AWEFULL

I haven’t been reading books for a long time now, I haven’t purchased a good read nowadays so I just decided to read again one of my favorite novels of all time — Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho. It always feels like the first time even if I have already read this book for several times already. And I am always moved by the lines so I am sharing some of my favorite quotes with you.

For I am the first and the last
I am the venerated and the despised
I am the prostitute and the saint
I am the wife and the virgin
I am the mother and the daughter
I am the arms of my mother
I am the barren and my children are many
I am the married woman and the spinster
I am the woman who gives birth and she who never procreated
I am the consolation for the pain of birth
I am the wife and the husband
And it was my man who created me
I am the mother of my father
I am the sister of my husband
And he is my rejected son
Always respect me
For I am the shameful and the magnificent one.

I need to love–that’s all, I need to love.  Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly.

The great aim of every human being is to understand the meaning of total love. Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.

…but something always went wrong, and the relationship would end precisely at the moment when she was sure that this was the person with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life. After a long time, she came to the conclusion that men brought only pain, frustration, suffering and a sense of time dragging.

If I must be faithful to someone or something, then I have, first of all, to be faithful to myself.

Sometimes you get no second chance and that it’s best to accept the gifts the world offers you.

If I’m looking for true love, I first have to get the mediocre love out of my systems.

There was one thing her mother said that she never forgot: ‘Beauty, my dear, doesn’t last.’

Humans can withstand a week without water, two weeks without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness. It is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings.

All my life, I thought of love as some kind of voluntary enslavement… Freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves the most.

In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel.

Passion makes a person stop eating, sleeping, working, feeling at peace. A lot of people are frightened because, when it appears, it demolishes all the old things it finds in its path.

At every moment of our lives we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss.

The strongest love is love that can demonstrate its fragility.

When a teacher helps someone to discover something, the teacher always learns something new too.

The world enjoys suffering and pain. There’s sadism in the way we look at these things, and masochism in our conclusion that we don’t need to know all this in order to be happy, and yet we watch other people’s tragedies and sometimes suffer along with them. As I say, it’s the human condition. Ever since we were expelled from paradise, we have either been suffering, making other people suffer or watching the suffering of others. It’s beyond our control.

When I had nothing to lose, I had everything. When I stopped being who I am, I found myself.

“I felt that pain is a woman’s friend.”
“That is the danger.”
“I also felt that pain has its limits.”

In all languages in the world, there’s the same proverb: “What the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over”. Well, I say there isn’t an ounce of truth in it. The further off they are, the closer to the heart are all those feelings we try to repress and forget. If we are in exile, we want to store away every tiny memory of our roots. If we’re far from the person we love, everyone we pass in the street reminds us of them.

…it’s (pain) a very powerful drug. It’s in our daily lives, in our hidden suffering, in the sacrifices we make, blaming love for the destruction of our dreams. Pain is frightening when it shows its real face, but it’s seductive when it comes disguised as sacrifice or self denial. Or cowardice. However much we may reject it, we human beings always find a way of being with pain, or flirting with it and making it a part of our lives.

I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It’s all a question of how I view my life.

Despite her apparent freedom, her life consisted of endless hours spent waiting for a miracle, for true love, for an adventure with the same romantic ending she had seen in films and read about in books. A writer once said that it is not time that changes a man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone’s mind is love. What nonsense! The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin. Love was undoubtedly one of the things capable of changing a person’s whole life, from one moment to the next. But there was the other side of the coin, the second thing that could make a human being take a totally different course from the one he or she had planned; and that was called despair. Yes, perhaps love really could transform someone, but despair did the job more quickly.

By the way, most of these came from Maria’s Diary (the lead and the character I have fallen in love with)

If you have time, girlfriends, read this.. you will enjoy, promise!

The bitch I’m talking about is not the “bitch on wheels” or the mean-spirited character that Joan Collins played on Dynasty. Nor is it the classic “office bitch” who is hated by everyone at work.

