Different, but one

Holding you is like holding a part of me. Outside of me but not vulnerable. It possesses a certain strong character--something that depicts strong emotions.

Looking at your eyes, I see my own reflection. The feelings extracted through the windows of your soul seem to emit the same feelings I do have.

The feel, the touch, our skin colliding, it feels like founding yourself in the body of a different person.

Different, but one in heart.

Our differences

"I'm too busy with my work, hindi na kita nabibigyan ng time."

Kahit na personal na lakad ito, sinamahan niya ako magpacheck up sa sakit ko (since high school).

Masaya naman ako, kasi nalulungkot talaga ako kapag sobrang busy siya. Though, I understand him. Really. Pero nakakasad din kasi minsan na wala siyang time para sa akin.

I know that he's doing what he can do. Chat. Text. Calls. But there's no better way of knowing each other than to be together personally, di ba?

It's weird. I know that in this trip, he'd see me. A glimpse of the real me. Lalo na yung part na takot ako sa karayom.

True enough, he has seen a glimpse of not just me, but also of our differences.

He's on polo.I'm on t-shirt.

He's on black shoes.I'm on sneakers. 

He has a hanky.I don't.

But our differences, like in his words, is what compliments us.

I suddenly remember a portion of my love letter for my future (nung hindi ko pa siya kilala) that I wrote for a writing competition:

"You know, life is so different without you. Or maybe, it is going to be more different when you are with me—different in some sort of a good way. I guess difference depends on how we deal with what life has given us, I guess, love is a difference. It has to be one, because it gives us a different feeling of being the most different person, together. I love being different with you."

And true to it's sense. I love our differences... We complete each other. :)

Things he found out about me today:

• My worst case of wrong sense of direction
• Poor debating skills (for he's good at it)
• Stubborn attitude when we talk about desserts.

Despite this...

I love how he says "I love you" a couple of times, while looking intently in my eyes.

I love how he looks at me, asking me (obliging me) to stop eating sweets for it will worsen my cough.

I love how we worries about me.

I love how I saw him sleeping while waiting for me. It took me awhile to wake him up for I have to grab that opportunity to look at the details of his face, freely.

I love how he'd tease me, then say "I love you" again, while looking at me, then we'll laugh together.

We'll just laugh. The sincere one. The laugh that craves for more. 

Then he'll tease me. He'll tease me for the sake of nothing. He'll tease me, but with sweetness. And every time I'd try to tease him too, he'd say "I love you", which I think would mean, "Shut up". Haha! And before I know it, I'd just shut up, smile, and say nothing.

Even though my mind is shouting out the reply.

I'll just smile. Look at his eyes, then look away.

I don't know if I just can't stand his mesmerizing eyes, or I just can't let him see me---see me say those words in my mind.

And even if we had conflict the night before that, we were able to easily shrug it off. Being with each other is what matters most. And that the time we spend together is a time well spent.

Noong Araw ng Kyusi...

Nakakatuwa.

Ang simple ng lahat. Ang normal. I mean, normal sa paraang walang pilit o pagpapabango, pagpapapogi, o pagpapaganda. Normal lang.

Nakakakilig. 

Si Lord kasi, nilagay sa isip ko ang bulaklak, pero sabi ko, ayokong magexpect. Sapat naman saking makasama siya sa gabing 'yun. 

Pero ayun na nga, may nadaanan siyang flower shop. 

In his words nga, "Si Lord talaga, gustong pasayahin si ate Gaze. Ako rin e, gusto ko rin siyang pasayahin."

Nakaka-amaze. 

How two hearts seem to know each other and find confidence in being with each other, even though you're still going through the knowing each other stage.

Nakakatunaw. 

'Yung malamlam niyang mata at mga titig na may kasamang ngiti. 

Sa bawat pagkakataong gusto kong sabayan 'yung ginagawa niya, mas nauuna pang matunaw ang puso ko.

Photo (c): Gazelle Marcaida <3

Salamat, Lord sa pagkakataong maging masaya kasama siya. :)

Love letter

I wrote this love letter more than a year ago for a love letter writing competition. Syempre hindi ako nanalo. :) Pero okay na rin, kasi proud akong sabihin na hindi ako in love nung sinulat ko 'to. Salamat sa dalawang romantic movie na pinanood ko para magkaroon ng motivation.

