gefuuhle

[gefuuhle]

Hello love,

By the time you read this, you’ve already gone: as you’re supposed to, as is what’s good for you. Penning down my feelings has been such a struggle, perhaps because there are so many things I feel that I must say but there are too little words in my vocabulary to encompass them. Writing this, I am both filled with immense longing and relief. Where the longing comes from is apparent and needs no explanation. The relief, however, comes from knowing that you have left places that that no longer bring you any sort of happiness. You’ve always loved the beaches and your current proximity to them hopefully provides you a sense of comfort. May the arms of the ocean help calm your restlessness.

To say that the last few weeks have been extremely difficult is an understatement, yet, try as I might to find words that approximate how it’s been for you is both careless and impossible. I could never come to understand the amount of pain you’ve gone through, and, are still going through nor do I attempt to. I just want to let you know that I’m always going to be willing to listen to you whenever you need somebody. Sometimes there is just so much iniquitousness in the world, incessantly unfolding, one after the other, no matter how much we bid them to stop and it leaves us bursting at the seams with anger before it we’re left heavy and leaden, and wanting to badly to scream at the unfairness of it all. You’re justified to be angry and tired given what you’ve gone through love. I could never come to understand how you feel, because, like you said, those are experiences that are merely conceptual to me. And you’re correct to point out that I’m no reliable authority when it comes to struggle as, time and time again, life hasn’t been all that unfair to me. Yet. Here is where the age disparity between us becomes apparent I guess; at 23, I don’t think I have room to make monumental failures because nobody really expects anything from me at this point nor is it a time for me to make life-changing decisions. When the time comes that I do fail, I honestly don’t think I’ll handle it well. In reality, when my academic career comes to a point where I feel like I am poised to fail, I would probably quit while I’m ahead. I’ve never really handled failure all that well; my grandeur self-image coupled with my chronic imposter syndrome demands that I succeed in everything. When the rug gets pulled out under my feet, I know I’m going to legitimately break. I’ve not even experienced anything too severe yet here I am already jaded beyond compare. I hope the comparison serves to strengthen the point I’m trying to make; that mistakes and failures aren’t easy things to handle, more so handle with as much kindness for the world as you have. Granted, life given you so many curve balls and has handed you quite a difficult lot, yet, you’ve overcome every single one of them with a kind heart. If you feel bitter about life right now, I think you have every right to be. You’re only human and kindness takes its toll on each of us when all we keep doing is giving it away.

With that in mind, it makes sense to me why you have the need to be alone. To be alone not only means time for ourselves, but it also means that we draw ourselves away from all the people and the places that keep taking so much from us. I can’t imagine the difficulty of being a giver in a place where everyone and everything surrounds you just takes and takes and takes. And I’m sorry if I’ve been one of those people. I understand why you want to draw away even from me. My criticism of your current relationship now seems quite hypocritical; I myself am guilty of threatening to jump ship the moment I feel like I should. Being vocal about my own self-preservation has taken its toll on you as well, no matter how much you’ve denied it in the past. In my moments of weakness, I’ve wrongly shifted the burden of my happiness to you, leeching away your light to cover up my dark jadedness. I can’t stress how sorry I am for hurting you love, and I know that no amount of apologies could ever undo the damage I’ve inflicted. I no longer want to be a love that demands, or a love that takes, because that’s the only love you’ve ever known for most of your life. I think the only kind of love that you have room for right now is a quiet, constant love that doesn’t consume you, but instead respects the boundaries and spaces you’re learning to build for yourself. A love that doesn’t take but instead gives; gives you the freedom and time you need to be alone. And that’s all the love I want to give you.

Before you think this is an act of martyrdom that’s going to leave me empty in the end, let me tell you how it’s not. At this point in my life, I think it’s important that I learn to be independent. I’ve paraded the trope of independent womanhood in my short years of employment, but I confess there is very little I know about what that means. For the longest time, I’ve always had someone to wipe away my tears, or someone to chew at on days when I feel like the world’s been horrible. In hindsight, I don’t regret it; that vulnerability was what precisely led us to each other. The first night I asked you to hold me (platonically) was a by-product of that inability to take care of myself. And thank you for that, and for every moment that you’ve kept me together on my worst days. I’ve realized only in your absence that it should be a responsibility that I alone should bear. Otherwise, I will never be a healthy love to you or to anyone for that matter. Your absence from my life, in that sense, hits two birds with one stone; in the time it takes for you find your peace of mind and it also gives me the opportunity to make choices that would bring me closer to the person I’ve always wanted to become. I can only do that in your absence. Hopefully, by the time you’re ready, I can be the love that you need; a love that doesn’t lash out at you or drains you, but a love where you can rest your worries after a long, tiring day.

