I have this habit of falling into seclusion from others, and it randomly slaps me in the face that I just. Don’t. Want. To. Talk.
I don’t want to talk, even when I feel like there’s something aching to get off/out/lifted from my chest. Even when it’s threatening to suffocate me and at night I end up staring into a blank space. In the mornings when the sunlight is seeping through the mask on top of my open eyelids.
Even when I’m in the car or on a train, an airplane, a boat and listening to the happiest of music.
I feel alone.
I rarely feel this sudden melancholy nowadays. I’m getting good at pushing the dread down my throat. But some other days I get weird, and this is what happens.
But seeing a certain Facebook post on catcalling has me recalling this unpleasant experience I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep with this morning.
I guess I’m too young to be catcalled?
Generally, I’m very open to new experiences, so when my mom invited me out to go shopping in Divisoria, I was like... oh cool, why not??
I’m used to dressing to impress. When I am confident in my stride and in my aura, it usually has to do with my clothes. Whether I find myself shitting around in jogging pants in Aura or rocking this romper in Landmark, my outermost expression, like many others’, is my clothing.
So when my mom told me that we’d be roaming around in this shitty side of Manila, I figured, hey, I’ll wear jogging pants to school tomorrow so I wouldn’t have to change from my uniform before I went down the car. So eventually I went around with my phone tucked in my underwear and my eyes wide like shit if I get assaulted
It’s all good the first hour... and then I’m passing by these two men/guys/shits too skinny for their lives and they say something along the lines ‘hello, sexy,’ and almost immediately I shit myself because I felt threatened.
Being me, I had to look at it in a objective manner: why do I feel this way? Should I tell mom? I need to talk to someone, but saying it out loud makes me seem like a self-absorbed bitch with a head too big. Besides, the low lives couldn’t have been talking to me. Like, um, hello, I’m a sophomore and totally wearing this slacky outfit. Sure, my nose might be turned up and mom’s usual air screams ‘we’re not taga dito,’ but to accost a fifteen year-old would be a different level of low.
Then, to my distress and my mom’s obliviousness, we pass by the two shits again, and guess what? They catcall again.
I’d thought it over in my head again and again and again and I was cussing myself for being so maarte, but man I really hope no one else has to feel that way. It was when I was reeling from major panic attacks, and I was hyperventilating without anyone knowing. I’d known how to calm my breathing by then, but still, what happened made me so paranoid that I couldn’t even lift my head for fear of them seeing how scared I really was through my eyes.
Maybe they were catcalling my mom, maybe they were talking to a person right behind me - two different people the whole time. But that strays away from my point:
It’s not cool to catcall. It may seem harmless and maybe some people wouldn’t find it offensive coming from a ‘good-looking’ person, but believe me, not everyone can live with it. Admittedly, the thought of going through that hell again makes me uneasy. However slight it may be, however insignificant a few words may seem, it hits many people hard. Especially ones who get anxious easily, and that number is rising in population to date.
It’s been months since the incident, and it feels hella good to get it off my chest; I’m pretty sure I’ve learned quite a bit for it.
I have this bad habit of making promises to myself and breaking them. Albeit normal for a human being, the number of said broken promises is quite alarming.
I started this blog so I could regularly post thoughts and just whatever comes to mind. I haven't posted in over two months.
I began my days of music tag in hopes of finishing it by the end of the year. It's December and I stopped halfway.
Speaking of halfway... I wrote a novel/fanfic that I revised at the start of the year. I've only edited half of the fifteen chapters. Based on my chapter-by-chapter the story consists of thirty-two.
Oh! And there's also this novel I worked on three years ago... finish four-fifths of it despite people asking me to finish it ASAP. That was two years ago.
I was inspired to write based on songs my friends sent, and somehow I thought of plots but couldn't transcribe it into a nice, coherent story someone would actually enjoy reading.
I also told one of my friends that I wrote her a story. Yes, I've written only 5k words out of the projected 9 thousand.
I created about fifteen cute plots starting from sixth grade. Haven't completed a single one of them.
There was this GBF story I worked on over the summer. I finished the first half and never wrote the other.
I hate writing.
I love writing.
I want to write without having this much trouble
and regret
and anger towards myself for never accomplishing anything
This is a blog yada-yada so I don't think I can exactly make myself suffer for shoving this out of my mind. (I literally forgot it existed for a while).
Anyway, my days of music will continue in a few woo!
