Letting Go

"Let go. Why do you cling to pain? There is nothing you can do about the wrongs of yesterday and today. It is not yours to judge. Why hold on to the very thing which keeps you from hope and love?"

- Leo Buscaglia, from "Loving Each Other"

As the saying goes, there is a time for everything: a time to love, a time to laugh, a time to cry, yada yada yada. But what I never thought will happen this soon is that the time came to end something.

It started out as a discussion on this person's health. Being a born worrywart, I was pushing him to get a check up since he was having a headache, about three times a week which is not good. The reason he said is that he'd been having too much to eat lately, saying that's his way of compensating for the loss he experienced. I said, okay, but it would really be good if he'll see a doctor. He agreed and promised to see one the next day and said he'll be taking a nap.

He awoke bout 3 hours later and sent me a text message that he felt better and that he is thinking of seeing the doctor possibly next week instead of the next day. Anybody who knows me would know how I'll react. And that was my mistake.

I went ballistic on him and texted him a lengthy message about being insensitive to others (read: to me) and just thinking of himself, blah blah blah. I even added for good measure, that oh, yes, I don't have any right to demand anything from him since I don't even count as someone who should matter. All the frustrations I had been keeping to myself on the onset of this relationship came pouring out in one single text message.

"Where did that come from?!" His reply.

I was just getting started. And I leashed out a barrage of words that I know would be impossible to take back now. He didn't reply anymore.

I was seething. I was so angry. Thing is, why am I seething? Why am I angry?

Am I angry at him for not seeing his doctor as he promised? Yes, I am. As everyone knows, if you are in a "complicated" relationship with someone, you will be the last to know if something happens to your significant other. Or worse, you might not know about it and you end up guessing your whole life what happened. Because in reality, you don't exist. You exist only in the hidden part of his life, the part no one else might know about.

Am I angry at myself for letting my defenses down once again and fall in love with someone like him? Yes, I am. I promised to myself that I would not be falling in love EVER again since it will just lead to disaster with Ondoy-like proportions. And it did. And again, I was left alone with a heart broken into a thousand pieces that I know would be impossible to put back even with the strongest glue known to man.

After the anger has subsided, I now felt sadness. Sad about not being to control myself and my emotions and vented out words that I might not be able to erase or delete since it had already been said (or sent). I felt sad that there would never be a time that I can fully feel the love he had promised since this had ended before it had even begun.

The incident happened two days ago. Yesterday, I swallowed my pride and sent him a text message: "Good afternoon. I'm so sorry about the things I said yesterday." He promptly replied: "That's okay, I was just busy." We exchanged a few more text messages and I thought everything is back to normal.

But he never texted me today. I was thinking: he's too busy, he might have another problem at home, he might be sick, he might be dead.

Maybe I should just think of the latter so it wouldn't hurt too much. Because if he's dead, I really can't do anything about it.

Is this what I'm waiting for? Is this the sign that I should let him go? Is he just waiting for me to end this since he might be too much of a gentleman to initiate the break up?

My brain is telling me the answer is a loud YES.

But my foolish heart is still in denial.

One essay I wrote years ago for a friend came to mind:

One reason why it's hard to let go of a certain relationship is because the person you were in love with truly had great qualities. With him you truly had an incredible connection. Maybe he loved you intensely, he may still love you. The only problem in the relationship was that he could only treat you well part of the time. The rest of the time, he acted hurtfully towards you.

It is very difficult to throw away this type of connection. And more difficult still is when you interact with the wonderful, caring side of him. Having to walk away from such a relationship can be the hardest thing you'll ever do. Even when you walk away, it may still pull at your heart. It is so much easier to let go of someone when it is clear he doesn't care about you. It may even be easier to let go of someone that dies, because there is nothing that can be done. But to let go of someone that is well and alive and you think who loves you back is an incredible task, maybe an impossible one. Yet let go you must if your partner is not willing to meet your needs. If you are ever to be fulfilled in any relationship, you must let go completely of this person.

I think it's time for me to think about what I wrote and apply it to my life.

