Wish I Was Here...Already Married

"What do you mean you want to be married already?! You're young! Live life, make the most of your youth, and don't worry about girls until your older...much older! I kid on that, but seriously, why worry about marriage now? It'll come in time. You just have to be patient."

Almost ubiquitously, I get such reactions whenever I mention that I would have liked to be married already. When I was 14, I had hoped that I would have finished university, began my career, and have wedded a lovely, intelligent woman. All by the age of 22. Instead, I'm now 25, still fighting for my undergraduate degree, and single. Not even a girlfriend. We're talking "forever alone" type of situation. Actually, that's not entirely true. If pretty girls didn't make me so damn nervous...!

...

Actually, we're derailing here. You're probably thinking, Why do you want to be married already? What's the rush?, and if you weren't thinking it, you are now. To answer the question (that I imposed upon you - sorrynotsorry about that), the answer is quite simple: security. See, I'm not the kind of guy that just relentlessly pursuits women; I'm not the kind of guy that's constantly seeking for the next girl to smash (euphemism); and I'm not the kind of guy that constantly has some ulterior sexual motive for interacting with people of the opposite sex and gender (I was that person, but I've come along a way since then, but I digress). Perhaps, and embarrassingly so, I have no game (also euphemism) nor have I an interest in playing "the dating game." It's through marriage that I bypass this cruel and, at times, illogical farce of social interaction that juxtaposes bizarre human personalities with other bizarre human personalities. 

The notion that I'd have some special lady to go home to, to give and receive any and all comforts has always been appealing to me. No games, doubts, worries, or other pointless bull. Just an ethereal security of knowing who's waiting for me (and who I'm waiting for) at end of the day. This is why I want to be married and avoid having to spend precious years carrying unnecessary emotional baggage and wear painful battle scars as we desperately search for our other halves like chickens with heads cut off.

In all honesty, I don't know why I'm feeling pressured to be married already. Is it just me playing some distorted mind game with my own self? All I know, at this point, is that I'm feeling all too self-aware of this. Is this just me being emotional or is it something more inherent within me that I'm not attending to?

P.S.: On an unrelated note, Zach Braff recently released Wish I Was Here and it looks interesting, similar to Garden State over a decade ago. If anything, this film just may be Garden State 2.0.

Maybe.

#YesAllWomen, #ViolenceisViolence, and Why This Should Matter

#YesAllWomen - this trending Twitter hashtag has been turning the world on its head, spearheading a a topic that must be desperately addressed and creating a public forum for women to publicly express their contempt for the prevalent misogyny and sexism that is in our modern society. This hashtag was a response to the tragic shooting near the University of California, Santa Barbara campus. One look of this hashtag and my heart just crumbled at the heaviness of it all. These are testimonies to real-life incidences that many women have been victim to or, at the very least, have been a witness to such victimization. So much of this happens on a daily existence, and most of us laugh it off as a joke, dismiss it as a rant, or worse yet, do nothing at all.

Below are some excerpts that I found online, but I won't post their Twitter handle, for the sake of anonymity:

• "#YesAllWomen because boys at my school think it's okay to touch me in any way they like and even when I say NO they just laugh and try again"

• #YesAllWomen should be able to make choices without coercion, discrimination, harassment or violence."

• "Because every single woman I know has a story about a man feeling entitled to access to her body. Every. Single. One. #YesAllWomen"

• "I shouldn't have to hold my car keys in hand like a weapon & check over my shoulder every few seconds when I walk at night #YesAllWomen"

• "Girls grow up knowing that it's safer to give a fake phone number than to turn a guy down. #yesallwomen"

In an appropriately timed video, ManKindInitiave released a video that highlights such inequality - in the first half, two actors portraying a couple act out a fictional argument, where the man is overtly aggressive against the woman. In a matter of seconds, a small crowd flocks about the woman in need. It's pretty straight forward. What's interesting is how the same crowd (or at least the same environment) reacts when the roles are reversed. Rather than flocking to the couple to support the man, the cameras capture many people laughing and ridiculing the man for not being "a man." Many people look on, smile and laugh, and move on with their lives, not aware that such a portrayal is quite accurate of men in abusive relationships. Overall, this video tries to teach its viewers that "#ViolenceisViolence, no matter who it's aimed at."

So, why does this matter? It's easy to see in our modern, progressive, and "Politically-Correct world that there is still much inequality between the sexes. More importantly, both men and women are still falling victim to abuses that shouldn't exist anymore.  Such tragic incidences reveal such inequality, even if this outcome was a by-product, not a direct. Our UCSB shooter had blamed women, believing that he was entitled to have a woman to call his own, rather than seeing that he possessed characteristics that women (by chance) found undesirable, which is why he was rejected. His online manifestos and videos (those you must find on your own) support this. So I challenge you, dear reader, evaluate your behavior: do the women in your life feel safe around you? Do the men in your life make you feel safe? If not, what needs to be changed? 

"Could You Say That Again?"

Since I posted the last post, I've got to admit that I'm a sucker for accents, especially those that are German, English, Russian and French. In the few years that I've worked at my little gas station, I've had the incredible pleasure of meeting men and women from England, Scotland, France, Norway, Germany, Italy, Australia and a few places here or there that I can't remember. And I'm entranced by their accents, especially from the women. It always catches me off-guard whenever I encounter someone from outside the US, since it's an experience that I don't have on a daily basis. It wasn't until recently that I noticed that whenever a foreign woman (especially if she's English or French) talks to me, I just space out. I get lost in the fragile words that gently fall from her lips, and after she's done addressing me, I embarrassingly have to say, "Could you say that again?" because I wasn't paying attention to them in the first place.

I always tell my co-workers that these women could just down-right be insulting, calling me the Scum of the Earth and such, and my reaction would only be, "Could you say that again?" since all I heard were the words that came from her mouth and not the message formed from those words. In other words, I'd care more about how she said those words rather than what she said with those words. I've always found a woman's German or Russian accent to be sexy, alluring; on the other side of the coin, I find English and French accents to be romantic, inviting. I always joke with friends and family that I would someday move to a European country with the hope of marrying someone from there. Right now, it's a 3-way tie between Europe's England and France, along with Eurasia's Russia.

All joking aside, I would still like to visit a country or two across the pond. I don't really travel much, since I don't really have the money to do so. I'm somewhat envious of others who have indeed traveled. Although, if I do choose to travel, what can I do for fun? What kind of food to eat? Would I meet new people and find new friends? So many questions. The only way to know for sure is to just go for it and visit those lands so strange from my own, with different cultures, social constructs, and perspectives of life, food, music, and so much more.