Salamat din sa National Book Development Board na naging daan para maka-experience ako ng mga ganitong bagay. :)

Spread the love! <3

Photo (c): NBDB

Hi J

I was thinking about you today, that’s why I am writing this letter. I was imagining things, hoping that we are together right now. You know, I’ve got a lot of stories to tell, corny jokes to laugh at (in which you are required to laugh, or else…), rants and rages to burst out. It’s really hard (and weird) to do this on my own. I wanted to be with you. I wish you do, too.

You know, life is so different without you. Or maybe, it is going to be more different when you are with me—different in some sort of a good way. I guess difference depends on how we deal with what life has given us, I guess, love is a difference. It has to be one, because it gives us a different feeling of being the most different person, together. I love being different with you.

The thought ‘Time heals’ is a cliché, but on my part, I was hoping that it really is. Every tick of the clock kills me. It kills me that another day will pass without you. That I have to wait for another day, hoping that there you will be, at the doorstep, holding a bunch of white roses, greeting me with ‘hi’, and the day goes, just me and you, staring at each other’s face, as if it was the very first time.

Yes, time for me does not heal. It hurts me even more, yet I’m holding on to the fact that I am not waiting in vain, I am waiting for you.

Maybe love gives us an unexplainable feeling of happiness. I haven’t met you, but the thought of being with you gives me not just butterflies in my stomach, but also birds singing in my head, chirping their songs of love, as if they feel what I feel. Constantly reminding of my very reason of existence—you.

You know what, most of the time, I get lost in my dreams, actually mostly in my nightmares. I don’t know if you are going to accept me for who I am when we meet. Specially when you get to know me.

You see, I’ve been to many distresses in life. I have a nightmare that haunts me to forever. Yet deep inside, despite what happened to me, despite having a little angel tagged along in my life now, I am and is still looking forward for a ‘happy even after’ story.

I am afraid that my nightmare wouldn’t stop. I am afraid that there will be a time that you would make my past to be a reason not to love me. I am afraid to lose you. But I am hoping that you will be my dream catcher—someone who will make my dreams come true, or maybe together we’ll make it.

As early as now, I wanted to say sorry. I wanted to ask for your forgiveness. I am sorry for not waiting for you. I am sorry for falling into someone that I thought was you. Sorry if I wasn’t able to preserve that one thing a woman should give to only one man. I am truly sorry. I hope you would forgive me. I hope that even after that fall, I will still see you, with your eyes full of acceptance.

I wish I could forget those memories and make a fresh start with you. But I guess it has already been a part of my life. I consider it instead as a preparation when I meet you. I love you so much, even though I haven’t felt it at the moment. I know I am going to love you more than all the love combined in the entire world. I love you, and that is all what’s going to matter. I’d love you now, until we meet.

If only I could follow you wherever you are, I’d do. But I don’t even know where you are. They said that the world is sometimes small. But I guess we aren’t talking about space here. Our love isn’t about how far or near. It’s about time—of when and where and how. ‘Cause our love, though it has never met, was longing, was hoping... our hearts—it will find each other, beyond time.

See you in the future my dearest. I’m really excited on how we are going to meet. How are we going to start or will we realize from the very start that it was ‘us’ that we are looking for all these years? Will we meet in the best or the worst moment of our lives? Is it possible that I have seen you before?

I don’t know.

If the time comes that a time machine will be invented, I promise not to peek into our ‘perfect time’. I wanted it to be a surprise. I wanted to be unprepared. I wanted to feel the natural feeling of falling in love.

When that day comes, I hope that it won’t be the end, yet the start of our own forever.

I love you my dear. And I promise to wait. I promise to endure the pain as the time ticks over and over. ‘Cause after all this pain, when I see you, it’s going to be worth it. I know.

I love you, my one and only. When those nightmares are gone, I’d believe that my dream catcher has finally come.

I’d hear the birds sing, I’d feel the butterflies around us. They’ll celebrate our unity, and together, we will fly to forever.

PS.

This letter was written before we meet. I wanted you to know in the future how excited I was to meet you. I love you, my dearest. I will, ‘til our forever meets no end.

PPS.

I chose to write you a letter, because I can no longer find another person whose worth to write for than my future husband. J

PPSS.

I wanted to say more, but I’ll reserve it when we meet. See you then! J

Excited to meet you,

Gazelle Marcaida-(insert surname of my future husband here)

Your future wife J

Oras-oras

Para kang sirang plaka, sa tenga ko'y paulit ulit na naririnig ang tinig mo.

Minsan tinanong ko ang puso ko. Pag-ibig bang maituturing ito? 

Ang sabi'y sa pag-ibig, 'di mo alam ang simula. Pero ngayon, hindi ko na alam kung paano ito hihinto.

