durr...

and the winner is...



i have no idea what the award is, but i'm sure the tricycle and its driver, hidden underneath all the children, deserves an award for something.

go figure.

the one about how things will never be the same again.

i'd give you a rundown, but instead, i'll just invite you to read the previous three posts. they look long, but they read short. really.

i had resolved to not make contact with her for the remaining week before she left for her out-of-country work assignment. after our 4 weeks of her healthy ignoring of me, followed by a week of trying to get things right again, only to have one more night of confusion, it had tired me out, and i was assuming it was the same for her. here i was, insisting to see her, when she obviously didn't want to anymore.

but, stupid that i am, i sent her one last SMS. a polite, generic one, just wishing her the best, and hoping that she do well and to take care of herself while she was away. and by that time, i wasn't remotely considering she'd reply. i had been ignored once too many times, and probably all the more so knowing she was preparing for so many things the night before she was leaving. so i sent the message, with a unnormal detachment. the giddy tugging of emotions you feel when you send a message and eagerly anticipate its reply was already gone. and so i curled myself into bed and

'beeeep!'

uh-oh.

and so i read her message.

'i know i have so many things to explain to you about what happened to us. i will, if you're still there when i get back... remember the day i told that i love you, i mean it, up until now, and always. take care.'

and then i fell asleep.

it was the day after when i was really bummed out, trying to make sense of what she wrote. the hell?! after ignoring me for weeks? if i hadn't even texted some crappy generic message, would she have even told me so?

and clarity came to me when i told one of my closest friends about it. and what was explained to me was something that i knew was a possibility, but refused to accept: that all this time, through all the calls she didn't pick up, all the SMS messages she didn't answer, she decided to do it because, that way, it'd be easier on her emotions to leave. that, because she needed to go, she didn't want the weight of leaving something behind. she likely gave in when i sent her the CD (and yes, the cookies), gave us a week to talk, then decided to be hard-hearted again when i asked her out one last time. she hadn't counted on the cabasa, i'm sure, and maybe she was trying to reach out or tell me something that last time she called. but i also hadn't counted on being so numb by then, so frustrated at the confusion caused by our own doing.

the week after she had left, i made a promise to myself to decide whether to 'still be there' when she got back. i did not want her to be somewhere far away, thinking about how best to explain what had happened, only to come back to someone who wouldn't be around to listen. and i did not want her to be anxious about whether i would still be there- i wanted her to be secure in knowing that there will be someone to come back to, someone who will wait patiently for what she has to say, and then maybe re-start to move on together. either way, i had to let her know.

so two weeks ago, i decided, and sent her an email. and i told her to not worry; that she doesn't have to explain. i doubt she's seen it yet, and if she has, i also doubt that she'd reply.

half a year is a long way to go, and i know i have to (and will) hold fast to my decision; i cannot stand to put her and myself through more frustration if i renege on the path i've taken- that path separates us from each other.

i figure that i needed to write this all down, to make sure i never forget and make the same mistake again. or maybe i wrote it down to get this out of my system and find clarity, because i never did find it with her. you may come to think, though, that she may not have found it herself. but i'm not worried. from the short time we spent together, i know that while i may have been important to her, she has so many things on her plate, that i'm certain that she will have her peace when it comes to what happened to us. she may already have it now. but i'll never know.

and so my story ends the same way whatever we had ended- with stilted communication, awkward words, and an abrupt ending.

the one about finding someone, only to lose them. part three.
(or, the one about the cabasa.)

i had but one monday left to see the girl i was (semi-)going out with, and i wanted to make sure she would remember what she'd be leaving behind. or so i hoped.

we had dinner once at one of those restaurants that had a small group of serenaders that went from table to table, usually made up of 2 guitarists, an upright bass player, and the (almost invariably a woman) singer. and that night's singer was equipped with her own instrument - a cabasa. my date was fascinated with how it was played, and was almost childlike in burbling out that she wanted one of those, even though neither of us (at the time) knew what the heck it was.

and so, the afternoon of that monday, i decided to buy her a cabasa as a going-away present, to give to her not that night, but, instead on the day before she was to leave. i didn't even know how to wrap it yet, and so i kept it in the car, on the seat next to me.

now, another thing about this girl. i guess she fancies herself a looker, because her drinking buddy group (by the way, who are all married men) never fail to be overprotective to her from others (and once, after one drink too many, from one of their own). her female officemates often complement her on, well, things women often complement each other on. and last valentine's day, she got not one, not two, but three huge bouquets, and oddly enough, all anonymous. one of them was so well-arranged that her boss bought it from her to give to his wife; the others were so big our fair maiden needed help in carrying them to her car. i, for one, was not going to contest her confidence. after all, here i was, buying her a cabasa, of all things.

and we pick up our story on monday night. having been completely ignored on a reasonable request to see each other, with no explanation whatsoever, i decided to find out what she was up to that dinnertime. and so i sent her an SMS asking if we were still good for dinner. and she replied that she was already having one last send-off dinner with her officemates, at a diner across the street from their office. and at that point, i went completely deflated. i knew that even a reply in the negative to my SMS that morning would have taken not one minute to do. one minute that, i guess, she couldn't spare to give. so then i knew that this was a lost cause.

as i wearily entered my car, my gaze held upon the object on the seat. and it occurred to me that the cabasa was pretty much useless now, since we weren't going to see each other that night, and we weren't likely to see each other again. so what was i going to do with it?