In truth, I think you’re handling this better than most people. Most people would just whine about how unfair life is to them without really doing anything about it. But not you. Bravery, I’ve come to realize, appears in a multitude of faces; that means that sometimes, it’s not as straightforward as fighting all your battles whenever you can. Contrary to popular belief, leaving can be the bravest thing you’ll ever do. Even if things are awful right now, the benefit is that at least there is some certainty to things. That’s probably why people cling on to their nows even if the now constantly drains them. Leaving means you’re hurtling head first into an unknown, and that perhaps is the most courageous thing to do love. Especially for people like me, who would give anything to have my feet glued firmly to the ground. Bravery also comes in the face of acceptance; acceptance that we can’t change everything we want to, when we want to. Coupled with this is a resignation to how things are going to unfold. As you come to ebb and flow with what life throws at you, I hope you find the peace you’ve been looking for. It might not come in the form you want it to, such as with most things in life, but it will come love. It’s just a matter of time. I have faith in you. And I know in the deepest recesses of my heart that it is not misplaced. Your kindness in the face of everything that life has thrown at you is proof enough. All I need know is to have faith in myself that I can do everything I have to in your absence.

The only constant thing that I know now is that I will always love you. I’ve read somewhere that the quality of relationships is not measured by the time we’ve been in them, but the impact they’ve had on us. It rings true for us; I think our brief time together has changed us in so many profoundly beautiful ways, love. You might say that I’m still young and that I’ll find someone better, but I highly doubt that. Rationally speaking, my investment on my own self growth leaves little to no space for anyone to enter my life anytime in the near future. Additionally, I have no time to invest in a budding romance with a stranger in the years of my doctorate degree. And I know that you’re my right person, as you know I am your right person; it just so happens that we met under the wrong circumstances. I hope you realize how much we already love each other even when every lick of sense screams at us that we shouldn’t. I think that itself is a feat worth celebrating. What more if circumstances weren’t all that wrong? I wouldn’t call our time apart as a waiting period; we must give ourselves more justice than that. It’s our period of individual growth. That might seem ironic to you right now, but it hopefully, one day it will sense somehow. Life is suffocating to you only because you’ve long outgrown those tiny, toxic spaces that were once so familiar to you.

In your time alone, don’t ever feel like you’re obliged to do anything for me at the expense of yourself. I don’t demand anything from you; not simple hello’s, or forced conversations, or mandatory messages updating me about how you are. Please don’t ever reach out to me because you feel like you have to. Your motivation shouldn’t be from an assumed responsibility but should be borne out of a genuine desire to talk to me. See me if you want to and only under those circumstances. I’ll leave you the occasional love letter (which you will find here) and the occasional short voice mail, but I promise to respect your boundaries. I’m not going to force myself into your life when we both know there’s no room for me there right now. I’ve come to terms with the fact that being together is not the best thing for us right now, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to walk away from us or that I’m going to stop loving you. Don’t worry about how I’m going to receive the person you’ve become; once you feel like you’re ready, I’d be happy to get to know you all over again, and to love each and every version of you that comes along (as hard as it is to believe that right now), as you have loved me in my all of my worst versions and my most volatile moments (most of which you’ve already been intimately acquainted with time and time again). All you have to do is to keep your end of the deal and find me when you’re ready.

