Ana Qarri / Silhouette Staff
Dear Friend,
Between the workload and the complaining about the workload, I often forget to appreciate your existence. So I’d like to do that now.
I’m thankful that at this very moment you exist. I’m thankful that your existence overlaps with mine, in such a way that your existence makes mine much less depressing.
You, friend, somehow find me to be a pleasant human being. You’ve listened to me talk about trivial and important things alike, and have at some point thought “Hey, this girl is cool.”
That thought right there might not seem like a big deal, but it is. It is the biggest of all deals.
In addition to tolerating my character on a daily basis, you also do nice things for me. You’ve brought me food during all-nighters. You’ve let me sleep in your room when the fear of being alone suddenly hit me on a Tuesday night. You’ve let me cry next to you after arguments and breakups and whatever else it is I do to make my life more complicated.
Not to get delusional here or anything, but it seems to me like you think I’m worth something, which is pretty cool of you.
But, the actual point of this letter is that I think I might be platonically in love with you. It’s the kind of love that is sustained with rare hang-out sessions and the occasional conversation on the way to class. I might not see you often these days, but know that the thought of you makes me smile, or laugh hysterically, or stop and acknowledge your beautiful existence.
Come here and give me a hug.
Love,
Your friend
Brandon Meawasige / Senior Sports Editor
For all that is worthy of time wasted, engrossed in discourse and studied from every angle, there is one subject that no equation or research can solidify. There is no way to measure either the quality or quantity of love.
The closest classification widely considered to be accurate is that love is an emotion. Taken at face value, we are told that it is something we can feel. However, love itself is malleable and takes many forms.
To simplify it as an emotion has left love susceptible to frequently cloudy, general descriptions that are in turn often sought as a necessity. In search of it, people manufacture expectations - unrealistic and naïve in nature - only to have reality come to fruition. Media, those who surround us and most other edges of our frames of reference dictate what love should be.
Pardon the allusion to the famous 1990’s nightclub song, “What is Love?”, but it may indeed be the most profound question known to humanity.
Some say that it is trust, some say that it is respect and some say that it is an unspoken connection. It has been described as a can’t-eat, can’t-sleep, over the moon feeling in the pit of your stomach. Some say it requires that one is miserable and some say that it is does not exist in its truest form.
If you are constantly searching for love, certainly you will not find it.
Anyone who claims to ever have been in love will tell you that happenstance, serendipity and chance played at least some role in their experience. Some call it destiny and others consider it to be the result of circumstance.
Even further contested is the idea of “the one.” Some believe that you can only truly fall in love once while others believe it is possible to be in love may times within one’s life.
The pessimist will tell you that love is not guaranteed and the optimist may believe it exists to a flaw.
At the end of the day, some things go beyond explanation; love is one of them. Love itself may escape definition, as many who find themselves bound by its capture seek to escape ever falling for someone in the first place. What constitutes being in love? The answer is different for every person.
Values supersede all else for certain people, others require physical attraction and to a select few just being able to spend time with someone is enough to conjure the ultimate happiness.
Love is not one thing in particular and it is certainly more than an emotion. You feel it in your body, mind and soul. You hear it in the music you listen to and see it wherever you look when you can’t sleep. It’s in the words that you say and the words that you don’t. There is nothing better and at the same time there can be nothing worse. It can fix you and it can break you, but when you fall in love with someone you will know. Doesn’t matter what you call it or how you express it.
In fact, nothing matters when you fall in love.
Put all your cards on the table, go all in and hold nothing back.
Ariel Garlow / The Silhouette
You call your friends up to make Saturday night plans. Lisa says she wants to go barhopping with you and Sara. Malcolm wants to grab coffee and a movie with you and Sara. Sara doesn’t want to go barhopping Saturday but still wants to see you and Lisa.
They all leave the task of sorting it all out to you.
They always leave it to you because you are least likely to start a fight about it. They trust your maturity and decision-making for a good night out. But when does trust become exploitative? Last week they trusted you to buy all the snacks for the party. The week before, they trusted you to have your parent’s car that weekend so everyone could go bowling out of town. When your phone isn’t on, they get mad at you. When you don’t call them back right after you leave campus, they are impatient.
