Why I might be Crazy, v2.0: She’s like a friggin’ Jedi

Oh, she’s good.  She’s continued to take and take, while giving nothing, and she’s managed to make me feel like the whole thing is my fault.  She’s like a friggin’ Jedi.

The Latest:  She asked if I consider myself single.  “Yes,” I reply, since I don’t have a girlfriend.  The follow up question was, “So if a girl asked you out on a date, you would go?”  “Sure,” I said, “depending on the girl.  If I wanted to go.”  Let’s unpack this for a second.  Societal norms in American culture dictate that in heterosexual dating, the man usually asks the woman out on a date.  I can’t remember the last time I was asked out that didn’t involve the name Sadie Hawkins.  But ok, if this mythical female asker-outer, who has somehow caught my eye, asks me out and I want to go, then yes, I’d probably go.  Hypothetically.

“Then you’re not choosing me.”

She proceeds to tell me that she’s going to accept the fact that we’ve broken up (2 months ago), and she’s going to move on.  OK, so what she wants is a guy to date her exclusively.  Back in the Philippines, we have a term for something like that.  It’s…um… BOYFRIEND.

The nail in the coffin is that I’ve been walking around for the past few days feeling guilty about hurting her.  But wait, what exactly did I do to her?  Break up with her 2 months ago?

She told me that the reason she didn’t want to talk to me, during the weeks before we broke up, was that she thought we’d fight.  And she was so busy that she didn’t have time to fight with me.  I accept that.  We had been fighting.  Our recurring fight was that I was feeling like she was putting our relationship on the back burner (because she’s so “busy”), and it’s hard enough being long distance.  I just wanted some reassurance that she still wanted to be with me because her actions were saying otherwise.  Her response to me was that she didn’t want to feel responsible for my feeling secure in our relationship and that I should figure it out for myself.  So instead of continuing to be an active part of this relationship, she chose to duck and cover.

And now that we’re broken up, I’m supposed to choose her?

This coming from the woman who told me she didn’t want to be “in a relationship,” then continued to date me for 4 more months, saying that she wanted to see where things would go between us.  She eventually told me that she loved me, and a month later hooked up with another guy while she was out of town.  But she made me feel like I didn’t understand the circumstances because she had made it clear that we weren’t TECHNICALLY boyfriend/girlfriend.

She says things like, “You think I’m a horrible person,” and “I ruined your life.”  We even had a conversation a while back about how she felt that she had projected a lot of her guilt and insecurity on me throughout our relationship.  But it all came up again in this latest conversation.  How I think she’s a “bad person.”  The only thing I could say in reply is, “If you took a look at a transcript of our conversation, you wouldn’t see the words “bad person” until right now. YOU keep saying that, not me.”

Look, I know it’s hard, but sometimes when you fuck up, the best thing to do is admit it.  Going around saying, “but look at all the times I didn’t fuck up,” doesn’t really get you anywhere.  It makes you look like you’d rather protect your ginormous ego than admit that you did something wrong once.

“I hurt you and I’m sorry” goes a long way.  A much longer distance than “I didn’t do anything wrong!  except for that one thing.”  Because, ultimately, that one thing can be pretty important.

Her unwavering defense of her out-of-town make out only served to further devalue my feelings about the situation.  Every time she said, “I haven’t done anything since we’ve been exclusive,”  just reminded me that she still thinks that I was being unfair to her by allowing her cheating tendencies (for lack of a better term) to hurt me.

And now that we’re broken up, I’m supposed to be choosing her?

The big question mark in my brain was, why is she calling me from the grocery store to have this conversation?  Did she not think that this might be something I might want to talk about?  She kept saying that she HAD to talk to me today.  She HAD to. Then she abruptly had to go because other people were depending on her for something.  Her roommates were leaving to go somewhere.

Through the magic of facebook, I found out that they were going to a party.  Ahhhhhh, so.  She HAD to talk to me?  That day?  Before the party?

OK, I’m not an idiot.  I’ve been made to feel like my imagination is overactive at times, but come on.  Is it possible that she called to get my “permission” to make out with whoever this new guy is, and he was gonna be at the party?  She’s been so wracked with guilt since the last time she went out of town and made out with some guy, that this time she wanted to get me to push her into the arms of another guy.  I can hear her rationalization right now.  “But I told you that since you weren’t choosing me that I was going to move on.”

