I love you. And on most days, I miss you with the kind of intensity and longing that goes with not seeing you for the longest time and the anticipation that comes of seeing you again. There's a certain push and pull with time, it seems so near yet still so far. The days can wheeze past by and yet the minutes can drag on forever.
It's been a long time coming and I want it to be great. I want everything to be great. I have all these things in my head, how I hope things would happen and unfold. How I can show you how much I love you with fewer words and more actions. I'd like to give you everything I could to make up for the absence and the time apart. I'd like to treat it as if it's our first date, as if I'm seeing you for the first time, as if I'm falling in love with you over and over again. I want to spoil you, treat you like a princess and sweep you off your feet. I'd like to get to know you more than I ever know you now. Listen to your dreams and find a way to wrap my dreams around yours.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Walk With Me
Sometimes it makes me feel queasy when you tell me that you look up to me. It's not like I'm taller than you, because I'm not. Sometimes I don't know if you're bluffing, because I never see myself as someone to emulate or look up to. I don't think I've lived an exemplary or extraordinary life. I don't think I've done any better than the next Juan. I have my faults and shortcomings. I have my failures. I have all these deficiencies that make me human, flawed and imperfect. I have my own struggles and disappointments just like everyone else.
This is a partnership and I'd like to think we're on equal footing. Maybe we have our differences, but it doesn't make one of us any lesser or greater than the other. My strengths maybe your weaknesses and your strengths maybe my weaknesses. But you're no less wonderful than I am.
I'd like to, one day, be there for you. To take your hand and ask you to simply walk with me. I need you beside me. Not ahead of me, not behind me. I'd like to know how it feels to hold your hand, to face the world together and make our dreams come true.
I was trying to recall a song I know. It somehow sums up what I feel at the moment.
Walk with me quiet, walk with me slow. With watered down coffee and words of gold. I can feel the edges of these things when I hear you speak to me, so walk with me.
Walk with me empty, walk with me strong. The hush of our voices when the day seems so long. It is like a balm; it is like a jewel. It unravels all I thought I knew.
At the end of the day, what matters to me is that I am with you. So walk with me.
Friday, March 25, 2011
March 25.
Today would have been the day you would have known this blog. This time last year, you were getting drunk, pouring your heart out to your friends on why you always seem to be the one left behind. Although it was you who left me earlier that day. You left me at Makati, so I left the Philippines. Simple quid pro quo.
I thought you'd disappear, because it wouldn't make sense staying in love with someone several light years away. I told you not to promise me anything and even if you did, I wouldn't hold you to it. I was being realistic, I know what time and distance can do. I was disbelieving when you said you'll wait for two years, that I'll slap into your face the blog you've written if you can't stay true to that. I remember laughing at that time, not at you, but because I thought you were crazy.
Why me? Why me of all people?
I've asked myself that many times--and I still do--because you could be with anyone there. There are thousands of single, gay guys in the metro looking for at least one of the three Ls--love, lust, or labels. I wasn't looking for anything at that time because I was also L--leaving. I knew my realities enough not to expect anything beyond what is typical.
The last thing I want anyone to do for me was to wait. When I left I didn't make any promises to anyone, including you. Choices come with an opportunity cost. And I thought in a few months of being away from Manila, everyone would have moved on, separately, with their lives. Strangely enough, though, you were still there hanging, literally, to some rope and shouting that you love me. Even when I was holding back, even when I had all these walls built around me. Even through whatever issues I got myself into--from the Twitter posts, to the blogs, to people threatening to come over. I told you once that you were like Scott Pilgrim vs the world.
You could have found someone else anytime. You could have moved on and given up at some point. And I wouldn't blame you. But you didn't.
I'd like to think about this, how our choices play out in our lives, today of all days. March 25 has always been meaningful to me long before I knew you. In my holier days, I wanted this day to be the day that I'll be ordained, if ever I get that far in priesthood. I use this day to think about where my choices had taken me. All the ones I've said "yes" to and the ones I've said "no".