The woman I’m describing is kind yet strong. She has a strength that is ever so subtle. She doesn’t give up her life, and she won’t chase a man. She won’t let a man think he has a 100 percent “hold” on her. And she’ll stand up for herself when he steps over the line.

She knows what she wants but won’t compromise herself to get it. But she’s feminine, like a “Steel Magnolia” — flowery on the outside and steel on the inside. She uses this very femininity to her own advantage. It isn’t that she takes undue advantage of men, because she plays fair. She has one thing the nice girl doesn’t: a presence of mind because she isn’t swept away by a romantic fantasy. This presence of mind enables her to wield her power when it is necessary.

In addition, she has the ability to remain cool under pressure. Whereas a woman who is “too nice” give and gives until she is depleted, the woman with presence of mind knows when to pull back. **

I’ve been a BITCH. Several times already. Until now… now that I’ve been trying my best to veer away from something that’s really painful not to be with. Something that’s really enticing yet lethal. I’m incessantly fighting with myself to never come near that venom once more. I know I am strong. I am smart enough to know what’s real and what’s not. I am a strong willed woman who knows what she wants and what she deserves. And yeah, I am a BITCH.

But I was never a DREAMGIRL. Irony, it is.

I’ve been reading this book (Why Men Love Bitches by Sherry Argov) for days now, and honestly I don’t agree with it 100% since it’s kinda idealistic and what I think is beyond my competence as a “Lover Wannabe”. I am known to be a cynic.. and no rules/guidelines could change the way I see/handle love and relationships. But why did I opt to read this book? Let’s just say.. sometimes I tend to be a passive person and when my friends told me it’s good, I believed them. Also, I’ve been hearing a lot about this, thus, I grabbed a copy. I don’t say that this isn’t good — it’s just that, believing too much in what’s written will make it hard for me to create my style.

Everyone has known a “nice girl”. She is the woman who will overcompensate, giving everything to a man she barely knows, without him having to invest much in the relationship. She’s the woman who gives blindly because she wants so much for her attentions to be reciprocated. She’s the woman who goes along with what she thinks her man will like or want because she wants to keep the relationship at all costs. Every woman, at some point, has been there. **

… and that includes ME.

Even if I am known to be a “bitch”, still, there are times that I unveil the weaker side of me. I tend to be the the DOORMAT (Argov’s other term for nice girl) at times. Well, who doesn’t lean towards his/her soft side? Nobody, I guess.. even Manny Pacquiao becomes soft under Aling Dionisia’s “spell”, doesn’t he?

I loved them, and I did everything to please them. Even making myself look like a total DOORMAT. But to hell with those who pity me, I am just human. Remember those times when all I had to do in this blog is to rant and cry my heart out for being the uber giving woman that I was before? (the “old” visitors of this blog may attest) I may be past that phase, but I can still be that same person when the situation calls for it.

I may be a bitch most of the time, and rarely a nice girl. Either way, I know that when I fall in love again I would go back to what I always believe in: WHEN LOVE HITS YOU, YOU HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO GIVE IN. No guidelines, no self help books will direct me to wherever.. only my heart will tell me what to do. Just like what most people say: follow your heart.

I could be a very nice girl for the first time, I could also be a combination of a bitch and a doormat… or worse, I could forever be a bitch, but one thing’s for sure.. I am a BITCH WITH A BIG HEART.

____________________________________________________________

**Excerpts from Why Men Love Bitches by Sherry Argov

… something to spend my dull moments with.

Ang tagal ko na hinahanap pero lagi akong bigo.. kahapon, finally nakita ko din sya.
Ganito yata talaga ang layp.. habang hinahanap mo ang isang bagay, lalo sya nagtatago..
Kapag naman nawala naman sya sa isip mo for a while tsaka naman biglang susulpot at tutuksuhin ka…
Kaya ayun, pinulot ko na din sya kahit pa marami pa akong nakaline-up.
Di bale na, mapagtutuunan ko din sya ng pansin these days, sana lang wag sya magselos sa mga nauna sa kanya.. dahil sinusulit ko pa ang mga panahon na kasama ko sila bago ko sila itago sa kung saan man..
at pagkatapos, sya naman ang magiging ka-date ko.