"We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us."

- Joseph Campbell

From A to Z

My friend Anna and I were chatting earlier and we're discussing our love lives (or the lack thereof) and I was ranting and raving about men being all alike and all that shit when I brilliantly suggested that since I'm having a hard time keeping guys in my life, I would breeze through it by dating men with names, one at a time albeit, that starts with all the letters of the alphabet. Maybe Anna and I had too much time in our hands but she willingly went through the silly thing with me.

We started with A. Since this talk started with dating a younger guy, we began with Ashton Kutcher. I suggested someone local, Akihiro Sato. Okay, nice bod. Bfor Biolo Bascual (we can't think of someone else but feel free to suggest, guys!). For C, I suggested Charlie Sheen. Yes, Anna said, he's cute. So on to D. I was about to suggest a name when Anna said I should be careful as to who I will suggest for the letter, of course, since she's my friend, I said Dingdong Dantes. (She absolutely loves Derek Ramsay so I didn't dare mention his name). Now withE, I said Eigenmann, Geoff. Easy one, huh? With F, I stupidly said Fiolo Fascual, and that started me laughing my ass off (I think I really can't get over the fact that he has a different preference with regards to you-know-what!). Anna said she's laughing as well and someone might think she's losing her marbles laughing all by herself!

G of course, is for Gabby Concepcion (I am channeling Sharon Cuneta during herDear Heart days now). I told Anna since he was my first crush in showbiz, he should occupy a place in my alphabet dating game! Now with H, that's one

tough cookie to crumble. I suggested Henry Omaga Diaz and that started another round of laughter (my kids are now eyeing their mother with trepidation, she's losing it, Abiel might be thinking). Anna suggested Hajji Alejandro and I agreed with the premise that he is acceptable since he was the original "kilabot ng mga kolehiyala". I suggested Ishko Moreno for I. Anna gave Ichard Gomez's name.

Anna typed in rico J puno and I of course said, we're not on R yet. That's for J, she said. I don't like it, I said and suggested Jejomar Binay. (This game is making me forget my problem!) of course, this began another exchange of "panlalait":

ANNA: eeew, ang jitim mother!

ME: oo nga, baka pati singit, majotim!

(LAUGHTER)

ANNA: jalosjos ...

ME: yikes! pedophile alert!!!!

Okay, so on to K. Kiko Pangilinan, Anna typed in. Okay, I said since I am again on Sharon Cuneta mode. With L, who would Anna suggest but the senator with the most numbers of bills passed (or so his camp says) Lito Lapid. Gross! I said, since we're talking about senators I'd rather date Lacson, Ping, I told Anna. Good thing she didn't say Lapu-Lapu. For M, Anna suggested Manny Pacquiao, Manny Villar and Manny Pangilinan. I asked, why them? She said Manny = Money. Nooo! She gave another name, Mark Herras since she said I like younger guys. Of course between the three Mannys and Mark, it's a no brainer.

For N, we simultaneously typed in NINO MUHLACH, but no thanks. Neri, Victor. Okay, the bad-boy-image actor won over the ex-child wonder of Philippine movies. Hmm... we're getting really good at this game. O is now for two boxers and a news reporter: Onyok Velasco (junano!), Oscar dela Hoya (mother, manghihiram ng stockings mo yan!) and of course Omaga Diaz, Henry. For P, of course, Piolo Pascual. Anti-climactic na kasi kanina ko pa ipinagpipilitan ang name nya!

Q is a really tough one: Anna is so stubborn she still suggested PacQuiao. WTF! I'd settle for Quentin Tarantino, thank you very much! Now for R, we had a blast on this one. She wittingly suggested Rustom Padilla (that's bad!). She still wouldn't give up on the Padillas and gave Rommel Padilla. I asked her, could this game go any worse? It could have been lest she suggested the general of the world army headquarters or something to that effect, whats-his-name Padilla? Oh yeah, Royette! Well, if Anna is insisting on one of the Padilla brothers, I'd settle for Robin. :) (Another Sharon Cuneta ex-boyfriend) Hindi naman halatang maka-Sharon ako, ano?

