The Love Blog

Because I've been wanting to for quite a while now, because it makes me giggle a little, because it makes me teary-eyed a little, because I need to re-learn a few things I thought I had already learned, I‘m opening up my ex files. 


Understand two things though: first, that this is by no means complete because there are stories I cannot tell and that makes me very sad; second, that none of this is real because as a matter of fact, love is blind. It is even blinder when it sits beside me Sunday mornings for a cup of coffee and some conversation. I say to love, “Do you realize that you will live forever?” And because my conviction is as infectious as my sunshine, it gives me a thoughtful look and a quiet nod. 


I cannot tell everybody the circumstances in which we first met -- love and I -- because I do not want to give my uncles, male cousins and all my other substitute brothers a heart attack. Let’s just say that I held its hands with all my heart while world span beyond comprehension. White picket fences then were for the old to shelter their fears of being alone. I had no such concerns. I was never to be alone, never to fail, never to grow old and get ugly and all I had to do was say, “Candy” and love would trade me one for a smile.


Then I lost love because it was not meant to stay just yet. Youth is precisely for getting things mixed up so that ideally when you get a certain age (for example, 29) you can put mixed-up things back in the right order again because such is the job of grownups. Ideally, that is.


I found love again while roaming strange street corners, living at nights, downing unhealthy amounts of gin-po, and losing at games I couldn’t play. Love was with someone else then and although it shared my laughter, played my games and held my hands, it did not really want to be with me. Love had its own thing going and would later send me a very emotional text message which read, “Thanks a lot. You didn’t know me at all.” But what love did to me then was far worse: it did not at all see me.


And so I go on to Cebu for my first real job and for my first real boyfriend. Up until this day, it remains doubtless that we were happy in the most normal sense. Love decided to let me have it easy for a while. It was the time to give me my sunshine back, buy me candy while I was drinking, hold me by the elbows when I wobbled yet insisted that I was perfectly all right, get me extra rice when I was ashamed to ask, wait outside my door when I was angry and jealous, meet my friends when I felt like being a socialite, and listen to me sing even though I didn’t get the lyrics to his rock favorites right. I left promising to be back but love knew better than to believe that. I meant to be back though. I really really did.


Love must have taken this against me though, because the next time it appeared, it was on a motorcycle at an ungodly hour asking me if I wanted a ride. It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. And let us leave it at that.


And nobody believes me when I say this but once in a while, love gets multiple personality disorder. I, in fact, have firsthand experience. One day, it came up to me and said, “Hi, my name is Fun.” And I said, “You are not Fun. You are Love.” And it said, “No, seriously I am Fun. If you want, I’ll prove it. I will cheat on you and then I will leave.” And so love, who believed himself to be fun (such a psycho), ran off with some other girl in Australia. It didn’t matter. I knew it was love because love always carries in its pocket a bunch of laughter that jingles a certain way. I recognize the sound every time.


What I learned though, after all this mad loving and disastrous breaking, is that it is not enough to find love. It is not enough to recognize it in its moments of ridiculous disguise. Some waiting may be necessary. 

Because entirely on its own, it has to come up to you looking all cocky and sure, and say, “I think you’re annoying, but for some reason, I can’t ditch you so we might as well stay together. And just so there is not a lot of hassle, I will try to be nice to you. And I suppose I'll take care of you because you're a little pathetic on your own.” And then of course you say, “You have some nerve. It’s not like you’re hot stuff. As a matter of fact, I think you are very mean. If it weren’t for my sunshine, you would be a very sad man with a very dark aura. But okay… since you beg.” 


With some luck, you might both find yourselves -- far far into the future -- on one of those quiet Sunday mornings sitting at the front porch staring at white picket fences. If you get this strange inexplicable feeling that something inside you will live forever, then maybe you’re good for life.