For now, I will look back at the catalogue of memories of you I’ve neatly kept. On cold mornings when there is a deep ache in my rib cage, I will remember your sleepy morning face and how you’d kiss me in the mouth after murmuring a quiet good morning. In vain attempts to ward away the creeping loneliness, I will remember how it felt like to be enveloped in your warmth as I inhale that fresh rainwater scent you carry so well. I will remember how good it feels to just hold your hand on the worst of days and the peace that comes from resting my head on your chest. The sound of your laugh will never fade from my memory, as will the warmth of all your sweet kisses and the feel of holding you as my little spoon (despite how big of a panda you are). And on the rare nights when I ache with physical need (they come very rarely now that you’re gone and I’m back to being my plant self), I will remember how well your fingers danced on my skin, how your kisses feel running up and down the length of my spine. I will remember that adorable facial expression you make whenever I bring you to the heights of pleasure and that look in your eyes every time we’d make love to each other. Your gaze, in all forms of intimacy, says so much about how you feel, and I will sincerely miss the quiet moments spent just getting lost in those eyes of yours. Most of all, I will remember you in the smallest of details; in the color pink because you always order everything in that yucky strawberry flavor, in the last slice of carrot walnut cake that you would definitely fight me for, in that everything cheese place because you hate cheese with a passion, in fruit flies because you know, your fetish, in all the beautiful things and places that I know for a fact you’ll love. Those are just to mention a few because if I went on about all of them, you’ll honestly never hear the end of it. Mom’s cooking is never going to be the same too, especially whenever she’d cook spaghetti. Alongside these good things, however, I’ll also remember the bad; all those fights and messy days where we spat shrapnel at each other and bruised each other with painful honesty. All those late nights spent fighting, and all those times when the ground crumbled under our feet as the weight of everything we feel comes crashing down on us. I need to always remember them together; the pain reminds me that this is all real. That we’re not in love with ideal versions of each other or there is this abstract idea of a perfect romance that is compelling us to fight for it. The pain we’ve gone through reminds me that this is all very real. That, the love that I continue to choose is not perfect (as nothing real ever is) but has nonetheless filled me with an indescribable happiness that I would have never known without it; that I would have never known without you. You gave me a lifetime’s worth of love in the span of 5 months and you’ve profoundly expanded my capacity to love beyond what I thought I was capable of. And for another chance at that happiness, I’d be willing to weather all the coming storms, no matter how long they last.

In sum (if you skipped to the ending because it was dragging at some point), I love you and in doing so, I respect your need for space for yourself. You don’t have to be selfless all the time, even in this relationship. You need to learn to be selfish too. And I will love you, despite the distance and despite how badly you think I will not love other versions of you. You don’t always need to be the best version of yourself for me, and I promise I’ll do my best to be your safe place. If I can’t be all those things, then I don’t deserve to love you at all. Despite you being far away, know that you’ll always be with me. I carry your heart in mine, always and always and always.

See you later, my darling panda. Remember that I am yours; mind, body, and soul. Circumstances won’t ever change that.

I love you so, so much. I love you always.

Yours forever, Gato

P.S. Please be kind to mama while you’re there.

[gefuuhle]

when Lemony Snicket wrote “I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you everyday” that hurt me

[gefuuhle]

Hello love,

I miss you in every single way; the way your quiet staring breaks into an uncontrollable smile, the way you’d hold my hand, and the way that you feel—holding me, kissing me, and making love to me. I miss you with such an intensity that I don’t have the language for. Most of the things you make me feel always escape my wide vocabulary; there’s so much intensity in loving, longing, smiling, and hurting. On nights when I am arrested by this intensity, I just let myself succumb to it. Tonight is one of those nights' love. So much has happened today and so much more energy and thought have gone into every single one of those events. I always find myself reassessing our relationship, not in the sense of thinking about whether to keep going or to move on, but in the sense of how to move forward from the mounting challenges we find ourselves in. At some point, along with coming to accept the intensity of everything I feel for you, I’ve also come to realize that this is something I’m willing to pour my everything into. Maybe it’s because I naively feel like if I work for it hard enough and if I give it my all it’s going to work out. I know life doesn’t work that way but I can’t help but wish it would. On the way home, I’ve been contemplating about how hard the next few months are going to be for us, but how worth it the future will be. I can’t help but feel like we really do work perfectly love, it’s just that the world is committed to making it as difficult as it can for us because we’re just too perfect for each other. Until now, after sobering up from another fit of tears, I still firmly believe that. I trust that you love me with a proximate intensity. Here I use the term proximate because I would never fully be able to grasp how much you feel for me. All I know is that you feel for me very, very much. Even despite your absence, I know that you do. It’s just that what you’re going through has nothing to do with me, and, more so, how you feel about it has absolutely nothing to do with me.