I think Anna has something against me by suggesting for S, Swarding. But she suggested another one, Samboy Lim. Okay, that's better. For T, flawlessly she suggested Troy Montero. Hooray, Anna hit the target on that one. I sooo love him, before AM entered the picture (Aubrey Miles, gaga, not Amalia Fuentes!). With U, she gave Uncle Bob of Channel 7 vintage. No way, I told her he's way too wholesome (and too dead) for me. I'd rather date Umberto Eco. Author of Name of the Rose and Foucault's Pendulum. Okay, this man maybe physically unsexy but boy, is he smart!

With V, the silliness began again. Vito Cruz and Victor Wood. Well we know Vito Cruz as a street and as a station of the LRT Line 1, and he's sooooo dead. Victor Wood? He's committed, I think, to Madame Auring so I'd rather skip him. You wouldn't want to cross Madame Auring's path when she's in love. She might put a hex on me and send me to V---- Valenzuela! Now my daughter is one intelligent girl, and seeing what her mother and her friend is doing, gave the name VICTOR ALIWALAS. Okay, he gets the honor of dating me!

W is for either Wesley Snipes or Wally Bayola. Let me ponder on it for a while and get back to you.

I thought the next letter's gonna be difficult but Anna's a fast one: she suggested the X-men! Andami nun ah! But wala kasi eh, so the X-men it is.

Yilmaz Bektas is for Y. Anna is just scared I might get electrocuted while in the bathtub. That makes it more exciting though ...

And finally, it's a toss between Zam Milby and Zanjoe Marudo. And the winner is: of course, Mariel's ex. I wouldn't be caught dead with Zam Milby. Besides, I'm not his type.

:)

This is How I Feel

Hello, I don`t even know your name, but I`m hopin` all the same
This is more than just a simple hello.
Hello, do I smile and look away? No, I think I`ll smile and stay
To see where this might go.

`Cause the last time I felt like this, I was falling in love,
Falling and feeling, I`d never fall in love again.
Yes, the last time I felt like this, was long before I knew
What I`m feeling now with you.

Hello, I can`t wait till we`re alone, somewhere quiet on our own
So that we can fall the rest of the way.
I know that before the night is thru, I`ll be talking love to you,
Meaning every word I say.

`Cause the last time I felt like this I was falling in love,
Falling and feeling, I`d never fall in love again.
Yes, the last time I felt like this, was long before I knew
What I`m feeling now with you.

Oh, the last time I felt like this I was falling in love,
Falling and feeling, I`d never fall in love again.
Yes, the last time I felt like this, was long before I knew
What I`m feeling now with you.

I need not say anything more.

This is how I feel.

This is for you, DrAR.

Words

Very unusual meeting, or maybe a better phrase is very unusual virtual meeting. I was playing at one of those trivia chat rooms, minding my own business of trying to answer the questions as fast as I can when I received a message from this guy. I have this very generic chat nickname, bookfan (appended with my age and my gender), and of course he asked me what kinds of books I read. That started the ball rolling. We chatted a total of four hours that night. Before we logged out, he asked for my number. I don't usually give it out but this guy struck me as somehow decent and a very intelligent person so I obliged. But I didn't really expected him to text, much more call.

I was pleasantly surprised the next day when I got a morning greeting from him. We texted the entire time I commuted from the MRT to the office, that's more than half an hour travel. I learned from our chat the night before and during our first texting marathon that he is a doctor (an ophthalmologist from the Visayas, but he was born, bred and schooled in Manila but relocated there when he married, yes he is married!). He is 10 years my senior, the eldest in a family of four, he loves his job and his kids (read between the lines please), he loves the great outdoors, he is a coffee drinker, he doesn't smoke.

