Of Broken Bridges

For the longest time, I've been used to having a strong support of people around me. In high school, I may not have been the most popular girl but I had a lot of friends whom I could count on in times of need. No, these are not fair-weather friends. I can say with absolute conviction that these friends are the people that would be in my life for a very long time.

These are the friends that you could visit anytime of the day and be welcomed home. These are the kind of friends who will lend a sympathetic ear and be expected to give you an honest opinion of everything about you. These are the friends that you could call at two in the morning just so you could rant about your school, your parents, or your lovelife.

I am a generally trusting person. I hate being cynical because I hate being bitter towards anybody. Most of all, I believe that there is good in everybody and there is a particular reason why anyone would do anybody wrong.Up until now, I cannot force myself to admit that I had poor character judgment because I pride myself in being a good reader of personality. I guess if it is a question of admitting faults, mine would simply be the fact that I trusted someone beyond any realm of reason, placed faith in one person unconditionally, and loved and respected someone like the older brother that I never had.

Call it blind faith or call it stupidity, but I really believed in him. I trusted him with my innermost feelings, emotions that I never dared to show to anyone else, thoughts that I can't bring myself to voice out even to my other closest friends. I bared my soul to him.

And for a time, he reciprocated everything I gave. He treated me like his younger sister, his little daughter. He spoiled me endlessly, taking me out for coffee, tutoring me in math, fetching me from school, and just spending time with me. My family was so comfortable around him that they let him stay until 2-3 in the morning, sleeping on the sofa.

It was one of those rare very close platonic relationships.

But we had our differences. I am the kind of person who is very vocal with my appreciation of someone else. I love telling the important people in my life how much I treasure them. He was more reserved and cool about everything. He hated displays of affection. He hated having to voice out what he feels and more often than not, I had to wheedle it out of him. That is not to say that I got satisfactory answers. He was always so cool and detached that he gave an unfeeling vibe.

Simply put, I sometimes felt taken for granted. I still understood him, though. I knew that he needed me. I felt as if he wanted me to stay. At that time, I was sure that he did.

Now, what he wants is anybody's guess.

I did not know what happened now would I possibly ever. A year has passed and I still don't know what prompted him to leave that day. I still have the barest idea of what I meant to him, if I ever did. Saying that I mattered would be pushing the matter too far.

Please do not think that I never asked. Please don't say that I never begged for him to come back. At first, I did everything that I could for him to tell me what was wrong, for him to make me understand the reasons behind his actions. No matter how much I racked my mind, I cannot find the answer to that just one question.

Why?

Little by little I accepted the fact that he was gone. I assumed a lot of things but that didn't mean that I never waited for him to turn around and still see me watching him, praying for him to just turn around, to just look back one last time. I longed for him to tell me goodbye, to just tell me that he cared for me, that he loved me like I loved him.

But, he never did. He just upped and left, never even sparing one backward glance. I was left torn and broken, alone and shattered.

There was the sun in my life, setting one last time, my eyes never to behold it again. There was the pillar of my strength, slowly seeping away, leaving me helpless and incapacitated.

For the first time in my life, amid all the wonderful people around me, I felt utterly alone.

I tried. I tried to get up and pull my self together. I tried to convince myself that I would be able to go on without him, that him leaving was just another bump in the road, one that I can go past without a hitch. But, despite all my efforts of trying to be happy, of trying to be a trooper and keep on marching, I just lost hope. A big part of me and my happiness went out the window when he left. He took with him an integral part of myself, one that I had a really hard time building again. There was simply no getting it back.

Everything just went downhill from there. I lost confidence in myself. I started to hate every single day that I woke up. I distanced myself from everybody. I alienated myself from the rest of the world because I really believed that I was alone.I know I hurt a lot of people along the way. I was a trainwreck waiting to explode. It was only a short time before my life completely crumbles right before my eyes. And I was too powerless to stop the snowball crashing down on me. My parents were shaken by my decisions. My friends felt outcast and unwanted. My family felt spurned. I enclosed myself within tight walls and turned away anyone who dared to scale my defenses.

To say that I am still hurt would be insufficient. This gaping hole inside of me is just too hard to fill. Everytime that I see his face behind my eyes, a surge of loneliness seems to rise up, tiding over my whole being. It's just so hard to see the people who love walk away from you. It hurts more when all you can do is watch and stare as everything that you believed in an anchored to for years crumbles right at your feet.