Noo'y tinutunaw ko ang pakiramdam na ito, pero ngayo'y tila mga ngiti mo ang tumutunaw sa aking puso.

Kay sarap maramdaman ang pag-ibig na hindi mo alam. Kusa. Walang pagpilit. Walang kapalit. Nagpapaubaya.

Pero walang nagsabing hindi ito makakasakit.

Inoorasan na tayo ng pagkakataon. Nalalapit na paghihiwalay o pagsasama sa habang buhay?

The gift of waiting (repost)

I just wanted to share this wonderful message of waiting. I take no credit for this.

Source: http://wonderandwandering.com/2014/06/26/the-gift-of-waiting/

The gift of waiting

POSTED ON JUNE 26, 2014 BY SARAKGILMOREa

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Six years ago I met a boy. I had zero romantic interest in him, but we became the best of friends. We loved all the same things… soccer, live music, pizza + beer… the list could go on but these ones carry most of my memories of friendship with him.

We spent more afternoons at my favorite coffee shop in Jonesboro, Arkansas than I can remember between 2008-2010, sometimes talking and sometimes just sharing a table while I studied and he planned worship sets. We took as many trips to Memphis as we could to see our favorite bands play together. We talked sports and there was never anything more than a high five going on between us every time we left hanging out.

Then 2011 rolled around. He had a girlfriend at the time, and I remember beginning to think that I missed my best friend. Somewhere over those few months of our friendship having boundaries for the first time, I started to wonder if maybe I could like… really like him. Obviously this felt horribly risky, so I decided to just pretend those feelings weren’t there for a while.

I remember talking to some of our friends one night and saying, “Guys, I don’t know what to do. I feel like when I think about the girl he needs to end up with, and I start to describe her in my head… she sounds a lot like me.” There they were, out on the table. My feelings. Exposed. I felt naked and afraid. And I knew it didn’t even matter at the time, because he was dating someone else. Even if I did have real feelings, he certainly didn’t reciprocate them.

I didn’t know what to do. So I fasted. For 21 days I was asking God over and over, “Lord, if these feelings are from you, I trust you’ll take care of me, and if they’re not, I don’t want to feel them ever again.” …well about day 5, he broke up with his girlfriend. My prayer took a slight turn to simply saying, “OK God, I think I want him. Can I have him?”

At the end of those 21 days, there weren’t words written in the sky, there wasn’t a burning bush or angelic visitation… but I remember feeling like God had given me this deep sense of peace, and I remember feeling like I kept hearing the words, “Just keep being. I’ve got you. I have the best for you.”

So for about a month, nothing changed. Besides that I felt like my best friend was back — and that was good. So good. And then one night in March of 2011, he called and said he wanted to come over and talk to me. He told me he was sorry that he had missed a season of my life when he was dating someone. He told me I was his best friend, and he loved spending time with me. He told me he couldn’t really imagine time with anyone else being better than time with me, and that he felt like he was growing feelings for me that were bigger than us being just friends.

Side note: OK, I wouldn’t probably recommend that all relationships go this way, but our years of friendship prior to this conversation made this next part not weird.

So basically we talk all of it out, and decide: (a) I think I want to spend my life with you; (b) we should probably date first; (c) we don’t feel like it’s time for us to date right now.

He told me he knew that with his fairly recent breakup, and him being on staff at our church, and me being in leadership in our college ministry, that it just didn’t feel peaceful to jump right into dating someone else. So we waited. For months I’d been working through these feelings in my own heart, then we finally had the conversation I’d been waiting for, and it ended in knowing we needed to keep waiting.

I remember him telling me, “I don’t know how long it’ll be until we feel like God says it’s time… it could be two months or two years, but I want you to know that you’re worth it, and I am going to wait.”

(Obviously I’m crying at this point.)

And then we went almost three months without really talking or hanging out. (Cried plenty more times during that time period) We just… waited. We knew we shouldn’t toy with the line of friendship/more than friendship, so we just stopped spending time together unless our friends happened to be all hanging out.

It was hard! I had gone through this whole process of believing for something, and then being told I could have it — but not yet. God’s promises are funny like that. Sometimes He shows us what He has for us and then He invites us in to the refining place of waiting and contending — not because we need to earn something but because He wants to stamp us with His image in those places. There’s a piece of His heart to be found in the waiting.

I think in that season the piece of His heart I found was that He’s for me, no matter what. He was stamping on me a belief that His promises are true, and the things He promises are worth fighting for.

