Letters of Laughter and Longing

I talk about you a lot now. Partly because I am more confident of what I feel for you, partly because what we have has become clearer and clearer to me, partly because I am proud of what we have had and what we have gone through. I talk about you to friends here, in this strange city, which feels like a home where I don’t belong. Friends look forward to meeting you, even if they’ve only heard of you through the stories that I told them about you and me. I wonder if they make you appear more like you to my mind, those stories that I tell. I wonder if it makes you more like what I want you to be. Or maybe, it makes me believe that I know the   real you through those stories.

But I liked that we kept it mostly to ourselves, this secret life of us. It’s not that I’m tired of  being asked by friends how my love life is going. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the occasional banter about things in our relationships that go wrong. I really didn’t plan it to go this way, but I’m really glad that I am not living a relationship bearing other people’s expectations in mind. This is our relationship after all. And whatever they tell me, they will never be in this relationship. This is you and me. This is us.

Seeing you a month ago was a relief and a joy; a relief because I was able to confirm that what we had in those few months before I left was real. It wasn’t a fleeting, passing thing - though I would argue against myself at this point: fleeting doesn’t make it any less real. What I mean to say is, that feeling that I wanted to be with you for as long as I can, that was still there. It lived. Joy, because with that relief came a guarantee of days of honest pleasure being with you, skin, flesh, and bone, and not having to pretend that that trip is the best one I’ve made in my life.

In a few months, you will be here. And I wait for you, looking forward to show you and share with you this life I have been living, so far away from you. When you leave, I will feel a certain longing, yes, but not that kind that pulls me down. It will be a knowing longing that will be tugging on my heart until the day when I come back to live that secret life of us with you.

Two months. Two months to go, I’ll be home. Or what I call home - Manila. But this city - Melbourne, has been somewhat of a home for me as well. It has nurtured me in ways that Manila hasn’t. It’s not a comparison between the two: there are things that you can only find in Manila and there are things that only Melbourne can offer. At the end of this temporary stationnement in Melbourne, I foresee a bittersweet parting. Looking forward to be home “for good” yet looking back with nostalgia at the things that I will leave behind.

A place is built by the memories that have been created by people who lived in it. And in Melbourne there has certainly been a lot of memories. Good ones or bad ones, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that those memories were testament that I lived in this city. I asked a traveler visiting Melbourne where he lived and he told me: “Where do I live? I live here. I live now.” Those were the wisest words that I have heard in a long time.

I guess I’ve reached a point where Melbourne has ceased to become a tourist spot and has started to become home. I have built routines, wondering in streets instead of wandering through them, made friends, saw the city in all its ugliness, slept in all day knowing that it will not go away. Something I have been doing for quite some time in Manila.

When I come home, I will be a tourist wearing rose-coloured glasses. For a few weeks, I will look at Manila not as one of its jaded residents but a traveler in search of its hidden treasures, for a change. It will involve a lot of searching but I’m sure I will not search in vain. After all, Manila is where my heart is, in every sense of that statement.

That includes the sense that I left my heart in Manila. Yes, Melbourne is probably one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in terms of gorgeous men per square kilometer, but there is something that I want that only one boy living in Manila can offer. What that something is, I don’t have a name for it yet. Maybe, I will found out when I come home.

Agreed! Isn’t it great that we have two equally gorgeous goalies?!

kriztelmae:

Why am i only discovering Roland Muller now? Oh thats right cause i haven’t been following the Azkals these past few months. Oh good Lord he’s gorgeous! 

It seems like i have a thing for Goalkeepers <3 Neil Etheridge & Roland Muller!

“Any luck with dating?” you asked.

And I said, I’m mostly looking for friends and maybe a bit of fun. I’m not here for the long run and I’m not really looking for anything serious. Of course, I didn’t tell you that there was someone back home. That would completely make you not want to see me anymore. I somehow would need to keep you interested if I wanted to make this potential friendship work. I guess even if I have to keep things from you at first. I need you to be emotionally attached. Sometimes, you have to be selfish.

You then told me a love story. About a boy who at the age of 18 met someone in a faraway place called Israel (which I call Palestine) where you were from. This someone said something like the same thing that I just said, that he’d be leaving in nine months. But that didn’t mean anything for you and you persevered and you made it work for nine months. Nine magical months. Like a surrogate womb bringing an infant child from conception to birth and then having the child taken away before you could even nurse it, he left you. He left and he brought his heart with you to London. For six months you tried to make it work but still, it fell apart. But the point, you said, is that you tried.

And then I told you a love story. About another boy, who, for three years gave up his own dreams in order to stay in relationship and live a life tied to someone who would eventually leave. I wanted to study in Europe but postponed it because I didn’t want to lose the love that I worked hard for. There was a plan. We will wait for this and then we will move there and then you will do this and I will do that and we will live the life that we have always wanted for ourselves. Until he gave up. And I was left with dreams that were ours but was not mine. And suddenly it wasn’t as desirable as I have seen it before. Suddenly I didn’t know what to do with my life. So I started dreaming for myself again and started doing things for myself that I will enjoy at my own time and under my own terms and I vowed to myself that whatever goals I have, I will not let anyone tie me down while I pursue them. Again, sometimes, you have to be selfish.

We can’t have everything. I choose this. To pursue my dreams and do what I want to do. I want this for myself.

You said that no dream is too big to give up or sacrifice if it’s for the sake of love. I just thought to myself that maybe you’re just a tad too young to know for sure.

We talked about avocados and soy lattes and peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches and watching movies by your lonesome. I finished my pint of ale and you downed your third glass of shandy (it’s 75% Sprite - that’s cheating). You dropped me off at my apartment and we said our goodbyes and good nights.

This morning I sent a message to let you know that avocados don’t work as well with soy milk as it does with vanilla ice cream and I received no reply. Maybe our goodbyes and good nights were the last of it. But it was certainly a most memorable and most spontaneous Monday night.

Four months ago, I landed at Tullamarine Airport, baggage in tow. Adelaide and Hong Kong provided brief respites during the long flight from Manila to Melbourne. Four months. Yes, it’s only been four months, how much I have changed. Yes, it’s already been four months, how little I’ve achieved.

What am I to achieve, exactly? I don’t know. Is becoming achieving in itself? I have become this person that I am more at peace with, someone I am more proud of, someone wiser, someone who doesn’t know more but someone who knows that not everything can be known and is at peace with it. Better? I wouldn’t say so. It is the same self. And the self can only be as good as it can be at the point in time where it existed. As I said last night over a pint of Fat Yak, “It was not the best decision of my life, but it’s the best decision that I can make at the time,” (pertaining to something completely unrelated but completely relevant).

I have asked myself if it matters to know more people or to know people more. I realised that in the 26 years and two months that I have been, before I came here, I counted my friends. But now I have started to realise that I should build friendships that count instead. I will no longer concede my beliefs and principles for the sake of gaining or keeping friends and keep those who will “merrily roll along” with every blasphemy and platitude that comes out of my mouth.

I realised that the world is made up of artificial hierarchies that we have been unwittingly supporting and that we should tear down at all cost to the ones on top and at no cost to the ones below. I realised that belongingness can both be empowering and marginalising and should be practiced only when absolutely and humanly necessary, in ways that don’t harm. I realised that letting go is a greater art than holding on.

I don’t know what will happen in the next fourteen months that I’ll be here, tied to this imaginary space, subscribed to the geographic notion of this city. I feel like I belong here and at the same time I don’t want to belong. I have let go of it even before I have decided to hold on. But I will have to see.