When The Magic in Promises Vanish

SUNDAY

There are so many magical things about love --some that I didn't know about before I experienced it myself or would've expected for that matter, but I will definitely say that one of the most magical things about it is the firsts. Honestly, at one point I was thinking that we were at a point in our relationship that we barely haw anymore of those. We've done so much together in the times that we had that it almost seemed there was nothing more that we could do. We would repeat it over and over again, of course, happily, but I'm starting to rethink that mindset.

I don't think firsts in love ever stop. We live in a gigantic world with so many opportunities as long as we choose to seek them, and we could've had so much more to do. Why would I bring this up like this? Well, when I go back to the the very beginning of us, the shyness we had, the risks we took, the leaps that paid of to the max, I know that there's a form of all of those that we haven't felt yet. Love is versatile and diverse, and everything that comes along with it is too.

For instance, let's bring us back to a month of knowing each other. We were good acquaintances to the extent that most people who knew us would probably call us friends. When this thought started to settle on me there was a period of time that I knew something about us was different. I just didn't know how yet. I can still remember how I looked back on the first times we met and several things that went through my head. I set my eyes on you in a way I've never set my eyes on anyone ever in my life.

I noticed things about you that I don't think you've even noticed about yourself. I saw how you were a person of endurance that could rub off on me and be exactly what I needed. People might look at you and think you're too delicate and fragile to ever get yourself into any big troubles, but when I looked at you, I saw how your lungs inhaled and exhaled with every bit of power you owned. I saw that you would never let anything get to you. That your body was loyal to you, to keep you trudging forward no matter what it had to do.

You had a tendency of running your tongue over your lips on every other word, especially when we were surrounded by a crowd that we didn't knew. I learned that that was your habit for that the timid side of you brought out, and the longer my eye caught onto it, I was surprised. Surprised that you never once bit it accidentally, and surprised that I was allowing myself spend so much time looking at your lips.

You appeared to be everything that I wasn't and everything that nobody could be, even remotely. A contradiction to the insanity of humanity, an impossible to the standards of romance, and a dream that was as likely to become reality as finding Santa on Christmas Eve with a bunch of reindeer. Suddenly, I understood. It hit me right then that this is why I've been told to keep my dreams in the world of fiction it is. That's why my approach on you for a time too long was to be cautious, more cautious, and even more cautious multiplied by the highest degree.

But somewhere along that journey I fell in love with you anyway. I didn't mean to. Believe me when I say it was an accident, and trust me when I say that you were too angelic in this world that it was just bound to happen eventually regardless of what I did. I can't look back and pinpoint an exact moment that everything simply fell into place, but soon enough it did, before I could realize it was.

On one random Saturday afternoon when you were drinking a cup of tea beneath the hut on the ocean side, your nose buried in a book, I felt it. Something fire-y and explode-y. I knew that from the trip to your porch to the green of nature, an out-of-this-world emotion popped out in the middle of it, yet I said nothing. Not a single word. I was still trying to wrap my head around it myself.

For a while, "wrapping my head around it" meant pretending it didn't happen. It meant trying to fool myself into forgetting about it as if it never happened. I told myself tomorrow I'd go on with my normal routine. My studies, my work, my hobbies, my many other passions that didn't consist of you. If I'm going to be truthful, I didn't think that the day would come I would fall in love. I've seen so much crap go on that I was certain that that was a fragment of an imaginary place with Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks.

I don't want to say it, but I was a wuss for that. Afraid of falling. Afraid of getting hurt. Especially considering that I wasn't going to be given a warning or a quick trailer of what I would be getting myself into, I was tolerating the life I already had. One with a neutral ending, and no possibility of an unhappy one. The thing is, it's that mindset that sucks the quality out of life.

We spend too long tolerating our life instead of getting what we really want.

And I think that's what I did for a while. I told myself that I wasn't in love, but that I had to avoid you at all costs. It just didn't come easily, because seeing you in person, throwing in the effort of understanding your steps and your life so I could walk in the other direction wasn't going to be enough. In my head, I was bent over backwards to you. In my head, I couldn't avoid you at all.

In reality, it was only for so long. Cutting around the long way and ducking behind entrances near city doorways, the time came we were brought back together like destiny, that I never once put my trust in was rooting for us.

You weren't like me either. You were using your energy to be around me. Whatever it was that you were feeling --or weren't feeling at the time, you were always around. It started out as the person in the seat next to me, nothing more than or less than that, but it became more than that overtime.

You were the one offering your shoulder when I was tired or when I was having an off-day. Again and again in fact, after I denied it the first times as a tempting punishment that came with not putting up a shield to my heart. You were the one that somehow made the stars talk to me and made me realize how tiny I am in this world, how vulnerable I am and in need of someone at least once. You were the one whose hugs began as as terrifying thing that I thought I had to resist, but that ended as the most comforting thing that I've ever known. You were the one that finally made me wonder what God has in store for me. If that's how it worked at all, if this was a test I was supposed to run from or an answer I was supposed to be embracing.