Oh, she’s good.  She’s continued to take and take, while giving nothing, and she’s managed to make me feel like the whole thing is my fault.  She’s like a friggin’ Jedi.

When was the last time you played?

As I douse myself with antibacterial hand sanitizer, I can’t help but smile at all the cute kids at the Halloween costume contest at the Mall.  Ok, so escorting the big shrimp isn’t the most glamorous job in the world, but every once in a while you get to remember what it was like to be a kid.  Today was one of those days.

There was a woman, who I later found out was Grandma, standing in line to register for the costume contest with her toddler.  I’d guess 2-3 years old.  Pacifier in mouth (the kid, not the grandma).  I walked up holding a sticker out for him and said, “Hey Spiderman, do you want a sticker?”  And Grandma promptly answered, “He doesn’t talk yet.”  Thanks, Grandma, The pacifier was a big hint.  I bet your grandson isn’t, in fact, Spiderman either.

I’ve always wanted to have a kid, and I didn’t really know why until today.  Yeah, kids are disarmingly cute and they have unbelievable imaginations and you can mold and shape them into little versions of yourself.  Perhaps even cooler versions of yourself, if that’s possible.  But that’s not why I want to have a kid someday.  I want to have a kid because they give you a whole different perspective on life.

As a dude in his 30s (yeesh), I know I have responsibilities.  There are rules to follow, and a lot of that boils down to one word: Fear.  Fear of what people will think, fear of losing everything I’ve built up, fear of failure, fear of looking foolish.  You probably won’t be surprised at how many adults turn down the stickers I hand out, while this one sticker seems to make their kid’s day.  The stakes are high for us grownups.  But when was the last time you played?  I mean, yes, we all have responsibilities to attend to, but why can’t we do both?  Why does being an adult mean that we have to abandon the joy of life that being a kid brings?

Kids remind us that we all have the capacity to believe, to love unconditionally, and to live for each moment.  They’re not trying to win some prize or tell themselves “I’ll be happy when…”  Their mere presence in a room changes the energy of that room completely.  Something innocent and pure; they wear their emotions on their sleeves, along with the requisite amount of mucus.  Their joys and their sadnesses are fully expressed, they don’t get self conscious or try to hide their feelings for anyone else’s benefit.  They just are who they are.

I think I have a lot to learn from kids.  There’s a part of me that’s yearning to remember what it was like, and one of the few ways to do that is to be around them every day.  To be invited to play and be silly.  To give myself the permission to smile and laugh as boldly and completely as I feel.  And to let my life be affected, changed by someone else.  Maybe even someone cooler than me.

Speaking of playing:

A Quick Note About Fartclouds

Have you ever farted as you’re sitting down to go #2 and you end up sitting into your own fartcloud?

Yeah, I hate that.

The Second Rat

There’s a guy I work with at the restaurant who is best described as your classic bullshitter.  He hits on girls at his tables, girls at other servers’ tables, well, pretty much any girl that comes into the restaurant.  To my knowledge, he’s got a couple baby-mamas, and yet he somehow gets by with working at the restaurant, where I make just barely enough to take care of myself.  He and I get along pretty well, but I tend not to take anything he says too seriously.  So you can imagine my surprise when I found myself thinking about something he said recently:

“The early bird gets the worm, but the second rat gets the cheese.”

Someone told me that when it comes to critiquing your art the person who is usually full of shit most days can actually be insightful every once in a while.  In the immortal words of Wesley Snipes, “Even the sun shines on a dogs ass some days.”  Well, this doesn’t really have anything to do with art, but it does have to do with a moment of sudden profundity.

We all benefit from other people’s hard work.  Whether it’s the first Filipino immigrants who picked asparagus, carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, sugar cane, or grapes and paved the way for families like mine to follow, or the migrant workers of today who make it possible for my grocery list to stay affordable, I recognize that their situations are often far less than ideal, but the reality is that their hard work has a direct effect on how we maintain our lifestyles.

