2006-11-19
Why The World Doesnt Need a Boyfriend
smmoch: woah! sounds like u had FUN. could i make a teeny weeny blog request? write sth abt the NEED to have a gf/bf? and gf/bf vs friends?
Honestly Smmoch, I've been giving this a lot of thought. (And I still don't know who you are.)
I tried writing an argumentative, but I couldn't find enough substance to fill an argument. Feeling, our supreme logicians tell us, is never enough to construct an Argument. I wanted to use a narrative, to lull the reader into walking the path of my thought, but I couldn't find directions to the heart. Then I thought maybe if I started throwing out descriptives, I might net the fluttering ideas and pin them down in a nice piece of prose. But as all collectors eventually find, his specimens, however pretty, remain quite, quite dead. So I guess I'l just settle for plain old telling-as-it-is.
I still don't understand why this is so hard to write, because right from the start, I knew this post would be titled "Why the World Doesn’t Need A Boyfriend". So I put it down on the white, white screen of Microsoft Word. And then came the hard part: Why?
Why?
At this point, I wish I were one of those legendary bra-burning Feminaziacs, so then my reasons would be clear - association with dick = oppression!
But I am not, cannot and will not. Because even as my scroll bar flickers over those seven words, the next line swoops right down: But everyday, I hear people crying for one. And even worse, integrity prevents me from saying that a little part of me doesn't identify with the amorphous wave of voices. I figure the reasons are both carnal and spiritual (human inventive to excuse our carnal guilt, really.)
(Before anything else, I must clarify that I speak only for the first seventeen years of life, because I daren't suggest (or wish to imagine) what it would be like to love at seventy. And that I use 'boyfriend' only for the convenience of my sexuality. Also, this post is the product of a perpetually single girl who has wrestled with the monsters of social pressure, primal urges and a monstrosity of greater proportions - boys. This cannot, thus, be anything but from the perspective of this exhausted mind. And for the record, she has no idea why she has been asked to contribute in this aspect, having absolutely no experience to boast. (Damn it.) (Just kidding q:))
I don't believe the world needs privy to my uh, worldly relishes, so we'll move on quickly to the loftier other arm of Relationships. (:
I think sometimes, I can almost understand what it feels like to be taken over by the urge to love and protect someone; to provide for him or her to your utmost ability, to gaze upon his/her perfection and be bowled over by a desire to preserve that porcelain grace. And I know, even without understanding why, how one can make concessions for him/her and peel away one's ego strip by humble strip. Just for him.
I believe that these feelings are paramount to our persons, and their existence does to us what everyone seeks: completion. They cannot exercise themselves (effectively and guiltlessly) without that someone else we tag Boyfriend or Girlfriend (and Lover in later stages, and finally and most befittingly, Other Half). I hate sounding paradoxical but I believe I am proposing that we cannot be complete unless we relinquish a part of ourselves and let it live for someone else.
I remember looking out of the car window and thinking that if True Love (that which satisfies all conditions of being true, and is mutual) is as hard to find as it seems, why is it that so many bloody people - almost everyone, in fact, is part of a couple? There seems two possible answers: 1) True Love really isn't all that hard to find, only that I so happen to be one of the condemned minority exiled forever in the barren lands of Singlehood, or 2) that tolerance increases and some simply jump at a cheaper price.
Between being optimistic about my personal chances and being optimistic about the concept of Love and humanity, I cannot profess to be all that noble. Perhaps some people want to avoid landing up on Loneliness' name list. Perhaps others don't want to be left out of Raging Hormones' name list. Perhaps yet others happened to see their best friends under candlelight.
And because I think I can begin to fathom the need for a boyfriend, I refute it, just as Lois Lane, I'm positive, knew better than anyone else the ache for Superman.
Need, whatever fantastical element that changes lead to gold, should not be confused with need, the characteristics that allow lead to exist independent of gold. While I would like to think that a Boyfriend/Girlfriend would be a Need in the grand scheme of things, He/She cannot be one of our needs.
Right now, I don’t think I am anywhere close to needing a boyfriend. Or wanting one, for that matter.
To speak truthfully, my refutation comes from fingers of tiny, almost hidden fears - the fear of botching up Love with dishonest reasons for getting into a relationship, the fear of sullying what should be perfect and beautiful with immaturity, and the fear that a person cannot be complete by him/herself.
If not a boyfriend-dependent-relationship, then what do I have, what should I have?
I would dearly like to say "Nothing. I am my own person, complete and wholesome." But I don't think I am strong or perfect enough. So the next tier of social interaction rises to the occasion: friendship.
I read somewhere sometime ago that friendship has a greater tolerance for repugnance. I don't know if it's because Love raises the bar of expectations, or that one sure as heck won't settle for a second-grade girl/guy, but there has got to be a reason why it's so much easier to make friends than fall in love. So it seems, there is no better incubator than friendship to keep one warm and safe until one sheds the shell of immaturity.
And besides, friendship finds forever a bit easier.
nothing ever happens at 11:32 p.m.