The Longest Moment of Clarity

by: Adam Robinson


I already apologized and I know you forgive me, but there's something I failed to make clear. I don't think the sort of behavior I exhibited on the phone last night is "okay." I have always been fully aware of the status of our relations. I went into our arrangement with total knowledge and have continued to engage in it with that same knowledge.

In denial of this, I accused you of being in denial. I said you disappointed me because I was disappointed in myself. The love I was talking about on the phone is not love. It was an eruption of internal desperation. It had nothing to do with you. In my resolve to restructure my identity, a primary goal was to quell exactly that sort of behavior, to gain some self-control and emotional discernment. This only shows me that I have much father to go in my progress toward change. I didn't think. I lied to myself and thereby to you. If I could take it back everything I said last night, I would and instead, I would say this: 

I love you as a friend, first and only, and hope only for your happiness. My behavior was surely not consistent with this priority.

I would also have ended our "friends with benefits" in calm, rational manner (as I tried to do last week. My back-peddling was only a further show of weakness and lack of self-control.) It's nothing personal. I enjoyed what we had for what it was, and have always known what it was, despite how I sounded last night. One of my new goals in self-restructuring includes the fact that I will never be anyone's friend with benefits again. 

I know you never felt romantically toward me and I know why. You want someone with enough clarity of mind not to engage in unnecessarily hurtful and irrational behavior. Totally understandable. My own feelings of romance were predicated on a set of feelings I imagined you to have, though I knew, consciously, you never possessed them. I agree with you that we are too different, and that there has never, from day one, been any sort of future for you and I. I have always known this, and to tell you otherwise was to let my selfish desire do the talking. It has nothing to do with anything you did, and were you not around, I would have been unleashing it on someone else or myself. 

I've also come to agree with you, that there is no such thing as unrequited love. It's one-sided. So it's not love.


the love letter collection

The Story of a Doll

(New beginnings)

There was a doll. She was on one of the racks displayed at the toy section. She is very beautiful and pretty just like all the other dolls lined up beside her. But there is something very different to this doll; other than a prominent mark on her face, which might be the result of a scratch, her eyes twinkle like the stars and the smile on her lips is radiant, just like that of a woman in love.

Every day, this doll would wait and wait and wait endlessly, with a hope that one day someone would buy her so that there would be a person who would take care of her, play with her, make her happy and important. But most of all, she needed someone to love her.

 She waited day after day after day. Suddenly it came - someone took her from the display, bought her and then brought her home. Imagine the delight of the doll. Her wish had just been granted. She was no longer on the display shelf but in the house of her owner.

It was the start of a happy and beautiful life of the doll. She and her owner were inseparable for wherever one goes the other goes as well. She plays with the other toys and sometimes gets dirty with them. But at the end of each play time, her owner would always return her to that special spot at the cabinet reserved only for her. She knew then she was loved.

One fine day, while they were playing outside, her owner's friend came by with another doll. It was a very beautiful doll, fairer than any she had ever seen. However, she did not feel any jealousy towards it because she knows that she was deeply loved by her owner and that in itself was enough for her.

When the friend left and they in turn, went inside the house, she heard her owner say:  "Mom, I want a new doll! Exactly like that of my friend. That very same doll!"  The mom answered: "But you already have one. You play with her everyday and you said you love your doll more than all the other dolls in the world. Why do you want to have another one now?"

As her owner answered, the doll went flying into the air, landing on a heap of dust on the floor, "I don't like my doll anymore. She is not pretty. She is not beautiful. She smells awful. I want a new one!" The mother replied, "But I told you many times that I would wash her for you. Yet you said no because you love her just as she is!" The owner retorted, "I don't care! I want another doll."

From that day on, everything changed for the doll. Oh they would still continue playing with her owner outside the house, but when another beautiful doll passes by, the owner would squeeze the doll until there were obvious marks on it’s body.

 After playing, she was no longer returned to her special spot on the cabinet but was left on the floor beside the discarded clothes, gathering dust and dirt. Yet the doll continued loving her owner because she knew of no other way than that. She continued to hope that her owner would love her and take care of her again. She continued to hope that all the good things in the past would happen again. She kept hoping and hoping and hoping.