A while back I found out that I was hired for a job after a friend of mine turned it down.  After the Sloppy Seconds feeling went away, I realized that being the last choice, the right choice, is what’s important, and the rest is just ego. You know how people say one person can make a difference?  Most of the time, we don’t see what we bring to the table, let alone how the things we bring to the table affect the people around us.  But in this case, it paid off.  I happened to have a couple of skills the director didn’t know about in my back pocket that really contributed to the project, so it felt serendipitous that my friend turned it down.

I suppose what I’m saying is that, as cliche as it is, everything happens for a reason.  A little patience and intelligence goes a long way.  We can learn from the mistakes of others if we take the time to really see what’s going on.

At the end of the day you gotta ask yourself:  What is the ultimate goal?  Is the goal to beat everyone else to feed your ego with a moment of satisfaction, or to get the cheese?

Ok, so it just wouldn’t be a Wily Filipino blog post if I didn’t mention something about being cheated on.  So here goes:  I’m fully aware that my heart has led me to be the first rat, and trust me, that big metal bar snapping down on your head sucks balls.  The problem is that I’ve been seeing myself as the rat, and what I need to start doing is see myself as the cheese.  I’m not saying that I ever want to be the other guy.  I just want to be with someone who is aware enough to know that it’s not about stringing me along while she gets something out of her system.  Someone who can resist the urge to rush into things with me when she’s not ready just because I’m “nice.”  Take a second, think, and breathe.  If you really want the cheese, it’ll be worth the wait.

Sometimes winning isn’t everything.  I guess that depends on your definition of “winning.”  If you want to look at it as “second place is the first loser,”  that’s fine.  I’ll be the one with the cheese, and you’ll be dead.

How many legs does a dog have?

“If you call the tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? 4, just because you call the tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” –Honest Abe Lincoln

Neale Donald Walsch writes in Conversations with God, “Words are really the least effective communicator. They are most open to misinterpretation. Words are merely utterances: noises that stand for feelings, thoughts, and experience. They are not the real thing. Words are the least reliable purveyor of Truth.”

My high school religion teacher taught that Love is to give of one’s self for the betterment of another.  To give.  I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because this has become my definition of love.  When I say, “I love you,” I’m saying that it’s not about what I get.  I just want to make your life better.

Now, let’s be honest, there are more than a handful of people out there who think they can boil Love down to that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you really like someone.  Ok, maybe that’s real enough for them, but what if that feeling goes away?  Then what?

It reminds me of a song from Fiddler on the Roof, where Tevye sings to Golde about their decades of life together, and he finally asks, “Do you love me?”  What strikes me about this is the idea that they’ve been together for years and have never told each other that they love one another.  They just did it.  They loved each other the whole time and never said peep.  But the point is that they loved each other.

This isn’t the chicken and the egg; it shouldn’t be a dilemma.  You can say the words and hope that they’ll come true, or you can do the behavior and find the words later.  For my money, the latter sounds like a better idea.  Calling something love doesn’t make it love.  Love is a verb, it has to be active.  At the end of the day, it’s about choices.

Will a piece of paper or a ring or a vow stop someone from cheating?  It depends on how much that person values that piece of paper/ring/vow.  From my experience, it’s not the paper nor ring nor vow that makes the difference,  it’s simply a person making a choice.  Choosing not to indulge a short term desire, but to honor a long term love.  I guess my experience has taught me that the label can only mean something if the choices of the people involved give it meaning.  And a person’s actions, as a manifestation of who they are, what they care about, and what’s in their soul, is the only thing that counts.

Love isn’t totally devoid of feelings, but there’s a caveat:  It’s not about your own feelings, it’s about the other person’s.  Maya Angelou said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Love is about the things we do to make the other people in our lives feel good.  And when you’re doing that with your whole heart and soul, it’s not subject to interpretation.

Parenting, Shrimp Style

I get it.  Your kid’s a little frightened by the large fuzzy pink shrimp walking by at the mall.  For real, I get it.  If I saw a shrimp that was 10 times bigger than me, I’d definitely be looking for my mom or dad’s legs to hide behind.  But come on, Parents, wouldn’t you wanna try something else before jumping straight to saying “It’s just a guy in a costume.”  Is that supposed to be comforting?  Really?  Killing your kid’s sense of imagination and magic is comforting to you?  All this talk about maintaining kids’ innocence and here you are destroying their ability to believe just so they’ll stop crying.