What responsibilities do you own as a friend? But, the better question is, what responsibilities do they own? You are not a machine built for other humans to load their chores and conflicts upon. So why should you be afraid to stop and say, “I’m not the only one who needs to be mature here”?
You go through a tough breakup. Your ex-girlfriend is apparently taking it pretty badly but you cannot tell. They have been going out more, seeing more friends, enjoying their favourite books and hobbies. But people tell you that you broke her. She tells you that you’re a horrible, messed up person one morning on the phone. You are told that it is your responsibility to give her a clean break up, no threading her, no mixed emotions. Told she’s in a bad place and it’d be wrong to hurt her any more.
What responsibilities do we own as a lover, or ex-partner? But again, the question still pervades, what responsibilities do they own?
Make sure that those who truly love you understand that you, too, can be weighed down immeasurably by stress, heartbreak, loneliness; that you are not an island of responsibility but a purely fallible human much like the rest of the world. We all own responsibility, some just own up to it more than others.
The most beautiful and enriching experience in life is to be in love and enjoy a romantic relationship with another person. There is always someone there to support you and pick you up when you need it most. Maybe they keep you up at night or maybe they let you rest peacefully knowing they’re around. You are unique individuals that bring out the best in one another and nothing can come between the two of you. The world around you slows down when you are with them and not much else seems to matter. Finding yourself lost in such a labyrinth of intense emotions, one thing is impossible to fathom: the end.
Maybe you are perfect for one another, maybe you are soul mates, but most people entangled in such passion never stop to realize that maybe you are not. As good as things get, there is most often something better - a tough pill to swallow for an addict recovering from their affliction.
How could someone that knows I don’t like the crust on my PB & J sandwiches not be there to enjoy them with me? That person knows my quirks and all of my secrets. They know just what to say and when to say nothing at all. How on earth could I go on without such comfort and security?
The answer is simply that anything is possible. Whether it has been told to you directly or not, there is one saying that holds true despite being one of the most overused clichés in human history: good things come to an end so that better things can come together.
For some, hearing that is like salt in a wound. The magic spell that is love and everything it involves can be illogical. However, as any wise person will tell you, the first love is not the last.
The morning always comes after the night and someone will always be better for you than your high school sweetheart. There are outliers, to whom I applaud.
Of course, some people find the perfect person for them early and never let go. Those people are the most blessed. For the rest of us, though, things are not that easy.
It is impossible to truly love someone until you love yourself. Corny, I know, but there is plenty of validity to those words. Some people, like those I have just mentioned, grow together and it all just works. Others grow apart.
Falling for someone at one point in your life, with one set of circumstances, fails to account for the fact that our world, the people in it, and the way you feel, is constantly changing.
So in the case that you find yourself at the end of a relationship because the two of you have grown apart or simply because it is no longer working, you can do one of two things.
You can let it defeat you, or you can choose to see the brightness and possibility of the future.
No one should ever affect you in a way where you cannot function in his or her absence and no one should ever prevent you from growing as a person, for the sake of growing as a couple. If they do, letting go should be much easier.
It may seem hard at first, but remember that there is something even better and more perfect ready and waiting for you to stumble across.
No one likes goodbyes and no one likes the ending of a good story. But all stories have endings. And nothing is more important than being your own author when it comes to a love story, since you are the main character.
By: Palika Kohli
I’m the kind of person who gives second (and third and fourth and fifth) chances to the people I care for. I firmly believe that if I know the reasoning behind someone’s mistake, then I can figure out a way to genuinely forgive them.
But sometimes there comes a point when you realize the mistakes a person makes aren’t actually mistakes at all. They’re purposeful decisions that reflect an integral part of their personalities.
But, being the all-forgiving soul you are, you ignore this fact and continue making excuses for their behaviour. You repress your response to their abrasive characteristics. You focus on the good memories you have of them and remind yourself that they haven’t always been this way. You hold on to an idea of the person, no matter who they are becoming or have already turned into.
You begin to believe that if you find it in yourself to forgive them, you are becoming a better, more mature person; that it will help you deal with ‘all kinds of characters’ in the future.
Then, suddenly, the invisible line that you have been pushing farther and farther out into unknown territories gets crossed. And that’s it.
