Romantic

9

Much like waves in the sea and tides in the ocean, concepts such as love and gender are ever-changing, continuously shifting through one lifetime. Born after a universe that is still expanding and developing, humans are also creatures of change–continuously evolving in hopes of reaching their ultimate selves.

For centuries, cisgenderism and heterosexuality were ingrained in the fiber of every human society. Kings are meant for queens, presidents are meant for first ladies, husbands are meant for wives, and boyfriends are meant for girlfriends. Anyone who deviated from the norm was tagged as an outlaw or a misfit, shunned from the community until they repent.

Until recently, it was not safe for queer couples to hold hands in the street or make families of their own. Even now, those who continue to defy society’s standards live in perpetual fear of being mocked and denied their basic human rights.

Like many who came before him, Xyrome Namiza’s journey through accepting his gender expression and sexuality was full of bumps along the road. Now on his Fourth Year of Interdisciplinary Studies, Namiza spent a great deal of his life wondering why he did not want to act like many of the boys his age.

“Growing up, people always call me malamya (frail) because I was a taong-bahay (homebody) as my parents don’t allow me to play outside. When I was in high school, I was exposed to lots . . . of teenage boys who fit the standards of how guys should act,” Namiza shared in an interview.

According to him, he questioned his identity because he did not fit in any of the boxes society has laid out for him and his peers. His deviation to what he assumed was “normal” started his descent into questioning his sexuality as well. Having a girlfriend in senior high school seemed ordinary–until he caught himself also liking a guy. So, Namiza did what every Gen Z child would have done given the situation: he turned to the internet.

What he saw made him realize concepts that were not taught in the four corners of the classroom, he was introduced to the notion of SOGIE (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Expression) and he was able to reconstruct the black and white image of what sexuality is in his mind. However, the road to self-actualization is not an easy one, and it is more difficult to unlearn years of homophobic education and beliefs that were instilled in him. Along with wrapping his head around new ideas was learning to let go of the old ones that were holding him back.

“My main struggle, of course, is fully accepting who I am… I dealt with it by educating myself and surrounding myself with people who are either members of the LGBTQIA+ community or an ally,” he said.

Namiza is definitely not the first person to struggle through embracing his true self, and his experience is not among the worst, but he can be one of the last ones to experience this internal battle. When society stops making pre-made boxes and shoving every newborn baby in them is the time little boys like Namiza stop questioning whether they are “manly” enough from such a young age.

As his call to everyone who experienced or currently experiences the same thing, Namiza said, “There is nothing wrong with you. Take your time. Remember that you can take as much time as you need in order to fully accept yourself and eventually go out of the closet. There will be lots of pressure, and you’ll encounter people who will try to out you and take that opportunity away from you, but always remember that it is always your decision to make. You don’t owe anyone an explanation about who you are. Celebrate yourself and the best is yet to be.”

Truly, it is due time for society to accept that humans are designed to change–just like the world we live in, just like the stars in the sky and the waves of the ocean. Things like love and gender are two of the things that make people happiest and most seen, which is why people like Namiza should be allowed to exist and flourish without fear. Sometimes, boyfriends are for girlfriends, and sometimes, boyfriends are for boyfriends as well.

Illustrated by Shiena Sanchez

Love at First Swipe: Stories of Online Dating Love at First Swipe: Stories of Online Dating By Jemina Eunice G. De Leon & Yuichi P. Desquitado

There are many ways to find love and your significant other. Whether you meet them while you are out for a coffee run or studying in the library, or even meet them when you were young. With the advancement of technology, you can now meet your potential partner online.

Through applications such as Tinder, Bumble, LitMatch, and more, finding love is made easier with just a swipe. With the help of social media, we are more connected, and even so, find love that could sprout with just one message.

Love found through the screens

It was the 13th of November 2020 when “Tonyo”, a second-year IABF student was drunk and “fooling around” and decided to chat “Marites”, his classmate. “For the sake ng pagpapapansin… para lang makapagpapansin doon sa taong ‘yon. So after that, nagtuloy-tuloy na until umabot dito (I did it for the sake of being noticed so that we would just have interactions with that person. After that, the encounter continued until we reached this point),” he reasoned.