when she got back to the office from her dinner, she must've looked at the odd-shaped, yet weirdly familiar object on her desk beside her bag. she probably took it by the handle, gave it a shake, and figured it out (along with the question of who had left it there while she was still having dinner with her officemates). and while i'm sure something stirred inside her, i don't think that alone was enough to make her call me afterwards. i'm pretty sure it had something to do with the sticky-note on the handle that said,

anyone can get you flowers.

by the time she called, i was already having out dinner with my own officemates, which limited our conversation to my telling her to practice it when she was gone, and some moments of awkward silence, as if there were things that we wanted to say, but couldn't, for some reason or another.

we never talked again after those uncomfortable 5 minutes. i resolved i wouldn't call her again, and i guess she had the same mindset. but we still had one more exchange before she left. and it was then that i learned that, even with the cabasa, i had not swayed how she felt about us. and further down the line, i came to the realization that neither had i.

the one about finding someone, only to lose them. part two.

when i learned that the girl i was seeing would be leaving the country for work for 6 months, i decided that i would try to spend as much time as possible together. not working in the city, that meant we only had a few weekends left to spend together. 6, to be exact. and so i told her that that was what i wanted to do.

the first weekend comes along, and i spend 7 hours driving home from my rural assignment, only to find that she didn't want to spend that friday night with me. and not the next day, nor the rest of the weekend, either. and we had a great big row over it. and she refused to talk to me for the next 4 weeks over the argument we had on that first one. i was confused. we had barely been going out for over 3 months, and now we would be apart for twice that time frame, and she didn't want to spend the possibly 12 days we could set aside left?

but i was determined to tell her i wasn't going away easy. and so, from the comfort of my home in the country, i spent the weekend before she left making... tandaradah! a mixtape CD. which is lame, of course. but the labor was in making the cover design for the CD. i'm terrible at arts and crafts and artistic endeavors, but i tried my best to make something that was presentable (which was difficult), and showed that i put some effort into it (which was easy). and had it sent through courier, with a bag of her favorite brand of cookies (i figured, if i couldn't sway her with the CD, i needed insurance).

and it worked. she called me her thanks for the effort and the songs (and the cookies as well, of course), and we started to talk again, though we gingerly sidestepped our disagreement from before. i did not press the issue, and that was possibly another mistake we both made. i, for one, was on her good graces; i did not want to negate that with just a week left before she was leaving. and i thought that, maybe, we could salvage the last 4 weeks, and go out one last time.

so things were looking up. we were burning the lines again, talking about her plans at work, we were talking about meeting up one last time, and it was the last monday before her departure, and i had asked her out. surely she'd say 'yes', right?

wrong. what's worse for me is that, not only did she not say yes or no, and left me hanging, she went out with her local officemates for one last time. which was no big deal, given that she was a lot closer to them, i figured. but they had already had 2 send-off parties, and this would be their second send-off dinner. but we were joking around through SMS just before i asked her out, so i was hoping to at least get any answer. a 'yes' would have been nice, but, at this point, a 'no' would've sufficed already. i was so bummed out over 4 weeks of her ignoring, and i felt that i had played my cards right this last week. where did i slip? what did i do to be so blatantly ignored yet again?

the answer to that came later. at the point where i was expecting no answers anymore, she sent one that, i think, explained a lot. but maybe not enough.

the one about finding someone, only to lose them. part one.

somebody asked me last week, 'is it me, or are you getting leaner, but wider?'

and i was told that i've grown thin, but at the same time, i wasn't as scrawny as i was before. i didn't think that there would be results so soon after starting to do some additional light weight lifting and running.

then again, it's all pointless by now.

i began seeing a former acquaintance around 4 months ago. i hadn't planned on this at all, but an intervention (by an idiot. maybe more on that some other time) led us down the path of a redemption dinner, then another, then a few saturdays together, and then even through sundays, with a mass, a movie, a college entrance exam, and a high school retreat in between (let me establish first that the last two were not hers). in the middle of one of these weekends, she mentioned that she was a little conscious of her weight. and so she asked me, 'if i hit 140 pounds, would you still love me?'

i was thinking, 'girl, you're considering being 140 pounds?'... but said nothing.

two months ago, without telling her, i bought some light weights, and started running consistently again (consistently here meaning more than once a week), with the thought of, 'well, if she wants to be 140 pounds, so be it'. and, at almost the same time, she was told that she was going on a 'developmental assignment' to one of her office's overseas hubs, and would be leaving shortly, to be gone for half a year. and i felt that, heck, not even working in the city anymore meant i had 5-6 weekends left being with her, i should maximize every one of those weekends together with her.

and on the first of those weekends, i found out that she was working with a different philosophy, one which i did not understand then, but eventually did. and we had a big fight. one that lasted, well, 5-6 weeks, give or take. we never spent a weekend together again. by the time she was to leave, we were talking already, but things had, by then, gone irreversibly wrong. and i'll save that for the next post.

i was so set that i had something to work myself for, that it wouldn't matter how chunky she got, and i would show her that it didn't. i wanted so badly for us to stick it out together, and i learned that maybe i wasn't alone in that, but there was a big mess that lay at our feet. while i may lay blame on myself for precipitating this mess, it's hard to regret it, given the circumstances that followed.

and so, i continue to work on those weights and the running. maybe i'll quit before she gets back, maybe i won't. but then again, like i said, it's pretty much without bearing. though it's not fully of my own work, i got what i wanted. that it won't matter anymore even if she does get to 140 pounds.