Also, reviews are coming up (I've been reading a shit ton of books + watching movies and shows / how I'm gonna manage that with school squeezed in I have no idea bur I will).
The whole time I was away, I was reading so. much. books. I'm not going to write reviews for those 'cause they're mostly series and based on my Shatter Me review it's pretty obvious I can't get series straight out in words. Bah. (And mostly since the series has to do with my favorite book character in the whole fictional world of books.) ((Jem Carstairs))
I'm not a happy person. BUT, I'm not a sad person, as well. I'm an ambivalent person. Someone in between, stuck between happiness and sadness. Confused. Happy. Sad. Alone. Not alone. Hopeful. Hopeless. Fearful. Fearless.
At one point in my life, I defined myself as an overall happy person. Like that kid who spoke rainbows and didn't give a shit about what others said because she liked herself. I smiled and shit out happy vibes to those with frowns and pouts and I liked to think that positivity was my greatest point.
I was actually really happy that year, and up to this day I don't understand what I saw because I was blinded by all the happiness that I couldn't take a hold of reality and how some people loathed me. Or maybe right now I'm blinded by all the sadness and that the darkness is actually just a really thick wall that's stopping the light from getting into my head.
It's really complicated. How I manage to see those two sides of the paper is why I consider myself as ambivalent.
It's a really pretty word, actually. Ambivalent. Ambivalence. Ambivalency. Ambivert.
It means that I can't make up my mind about the world. Defines me as someone who is neither introverted nor extroverted because she's actually caught in between. I took a personality test and got 4.9 on extroversion. That's basically a 5 and if that doesn't mean I'm an ambivert, then something must be off with the way the universe works.
I guess it's why whenever I write something as aimless as this, I often get lost. I end up writing shit that doesn't actually matter because I can't control the tap, tap of my fingers on the keyboard. I write these to get these constricting feelings off of my chest.
I'm not sad. Nope. No.
Happy? Soon enough.
I was very happy before. I was probably truly happy. But sad? I don't think I was ever really sad. Ambivalent was what I was.
People complain about not being skinny enough, but I can't help but pity those who look so fragile that a single blow could make it or break it for them.
if you're a guy, but you like a guy? it doesn't matter
you're happy with yourself, but people are bothered by it? it doesn't matter
you think you're fat, but people don't agree? it doesn't matter
it's been reiterated over and over and over again, but why can't people get the fucking point? you're YOU. not who people say you are, or who people want you to be
you get pressured by these things in life only because you want to
sure, some people may or may not have a choice because they're sick in the head, but they'll never really know unless they try, right?
i know what it feels like to be sad, and i sure do know that it's possible to get sick of being sad all the time.
when you get sick of it, i hope you realize that you're who you want to be
listen to opinions of others, and it may change your perspective on things, just like what i'm saying
but don't ever change your perspective on something because you feel forced to
you can opt to not comprehend what i'm trying to say, but you'll be agreeing with me either way
now, that, is something to think about
but it won't matter
doesn't matter
what i think because only your opinion matters in your head
this messy heavily opinionated post is the sole reason on why society is filled with kids who think their life is a dead-end with nowhere to run to because nothing makes sense
you say go be who the hell you want to be
you say love yourself
but it all goes back to
how will i love myself when others can't?
you can't survive in this world if you always go against the status quo
it's the sad truth
i'm starting to realize
that it doesn't matter if i say fuck society because many people are trying to and so far
Last night, I stayed up 'til I finished my favorite band's discography.
I own 286 tracks by them. It'll take around 17 hours to listen to all of them one by one, so I set aside all those EP's and focused on their full lengths. I slept at 5AM.
Needless to say, I was tempted to look up each album and look for all the reviews each album had.
I was very disappointed.
Not in the reviews, but in the reviewers.
Rant after the jump.
I'll start off with a little something about The Maine. Formed in 2007, they've released four studio albums, one live album, four studio EP's, three acoustic EP's, seven live EP's, one demo EP, five documentaries, three books, one live DVD and another one in the making.
I can't say that I'm an 'old soul' fan of theirs even if I could. I started listening to them when their older fans barely knew that they were struggling with their label, so I wasn't in the bandwagon of shock that followed after the news that they were going to release a new album independently. I was merely at the sidelines sending my friends a link to a two-week old blog post of 'The Maine's comeback with a really ugly cover' with the caption "OMFG The Maine are releasing a new album!!! <3 Ahhhhh so excited =))" (not exactly sure if that's what I said - but it probably was).
Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that the next few things I'm going to focus on are based off of the reviews I read last night/this morning and not on opinions that I've been desensitized to.
2008 | Can't Stop, Won't Stop
They released this and won a whole lot of new fans in the process, but many often commented that:
"I know, and we all know, that The Maine aren't going to do anything ground-breaking; they aren't going to change the face of the music. They are simply a fun-based music group that, to any outsider, may just seem very generic and trend-following."
What is up with that?
I wouldn't have been bothered by reviews like this one had the reviewer not said that ' they aren't going to do anything ground-breaking.' Like, wow, what future did you travel to to find that out? Or what false psychic did you have read the booklet of the album to say that the band was never going to get any better?
Reviews aren't supposed to put the band in some kind of dead-end rut. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but for the sake of the world, the band was composed of 18-20 year olds that were far from maturing musically. To say something like that so early into their career is very juvenile.
I hate things as well (like Rock & A Hard Place), but it was because an older woman was trying a bit too hard to write in the perspective of a fifteen year old. In this case, these guys were creating music that they enjoyed and that people their age enjoyed. If they created music that people actually appreciated, isn't that a feat by itself? I've heard of bands with albums that were rejected worldwide. CSWS reached the charts, and if that isn't something, then the people who reviewed were clearly trying to make something bad out of them.
What bullies.
2010 | Black & White
Perosonally? I really liked this album. I jam to it up to this day. It got The Maine three Alt Press awards, and this even won for album of the year. Adding to that, it got the band to its highest peak on the Billboard charts at #16. Music reviewers, however, seem to think otherwise:
"Frontman John O'Callaghan has the pipes for this style, but isn't at the lyrical level to back up the change, while the rest of the group seemingly suffer from a lack of creativity and true chemistry. Tracks like "Fuel to the Fire" and "Listen to Your Heart" come across as oddly arranged while others like "Every Road" and "Color" are just plain boring... Considering the number of co-writers, The Maine don't appear to be very confident in their own songwriting, and plenty of songs on Black & White support these concerns... To put it bluntly, The Maine are the latest group from our scene to suffer from not being a good band. They have the right idea and at times put it all together to make a couple of enjoyable songs, but as a whole Black & White will go down as a forgettable release in a year full of good music."
I know, I know, I took too much from the review on this one. But I couldn't help it - so much things about the review bothered the living hell out of my soul.
One question: who are they to say which bands have chemistry and which bands lack creativity?
These people really need to start taking note of bands' backgrounds and what label they're on, 'cause it says so much about the music they've created, are creating, and will create while on that label.
Warner Bros., in my honest opinion, seem to focus too much on what the reception of the album might be rather than on what the band wants to do. From what I've heard, that's basically the reason why The Maine left - they had major issues when it came to the level of creativity the band could branch out to.
If the reviewers had actually thought of that, I doubt they would've said that much shit about them. To say that the record is completely forgettable is literally just hating on the band. Ugh.
...On a another note, people were whining about how pop The Maine sounded in CSWS, and then when B&W was released, people were hating on them for taking a step out of their bubble? Where's the justice in that? Poor babies, they never win.
2011 | Pioneer
Now this, this was a very pleasant surprise. It was this album that really got me into the band. I remember being so excited on the day of December 6, torrenting the album (don't worry, I have two original copies now) and putting everything in my iPod as soon as possible so that I could listen to each and every single song.
And you know what? It was heaven.
"The vocals were never the issue, but the rest of the band has caught up and Pioneer feels twenty times more cohesive than anything else this band has ever put out."
This is the point wherein I can say that the reviews are actually starting to make sense. Album reviews aren't supposed to define a band as a whole for making a sucky album. There's always room for improvement, and this is basically why I wrote this thing.
I'm going to skip Forever Halloween because it's their best and the reviews were all spot-on haha.
My rules on rating albums:
Don't judge a band based on their previous albums. So what if their five albums beforehand sucked? People change, sounds change, bands change.
Never, ever say that a band sucks because of one sucky album. Remember: there's always room for improvement and time for the music to actually grow on you.
Don't act like your opinion is general and superior to any other person's. Don't say "we all hate it," because there are people out their who like it.
Think of the label. Think of the label.
Don't expect too much from young bands. Just don't.
If you actually read this, I love you. You rock. Stay cool. Don't be fooled by biased album reviews. Listen to the band, check out a bit of the song. Who knows? That band with the one out of five star album rating might turn out to be your all-time favorite.