It had been four days and a hundred text messages exchanged and an hour or so of phone calls. On the second night we were texting, he already called me a friend. Third day, we were spending almost the entire day (and evening until 3 a.m.) exchanging calls and messages (of course, during times when he doesn't have a patient and when I need a break from the things I do at work and at home). He even told me that he'll be leaving for the US Friday evening and asked for my IM ID so we can keep in touch while he is there. Fourth day, as usual, we started texting at 6 a.m. until around 10 a.m. and he called me three times that morning. He said something that really made my heart leap, this is how the exchange went:

HE: do you open your ym?

ME: yes.

HE: that's great!

ME: yep, that's great talaga so i get to chat with you later.

HE: yesss :) i'll be using ym to keep in touch with you the whole trip. ok with you?

ME: that's fine.

HE: good to hear that. i don't want to be out of touch with you. :)

ME: same here

HE: am delighted to know that

ME: what can i say?

HE: sometimes words fall short of what we want to say and sometimes words just get in the way

I felt like I'm sixteen all over again. It was one of the sweetest things said to me. Ever.

After that exchange, the rest of the day was quiet. Not a single text message sent. I was hoping that he would be telling me that he is already off to the airport. Nothing. Nada. Nil.

I got worried: Did I say something wrong? Did I offend him one way or another? Or is he okay? Maybe he was in some trouble or something? I was thinking the whole day why he didn't even bother to say goodbye. Oh well, another one bites the dust. Easy come, easy go. And all the other cliches I can think of.

Saturday came. I woke up and opened my IM, no message still. The entire day, my IM is open and not a peep or even a buzz from him. I was starting to lose hope and while playing my online game, he sent me a message. I was kind of scared. Maybe he will be telling me that everything's a mistake and we should forget about our "friendship". But no, he was so apologetic about not being able to contact me earlier but something really bad happened. His brother, whom he will be running in a marathon with, had just died. I can feel he was really devastated. I tried to console him as much as I could. And even if I thought it was inappropriate, I told him that I missed him. He said he missed me as well. And he said that he needed a hug right then and he wished I'm the one who will give it to him, he also asked if it's inappropriate for him to say that and of course I said it's not.

I chatted with dozens of guys but this guy is a different breed (I really hope so!). He didn't even ask me to describe myself. Guys from chat rooms usually ask that and this one did not. He didn't even mention that he wanted me to go to bed with him.

He will be further away for two weeks, I won't get to communicate with him as much as I wanted to but I think this is a test for us. I hope we both pass it.

To Blog or Not To Blog

I've been really skeptical in keeping a blog regularly. First of all, my schedule at work is really tight. I rarely have time to go out and socialize. Another thing is that I'm having second thoughts as to who will be reading my blog. I have friends who love to read blogs but I don't think mine will be as readable as the others'.

But I think this will be really therapeutic for me. Lately, I have been having mood swings that affect the way I perform at work and it also affect my relationships. At home, I'm always in a bad mood that my kids are really keeping out of my way. I also started on a new relationship (read: new boyfriend) but it seems that it was a short-lived one. We started only less than a month ago and now we already broke up. (Good thing though since he's the typical male polygamous pig. No bitterness there, he told me so when I broke up with him!)

I love to write. I started writing as early as my pre-teen years. I know I always turn in the nearly perfect "sulating pormal" in Filipino class. But I write better in English. In high school, I turn in great essays for examinations and continued on during my college years. I started writing for the school paper in Sta. Isabel College. But I really made my mark during my years in Manila Bulletin wherein I have a bi-monthly column on teens (Teen Talk), articles for Philippine Panorama and special supplements and interviews I did for special assignments. I also dabbled in writing elementary school textbooks in Music and in Social Studies.

To think, with that experience, it will be easy for me to maintain a blog but it's not. I always compare my work to better and more experienced bloggers. But as my friend Anna told me, each of us have a unique way of writing. Maybe I should just write and let my creative juices flow and see where it will take me.

I hope this will be a good start.

So, it will be: to blog!