Sometimes we need to do more than just clean out our closets to get a fresh perspective on ourselves. So here’s a list of indicators if a relationship in your life – romantic or otherwise – is unhealthy.
Verbally abusive: This doesn’t have to mean what you think it does – their snide remarks can be the basis for a realization that this person isn’t adding to your quality of life.
Uses gossip to get close to you: On this same line – if you realize that all you discuss with this person are other people, your relationship probably isn’t going anywhere.
Feeling a lack of privacy: They’re constantly in your room, reading your phone, or consistently referencing details of your social networking profiles.
Inconsiderate of your situation: They can make unreasonable demands, expecting things from you that maybe you can’t afford to give – be it time or money – and then they don’t appreciate what you do give, because it isn’t a tangible object.
Passive-aggressiveness: They won’t say anything aloud if it’s bothering them, but will show it in other ways – or will hold it against you in the future.
Gratefulness: You should never be feeling grateful that a person is suddenly making time for you, that they returned your call or that they showed up – this indicates imbalance.
Justification in assertion: You should never feel uncertain asserting your opinion or be scared of arguing when you don’t agree with them.
Finally, it can often be cathartic to actually tell a person why you don’t want them in your life. It means that you have to think carefully, and drain out your anger and bitterness before confronting them. You will have the opportunity to sit down and have a civil conversation over past issues, thoughts or feelings – maybe you will even prevent them from making the same mistakes in the future. But at the very least, it will be off your chest.
By: Ana Qarri
Put your hand up if you like someone. Put your other hand up if they don’t like you back. Now worm out of your seat and fall on the floor if “you’re great,” but they “just don’t see you that way.”
Lay there.
Welcome to the Friend Zone. Our motto is, “You’ll never find love in this hopeless place,” and our favourite pastime is living in a constant state of denial. We like to wallow in self-perpetuated sadness, while making no efforts to leave this zone of obsessive behaviour and overly friendly gestures. We’re usually found next to our close friend, being hilarious, throwing compliments around like they ain’t no thing, and being excessively pleasant in general.
Honestly, we’re a catch.
Firstly, as a representative of this very sad community, I would like to ask: Why? Why do you smile at us as if you aren’t thinking about making out under a tree somewhere behind Hamilton Hall? Why do you ask us out to dinner if it doesn’t involve a shared spaghetti scene straight out of Lady and The Tramp? And finally, if we’re so great that you want to spend every waking moment with us and tell us about your whole life, why not just sweep us into your (perfect) arms?
The friend zone can be awkward, and this is an understatement. You try not to stare, but sometimes, you just have to. Don’t blame yourself. Staring at people is a compliment – a very creepy compliment. You try to act completely unfazed when your hands touch, but that’s followed by the terrible realization that you probably aren’t a great actor. Your heart really needs to stop beating so loudly, and if your obsession wasn’t already tragically obvious, it probably becomes so when you reply to their texts within the nanosecond.
Finding yourself in the Friend Zone can be devastating. It’s a barren land, yet one thing remains: Hope.
Hope is the driving force of the Friend Zone. Hope is what makes it so heartbreaking, so difficult to leave. If you find yourself in the friend zone, recall the Myth of Sisyphus. You are Sisyphus pushing a rock up a hill, and when you’re almost there, when you think they finally want to hold your hand and share the weight, the rock falls back down to the bottom. And you push it up, again and again. It might be heavy, but you know you can’t stop. You still have Hope.
The question is: Is Hope good or bad? Is it okay to have Hope in situations like this?
Of course, we regard hope as a great thing. Hope is perhaps humanity’s greatest tool – it is its motivator for change, a reason to live, to survive. Yet the Ancient Greeks would like to disagree. They generally thought that Hope was an evil. Hope is associated with expectation, which when unfulfilled can be devastating, especially if it occurs repeatedly. While Hope keeps you going, an excess of Hope could leave you defeated. It could lead to days (perhaps even weeks) of watching bad reality TV shows, eating buckets of ice cream and Nutella, and wiping your tears with No Name brand tissues.
So, in the end, it’s up to you. Hope or not, the Friend Zone rarely has any secret passageways to the Zone. Sadness is only temporary, but clinging on to possible scenarios, hoping that maybe another you in another universe is cuddling with the cutest human ever, will only prolong it.