It is only with constant reassessment that I realize these things; too often I allow myself to be consumed by my own feelings, inducing myself with a blindness to truth. My feelings are valid, but it doesn’t mean that they’re true all the time. With you I’m learning to accept that. The truth is, regardless of how this setup makes me feel, you love me in the most honest way possible. It’s just that love is not a panacea for past mistakes and personal issues. The past few weeks have been so incredibly hard darling, but they are absolutely necessary for both of us, not just as a couple, but also as individuals. For us to develop the most nurturing relationship possible, we must first learn to nurture ourselves. I know I am overly attached. Communication, intimacy, and loving come very easy to me. Too easy, in fact, that I often undermine how daunting it is for most people; you included, if not the most. I know talking about how you feel is never an easy thing with you love. For most of your life, you had to put yourself and your feelings aside in favor of other people, never being able to verbalize how you truly feel because you care about them too much. I’m constantly amazed at how bottling up all that pain has not made you any less kind. To cope with things, I read and listened to a couple of things about attachment styles, and you seem to fit the avoidant type, and I, the anxious type. Both are extreme poles on either ends of the secure attachment type. Avoidant types are the types to rarely speak about themselves or share intimate parts of themselves to their significant others, and this is a manifestation of their fears of being abandoned or left behind. In your case, that is also compounded with the incessant need to avoid burdening the other person. The anxious type, on the other hand, are often in need of intimacy and closeness and panic at the first sign of distance. Understanding it in this light, however stereotypical it may be, makes a lot of sense to me. I come off as needy because I am very unrelenting when it comes to issues. I always want to settle them as soon as possible, in the most honest of ways. In my book, honesty is the best way to fix things, but I neglect to remember that for some people it takes time and it doesn’t come as easy. With you, I’m learning to be patient with these things. Forgive me if I err sometimes love. I promise I do try my best, much in the same way that you try to tell me how you feel. It just takes time as well. And however strongly I feel anger, sadness, and disappointment, I must constantly remind myself that these things take time. Giving it my all doesn’t just mean that I fully come to accept the emotional consequences that come at the price of loving, but it also means learning to pick myself up in the aftermath and trust that things take time.

We cannot suddenly overcome our issues overnight; I can’t overcome my need for convenient relationships and set-ups in a week, in the same way that you can’t overcome over a decade’s worth of trauma in a month. You’re trying your best love, but I know that also means resting when you should. I know that in your absence, I have to learn to do the same. I recognize that you do need to take time off from things. That is very well-deserved. But absolutely avoiding things all-together is not a healthy way to deal with things. I know that you know that, and I know that on days when you have the energy, you do try to do that. It’s just that the past few days hasn’t been one of those good days. Perhaps the fear comes from the idea that you will always continue to be avoidant once all said and done, although I’m very happy that you’re willing to talk about them. I can see how much you try with your willingness to negotiate, and your constant efforts to meet me half-way. I appreciate you so much more for that.

When things get too daunting, I find that it is always important to celebrate little victories, which I hope I would get to do with you soon love. Thank you for always taking the time to talk to me, even about hard things love. I’m always here when you need me. I’ll take you to the beach soon, to celebrate you making it through a very very rough patch. I love you so very much.

With all my love, always, Gato

[gefuuhle]

I’m yours, my love. All of me is yours. Always.

[gefuuhle]

