Situation ship

URBAN Dictionary defines situationship as “When one or two motherf*ckers take part in a relationship, but out of fear of making things serious or messy, do not label it, leading to said relationship, ironically, becoming more serious and messier.”

By the way, if you trust Wikipedia, then perhaps it’s also safe to trust Urban Dictionary. Haha.

And its definitions for situationship don’t stop there. Here’s more: “A situationship is emotional trauma in a gift box”; “A relationship that has no label on it, like a friendship but more than a friendship but not quite a relationship.”

This must be what our generation called as mutual understanding or MU. Try mentioning MU to your kids and grandkids if you want to see question marks hovering above their heads.

For a while there, I thought a situationship is a boat that bored people board to flee from boring situations. You know, Situation Ship. That would have been the perfect vehicle during the pandemic lockdowns.

After the World Health Organization and President Bongbong Marcos declared the Covid-19 health emergency as over, I’m one of the few who still wear face masks. Because I bought a box of KN95 masks and it would be such a waste not to use them.

There was some kind of an anticlimax in the situationship, er, in the declaration. I thought people would be celebrating with fireworks. But we were all weary and wary by then: weary of dealing with the pandemic’s aftermath, and wary of such declarations as we were now facing new challenges—the rising price of rice, and what else?

Still, yay! If there’s one thing we learned from the pandemic, it’s to appreciate every little thing. And that declaration was definitely not just a little thing.

There are people, though, whose mindset somehow changed during the pandemic. Unless that has always been their mindset but we only noticed it after the lockdowns when we began having face-to-face get-togethers again. Their negativity has worsened, they look at the glass as half-empty and not half-full, their mere presence could immediately turn a happy situation into a gloomy one, prompting their friends to board the Situation Ship to save themselves from further harm.

But these negative people still have friends. Perhaps because “birds of the same feather are of the same bird,” as former President Erap Estrada supposedly said once upon a time.

It’s a miracle for anyone to have the patience to be with people whose negativity has reached 100 percent or even more. The ability to ignore their negativity is a talent that only the most tolerant can possess. If you don’t have that talent, better leave these people behind otherwise your day will end up gloomy, too.

I now wonder if all negative people are depressed. Hmmm.

Keeping the faith is one important lesson we learned from the pandemic. Along with that is the constant practice of remaining hopeful. And to have a sense of humor. Depression, however, cannot be fully healed through any of these. It needs medical intervention.