This would have been the day I would have said, yes I want to be with you. And yes, I love you. But it's been preempted almost three months back. I knew I love you even before I told you I did. So I thought it wouldn't matter what day anymore, as long as I get to tell you. There was no reason to wait it out till today to tell you something just so the date would be significant for both of us. If there's anything I'd like to tell you now is that I love you more than before. Through the distance and time apart we've spent, it has only grown stronger. When I think about how you could love me despite being a million miles away, it makes me feel so L--lucky.
I thought you'd disappear, because it wouldn't make sense staying in love with someone several light years away. I told you not to promise me anything and even if you did, I wouldn't hold you to it. I was being realistic, I know what time and distance can do. I was disbelieving when you said you'll wait for two years, that I'll slap into your face the blog you've written if you can't stay true to that. I remember laughing at that time, not at you, but because I thought you were crazy.
Why me? Why me of all people?
I've asked myself that many times--and I still do--because you could be with anyone there. There are thousands of single, gay guys in the metro looking for at least one of the three Ls--love, lust, or labels. I wasn't looking for anything at that time because I was also L--leaving. I knew my realities enough not to expect anything beyond what is typical.
The last thing I want anyone to do for me was to wait. When I left I didn't make any promises to anyone, including you. Choices come with an opportunity cost. And I thought in a few months of being away from Manila, everyone would have moved on, separately, with their lives. Strangely enough, though, you were still there hanging, literally, to some rope and shouting that you love me. Even when I was holding back, even when I had all these walls built around me. Even through whatever issues I got myself into--from the Twitter posts, to the blogs, to people threatening to come over. I told you once that you were like Scott Pilgrim vs the world.
You could have found someone else anytime. You could have moved on and given up at some point. And I wouldn't blame you. But you didn't.
I'd like to think about this, how our choices play out in our lives, today of all days. March 25 has always been meaningful to me long before I knew you. In my holier days, I wanted this day to be the day that I'll be ordained, if ever I get that far in priesthood. I use this day to think about where my choices had taken me. All the ones I've said "yes" to and the ones I've said "no".
This would have been the day I would have said, yes I want to be with you. And yes, I love you. But it's been preempted almost three months back. I knew I love you even before I told you I did. So I thought it wouldn't matter what day anymore, as long as I get to tell you. There was no reason to wait it out till today to tell you something just so the date would be significant for both of us. If there's anything I'd like to tell you now is that I love you more than before. Through the distance and time apart we've spent, it has only grown stronger. When I think about how you could love me despite being a million miles away, it makes me feel so L--lucky.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
360
In five days, it will be one year since you left me at the altar. I was at the Greenbelt chapel then and you were in the MRT already. I waited, like a groom, but you were the runaway bride.
Time passed rather swiftly, but not swift enough to get me to you. It's been almost a year since you, for some strange and cocoa-induced reason, decided to love me. I had told you before: no, love someone else, someone nearer to you, someone who won't be 10,000 miles away, someone you can be with and who can be with you everyday.
I pushed you away that night, but you pulled back and you held on. I had seen the world we revolve in and that was my baggage when I met you--I had very low expectations that anything could ever work. I was skeptical, not just because of the distance between us, but also because you seem to be bouncing back and coming out from a relationship that you cared so deeply, one that you felt was so right but just didn't work out. I thought that if at some point the person would want you back, you'd leave in a huff, with a post-it as a goodbye, leaving me once again at the altar. I was wary because of that. I cannot be too sure and I cannot assume too many things.
I certainly did not expect that you'd still be here, in a relationship with me. I don't know if, from where I am right now, what I bring into the relationship is enough. It can not be enough considering how far we are from each other. Words can only mean so much; actions will always speak louder than words.
I know I'm a man of (very) few words and maybe it compounds to the distance because I don't say I love you as often as you do. I'm not used to public declarations of affection. The most public I could ever get was a note in Facebook, where only less than 300 people can see. Still, it took me two days to push myself to write that, although it only took me less than 15 minutes to actually write it.
