Maui Cruz: Part One — Because She Liked A Boy

By Mikael Jay Borres

All Cebuano quotes have been translated into English for clarity and length.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Marianne “Maui” Cruz entangled herself in a relationship with a boy whose life could not have contrasted more with hers. His family sat comfortably rich, whereas Maui’s was squarely working class. The discrepancy in their wealth bothered her. She kept linking his fortunes to his expectations of her. In hindsight, she now recognizes how hell-bent she was about contorting herself into pretzel-like shapes to fit into what she thought were her then-boyfriend’s standards.

In a crushing blow to her being, she extinguished her willingness and passion to fight for what she believed in, like gender equality and LGBTQIA+ rights. Her seemingly apolitical then-boyfriend would lose interest in her whenever she spoke about politics, tagging her as a “social justice warrior.” 

It was a label people stuck onto Maui when she voiced her dissent to a controversial policy imposed by her high school, Assumption Iloilo. In 2020, the school faced public outcry for including homosexuality under its definition of “immorality.”

According to the policy, acts considered by the school as “immoral” are grounds for expulsion. Other immoral acts outlined in this definition include adultery, incest, and sexual abuse. Enrollees’ parents are required to sign a contract that has the definition. The school’s employee and learner handbook also used the same definition.

Maui was willing to tell the people how discriminatory her high school was in creating that contract. But she never felt she could tell that to her then-boyfriend. She dreaded losing his interest if she exposed her activism to him. All he wanted her to do was to look pretty and nothing else. To him, Maui was a “trophy girlfriend.”

“I don’t want to badmouth him. He’s a good person. He has morals,” Maui told me. “It’s just that we didn’t work out.”

“I don’t know what to say, but I feel like for the entirety of our relationship, I was here, and then he was here.” When she referred to her position in their three-year stint together, she placed one hand lower than the other. The lower hand was Maui; she thought she was below her boyfriend. “And things had to stay that way or else he would lose interest in me.”

Her feelings for her then-boyfriend made the difference between self-respect and self-contempt. When asked why she feared him losing interest in her, Maui replied, “Because I loved him.”

“At that point, I thought no one else would love me or no one else would accept me, I guess, or be with me. It was like he was really the only person for me. Looking back at it, it’s so stupid.”

“There were points in our relationship where I’d confront him about something, and then I’d end up crying, and he’d just look at me, emotionless. Like robots.”

A year into their relationship, Maui and her then-boyfriend read what was written in the stars for them – they would not last forever. They did last for a long time; they stayed together for three years. It was long enough to know that it should have been short-lived.

For six months, he could not say to Maui that he loved her. He told her he would only utter the words when he was sure he felt what he would say.  “Six months. I’d tell him, ‘I love you,’ and he’d say, ‘Good night.’” 

In several instances, her then-boyfriend would ask to break up. Each time, Maui fought for their relationship. Responding to her plea, he would dismiss his own request and keep the ball rolling. 

But as the couple tiptoed towards their end, Maui grew more resigned to the inescapable. She believes those six months of continually expressing her love, even when it went unrequited, gave him a chance to think whether he truly loved his girlfriend. “I told him: ‘You had six months to think. If you love me, stay. If you don’t, let’s just not.’ And he told me, ‘Let’s just break up.’”

It was a long time coming. She felt defeated at the moment of their breakup, but she was not as heartbroken as she thought she would be. She used those months before the end to grieve for the relationship before it died. 

During the breakup, her now ex-boyfriend tried to make up for lost time by showering her with praise, saying how great of a girlfriend she was, and telling her how sorry he was. She turned those words down, thinking to herself, “‘Really? You treat me like that, and now you’re saying sorry? Now, you acknowledge that I was good to you and you weren’t? I don’t need that shit.’”

In the end, Maui’s now ex-boyfriend told her that she did not deserve the treatment he gave her.

“Silently, I agreed,” Maui said before laughing.

After the end of their relationship, Maui reclaimed her true self, fighting for what she believes in and making the space for other people to feel safe and respected. 

In the pursuit of making those safe spaces, she now makes no apologies for being a progressive student activist. At the University of San Carlos (USC), where she studies Anthropology, she is a member of the feminist group Gabriela Youth - USC and the progressive student political party Student Alliance for Nationalism and Democracy USC (STAND USC). She was elected councillor of the University of San Carlos Supreme Student Council (USC-SSC) as a STAND USC candidate.

In her short time as a councillor thus far, she authored the resolution to re-establish What Women Want, a grievance system aimed at tackling gender and LGBTQIA+ issues. 

Maui is also the chairperson of the USC SSC’s Committee on Gender and Development (GAD). One of her first accomplishments as the GAD chairperson is her committee’s successful lobbying of the USC administration to allow female graduates to wear black pants during their graduation ceremony. The previous guidelines restricted women to only wearing mini-dresses.

Present-day Maui is a far cry from the person who felt apprehensive about saying anything because of a then-boyfriend. She can only laugh at how a now-ardent feminist once believed that a man was what she needed. The breakup may not be the definitive point that reverted her to her true self, but it sure does help to not be shackled by fear.

Thinking of those three years, she sees Maui whose heart was wounded by a boy who may have never known of the wounds he inflicted. It was a past version of herself who thought she possessed no value if not for a boy.

“I felt that, ‘OK, in the future, I’m gonna be nothing, and he’s gonna be all that.’ I guess he didn't impose that type of [thinking] on me. It was something I thought, that it seemed like there really was a power dynamic. I felt that during our relationship, he was doing more with his life because he had the means to. Because of that, I thought I was lesser than him.”

“I was never jealous of him. I always supported him. But it came to a point where he took it for granted, that I would always be there despite everything.”

She now sees those three years as an attempt to reject her truth but bestows forgiveness upon that version of herself.  “I feel like I understand why I did the things that I did. I was in love. You do stupid things for love.”

Maui and Mikael conducted an in-person interview on Sunday, August 27th, 2023.

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