Leaps

Because this doesn't happen very often.

It's been fourteen months since you leapt--where were you at that time?--from bed to floor or chair to floor to stairs, from the second floor to the first floor to get some water because you couldn't breathe. I could imagine you rushing down, skipping steps and bounding up again after you drank. Maybe in your mad dash you missed a step or hesitated before a foot landed on something solid. I don't know, I imagine things.

You

(The last of three parts)

I knew I had a lot of walls. I was conscious of them, the way I kept people at a certain distance. Deflecting any interest to me with sarcasm or a nonsensical answer. I pushed people away, not for any particular reason, but for the accumulated reasons that have happened.

For one thing, I felt different and quite unsure of where I was going or what I was doing. I wasn't very comfortable with the world and I needed the distance so that I could easily pull myself away if I have to. I needed a separate life that was different from the one I was trying to inhabit.

My past relationship also burned me. It may not have been enough to make me straight, but it was enough to stop myself from falling. I became disillusioned almost to the point of cynicism. It almost ruined my view on gay relationships and made me realize that maybe what I want was too much of a fantasy to be real. Like falling into a rabbit hole to get into some wonderland.

It made me realize a hundred things that I didn't want in a relationship. And those hundred things were the ones I saw in the gay world. It was hard to reconcile what I want from what I was witnessing. I know what I wanted but it felt like it was something I would never find in this world. I know what I could give, but I found it hard to find someone who would be worth that.

My past delivered exactly what our culture told me lay in store for every gay person--lies, heartbreak, deceit.

So you were a turning point in my life. Because no matter how hard I pushed in the beginning, you would not leave me (even if I had left.) Your persistence told me that you were not like my ex or any other I had gone out with. More importantly, you established yourself as someone I could trust. That was important for me. Slowly, you broke through, chipping away the walls that I had built around myself. And for that I thank you. And for that I love you.

(Still) Taking Chances

It's been a year since this blog existed, although it would be five days later before I posted anything in this. It's been a year since I asked you a nonsensical question, two numbers that I told you I'd use to bet on the lottery. I didn't reach that date when I realized it was pointless to hold out and postpone something that could be beautiful already. I also didn't make a bet on the lottery. But, a year later, I still feel like I've won.

With You

I'm out of ideas. So I went looking at pictures, mostly the ones you've taken, looking for some inspiration from the details. I admire your photos. I guess I've told you that many times. It's the perspective you have of things, the way they become something else from your lens. It's a different way of seeing the world, the simple things take on a grander perspective. I love that about you. It shows, at least for me, that you can see beauty from the simple things; you can appreciate moments, no matter how mundane or ordinary they are.

As I browsed through the pictures, which number well into the hundreds, I realized I was happy. Really happy with you even without the sugarcoat of the places we've been. I remember more the moments that we've had more than the places where we've been. I remember walking with you, discovering the world with you and, sometimes, just standing behind or beside you while you take your pictures more than I remember the view from the Empire State or even the Petronas Towers. I can remember more how your face lit up, in surprise and amusement, as we stumbled on the two towers or the first time we settled in to our hotel in Malaysia or how we got lost driving in California and ended up taking the scenic route to get back to the airport.

It's a skewed similarity. You see beauty from the simple things and I find it from our moments together.

Spotlight Shining

Recently, I've been listening to this song again and I thought how the first stanza (the one sung by the girl) was quite appropriate for you saying it to me--since I don't really know how to dance. Also, because I like the idea of the lyrics. For most, if not all, of my adult life I've been pretty much on my own. I had learned how to fend for myself and fumble my way through the world without anyone leading me. I was used to the independence, of not having anyone holding my hand and spinning me around. I had all these walls around me, because I could not allow myself to fall down--because who would catch me if I fall?

But you dance really well and I feel that I can let you take the lead. I don't have to be so much in control of my life, because there's someone--you--who can hold my hand. I can relax a little, let my guards down, because you won't let me fall down.

Like what the guy said in the song--suddenly, I'm feeling brave. I guess the strength comes from knowing that you're around. And you're with me to make all these plans, dreams and aspirations we have come true. For the past month, we've been making plans, not just vague promises, but concrete ones of the next steps for us. There's comfort in knowing that we both have the same plans and we want the same things.

This is really all about us. Not just me, not just you. But us, chasing dreams and making plans. I'm happy that we're going somewhere and we're making the steps together to get to the place of where we want to be. I love how you learn from me and I learn from you; how your weakness is my strength and my strength is your weakness. I love that we can both be strong together, but we don't allow ourselves to be weak at the same time. I love our differences, the way they make us interesting to each other. I love the little things and the big things in our relationship, the sleeping and waking moments together, our fancy dinners and the quieter, simpler ones. I feel we're doing--and getting--this right.

Archives and Longings

I was upgrading several things earlier, which meant I had a lot of waiting time, of simply staring at the progress bar until the updates pull through, hoping that there won't be any error and I won't have to read through logs. You had said good night then and I had moved your text message immediately into my archive folder, which now stands to fifteen hundred messages. All from you.

I don't keep a lot of things, not movie tickets or receipts or any form of memorabilia. I didn't keep your first text message. Or your second. Or your third. Or your fourth. The oldest one I kept was dated March 1, 2010--because it made me laugh. Because it wasn't supposed to be sent to me.

I read some of them, randomly, the earlier ones, the ones that dated back a year ago until a few months back, petty misunderstandings included. There were the things you used to wonder, way back--what would it be like to lie beside me while it's raining outside? What would you say when we meet again? And what would you do? How would it feel like to travel together, with me, just us, waiting on airports and chasing airplanes? There were the things you wanted to do--to eat at Pancake House again, to sleep and wake up beside me, among the GP-rated things you wanted to do with me and to me.

I felt a kind of wistfulness going through the text messages. That was our history. More than a year of wondering and waiting, longing and loving through text messages. We held on, for more than one year, not so much on a past, but on the promise of a future. We didn't have much of a past; we met just when I was about to leave. There wasn't much foundation to begin with, just love.

And now we're back again to that, to text messages and different time zones. But for one month, this past month, we've had something else. Something more definite and tangible than all the sweetest things we have said to each other. A taste and a glimpse--more action than words--of how much I love you, a kind of fulfillment to promises made. And perhaps answers to some of the things you used to wonder and things you wanted to do.

Laying Down Fears

I suddenly woke up earlier today, much too earlier for work, because I was waking myself up from a heartache. I was having a terrible dream and it had felt real. A few days ago, a friend asked me how I was feeling now that I'm back in the US after my month-long vacation. I said, vulnerable.

Of course, he said.

I fear a lot of things, the very long wait notwithstanding. I fear what the time and distance will do to us. The day-to-day things that we will miss about each other; the details that make up our individual lives. I fear I cannot be around all the time to witness your life as it happens. I will only hear of the aftermath, when your day is over and mine has just begun. I won't be there to see your daily success and blunders, when you need to tell someone of a good news or when you've had a bad day. I won't be there when you wake up and when you sleep. I will miss a lot of things and a lot of events in your life. I will miss seeing the world through your eyes, listening to you talk or laugh as you tell your stories, of things you've seen or watched or encountered, of things from your past, your family, friends and the world around you. I fear what this absence can cause us.

I fear how the distance can make us complacent about us; how we might get used to not being together, each with separate lives, uncertain how to coexist and become one when the time comes. I fear how changes will change us. I fear these things because I love you so much and I don't want to lose you because we've grown apart, not just geographically but emotionally.

When I think about June and how happy I was, I want more of that, more of that with you, not in short bursts of happiness, but one that lasts a lifetime.