The Friend Zone can be hard to understand. Its outcomes are never certain. It could make you upset and angry. It could hurt your feelings, or you could be one of the lucky few who manage to push that rock over the hill and come out victorious. Truth is, you’ll never really know until you try.
By: Yashoda Valliere
A quick Google search of “how to get over a breakup” will yield thousands of articles written in a well-meaning but slightly condescending tone, by authors who may not have been through a breakup themselves recently and thus have a bit of an “outsider’s” perspective. I do not want to contribute to this collection. Currently spinning off the tail end of a two and a half year relationship, I’ve been giving close attention to my mental gymnastics of the past week, as well as the coping strategies that I have found work well for me. I figure I might as well share some of these insights, in the hopes that they can help at least one Sil reader through a difficult time.
Let go of the pain, but don’t let go of the valuable lessons that can be learned. If you treat this like a growth opportunity, it will be one.
By: Arnav Agarwal
While many couples like to match up for a spooky Halloween celebration, the idea of complimentary couple costumes does not settle well with everyone. A costume duo might be cute to some, but many find the combo a little bizarre and too much to handle.
“We trick-or-treat together every year,” said one young couple in Mississauga. “It only makes sense to costume-code. It keeps us feeling young. And getting candy, of course. Who doesn’t like candy?”
From Peanut Butter and Jelly twosomes to NASCAR match-ups, and Air Pilot and ‘Sexy Flight Attendant’ duos, shops are stocked with just the right couple-related Halloween gear to draw some serious attention (and candy, for those who never tire from trick-or-treating). If the classic pairings don’t suit your taste, feel free to throw in some contemporary mixes like Zoolander and Mugatu, Gwen and Amazing Spiderman, Red Foo and Skyblu from LMFAO, or Red and Yellow Angry Birds, and that should be enough to get any party on the road!
And although many a couple pairing may be cheesy and weird, matching costumes can up their perks under the covers. The fun doesn’t have to stop on the streets and dance-floors, couples can often take their role-plays one step further: All Hallows’ Eve need not spare the bedroom setting.
“What’s Halloween without a little bit of spicing up?” said a Hedden Hall McMaster student in response to the costume ideas. “If we’re dressing up, let’s dress for double trouble. By the way, this is kept anonymous, right?”
For all the femme fatales and Prince Charmings out there, a chance to dress up might be far more than a Halloween costume stunt; it is a chance to step up the intimacy in the bedroom with their significant other even after the festive night has passed. While having fun with role-play, the heaps of candy and the spooky tunes of Halloween might be drowned out for many couples, for whom the attention will be on the “afterparty” of the traditional celebrations.
By getting creative with intimate attire, frisky fantasies and holiday excitement is just one step away. Who needs the candy when there are plenty of goods already waiting at home?
By: Oskar Niburski
I understate many things and understand even less than that. For example, I do not understand quantum mechanics, people, administration, and legal proceedings, nor can I grasp how refrigerators work, when my dog must go pee, and what I mean when I say I love you.
I have never been in love before, maybe that is why I am unable to accurately understand the notion of love. From an overview, you seem to be taking some sort of emotional average, with it’s range being everything you experienced together and transmogrified into one word. But that is just one statistical way of looking at it. If you are like me, then you tried different things - like writing a book for them.
And when all of the 181 pages are complete, you realize you have not said enough. So then you use body language and when she comments playfully about your thrusting, you quickly switch to posting 500 post-it notes on their wall, each with a unique message regarding musicals and travels and poppy seed bagels, but when that still is not enough, you try to tell them: I love you.
She stares in your direction.
Those three words have been written on everything from tree bark to washroom stalls. This arduous graffiti makes love seem slightly trivial: if cellulose has the word engraved in its atomic structure, what makes your sentence so special? This inevitable and unoriginal thought leaves you with apologies, fumbling around your own tongue, burrowing your hands deep into your pockets, forcing you to utter three more words - I am sorry – more aptly summarized as I am sorry cannot tell you how much I love you.
The word feels recherché in your mouth, and when you used it the first time, you felt like you diffused a bomb with a paperclip. Somehow, you did, and this escapes you. It escapes many, though. Love is the world’s most known and debated subject, with major religion somehow equating God into love or that the feelings we have are connected to some seraphic order.