Hello love,

This is probably the beginning of a series of letters that I will never send to you. The idea of penning down my feelings instead of saying them stems from my own realization of my own demanding and needy nature. Earlier, I asked my marshmallow about whether I was a demanding person. I trusted his opinion and his honesty; we’ve been together for almost 6 years now and I think in this respect, he would be the best authority to ask. I think the answer would be obvious by now, and it is one that I’ve always known: I can be a demanding person, but not in a typical sense. By this he meant that I was not one to demand things that were commonly expected from my gender. I never asked for expensive dates, thoughtful gifts, or grand gestures. My typical demands would fall along the lines of requiring affection and he recalled that I often used to cry whenever he’d leave me. My own volatile and emotive nature has always been something I’ve had difficulty accepting. Even now, as I try my very best to grow out of habits and attitudes that do not serve me anymore, it’s still something that I have difficulty admitting. Being on the receiving end of it, however, sounds like a significantly more daunting task. Hence these letters. There are some days when I just want to pour my heart out because all my feelings are threatening to overwhelm me, but it can be so difficult sometimes because of the nature of our relationship. I’m not one to go into the details of it, and you’re sometimes off fighting your own demons. Writing them, at least, allows me to feel but at the same time, it mitigates the harm and pressure on your end. So these letters, I think, are a win-win situation for us.

Today was a particularly bad day. We ended yesterday on quite an aggressive note, since both of us are very emotionally charged, and today I decided that I would do my best not to open my inboxes. All the while, I was expecting to hear from you though. And then I saw you in one of your classrooms. I didn’t know if you saw me, but I swore we made a split second eye contact before I looked away. It was difficult; I wanted to see you, but upon doing so, my chest threatened to burst with at least a week’s worth of pent up emotions -- rage being at the forefront of it all. I was seething, to be honest. Seething perhaps an understatement of how angry I was. I think enraged would be a much accurate term. There were multiple times during the day when I thought about cutting you off for a while, or pouring all my anger out at you in the form of profanities followed by a flood of tears. But I tempered myself by thinking about how you don’t deserve any of that. In the days that led up to our fight, I had already felt that something was off and I was just waiting for you to say it. Knowing you, however, you wouldn’t. I wanted to delete everything that reminded me about you because I felt like I was at the tipping point. In my head, I kept repeating how this isn’t worth it, that I didn’t deserve this at all, and I’m smart and I know better than to stay. After my initial rage calmed down, however, I was overcome with grief but the mantras still stayed. I didn’t deserve this. I absolutely did not deserve receiving the short end of the stick every time, and even though I believe you every time you told me you loved me most and that you’d always choose me, it isn’t enough to compensate for all the heartache. I thought it was only fair that you had to deal with my reactions. This was a commitment and that meant whether we had good days or bad days, we’d do our best to make sure to do everything we can to fix things. On days like these, I feel like I’m an outsider, that I’m groping in the dark because you purposively left me there. And I think that’s what hurts the most. 

Last week, in a fit of rage, you told me that I “expected too much” from you. The thought has never left me, and has really been there ever since the beginning. I could never really begin to imagine what you’re going through and often times I feel like I’m nothing but impatient. Wounds don’t heal overnight and you’re littered with decades-old scars; I know I have to be gentle. I’m trying love. I’m really trying my best. I constantly think about whether I’m not mature enough to handle my own feelings, but at the same time, I’m torn between believing that and that they’re justified. Oftentimes, despite my best intentions to just be as honest as I can to you, I wound you with my sharp tongue. It’s so difficult to have all these feelings and not be able to say them love, but at the same time I have to accept that there is the right time to say them. This need for honesty springs from an inherent distrust; even though I know it isn’t reasonable, I can’t help but think that when you hide things from me it’s going to snowball on you cheating on me at some point. In the same manner, I also distrust myself. When circumstances fail us -- and circumstances fail us too often -- honesty and communication are the only avenues we have to recover from those disappointments and move forward. 

I’m sorry if I often overwhelm you as well, and if I am needy and too much. In my lowest moments, when I’m too jaded to have faith in us anymore, I often think that I’ll be able to find a person that wouldn’t tell me I was too much. That my muchness wasn’t an overwhelming burden to them. That, such a person might not be my great love (because one thing I know for sure is that you’re the greatest love I’ll have in this lifetime), but at least that person will be my right love. But most days I try to hold on to the hope that we’ll be together and happy one day. In the wise words of Florence Welsh, “it’s always darkest before the dawn.” I’ve broken down into tears in several instances today; in some crying fits I thought I wouldn’t have it in me to cry some more but I manage to amaze myself by crying even more. During these immense lows, I naively hope that these are the darkest moments, but I know that this is just the beginning of a very deep downward spiral. All I ask is that you let me hold your hand the entire way down.

I love you always.