And one night, I decided after what you've done for me, you deserved to see the realest, deepest, thorough version of me. I made up my mind that if you were here for me after I was that genuine and raw, then I couldn't possibly let us lessen back into zero. I had to make something of this. I didn't give you warning. I didn't prepare you for what I was thinking of. I didn't build up to it. Instead, I looked you right in the eye as hard as it was, and I said two words.

"I'm terrified."

You were silent for a minute. You didn't say a word, but your expression did. You were intrigued, curious, and I was concerned that this was going to go down the drain as fast as the words left my lips like a faucet, but I was also afraid that it was going to go too smoothly than I'd be able to catch up with. Either way, I was in, and there was no going back. I had to take the answer for what it was. I had to accept wherever this brought me to.

"What? What are you terrified about?" You had said.

"Loving you." It came out bluntly. More bluntly than I thought it would. The close grip we had on each other that I didn't take note of because of how right it felt, shouted at me in the empty air. You had tensed up, and I was trembling already expecting a rejection. I was ready for you to say that we weren't meant to be, that it couldn't work, the painful truth that I wasn't enough for you, and maybe on top of that, a slap on the face so hard the red would leave an imprint of your hand. When that doesn't come as soon as anticipated, and I'm drowning myself in the idea that your expression may lie but your body language couldn't, I attempt to use words to diffuse the tension the slightest bit. "I love you. I said it. I love you, but it can't be, can it? Even if there is anything there on your side, it would probably fall apart. This kind of thing always ends."

"Why would you say that?" You smiled, a wide smile that couldn't be faked, and my heart tripled in speeds as I saw the wrinkles at your eyes. You laughed briefly and kindly, and it echoes within your body too, I swear I could hear it. The world is coming into color rather than black and white. I'm giving myself the green light to dream like I thought I wouldn't, and with your subtle permission I didn't jump up with regrets. Not when you said, "sure. Sure it could end. Of course it could, but what if it doesn't? What if we last? What if everything falls into place? What if everything works out? That is possible, isn't it? Did you forget about that part? The good part? The good that could come from it?"

That was it. I got everything I thought that I couldn't.

I got love. Your love.

How could that innocent, pure us somehow bring us here?

It feels like everything happened overnight.

Can we kiss like we did then? Can we feel that right just one more time, darling? Can we go back to the time before everything went wrong?

The only reason I believed in love in this world is because of the way I've loved, but what's happening to it?

MONDAY

I've always hated the concept of a guilty pleasure and you know that better than anyone ever has. When I mentioned this to people, I'd get the same reaction time and time again. I'd hear something along the lines of there being something we like to do, but that we don't hold to high regard or something we do that we aren't exactly proud of. It's understandable to feel that way. My goodness, seriously it is, but I've just believed that if there's something that we like and it's not hurting anyone, then we shouldn't hold it to any regard. There shouldn't be anyone's viewpoint that affected us from doing what we liked to do.

And you thought the same.

It started out as a simple, little, harmless "addiction", if you could call it that. We were connected over our love for sweet things. In a culture where they tended to put cheese on desserts and sugar in their pasta, I think we were the only ones who were normal to have an obsession with candies and not those things, but that's a story for another day.

This is about those cringe moments that we reached for the packages at the same time, meeting in the middle, sharing king-sized chocolate bars when we knew darn well we could finish them on our own. This is about splitting them in half for the first time ever, as we couldn't tolerate doing that with anyone else and about failing to get it straight down the middle, but insisting to give the bigger piece to each other.

You remember those days, don't you? I don't think either one of us could possible forget them. I'd bet my life on it, actually, if it was still worth as much as it used to be.

This began as a friendship. A tradition that we had on the anniversary on the day we met, but then it became monthly, then weekly, and eventually daily, miles apart on a phone call the second we got the chance or side by side, until suddenly, --it feels like it was overnight, it wasn't a friendship anymore. It was more than that. Sticky hands that couldn't resist one another, refusing to separate while we had the chance arising, high on two types of drug; sugar and a heart molded in attraction. At the end, when we felt puke-y and you'd swear we'd regret getting ourselves into it again and again, I at least, always thought it was worth it.

Maybe it wasn't exactly healthy. Maybe it made our dentists angry, and the doctors in deep prayers that we would get out of the childish faze that most kids go through but got over by time they got to our age. Maybe the cavities we had to live with criticized us for a while, telling us as a warning that we didn't heed, that the sweet and tasty things come to agony soon enough.