Do you have any idea how it feels when I see your name? Do you have any idea how my heart constricts at the mere mention of your current affairs? My heart breaks every time. Every single time. Your name is enough to break down all the defenses that I have put up when you left. It is enough to break me all over again.

That's the funny thing. I go around for weeks not remembering you or anything else about you. I am happy. I feel free. Then someone or something reminds me of you, anything remotely connected to you, and all that is just lost. I am happy. I am. But, there's no discounting the fact that you're gone and no one else can fill the space that you vacated.

Silence.

That's the worst thing you could ever give me. I could take all the insults, all the ugly words. At least then, I know where I stand. But, this silence? I can't take it. It's impossible to counter. It's impossible to refute. It's impossible to appeal when silence is all that you're handed.

It hurts. This vise-like grip you have in me is choking me. It hurts that I am very much aware of your existence. I know how you're doing. Your brother keeps me up to date with your affairs, your schedule, your life. I don't even know if I ever cross your mind. I don't even know if you remember this younger sister that you had.

All I know is what I feel. And I feel as if you've already forgotten me, erased my existence from your mind. It hurts when you are still a part of my life when you've banished me from yours. Maybe, just maybe, I'm afraid to let you go because doing so would be saying that I gave up. Doing so would mean losing you from my life completely. And I am not ready for that. I don't know if I ever will be.

I would rather have you in my life as a ghost of the past, as that broken fragment, as that smoky memory than not have any part of you at all.

But, I'm still hoping. I'm still holding out for that day when you turn around and smile at me again. I'm still waiting for you to come back.

The bridge is not broken. Not yet. Not ever.

I'm waiting.

Three Words for Three Years

THREE WORDS FOR THREE YEARS

I am not going to write this piece with my usual brand of long, descriptive introductions nor with metaphor-ridden passages that very few people would see the significance of. Instead, I'm going to keep this short and sweet. Stripped, raw, and real. After all, like what you've told me countless times before, you don't really like waiting. So here goes...

I love you.

I love you with all that I am and all that I can be. I love you with a fire that surpasses all the love that I have or had for anyone else. I love you with everything that I have and despite what I am at risk of losing. I love you with a depth that even I have trouble reaching for the beginning. I love you with an intensity that scares me for never in my dreams have I foreseen this kind of attachment to anyone. I love you. I love you. I love you.

Truth be told, I'm having a hard time writing this because I am at a loss as to what I should say. I don't know how to express the dam of emotions that continually piles up inside me. I am simply out of words to tell you how much I love you. There doesn't seem to be enough words in the English lexicon to explain the way that I feel.

I know that we're novices at this. We are not experts at having relationships because we have never been in an official, mature one before. But, even if we are still exploring the avenues presented before us - the arguments, the sweetness, the playfulness, the seriousness - this is one thing in my life that I feel absolutely sure of. Never in my whole life have I been this sure of anything.

You. Me. Us.

Out of the many wrong things in my life right now, this actually feels right.

I know that I never made it easy for you. (You say it all the time! Haha. :) ) Over the past years, all our friends have been consistently teasing me with the alleged ten years that I've asked you to wait. For the record, I never did such a thing. Hahaha.

But, admittedly, consciously or not, I made your whole college life probably the worst of your 19 years. I'm sorry. I know told you a lot of things but I never really told you why I left. Not until late anyway.

I know it was the last months of our high school life. It was a last-minute love story, wasn't it? We were scrambling for time, wishing had more when it was already too late.In fact, we can barely remember where, when, or how we started. All that I can remember was that you were in love with someone else and I was the one you turned to during those times.

Somehow, those advice sessions turned into long life talks which eventually turned into sweet, enjoyable conversations. Sino bang makakalimot sa mga pa-sweet mong mga hirit. O kaya sa pasimple mong 'I love you'? I know that you pride yourself with saying that you never actually courted anyone. But, sorry to burst your bubble, you did.

Naaalala mo ba nung tinanong mo ko kung hindi pa ba panliligaw yung ginagawa mong paghahatid-sundo sa'kin sa classroom? O yung lagi mong pagtetext at panlilibre? O yung pagpapakasweet mo? Face it, niligawan mo ko. :))

Remember that dance that you stole from someone else even when it was you who promised him that? Or when you followed me on the rooftop of our graduation night's venue, only to dance with me under the stars?