But it felt good to be able to write that, to say it to a wider audience and not just to you. I wasn't trying to be mushy or sentimental or cheesy. I knew that you had to face down some people; you've probably had dissenters who told you and warned you that we will never work or that I'd play you the way some people assumed I played others. It was my way of saying I'm yours and only yours. And I will be yours for as long as you will have me and want me and love me.
These are words, all words, and I still long for the day when I won't have to say anything but you'd still know that I love you. The day when I'm near you and with you and all my gestures and actions would speak volumes of the things I find hard to say.
In five days, it will be a year since you, for some strange and cocoa-induced reason, decided to love me. For now, it's been 360 days. That's one revolution, that's from 0 to 360 degrees, from point zero to all the way back. It's like getting back to where it all started, a homecoming of some sort, a remembering of what we have and what we've become. Thank you for all the love you have shown me and you continue to show me. I hope to have the rest of my life proving to you that I love you as much and even more.
Time passed rather swiftly, but not swift enough to get me to you. It's been almost a year since you, for some strange and cocoa-induced reason, decided to love me. I had told you before: no, love someone else, someone nearer to you, someone who won't be 10,000 miles away, someone you can be with and who can be with you everyday.
I pushed you away that night, but you pulled back and you held on. I had seen the world we revolve in and that was my baggage when I met you--I had very low expectations that anything could ever work. I was skeptical, not just because of the distance between us, but also because you seem to be bouncing back and coming out from a relationship that you cared so deeply, one that you felt was so right but just didn't work out. I thought that if at some point the person would want you back, you'd leave in a huff, with a post-it as a goodbye, leaving me once again at the altar. I was wary because of that. I cannot be too sure and I cannot assume too many things.
I certainly did not expect that you'd still be here, in a relationship with me. I don't know if, from where I am right now, what I bring into the relationship is enough. It can not be enough considering how far we are from each other. Words can only mean so much; actions will always speak louder than words.
I know I'm a man of (very) few words and maybe it compounds to the distance because I don't say I love you as often as you do. I'm not used to public declarations of affection. The most public I could ever get was a note in Facebook, where only less than 300 people can see. Still, it took me two days to push myself to write that, although it only took me less than 15 minutes to actually write it.
But it felt good to be able to write that, to say it to a wider audience and not just to you. I wasn't trying to be mushy or sentimental or cheesy. I knew that you had to face down some people; you've probably had dissenters who told you and warned you that we will never work or that I'd play you the way some people assumed I played others. It was my way of saying I'm yours and only yours. And I will be yours for as long as you will have me and want me and love me.
These are words, all words, and I still long for the day when I won't have to say anything but you'd still know that I love you. The day when I'm near you and with you and all my gestures and actions would speak volumes of the things I find hard to say.
In five days, it will be a year since you, for some strange and cocoa-induced reason, decided to love me. For now, it's been 360 days. That's one revolution, that's from 0 to 360 degrees, from point zero to all the way back. It's like getting back to where it all started, a homecoming of some sort, a remembering of what we have and what we've become. Thank you for all the love you have shown me and you continue to show me. I hope to have the rest of my life proving to you that I love you as much and even more.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Something Real
I woke up with my phone vibrating (it was you calling!) and a song in my head. Incidentally, the first few lines that popped into my head while I was waking up was: "Don't wanna wake up alone anymore." After your very short phone call, I went back to sleep, briefly, and woke up some 30 minutes later. The song was still humming in my head, even though I haven't listened to it lately. It somehow fits my sentiments.
I wasn't looking for someone to talk to. When you have a friend as big as BIG friends, I'm more than okay. I've got more than I could wish for. I'm probably living somebody's dreams but it's not all they say.
And then you came along, and you somehow insisted on sticking around, even though I've been hesitant for awhile. I don't know exactly what you saw in me that made you want to wait and risk and even fight off guys I've paid to pose as my pseudo-lovers. You made me think that love was possible in this messy world. Ironic how I felt sure with you despite the thousands of miles between us. And God knows I want us to work, not for a moment, but for a lifetime.