Until one day, her owner picked her up, looked at her with disgust, and then threw her at the trash bin. That was the last she saw of her owner.

The doll cried. She cried and cried and cried. She found it very hard to accept that the owner who had loved her so much was the one who actually threw her in the trash.

Inside the bin, the doll felt like she was the ugliest, dirtiest, and lowest doll ever created and that nobody else would accept and love her. But despite the pain, the doll never gave up. She continued to hope that someday, her owner would miss her, bring her back from the bin and play with her again.

But the garbage truck finally arrived and she knew that her owner isn’t going to come back for her. As she went tumbling down with the rest of the garbage, she saw at the corner of her eyes, the new doll her owner was playing. She knew then that her owner would no longer miss her, need her nor love her.

As she lay on top of the mountain of trash, she felt her world crumbling down. She knew that she will remain in that situation until she gets covered by another heap of garbage. She knew there was no longer that beautiful cabinet she would return to for rest.

While she was busy wallowing in pity and pain, to her surprise, someone picked her up and looked at her with eyes of delight – as if the person had just found a treasure.

The doll was brought to a very small house and was washed and dressed anew. At first, the doll did not enjoy or even appreciate it because she was still hurting very bad. She dreaded that one day this new owner would abandon her again and throw her in the garbage.

But the day went smoothly for the doll. Her new owner and friends played with her and kept praising her for her beauty. The new owner was very proud and happy to have such a doll and shows this by always hugging her tightly. She felt again that feeling which she thought she would never again feel - Love. She knew in her heart that her new owner loves her much more than the first one ever did. But after her experience of being hurt and abandoned, she couldn’t avoid having doubts and fears and so she wanted to find out first.

She waited for night time when they would all rest. She believed in herself that if this new owner loves her, then she would again have that special place at the cabinet reserved only for her. But there was no cabinet; instead, she lay on the bed, hugged beside her owner. And for the first time, before her owner went to sleep, she kissed her and whispered: “I love you and I am very glad someone threw you away so you could be mine.”

The doll slept blissfully with this thought in mind: that an old beaten bed beside the person who loves you is a far better place to rest than on a space of a beautiful cabinet alone. She was glad that someone found her and loved her despite her worn out condition. And she promised herself that she would love this new owner more deeply and strongly than she had loved the first.

I Believe in Love

by : Dixie Chicks

I made a promise to myself
Locked it away deep down inside
Told my heart we'd wait it out
Swore we'd never compromise
Oh I'd rather be alone
Like I am tonight
Than settle for the kind of love
That fades before the morning light

Silence stared me in the face
And I finally heard its voice
It seemed to softly say
That in love you have a choice
Today i got the answer
And there's a world of truth behind it
Love is out there waiting somewhere
You just have to go and find it

I believe in love, I believe in love
A love that's real, love that's strong
Love that lives on and on
Yes I believe in love
Yes I believe in love 

listen here

Longings of the Heart

How i long to see your name on my wall, liking, commenting

the way you do it with your friends

but that is next to impossible.

How i long to see your messages on my phone

the way you do with your text mates,

but that is wanting for a miracle.

How i long for you to spend time with me

the way you do with your drinking buddies

but that is like asking for the stars

how i long to put you out of my heart

the way you put me out of yours

but that is same as asking forever to end.

First Aid: Quotes

First aid is done to heal or at least remedy instant pain. These are things or ways we use to alleviate the minor pains, or emergency responses before we under go surgery. We commonly see them as medicine kits so we fail to recognize them in our life's daily battles, where emotional scars, wounds and pains could never undergo surgery, hence, the only medicine we are left with is our emotional first aid kit, which we fondly call coping mechanisms.

Funny how much i observe that on the lowest points of my life, Quotes help me cope. This is one content of  my first aid kit. For it expresses what my heart fails to say. And here are some of those:

“And she will fool everyone with her fake smile and pretend laugh.”

“Dear heart, today I met a boy — prepare to shatter.”

“Don’t tell me you love me if you don’t really mean it, 

because I might do something crazy,like believe it.”

