Piece of my soul: There’s a very fine line between love and a waste of time.

Love. I fell in love for the very first time three years ago, March 12, 2007 and now I realize why they say that you get “crazy in love”. You actually get crazy. From the moment I wake up to my last conscious thought at night, all I think about is him. Everywhere I go and everything that I do must include him and must never be something that could ruin his regard for me.  And I loved him the way 1Corinthians 13:4-7 told me to. I loved him like Ruth.

After a year of being idiotically in love with him, forgiving him for all and practically any kind of hurt he had inflicted on my poor heart, trusting him with my entire being, defying everyone who had unkind words for him and deciding to turn my back from the wonderful life and the wonderful people I had, I was violently smacked in the head by a terribly massive lie that crushed what remained of my existence. I promised myself that I will never ever allow him back into my life for I only had enough dignity left to get by.

Clutching the last piece of sanity in my shaken hands, I went on. Thank God for my bestfriend who was there to remind me again that I was something special. It didn’t stop me from crying myself to sleep every night and having nightmares, but at least I was healing. And so I thought.

A waste of time. It only took him a few words of flattery, an explanation (which potentially should not have worked for a smart girl like me) which was a couple of months too late, his knees on the ground and a couple tears from his beautiful eyes and I was back to March 12, 2007 all over again. It became the longest year of my life. Forgiveness, understanding without question and the road to self-destruction was the theme for that year in our relationship. He took me through a roller coaster of realities that I could not even fathom existed. The strong feeling of longing slowly turned into familiarity and then it fell into numbness. As if there was nothing he could throw at me that I could not handle anymore.

I eventually learned to let him go and move on without him by the first quarter of next year. My Wednesday prayers to the Mother of Perpetual Help in Baclaran Church finally were answered. I packed up my bags and walked as far away from him as possible. I didn't answer texts nor calls from him or anyone connected to him. I had at the snap of a finger, just stopped. No goodbyes. I just stopped. I received an email from him recently (after more than a year of moving on) and I had to pause and feel my heart after reading. My heart did not fail me, it no longer remembers the love I had for him before. In my mind, I can still see every single detail of the love quite clearly and I shelved them into the part of my life that was labeled ‘Memories’. I made a copy of parts of it too and shelved it into ‘Lessons’.

Now that I know that there really is a fine line between love and a waste of time, I’m looking forward to fall in love again and be in a relationship that would actually be good for me and the people I love so dearly. It feels so good to be happy the way I am now. Like my bestfriend Dazl says, no one else should complete you but yourself. The happiness and content that I am feeling right now must follow through or even be greater when I find the one that the universe had intended for me.  I will always be Ruth, I have always been and I don’t intend to change that about me. And I will love again, but I promised myself that next time, I will not forget to breathe.

Note to the people who said "Sayang naman kayo.." (I get a lot of this. A lot of people who knew him, liked him a whole lot.): It was love and it wasn't 'sayang'. It served its purpose.



***This piece of my soul is dedicated to my bestfriend Dazl who patiently (the impatient person that she is) and relentlessly endured and supported me through this roller coaster ride. I love you and I thank the universe for conspiring to make our great friendship possible.***