For Marites and Tonyo, falling in love was all unprecedented. “Hindi ko ine-expect na magkakajowa ako. I swear kasi ayoko din talaga (I did not expect that I will have a partner. I swear because I really do not want it in the first place),” she explained.

At one point in March 2021, Marites wished to cut their budding relationship short due to her perceived impossibility of them meeting at all, but Marites was not prepared with what Tonyo is about to draw, a reverse card. He invited Marites to meet for the first time at the Enchanted Kingdom and did not expect to have their feelings evolve from there.

“Noong una ko siyang na-meet, … everything fell into place (The first time I met her, … everything fell into place),” Tonyo fondlingly shared. He puts himself to be very lucky of meeting Marites because out of all the odds, zero to trillion according to Tonyo, a “boy from Batangas'' got the chance to meet a “girl from Pasig”, and the only thing that connected them is that they are both from Far Eastern University (FEU) taking the same classes.

Mishaps in online dating

Relationships are not always perfect. Tonyo and Marites went through many obstacles but their love for each other remained unwavering. That night prior to the interview, they were in the middle of a fight and Marites was on the verge of ending their relationship.

There were many times when Tonyo and Marites thought it was time to end things. Tonyo thinks his worst experience was during their “talking stage” when the realization struck him that Marites is still talking to other guys. “It broke me into pieces,” he said.

Marites mentioned that she wanted to end what was still blossoming for the both of them. “Sarili ko na talaga yung problema. Sabi ko, ‘huwag na nating ituloy ito kasi masasaktan ka lang sa’kin’ (The problem is with myself. I told him, ‘we should stop this or you will get hurt’),” she tells. But it was Tonyo’s steady will to pursue her that persevered in the end.

The Lovers’ Advice: from one to another

Tonyo emphasized that before divinginto the world of online dating, especially when pursuing someone, you have to know for yourself and be sure that your feelings are true. As for someone who despises LDRs like Marites, she confessed that despite the dislike, you are doomed when the heart takes over the mind. She wishes and advises the people who will be their partners as this can help clear the clouded thoughts. This gives them something to hold on to as they fight for their love.

“Love is in the air,” they say, but for today’s generation, love can also be found online. Even though the internet is mainly used for communicating (and possibly meeting the love of your life), it is still best to keep oneself loved and safe.

Online dating can be fun and scary, yet that is the same thing when dating in person. At the end of the day, you are your own judge for if the love you are giving is worth the love you are getting. You cannot force destiny to write you your own love story. A masterpiece takes time to be finished, and a beautiful love story does not happen alone, but maybe it can start, with just one swipe.

Illustrated by Sophia Kaye Fernandez

Words are the imprints of the artist's soul and when their legacy is deeply etched in the milestone of literature, the rise of followers of their stories becomes the pinnacle of their career. But sometimes, even the most quoted and famously fleshed-out statement of a renowned writer might not hold a grain of truth in its essence.

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald or most commonly known as F. Scott Fitzgerald is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and screenwriter who birthed enthusiasm towards the movement of the Jazz Age, a period of celebration of jazz music and colorful dance styles of the 1920s to 1930s, and the most honored with his novel, The Great Gatsby (1925).

Fitzgerald is known as a romantic and realist in the entire canon of his works, which is why his words effortlessly flowed in the sea of prominent love quotes of the century. Borrowing his infamous line from the said sought-after novel that “there are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice,” there comes a great deal of unreflected light–a truth trapped inside the scripture because the frame of reference has always been through a looking glass.

Refuting one-of-a-kind love

Fundamentally, being hopeful to find a love that surpasses all that came before and will outshine those that will come solidifies the ground that this invaluable kind of love will never circle back to you, and once gone, there will never be the same.