Maybe that was our slap in the face that love comes to bitterness in the long run no matter what you do to prevent it from going in that direction. Maybe it was letting us know that our greediness, our desperation and our stomach pains were trying to get us to stop, as if our foundation was built shaky, built in the sand. Maybe it was a trap we were gripping each other in. Maybe we were hurting each other without even comprehending it yet.

But we didn't trying to pay attention either. The truth is, if it jumped out and bit us, we probably wouldn't have noticed it. We would've went through with it anyway. We were already too intertwined in the ways of love, that the power in having the other leave or stay wouldn't have done very much. We would've held onto each other so tightly we could't have went anywhere. Not when we didn't want to. I would've thought those junk foods, as stupid as it sounds, were destined to hurt our teeth and I wouldn't have questioned it one bit.

Eventually we did get over it. Not entirely, but not to the point that it sapped us of our energy. In moderation like the recommendations say we take it in. I did that by quitting it cold, and you, well, you did it little by little, allowing yourself access to the treat, but while taking your coffee black and the sugar out of your tea in the morning. It was odd at first. I didn't really know what to think about something so minor, but things were changing and that itself was big. It was noteworthy for us, as we weren't diving ourselves into caramels and whipped creams, like we did when we began, and we learned we didn't need anything but each other for that to work.

It was a turning point.

Sure, we had our setbacks. Everybody does, but in the areas where we disagreed on what candies were best and worst, and what candies were meant to be totally hated, we did find out that there was love between us. Surrounded by delicious types and the icky types, completely opposite in both our heads, we were vulnerable and weak. We were raw, and we were real.

And I learned you were the very sweetest one of all.

Nobody would ever say love was a guilty pleasure, would they? Because if someone ever did, they were wrong. It's everything I ever needed.

It's everything we ever needed.

TUESDAY

What I know better than ever before is that every single person wears their heart in a different way. Sometimes for their entire lifetime, it's only in one way. They wear it in one spot and nowhere else. There's not a second that it's placed somewhere else. They know flawlessly, without doubt that where it is is where it belongs. For me, it wasn't exactly like that.

Don't get me wrong. Once I met you, I knew that my heart was utterly yours and that that was it. That love didn't have to be as complicated as I thought it would be. When it was complicated, it was complicated in the good ways, the kind that said that it was worth fighting for. That it was worth putting everything on the line, but I wore that thing on many places among myself, as my love for you began and grew.

Still sound funny? Still a lot to comprehend? Just hear me out for a second. I promise you it carries weight. It means something important.

Once upon a time, I wore my heart on the sleeve of my sweater, like the song lyrics tend to say and that I at one point didn't understand the meaning of. It was in a spot meant to be given to you, handing you a sense that I wanted you to have it more than I did, entirely trusting you to take care of it. As shaky as I am and as nervous as I could get, when I wore it there I knew that it would never trample and fall. After all, when I had your arm on mine, interlocked or crossed over one another, or when our shoulders would graze across each other with a unspoken spark, I got lost in you with ease. Without even having to try.

But I also wore my heart at my eyes. People like to say that they're a window to someone's soul, but for me, it was a reflection. A reflection of the happiness that you had, and that you made sure that I had as well. They whispered snippets of what would come in the future, and what we would become with the power of time. They made me excited for the life I had. They made me glad to be me for the first in forever.

I wore it on my hands and on my forehead. Here, they spoke the soft, cuddly, pure kind of love. How we would hold each other and refuse to let go, your head on my chest and your lips against me bare skin. How I would cup your cheeks as I took in your hopes and dreams and saw how they wrapped around mine. How you changed from being giggly to the affection when it was new to you, to melting into it like you longed for it. Like you longed for me. Like you needed me.

I wore my heart in my vocal cords until the several times I got the chance to praise you and to shout to the world what you meant to me and what you'd always mean to me. Then, it'd spill on the ears of my family and my friends, who came to love you almost as much as I did before they even met you face to face, or at all, for that matter. My love for you has be worn by the earth that we've stood on since we took our first steps, and it turned me into a better version of myself. The kind of person that wasn't afraid of vulnerability or that found it odd to display the feelings I had inside. The kind that was happily and proudly in love.

Yes, I wore my heart in my arms at one period of time. There, it never once let go of you, wherever we went. In the middle of the sea, in the middle of the city, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, all I wanted to do was hold you. Our several meet-ups at the airport, our moments at mini gatherings where people teased us about a wedding date we hadn't prepared but that I was sure would come very soon, our casual very-bedhead memories where we gave not one care in the world while we ran errands.

And you always paid back the same energy in the same ways that I did, wearing your heart in the same places that I have. You were upbeat about it at every second we had together and it was never shut down. It was never meant to be shut down, now that I bring it up.

But I think you'd agree that the best place it's always been worn is nuzzled up side by side.

Some people out there wear their heart only in one place. It's an only, but in my lifetime I've learned that I have a favorite.

Beside you. In a million ways, but beside you.