Three months later we started dating, and this weekend I get to celebrate two years of being Mrs. Noland Gilmore. As I’m looking back on our second year of marriage, I’m reminded that it’s been marked by the same thing that started it all: waiting.

It’s been a year of the two of us contending for something that we’re not sure if or when it will happen. It’s been a year of learning to carry each other in ways we haven’t had to before. It’s been a year of unfulfilled promises.

But today, I choose to celebrate. Because every day I wake up next to a promise fulfilled. And that makes me want to keep fighting for the ones I’ll see come to life in the future.

Cheers, my love — to all the promises we’ve yet to see fulfilled. What glorious days ahead of us!

Cycle

Full of words.

Words of love.

Love to you.

You and me.

Me to you.

You are full.

Random thought # 2

Those words. I hugged it. I hoped for it. I longed for it. I read it countless times in a day. I prayed that it is real and started hoping again.

You and hope

Your word

It's torturing me

It makes me live and die everyday

Your name

It pumps my heart

Like I never wanted to die again

Your face

It melts my entirety

And I never wanted to see beyond

This hope.

It smiles.

It hurts.

It lives and dies.

Everything, at the same time.

Good, but Deceptive

This article was published last April 2013 in Philippine Daily Inquirer's Youngblood section.

“A love that is not true will lust, a love that is true will last.” That’s a quote I heard in a Christian gathering I attended last Valentine’s Day. It was the first time that I attended a Church-related event where young people are taught how to deal with the offers of the flesh.

I asked myself then: Why only now? Why did they not teach us about it more than five years ago? Why were they so silent on sex?

I believe that our 1990s generation is made up of “transitioners.” We witnessed how the modern era ate up traditional beliefs and cultures, leaving only memories. We were the victims of the close-your-eyes-there’s-a-kissing-scene automatic syndrome, which left some of us innocent of the bitter taste of life, the cloth in a glittery, sumptuous wrap.

More than five years ago, a period I have no way of gauging except by my own experience, teenage pregnancy was a big scandal. In typical cases, a girl gets pregnant, and the boy must marry the girl so as to cover it up. Other pregnancy cases are denied: The girl’s family sends her to the province for the preservation of whatever name it has. Still other cases end up in devastating situations: suicide, abortion, postpartum depression. But everyone was in denial that it was even happening.

It’s apparently worse these days: Younger and younger people are involved in premarital sex, resulting in their being parents at a very innocent age. It’s a case of being in a situation where the body may be ready but the mind is too young to adapt to parenthood.

People may say that it is our choice, that we are in our right mind and right age to know what sex is. The reality is, no. Because more than five years ago, when everything was just heating up, it was curiosity that was boiling inside a teenager’s mind. And it was the period when the topic of sex was something that no one dared ask about because it was frowned upon by most “traditional” people.

Sadly, no one dared talk about it, not even during “faMEALy” days. So we resorted to a different form of learning—experience.

And because there was no guidance on what and what not to do, curiosity led to broken trust, torn relationships, and changes in family trees.

And now, seemingly in response to a growing society of beanstalk-like family trees, education on the critical subject is being promoted. Everyone is suddenly conscious and brave in saying the word “sex.”

Did we need the Reproductive Health Law to be passed just for young people to be educated? I guess it’s too late. We are just applying some remedy, but the disease has gone too far, just because more than five years ago, a period I have no way of gauging except by my own experience, no one dared ask about it, no one dared discuss it.

For almost three years now I have experienced how it is to be forced to think and act like a mother. They say that all women have that motherly instinct—and I do not deny it—yet I still have the “singlehood” instinct that seeks fun and adventure.

I guess that gives me a double role in society. But it rips me apart: Do I catch up with the opportunities offered to do the things that I want, or compromise to do what’s best for me and my angel?

It is the worst feeling. It is as if one is robbed of one’s dreams, of opportunities, of fun, of freedom, of many things that one should be enjoying. But with motherhood as my other role, I just can’t do those things now, not ever.

If sex education was as open more than five years ago as it is now, maybe a lot of “me” will be able to think of what should have been the right decision.

I am a single mother. I am not proud of it but it doesn’t make me shy about it because I can never think of myself being able to speak this way without having that experience.

I speak in behalf of those who were victimized by innocence more than five years ago. Lucky are those who are hearing lectures and learning now, because finally, “traditional” people have opened their minds to the fact that sex education is something that today’s youth  must acquire.

Experience may be a good teacher, but it is deceptive.