But I am not writing to proselytize anyone, nor am I trying to consecrate the word itself. I am more likely attempting the opposite. Maybe if I outline love’s etymology I can better understand the word myself. Love, or “lufu,” comes from the German language and roughly would translate into “desire.” It has created other Anglo-Saxon derivates such as leave and lief. Interestingly, lief is just an archaic way of describing happiness.
These definitions do not aid me, however. I remember the well quoted Sonnet 18: “so as long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this give life to thee.” Yet even Shakespeare never mentions love in his poem. We only have implicit references to it, which continues to cause uproar on whether Shakespeare was in love or was trying to find it still.
This is discouraging to me, because if love cannot be defined by the world’s greatest poet, what chance does the Silhouettes’ worst Opinion’s contributor have? Shakespeare’s answer seemingly was that we can only be left with the enigmatic. But I want to tell them and her and everyone else how much they mean to me. I need to do what Shakespeare didn’t. I need to capture the word’s highs and lows in all its totality.
In order to do this, I turn to the master logician, Ludwig Wittgenstein. But logic can fail too, and so Wittgenstein’s response is more than frustrating. He says that the limits of the language are the limits of his world. Blast, what good is private or public language when our vernacular fails to define a simple four-letter word? I am in awe, and rightfully so.
Yet I wonder if Wittgenstein ever went into a paint shop? Of course, that is not to question the great man, because he surely has an answer. But I think it necessary to show the reader something they already are well acquainted with. There is a prodigious amount of colours, commensurate to the different wavelengths that exist, and only so many words to describe them.
Red, pink, reddish-pink, pinkish-red, rouge, hot pink– as one can tell, despite the wide range of spectrum between these colours, will soon not last. The number of colours will be greater than the number of words used to describe them. That is not to say those colours do not exist though, but rather there seems to be an inability to define them. So we are the mercy of our words.
And when I said I loved you, I must have been at your mercy. I wondered how you would react, when I had disarmed my olive branch, this dove in front of you, now empty-handed. This vulnerability made me squint and supine, making me wait for the killing blow. What came was a kiss, and the most striking following was, I couldn’t say a word. Speechless could describe that… maybe.
When we try to describe the ineffable, we most likely will get frustrated. In a way this is to my advantage for if I were to tell you everything about my partner, describing them head to toe, you might fall in love with them too. Yet if I cannot describe love, even to my significant other, how can I explain the joys I am feeling to you?
I could refer to Dante’s canzones about Beatrice, or perhaps to Einstein’s famous quotes about the matter, but we would be left sitting around, wondering what they meant. Therefore although I cannot describe to you this wonderful and staggering topic, I hope you will remember this poorly written article. If you do, maybe one day you will be walking down the road, and suddenly observe two people, one with dirty blond hair and the other sporting the darkest brown you’d think it was black, laughing just slightly too loud. You might hear this elated laughter, become curious, and then note they are holding hands, smiling with off-white teeth, and their legs are swinging oddly coloured pants in unison. They are side by side, concerned with only where the next foot will take them. They’ll look up at you, nod knowingly, and then be off their way, leaving you to wonder like in a paint store: those two were lief.
Perhaps better put - those two were in love.
By: Katie Golobic
In the dusk of the summer months, the impending school year unfalteringly coincides with a serious dose of reality and sobriety. For many, however, it also means eight long, difficult months away from their romantic partner. Summer flings have ended, and university is often considered a time to ignite new or old flames of amour amongst fellow students. The adventure of a fresh new relationship is one that many are drawn to. Nonetheless, some decide to brave the task of maintaining a previously established relationship with said summer love, or even a high school sweetheart. The romanticism of long distance relations is one that is easy to fall victim to; it works in the movies, right?
The truth of the matter is (as with all things worth doing) long distance relationships are no walk in the park. They are a marathon of sorts - a long, often mentally straining and emotionally dehydrating marathon - but the payout can be immense.
Though not for the faint of heart, there are many ways to maintain a happy, healthy and long-lasting long-distance relationship. Whether your beau goes to U of T or Harvard, here are some simple, practical ways to keep it together whilst being apart.