It was perfect wasn't it? Until I let go, that is.

I have no excuse. I don't have enough reason to justify why I left, nor the abrupt way that I did, not even the completely rude way that I acted after. God knows I've given you a lot of pointless, meaningless, senseless reasons, none of which are any closer to the truth.

I've made you ponder endlessly when the simple truth is, I chickened out.

Everyone knows I came from a destructive pseudo-relationship. It would be an extreme understatement to say that I came out of it still broken and bleeding. You were one of those people who helped me up and got me to move on. I would have been so lost if you were not there for me, then.

You made me feel safe and protected. You were my rock, my stronghold, my own secure fortress.

And you loved me still, despite of what I did, what I went through, and what I became after. You made me feel as if I deserved the love that you and all the people around me gave. You never ever left my side. Even when I did all that I can to push you away.

I was afraid. Not because I thought you were capable of hurting me. I was afraid that I would hurt you the way I hurt him. I was scared of the thought of you suffering irreparable damage because of me. For the longest time, I blamed myself for what he is. I can't bear the thought of doing that to anyone else, especially you. But, I was wrong.

I'm sorry for leaving you like that. I'm sorry for what must have been a thousand excuses that I gave you. I'm sorry for having too much pride in me to tell you the truth. I'm sorry for making you feel worthless, like I never loved you. I'm sorry for making you wait all those years when we could have been together all this time.

But, please understand. If I did not decide to leave while I was still trying to fix my crumbling shreds of dignity, what we had would just shatter into pieces. And picking up those pieces would only hurt us more. This is not a rationalization of my actions. I am just trying to make you understand why I left.

If I didn't leave then, there would be no us today. If it was a question of losing you to someone else or losing you altogether, I would choose the former. In an obscure way, I'm glad I left then. Because now, I'm ready. I am ready to brave the world with you, holding your hand until the very end.

Thank you for waiting for me. For still standing at the same spot where I left you. For your unwavering love for me. I never expected that you will still be there the moment that I came back. Totohanan na. You are too good for me. You deserve someone so much better. 'Yung hindi ka sasaktan tulad ng ginawa ko noon. But, you're giving me this second chance with you. I am not willing to lose this chance.

I should be groveling at your feet, asking for you to love me again. I should be begging for that second chance. But, no. You opened your arms and welcomed me in. When I told you I love you that day, you told me you love me, too. You didn't even miss a beat. You never hesitated. You took me back. And more than anything, that is the one thing I am most grateful of.

I love you. Sometimes, I can't find the reason why I love you. I just do. But, there are a lot of reasons why I am here beside you. And every single day, you give me more.

I love you for your patience. I love you for never giving up on me even when I was my worst self. I love you for always understanding me. I love you for being a source of my strength, for being a constant person in my life, for being my security blanket in this harsh world.

There are many more reasons why I am so lucky to have you (and all my friends agree). I want you to know that I see all of them, and I love you for every single one of those reasons.

Ayos na po. Kahit ipagmalaki mo pa sa kanilang lahat na napasagot mo ko kahit hindi na nanligaw. Forever ko namang ipagyayabang na hinintay mo ko ng tatlong taon. Kahit walang kasiguraduhan. Kahit hindi ko pinaramdam sa'yo na may pag-asa. Naghintay ka kasi mahal mo ko. Ayos na 'yun.

I know that we are still at the beginning at that we still have a lot to face. We still have a long, long, long way to go. We are just starting and forever is still in a faraway place. So please, I'm begging you, bear with me.

I know I'm not the easiest person to be with. I can be overbearing at times, sulky, demanding. At alam ng lahat na tampuhin ako at selosa. But hey, I love you.

I may not be that perfect girl that you've been dreaming of all your life, not even close. But, I'm the one you waited for. And aside from the fact that I love you, that is one reason why I will hold your hand and rest my head on your shoulders, five, ten, twenty, fifty years from now.

I know how much you hate waiting so I'm going to make it worth the time that you wasted, the money you spent getting drunk, and all the bullshit I put you through.

I can't give you anything else but I'm hoping these three words could make up for those three years of waiting...

I love you.