weekly winner. Or see where I am in the overall ranking among my friends.

The thing is, even if I am feeling so down, I’d always make it a point to stay ahead in the weekly ranking in my club. Why? Because it is my club~somehow I feel responsible to stick to my goals so others would perhaps emulate. We are 45 in the club and so far, the average number of persons participating in the weekly exercises is always above 50%. Comparing these with how other clubs perform, as I am also a club member in some Spanish, German and French clubs, a 50% interaction is already high. Mind you, clubs can become very active on some days and suddenly become ghost clubs where not a single member does the exercises for several weeks.

And I cannot allow that. Not even when I don’t feel like winning.

At times I feel I was being selfish as I would race over to win in the weekly leaderboard. With the available time I had, this undertaking entails sacrifice. And what do I get after? Other than some eyebags and dark circles around my eyes and a morning headache, is an affirmation that I am capable of building positive things for myself, just to get a boost, even if the other parts are failing.

Perhaps it does help that I am more into reading, listening and watching media contents that are motivational in nature like the ones Be Inspired are creating. And because I maintained some social media accounts, I choose very carefully who to follow in each platform as these people would end up either helping me make or break my day.

It is good that most of my friends are not active in many platforms besides Facebook and IG, that way, I could enjoy a sense of anonymity for some critical opinions that I choose to rant about, evading possible conflict to say the least. Is this good? Perhaps. Let’s just say that out of my 267 friends I have in Facebook, I only knew around 10 people who share the same political opinion as me. That’s not even 5% of the total.

I voiced out an opinion before and sad to say, it did not fare well within my circle. So I tried to stay away from getting too political especially that I will be raging war against, sorry to say this, purveyors of hearsays, relying on Facebook to gather information and then mark it true. If only people would dig deep into the issue instead of browsing their timelines liking fake news, I would be as proud as I was before for being a Filipino.

So to avoid conflict with my peers and for my peace of mind, I choose where to wage my battle. Do not forget that the mighty pen is as deadly as a katana. Dr. Jose Rizal taught us that a century ago.

In the evenings. my time is usually spent doing Duolingo exercises and reading. In the past, I did some workout before bed but I had to cut that off due to the physical exhaustion I felt in the morning.

 

Weekends Be Like

4:00AM: waking time

4:20AM: end of workout

4:30AM: done checking WordPress, IG, Whatsapp, Duolingo, Facebook

5:00AM (before): start doing my EDX courses,

5:00AM (now): leave home for a morning walk/jog

5:45AM (before): breakfast

6:30AM (now): breakfast

6:45AM: checks WordPress, IG, Whatsapp, Facebook, and then do some exercises in Duolingo

7:30AM: go back to EDX courses until 3:00PM (with meal breaks of course)

The late afternoons are usually spent reading, researching, writing a blog post or composing poems. Sometimes, I experiment with video editing. Sometimes I draw. Or take a typing speed test. 🙂

I go out when I deem necessary.

In between my time every weekend, I’d spend hours with the nephews and nieces~just to play, talk and cuddle with them. Everyone is growing up so fast and I am afraid the new schedule I have isn’t helping me with optimizing my family time. I am just hoping all the baby monsters would understand why the aunt is doing this though. And then, there’s my dog and my cat who might demand some more time from me as well.

So how is my time now different from the one I had before? Not much actually, except that I have to allot several hours now for my courses. And also, I am enjoying a few hours being alone every morning in the ocean.

The view and sound of the ocean, the scent of morning air and the brush of the wind on my face along with a glimpse of the sunrise, well, these are the magical things I get lost to every morning. It’s almost like an epiphany.

 

I have something in mind that I might start doing every weekend or maybe twice a month but until I am able to pull that plan off, I could not provide further details.

Please do not ask me what I would have wanted to do if circumstances would permit because I could write an entire book about my dreams.

“You may say, I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one. ”

~John Lennon

 

Tomorrow would be another morning session and I hope the sun gets to shine tomorrow.

This morning, I did not see any sun as it was raining when I left home but I went nonetheless, walked towards the baywalk, settled myself on a bench opposite the ocean and waited until the rain would stop.

I was lucky because it rained really hard instead and the park now became a ghost town.

Speaking about choosing battles? I had to retreat an hour later.

 

 

 

Faded

Maricel Repunte9 Comments

Several days prior, I had pre-planned what I am going to do today, the 1st day of May, while I won’t have to think about work. If this holiday was only longer, I would have preferred to go south or north to see the ocean. By myself.

I’ve talked about “Faded” in my last post and how that song has gripped me. It still is the song that I listen to from morning, during my daily commute until I went to bed at night. Why? Because I am at a point where I am searching for my old self. She is lost somewhere and I need to get her back, unfortunately. Faded is a cry to my old self. I hope she is not in Atlantis. I can’t follow her in the deep. I am scared of sharks.

Before I went to bed last night, I made sure everything was all set for today’s plan. So in the early morning as soon as I woke up, while everyone was still asleep and while it drizzled outside, I left home.

I went to get some cash just in case I would impulsively think of going somewhere other than what was planned. And while I was about to leave the ATM machine, I bumped into an old friend from high school. I could not exactly remember the last time I saw April. Although I would often see her on Facebook. We said our hellos and a few questions here and there~ her about her family life and for me, the usual, “when are you going to settle down” types. Don’t worry, these questions will no longer bother me. I’ve become used to it that I could brush it off politely. A few minutes of chitchat and then we parted ways. She also mentioned that she reads my blog which kind of surprised me because I wasn’t expecting she is one of those people who came to my blog from Facebook, as shown in my analytics. It also dawned on me that High school is sixteen years ago and I’ve already missed several of my old friends. This after I canceled my attendance on the batch and class reunion on several occasions. A couple of days back, I was also talking to a high school friend in IG who is now living in the US with her family.

Here, time is the only element that’s changing because friendship has remained even if we are several oceans apart. While I have intentionally stayed away from acquaintances, fate had put me in situations where I won’t have any other resolve but to face the old folks, one by one.

As soon as left April, I went straight towards the baywalk. There were already a few people jogging around the vicinity while some others are obviously waiting to see the sunrise. I thought I should have been earlier. Maybe when everything is still dark and I will be alone. So will the next time be.

My closest friend, Joyce has been pushing me to pursue my plan~ to rest my mind even for a week. To go somewhere far and just leave everything behind. I could do that actually but I have to do careful planning for safety purposes, especially that I will have to travel alone and most especially because the places I’ve had in mind may not be too friendly for a woman who’s traveling solo. I can’t be too careless. I still have a blog to update and a new IG account that needs to be filled with more poems. My gazillion followers would certainly miss me.

The ultimate game plan for this year is still something I am working on, along with a lot of other things I need to complete and sustain this year. I am tempted to dive and take the risk now, but honestly, I don’t see it as the best course of action. I need to plan. And then devise plan Bs, Cs, and so on and so forth in case the initial plans would not work. I can’t take planning out of my system. If you know a Virgo, an INFJ and who has a type A personality, you would understand why I am like this.

These are for the long-term goals.

The short-term ones are what needs to be done impromptu. I am building myself right now with this end in mind.

Today after the early morning walk, I realized something about myself. So I will build this thing up until I am able to say, I am no longer chained. That I could be like the bird I saw this morning.

Just stay above the water, Maricel.

I’ll see you all again over the weekend.