With airfares and hotels halfway booked, I'm both giddy and scared. Scared of what could possibly happen between now and the time I'll be with you. The things we can't control like disasters and unfortunate events. I want so badly to be with you and to give you all the love in the world.
I wasn't looking for someone to talk to. When you have a friend as big as BIG friends, I'm more than okay. I've got more than I could wish for. I'm probably living somebody's dreams but it's not all they say.
And then you came along, and you somehow insisted on sticking around, even though I've been hesitant for awhile. I don't know exactly what you saw in me that made you want to wait and risk and even fight off guys I've paid to pose as my pseudo-lovers. You made me think that love was possible in this messy world. Ironic how I felt sure with you despite the thousands of miles between us. And God knows I want us to work, not for a moment, but for a lifetime.
With airfares and hotels halfway booked, I'm both giddy and scared. Scared of what could possibly happen between now and the time I'll be with you. The things we can't control like disasters and unfortunate events. I want so badly to be with you and to give you all the love in the world.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Amazing
Have I ever told you how, everyday, I'm amazed by what we have and how you've stuck with me? How you've chosen to love me when I'm so far away and there are thousands of single gay guys better than me around you. I don't know, but sometimes in my idle moments I think about that. I think about the why--why me instead of somebody else, perhaps somebody else a lot nearer to you. Why me instead of someone hotter, richer, wiser, and better in a million ways than I could ever be.
When I think about us, I'm grateful that you have found me; grateful beyond words that you love me. It's one of those things I wish we could have--a long life together, because I'd like to spend the rest of my days and all of my life showing you how much I love you and how much I appreciate the things you have done to me. You're amazing and what we have is amazing because of you. :-)
When I think about us, I'm grateful that you have found me; grateful beyond words that you love me. It's one of those things I wish we could have--a long life together, because I'd like to spend the rest of my days and all of my life showing you how much I love you and how much I appreciate the things you have done to me. You're amazing and what we have is amazing because of you. :-)
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Everything and Nothing
I don't know if it was because there were those few days when you weren't able to go online or because I haven't seen you in any form since your Internet went kaput and I haven't seen a picture of you in Facebook, because I have abstained from logging in. But this is one of those times that I miss you terribly. Sometimes, I catch myself daydreaming and pressing time forward to that day when I will be with you, but I stop myself because I'm afraid something might happen and I had put so much of us already into daydreams.
Time is so relative and I remember a book I've read a long time ago, Einstein's Dreams, that posits how time feels different to everyone. Like how time seems to stretch endlessly right now, but when I look at the schedule we have made when I go home there seems to be no time at all to do everything we want nor even go to all the places we want to. Pearl Farm was abandoned and Bali, too. And, so far, we only have one tentative night to meet all your friends. Time right now seems so expansive until May ends and then it would feel so condensed. If only time could be hurried up when waiting then paused when the moment's perfect.
I was listening to Maroon 5's live version of Alicia Keys' If I Ain't Got You while I was driving home and it hit me perfectly. I'm actually in the land of milk and honey; I'm living some people's American Dream. I've got a job that pays good enough. I can get the latest, the greatest, the best of technology and fashion. I can have everything that people want, but everything means nothing if I ain't got you.
Time is so relative and I remember a book I've read a long time ago, Einstein's Dreams, that posits how time feels different to everyone. Like how time seems to stretch endlessly right now, but when I look at the schedule we have made when I go home there seems to be no time at all to do everything we want nor even go to all the places we want to. Pearl Farm was abandoned and Bali, too. And, so far, we only have one tentative night to meet all your friends. Time right now seems so expansive until May ends and then it would feel so condensed. If only time could be hurried up when waiting then paused when the moment's perfect.
I was listening to Maroon 5's live version of Alicia Keys' If I Ain't Got You while I was driving home and it hit me perfectly. I'm actually in the land of milk and honey; I'm living some people's American Dream. I've got a job that pays good enough. I can get the latest, the greatest, the best of technology and fashion. I can have everything that people want, but everything means nothing if I ain't got you.
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