Welcome 2009/To a Friend

One of the few New Year's resolutions that I intend to keep is to blog as often as I can. I only get to blog very few entries the past year because of many things but mainly because I got so busy. But with lots of time in my hands at work, I hope I'll get to blog, if not daily, as often as I could.
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I just read a blog entry of one of my dear friends at work, Michelle Pfeiffer (that's my term of endearment for her and I'm sorry, I still can't get used to her nickname pa kasi). I love the way she expresses herself. She is a funny and lovable person and I enjoy being with her. We became friends a little over two years ago, we were in the same account. We've had our share of misunderstandings but who can resist having her as a friend? I consider her as one of my best friends though she considers me more of a mother figure than a friend because of my age. That's one of the things I love about her: very frank.

This is for you. As a way to welcome the new year, I dedicate this blog for you.

Love you, Michelle Pfeiffer!

A Stroke of Luck

The day ended like the days that went by: uneventful, hot and ordinary. I arrived at home and did the same things I usually do upon getting home: prepare my dinner, wash the dishes, relax awhile with my pc games and read a few chapters of my latest Lisa Gardner novel. Just before midnight, I had my pre-bedtime shower and off to bed I went.

I woke up with a leg cramp and I shouted with the pain that went with it. Nanay hurried from the kitchen and massaged my left leg. My children woke up with the yell of pain that woke up the whole neighborhood as well, I think. Nanay suggested I call in sick so I can rest. Before lunchtime though I felt a numbness in the left part of my body and I have difficulty focusing on things. My head is about to burst with pain that I took 2 500 mg tablets of mefenamic acid just to alleviate the pain (still no luck, though). I felt nauseated as well. Oh gosh, is this what people feel during a stroke? Off to my cardiologist I went and she told me I needed to be hospitalized for the symptoms I felt. My blood pressure is elevated (what else is new?) and I got myself admitted. Anna was the one who stayed in the hospital to look after me.

After all the blood and urine tests: doctors diagnosed TIA (transient ischemic attack), also known as a mini-stroke. Not really a stroke but a preview of things to come. Morbid huh? I also have glucose intolerance which does not help the condition at all. During my entire hospital stay nurses pricked my fingers three times a day to check my blood sugar level. There was a time, the nursed pricked me four times that day because my blood sugar is elevated as well. I downed dozens of pills and capsules to regulate my blood sugar and blood pressure. And yet the numbness is still there. The day I was to be discharged, my cardiologist referred me to a neurologist to check what the numbness is all about. I am not really too keen on seeing a neurologist because he is not covered by my medical insurance and I have to shell out four hundred bucks for seeing the neuro. So after the discharge, I went about with my routine (although I still reported in sick at work because I still feel the numbness and I am always tired).

A week after though, I can't ignore the numbness anymore and the recurrent headache. Went to the neurologist and the doctor probed and poked me with his pen and reflex hammer, asked me to jump, to count, gave me some simple mathematical questions, and what-not. Guess what? I failed most of the exams. I don't have TIA, it's cerebral infarction and in layman's term: a mild stroke. Imagine, having a mild stroke at the ripe old age of 40.

I was not actually shocked but I felt scared. Such a morbid thought, I am now really aware that I might be gone from the world in just a matter of minutes, even seconds. I felt bad about my children, I owe it to them to be here for them, at least until they can go on their own ways.

The neurologist advised for a total lifestyle change, that is if I wanted not to suffer a really bad one (come to think of it, is there a "good" stroke?). I have three risks: hypertension, high cholesterol and my BMI which is classified as obese (oooh... is that the politically-correct term?). That will be a tall order for me. So does it mean goodbye crispy pata and chicharon for me? No more late nights. No more alcohol (I quit drinking a long time ago) and no more nicotine (I have never been a chain-smoker and besides the last cigarette stick I had was eons ago). The late nights, alcohol and nicotine I will gladly not do but the food??? That will be a trifle hard because I love food. But as Nanay loves to tell me: it's either I chose to live longer or eat all those cholesterol-rich foods. Of course, it's a longer life I will choose. I love my children so much and I wanted to be with them for a long time still.

God gave me a mild "reminder" and I hope there wouldn't be a "major" reprimand soon. I am still lucky and very blessed.