“She completely fell for him, but he didn’t even stumble.”

“I wish that I was as invisible as you make me feel.”

“It’s funny how someone can break your heart, 

but you still love them with all the little pieces."

“Sometimes we have to let go, 

just to be sure that there is something out there worth holding on to.”

“Just like Barbie, always smiling, even if she doesn’t want to.”

“Sometimes, when I say ‘Oh, I’m fine.’ 

— I want you to look into my eyes and say ‘Tell the truth.’”

“I guess what scares me is knowing that at any moment 

you could rip my heart out and step on it…

and I would just pick it up and hand it right back to you.”

“No matter what I do, I always forget to forget you.”

“I never stopped loving you, I just stopped showing it.”

“When you weren’t mine, I couldn’t get you. 

When I finally got you, I couldn’t keep you. 

When I couldn’t keep you, I got over you. 

When I got over you, you wanted me.”

“If it’s a broken part, replace it. 

If it’s a broken arm then brace it. 

If it’s a broken heart, then face it.”

“Sometimes, two people have to fall apart 

to realize how much they need to fall back together.”

“There isn’t a moment of my day 

that isn’t spent wondering where you are, 

what you’re doing, how you’re feeling. 

Even in the quiet of the night, 

when everything is still

 and I am nearly asleep, 

there’s a part of me that is still wondering.”

“If they don’t chase you when you walk away, keep walking.”

“It’s hard to decide when you’re too tired to hold on. 

Yet, you’re too in love to let go.”

“If a girl understands your bulls**t, sticks through your mistakes, 

and smiles even when you’ve done nothing for her 

— it’s obvious she’s a keeper. 

But it’s also obvious you don’t deserve her.”

“Your first mistake was leaving me. 

Your second mistake was giving me the chance 

to realize I could live without you.”

 “I miss you when something good happens, because your the one I want to share it with. I miss you when something is troubling me, because your the one that understands me so well. I miss you when I laugh and cry, because I know that you are the one that makes my laughter grow and my tears disappear. I miss you all the time, but I miss you the most when I lay awake at night, and think of all the wonderful times that we spent with each other for those were some of the best and most memorable times of my life.”

quotelicious.com

Second Chance

October 12, 2010

Alone in my room, now I have the time to ponder on the events of my day. Interesting one. A friend of mine was able to read one of my blogs on the topic learnings on love (2/x). He said he liked it and further commented that I reminded him of his late wife. Sad honestly, but it was not that one that took my attention. It was when he requested me to write an article on him.

An article? God! I barely know the man and he is asking me to write something on him. Will I be able to give him justice in my writing? Not only that, I am afraid to write something on him,  for I might be able to discover things and feelings within me that I am not yet ready to entertain. But he is a friend and I owe him a lot, the least I can do is give him a write up (hopefully it is plain and an unbiased opinion of him)

So here it goes…

  

Reynaldo Novida. Ondo or Rey for short. I really don't know which he prefers that I call him for I only say 'sir', being one of my fellow faculty in STI. I could not remember an occasion where we were  formally introduced but I could remember the first time I saw him.

I was teaching AutoCad in one of the laboratories and he was teaching another subject in the other lab. I was shy of approaching him for I don't even know his name but one thing did struck me 'he's cute!' More reason for me to be shy of him. As school days progressed, and the administration gave me some regular class load, I was able to see him more often. We cross paths along the stairs, the corridors, the lobby and all throughout the school but a single 'hi' nor 'hello' was never uttered. I was living my life, he was living his. Until one day, our individual lives collided.

He asked one of our faculty, also an SFC to do a funeral service for his aunt who recently passed away.  I even asked that SFC "who is rey novida?". And they kept describing. What struck me was that he is widowed already. He lost his child and his wife, whom he loved so much,  two years ago.  Those description summed him up. Pain, loneliness, lost, grief. I myself could not imagine how painful it might be to lose someone who means the world to you.

At the funeral, I was silently observing him, not knowing he is openly observing me. He talked and asked things about me, he may not know it but he really made me uneasy. He seems to be knowing and observing too much, yet I obliged answering his questions. It was nice to look at him and his eyes seem to say so many things.  He was a good and fluent conversationalist and he kept me engrossed in conversation the rest of the night. How would I ever know that it would be the start of the friendship that we are now sharing.