Tsktsk, ang arte ko talaga.. kung ano-ano na naman naglalaro sa isip ko..
E ang gusto ko lang naman sabihin…

Yehey!!! Napasaakin din sya!!!

kaulayaw pati sa pagkain..

Ang hinhintay kong book eto eh, wala kayang ganito? “WHY WOMEN LOVE MANWHORES? harharhar! joooke!

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Siguro tama nga si Ricky Lee noong sinabi nya na ang pag-ibig ay may QUOTA.

At sa tingin ko sa lima na yon, ako yung pang-apat. Yung isa, iba ang kapalaran nya. At di yun ang akin.

I love reading novels as well as “self help” books. In fact, when I was devastated a few months ago, I transformed myself into my bookworm persona and read a lot of books about getting over the pain of losing someone. I don’t really know if those books helped me, or was it just me who helped myself.  Nevertheless, I still enjoy reading books may they bring me hope or not. May they enlighten me or otherwise. Anyway, reading still satisfies some of my cravings — entertainment and learning.

One of my favorite authors is John Gray, the author of this well-known set of books called Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.  Recently, a friend of mine handed me her copy of Starting Over, a part of the Mars-Venus chronicles of John Gray. This book is a practical guide for finding love again after a painful breakup, divorce or the loss of a loved one. Honestly speaking, I no longer feel the pain but I guess there’s something in this book that always leaves me in awe — REALITY. I am so moved by the lines that I wanted to share them with you..

For those who are in the process of building a new life, this book is for you.

Here are some of the lines that captured my soul (well, almost everything in the book is worth posting here). Perhaps, this book could help me find love again, watchathink?

• Starting over after a divorce, a painful breakup, or the death of a loved one can be the most challenging experience of a lifetime. For most people devastated by the loss of love, it is beyond anything we could have expected, predicted or imagined.
• After a loss, we fight inside ourselves with our inability to change what has happened.
• We are not taught how to heal a broken heart in school.
• Becoming single again is definitely a crisis. Like any crisis, it is a time of danger and a time of opportunity. The opportunity is the possibility of healing and strengthening your heart and mind so that you will move on healthy and whole. The danger is that you do not complete the healing process. Time alone does not heal all wounds. How we cope with the loss of love determines the rest of our lives.
• When a broken heart heals it actually grows back stronger.
• The three steps for healing the heart: getting help, grieving the loss, becoming whole before getting involved again.
• Men can speed up their healing process by hearing from others who are in pain, while women particularly benefit from being heard.
• By feeling gratitude for the good times and forgiveness for the mistakes, the heart is filled with the love it needs to heal itself.
• It is impossible for your heart to open fully to another when it is completely closed to someone in your past.
• Until the healing process is complete, men have trouble making a commitment and women have problems with trusting again.
• The best time to get involved again is when you feel as if you don’t have to.

I’m already sleepy.. ’til next time.

A conversation between Paulo Coelho and his wife Chris: on the distance, soul and the horizon…

“Before, I looked in the distance, and things in the distance seemed really far, you know? They seemed not to be a part of my world. Because I was used to looking only at things that were close, the things around me.

But two days ago, I got used to looking into the distance. And I saw that besides tables, chairs and objects, my world also included the mountains, clouds, the sky. And my soul — my soul seems to have eyes that it uses to touch those things.

My soul seems to have grown.”

– Chris

“Anyone can see that. But we’re always looking at the things that are closest to us. Looking down and inward. So our power diminishes, and using your term, our soul shrinks.

Because our soul includes nothing but ourselves. It doesn’t include oceans, mountains, other people; it doesn’t even include the walls of the houses where we live.”

– Paulo

taken from THE VALKYRIES by PAULO COELHO

People give flowers as presents because flowers contain the true meaning of LOVE. Anyone who tries to possess a flower will have to watch its beauty fading. But if you simply look at a flower in a field, you will keep it forever, because the flower is part of the evening and the sunset and the smell of damp earth and the clouds on the horizon.