Why not try to show them how not to be afraid?  They might be scared, but maybe your job in that moment is to demonstrate courage.  Comfort your kid by showing them that unfamiliar does not equal scary.  If fear is the root of hatred, then this might be one of those moments that can shape the rest of their life.

So let your kids dream.  Let them keep that sense of wonder as long as they can.  And while you’re at it, high five the big shrimp.

Why I Might be Crazy

As I watched the Vikings game today, I thought about how shitty it must be to be a place kicker in the NFL.  A lot of times, your team will run out the clock putting all their trust, hopes, and dreams on you to put it between the uprights.  You get one shot.  One moment can drastically change your life.

I might be crazy.  It’s like the episode of the Twilight Zone where everybody’s face is jacked up except for that one woman, who’s gorgeous by our standards, but they keep telling her that she needs to get plastic surgery.  Yep, it’s that kind of crazy.

I keep hoping that there’s a woman out there who can tell me she loves me without completely betraying my trust.  I’ve been told that it was my fault for not satisfying her needs, or that “it just happened,” or I was being unreasonable because, based on some technicality, we weren’t boyfriend/girlfriend.

I feel like I’m the crazy one because there are people out there who wonder why I’m not married, tell me I’m a catch, and say all kinds of nice things about me.  But for some reason, the women I’m attracted to make me feel like what I bring to the table isn’t that special.

I feel crazy because I’m starting to think that saying I love you is one of the worst things you can say to a person.  Those who know don’t talk and those who talk don’t know.  When someone says that they love you, I’d really like to believe them, but I don’t.  Just shut up and put your money where your mouth is.

I might be crazy because I thought that being in love was enough for someone to want to be in a relationship with you.  Apparently it isn’t.  I guess this is like Junior High all over again.  You gotta pass her a note that says, “Will you go out with me?  Check yes, no, or maybe.”

I might be crazy because if you’re with me, I’ll probably assume that you are going to run off on me.

It’s the knee jerk reactions.  I recently called my X (yes, we’ve started talking again) and she didn’t pick up.  Usually she turns off her phone when she’s going to bed, so I was surprised that it rang and she didn’t answer.  But the knee jerk was this:  Instead of thinking, “maybe she’s asleep,” I thought, “She’s probably with some guy.”

I can look at a picture of a group of people and tell if anyone in the picture has a crush on anyone else.  In the past, I’ve used this skill to determine whether or not my girlfriend has been cheating on me.  And I’ve been right every time.  It’s just like Spiderman says, with great power comes great responsibility.  I gotta figure out how to deal with this superpower.

I wish that one day someone will look at me and tell their friends that I’m too happy to realize how miserable I am, rather than the other way around.

It would be different if I wasn’t constantly hearing from my female friends about their loser boyfriends and how they won’t even take them to the movie they want to see or call at decent intervals.  It would be different if I didn’t see these amazing women settling for these nothing guys.  It would be different if I could just take every cheating, ignorant, overly aggressive, “bad boy” aside, smack them upside the head and tell them they’re making me look bad.  But the reality is that they are the ones who make me look good.  But still either not good enough or too good to be true.

Doc Brown and Marty McFly taught me about the space-time continuum.  One moment can change the course of history.  And sometimes I just want to hop in my Delorian and go back 10 minutes before she kisses him and tell her that she’s throwing it all away.  But I shouldn’t have to.  She’s not an idiot.  She, like a drug addict, took full stock of me and our future together and still decided to get her fix.

And that one moment changed everything.

Wily Filipino Blogger Believed to Date Attractive Women

Internet blogger, Wile E. Filipino, is believed to date attractive women, sources say.  This, coming after the stunning revelation that several of his former girlfriends had been asked out on dates while they were still in a relationship with Filipino.  “I usually take it as a compliment,” said Filipino, “except for those times when they actually did run off with the guy who was flirting with them.  Yeah, that kinda sucked.”

One particular ex-girlfriend, who chose to remain anonymous, relayed the following story:

We were at this club with some friends and this one guy kept hitting on me at the dance floor.  I kept looking over at [Wile E. Filipino] and he was just smiling.  Later on, I asked him why he didn’t do anything and he just laughed and said, “It looked like you were doing fine.  If you wanna go out with that guy instead of me, go ahead.”