As I am trying to recall now, it puzzles me how we became close. I will try refreshing my memory. At the funeral, we exchanged numbers and he texted a thank you, I guess, when we arrived home. The following morning, I asked my fellow SFC Faculty if they received sir rey's message and they said no.  That's odd I thought. They have been working together for months now yet they have not even exchanged numbers. I openly narrated to them the conversation we had at the wake and without pretensions, I told them that he is nice and he is cute. With eyebrows rising, eyes staring, and smiles teasing,  they knew I had a crush on him. It's just a crush anyway, so what's the big deal!?

Intramurals came, games, competitions and the sort. Mingling with students, mingling with faculty. It was also the blossoming of a new friendship I had with Sir Rey. One turning point in our acquaintance with each other was when I shared to him my family problems.

We were chatting on FB that time when dad announced to me that he is filing an annulment. It broke my heart and he was the only person I could let the pent up emotion be released. I told him while desperately holding my tears in check for dads scrutiny. He offered me a shoulder to cry on, to text him if I wanted to talk about it. I have never openly shared it. And the only person who knows about it, is someone I really don’t have the desire to see. So I am left with Sir Rey or alone in my room, and cry my heart out.  I'll choose someone who could talk back I guess.

It was that night that I got introduced to Reynaldo Novida. Interesting man. He loved his wife and he love her still. I don't think there could ever be a woman who could measure up to the love he has for his wife. No wonder he changes relationships instantly. I envied her wife. How wonderful it might have felt to die knowing that you have been loved so much by the person you also love.  Never had that experienced  of being loved back. But I pitied the man I was talking to. He has forgotten how wonderful the world truly is. He is still living in the past with the memory of his wife. No wonder my fellow faculty would discourage me on him because it would be hard to compete with the memory of his late wife.

I could see how great a man he could be but he failed to see that. He runs his life in women and alcohol. Pain, grief and suffering. He is still mourning. I don't know if he realizes that. I am sure his late wife would be happy if she is seeing him happy. I thought to myself, he is lucky in fact because he already have someone up there who is going to watch over him. Someone he could ask to lead him, to help him, to guide him, to start over on life again.

To start over, carrying with him the learnings, the memories, the love, the pain he had in the lifetime of his wife. Here is this man, who have already experience loss, he should be someone then who values life. Live it to its fullest, experience it, for he himself knows how short life could be, yet this man is wasting, as if every second does not matter, as if every breathe is a reminder of how painful it is to be alive.

I sent a silent prayer to his wife, telling her to help him. And promising her that I would help this man appreciate life again. Also hoping that one day I would be able to visit her (at the cemetery) and be personally introduced to her and talk to her about who I know Rey to be.

That he laughs easily and when he does, it is his eyes that says a lot. He has this lopsided grin habit that makes his smile childish looking. He could stare on you with those mesmerizing eyes and he'll have you weak. It is maybe those eyes that wins him over the women. He is broadminded and smart. If he lets himself unwind, you'll see how easy going he is. Not to mention he is sweet.  With all those adjectives, no wonder I had to have myself immunized by his so called charms.

Yet all those character  fades into distance as he keeps holding on to misery. This I want to tell her about what has become of the man she loves. As I was thinking that,  my eyes opened on the reason and purpose of why I met him  in this lifetime. It is to make me realize that I could love again without needing to erase all the love I used to have for someone. To realize how beautiful life can be if we start to truly love again, bringing with us the lessons of the previous relationships.

I don't know what my purpose in his life is but right now, I want to help him, to start appreciating life, love and loss. I don't know either if any of my efforts are succeeding, but I hope that one day before our paths go separate ways, he would be able to realize that He is one great man, for he almost had my heart beating for him.

So for you Rey, may you not let life pass by. Live every second of it. This is your only lifetime. Hers is already over. She was able to live it well, happy and loved. Live the way she lived it. No regrets only love.  Grab what fate is offering you. A second chance to live for love.