Such finality of a glorified destiny belief is tantamount to what most of us believe as the epitome of “true love” that most fictional romance novels have long-remarked in their entirety. Certainly, Filipinos are known to be romantics which translated to a 2019 survey from Netflix, a service media provider, reporting that 72% of Filipinos believe in the concept of a romantic soulmate or “the one.”

This idea asserts a once-in-a-lifetime experience but such a stance often capitalizes on the enormous pressure that one should always be aware of their meaningful connections and never blink twice to avoid losing in their grasp.

The committal attitude in such belief is somehow similar to “arrival fallacy”, a term coined by a positive psychology expert Tal Ben-Shahar which refers to the illusion that once a certain circumstance has been achieved, everything that follows will result in an enduring state of happiness: the culmination of life’s desire.

Meeting with your soulmate often equates to the climax of all romances in one’s lifetime of heartbeats and heartaches. However, this recipe of happiness, in reality, has been jeopardizing its nature. People are often dismayed when they think they have missed or let go of it – such fatalism.

Fitzgerald may have failed to see that his remark posed a challenge and that there is a kind of love that we could re-experience and it is not about getting back to your exes or returning to your safety blankets but rather a reunion with the self.

Reunification to the source of love

In a world where shards of so-called truth impose that love comes from outside, the reality of truly seeing the most primitive love through the mirror augments the very definition of what is the true source and face of love: the self.

According to clinical psychologist Deborah Khoshaba, self-love is a state of appreciation, of embracing oneself that fosters actions that cultivate growth in different facets of our well-being. These actions towards oneself enable the expansion of the capacity to accept our strengths and weaknesses, be compassionate to ourselves, and find our values and existential purpose.

Self-love, as argued by Jan Bransen, a Philosophy of Behavioral Science professor at Radboud University, Netherlands, is a relation to oneself that requires a “reflexive capacity to discern an alternative of oneself that presents itself as an alternative one is capable of loving.” It is an attitude of self-love that manages to perceive one's alternative as a beloved object that can be loved.

This kind of strange love is pure in its form but as the people continue to move from one developmental milestone to another, the world incessantly strips its innocence that when meeting this halfway through, we are often bewildered by the familiarity of it. A living testament that even if people get lost in translation, self-knowledge finds its reawakening and understands its meaning even in the face of external noise.

Self-love has always been the same and can be experienced over and over again and the world only made us distant from it by enforcing ideas in our heads. Fitzgerald may not have mentioned this kind of love, but its mere presence can shatter his words. However, the openness to embrace this concept is deeply challenged because of the prevailing social notions.

Recognizing the gray areas

Humans are often defined by their actions and society has categorized these expressions into polarizing archetypes: a good nature that is exhibited in preference for others over oneself and a bad nature as manifested in choosing oneself over others.

This ancient and ongoing false dilemma has estranged most people in accepting actions of self-love, one that is incompatible to believe that self-preference cannot be a good act. More so, this concept has eloped to a conditional impression that if you love yourself more, then you are selfish or narcissistic; however, these ideas are the exact opposite, and this only creates a barrier to genuinely embracing the idea of self-love.

The schism of black and white has delimited the person to truly accept oneself and be comfortable in one’s skin. This vicious cycle will continue to happen not until we start to break this curse and start realigning our perspective towards positivism.

Loving oneself is the root of all kinds of love. Self-love allows the person to be aware, complete, and continuously flourishing which empowers an individual in finding the true meaning of love and be able to share this light with others.

Looking at the mirror and truly seeing yourself is the first step of a lifetime of fulfillment. Only then will you be able to see yourself naked and vulnerable, can recognize and start accepting equally your flaws the way that you accept your strengths, humanize your relation towards yourself, and finally have the integration of your complexities.

Loving oneself is not tantamount to pedestalling self above all else but rather it is the most sincere and humane course of action that will enable us to find ourselves–always circling back to the same love, full of invigoration. Self-love may not always be a revolutionary step for the world to see but it is enough to change our lives.