Another former girlfriend admitted that she actively chose not to tell Filipino when other men would ask her out, citing that she thought that “his face would turn red thermometer style, and smoke would shoot out his ears.”  When asked about this, Filipino replied, “As long as the story ends with ‘and then I shot him down,’ then I’m fine.  I’m a big boy, I can handle the truth.”

There was a time when Filipino went through what many of his friends have come to refer to as his “Ugly Girl Phase,” where he dated women he wasn’t physically attracted to after a particularly attractive woman cheated on him.  Friends close to Filipino reported that this phase was short-lived since, according to one friend, he makes “even ugly girls feel beautiful, so they end up dumping him as soon as other guys start paying more attention to them.”

Said another friend, “Man, I’m glad he got out of that phase quickly.  Don’t get me wrong, they all had nice personalities, but that’s the only way any of us would ever describe them, and that’s never a good way to describe someone, you know what I’m sayin’?  He needed to learn that a girl can speak in coherent sentences about their interesting experiences and be hot at the same time.”

Filipino, who has admitted to having trust issues because of past infidelities, recognizes that while he may have some insecurities, he’s not as bad as some guys.  “I know someone whose husband won’t let her got to the beach because he thinks she might get hit on.”  He notes.  “Even though I’ve never met him, I can tell that guy’s a douche.  I mean, come on, what’s he afraid of?  Besides, he thought she was attractive, why wouldn’t anyone else?  It sounds to me like that guy doesn’t even trust his own wife.  I assume the women I date will get hit on.  They’re attractive women.  What they choose to do after they get hit on is up to them.”

Be the Man You Want to Marry

I gotta give due props to Facebook cuz this isn’t a Wily original.  I was checkin’ out the ol’ news feed the other day and a friend of mine (someone who I don’t really keep up with) had this as her status.

My sister used to have one of those lists.  Several of my Xs have had one of those lists.  I get it.  It’s cool, a girl’s gotta have standards, right?  But you gotta ask yourself, if you’re demanding that you won’t even look at a guy who isn’t–

taller then you, who supports himself, will cook for you, rub your feet, watch girly movies with you, makes enough money to spoil you, knows how to dress himself, stays in shape, is spontaneous, surprises you with flowers for no reason, has a nice car, will go shopping with you, has a great sense of humor, is a free spirit, wants to travel to exotic places, loves his mom, won’t get jealous of all the guys you hang out with, will take you to a fancy dinner every once in a while, will tell you you’re beautiful and not just “hot,” won’t make a big deal over girl’s night out, has a six pack, doesn’t even look at other girls when he’s out with you, opens doors for you, will go with you to the Art Museum he hates just because you want to, will tell you he loves you even in front of his buddies, reads, keeps up on current events, is a good listener, watches all the same trashy reality shows you do, can keep up his side of a conversation and be intellectually stimulating, will hold you when you’re sad or depressed, has blond-ish hair and dark eyes, doesn’t try to fix all your problems when all you want to do is vent, has something in his life that he is passionate about, and can meet your needs in the sack,

–then what exactly do you bring to the table?  How many of your own criteria do you fit?  If you think these things are important for you to receive, as a strong independent woman, why don’t you do them for yourself?

Realistically, how often do we look at the person we’re dating and think, “What do I do for them?”

As my last relationship began to wane, she told me she wanted me to be more philosophical and mentally stimulating in our conversations on the phone.  Part of the problem was the idea of being put on the spot during what was usually a 5 or 10 minute conversation before bedtime because we live in different cities.  ”Can you do it?” I asked.  ”If I said, ’say something profound,’ could you?”  ”No,” she replied, “but that’s what I want in a partner.”  So I tried to keep track of anything halfway decent that would pop into my head through the course of the day, so I could tell her about it, hoping to meet her needs.  And when it came down to it and the long distance was starting to get to me, I asked her to help me feel more secure about things by admitting that there’s some stress in our relationship from being long distance.  ”…Do it yourself,” she responded, “why should I be responsible for whether or not you feel secure?”