Years later, now (continued)
He’s still reading old letters, he says. He quotes some of them. He is more self-aware now, and he is thankful. He misses me, he misses our old perfect little universe of friends, and, in his missing, allows himself to be sometimes slayed by old feelings—the only lingering proof that the past was real.
He feels guilty about something, and I know him well enough to understand that it’s the same thing I’m feeling guilty about when I think of our picture—he wishes he had treated me better, as I wish I had treated him better now that I know our time together was meant to have been a short chapter in our lives, and that the time we had dreamed about when we were college friends, that of staying really close friends as adults, would likely never come.
And he sends me a message that I need to hear from an old love, years later, now that I’m in the middle of the story of a new one:
“I am more than thankful I met you. And the love I took for granted before, that didn’t go to waste. I hope, as
He mentions several other clichés, calls them such, and tells me not to puke when he says the love I gave or the love he gave wasn’t ours; it has been there even before us. He ends his letter saying he has ran out of clichés, so he just says he loves me—and I understand him well enough to know exactly what he means.
I read it again one particular, sad, evening, and in that moment I got from him something I’d forgotten I’d wanted so bad when I was 19: my own version of a friend’s romantic night, up in a rooftop in Quezon City, where she’s reading his love poem under the constellation Orion which, right then, she called as theirs. It was different, and yet the same. We now have our own moment, and I know now that I am special to him, as he was, is, will always be special to me.
Just as my love reached him years later, his love bounced back to me even more years later. For both of us, it wasn’t the kind of love we’d expected from each other, neither was it the kind of love we’d wanted at the dissonant points in time we actually wanted anything from each other. But it is exactly what we both need.
He needs his dead stars to create the dreams that make him beautiful; I need to know someone at the other end of love, unrequited or otherwise, can still see beauty after a star dies, no matter how long it takes—and be grateful for my part in it.
The end we think it to be is never the end that is. In fact, as he says, it’s never even the end at all.
Everything works out, hurt fades, only beautiful things remain, and they come back to you if you were sincere in your struggle to be true, no matter if you failed—if you loved with your beaten, broken, fallible, stupid, selfish, but truest heart, someday this ordinary love can gift you something extraordinary.
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! Live well, laugh well, love well. (And pray I find true love.)
Good luck, Mark & Rovilson!
Tonight’s the night we finally know who makes it first to the pit stop that matters most—the last one! Last week, Mark & Rovilson made it first to the mat in
In any case, all biases aside, they do stand a good chance of winning. They’re strong, they’re smart (Mark actually enjoys adding numbers in his head), they can charm the pants of any local, and they play fair. Yes, they’re aggressive, but they always play fair. And, yes, they’re really easy on the eyes too. So let’s all cross our fingers and stay tuned!
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