On Loving Better

Funny. I sit here finishing an entry to my travel blog when Akon’s “Blame on Me” came blaring from my head phones. I felt being taunted by it. I felt like a character in some Greek mythology with the gods looking down and playing a trick on me. I could almost picture them hovering above me in some cloud enjoying the fact that they have yet found another victim of their very dry sense of humor. Well, I am amused by the coincidence myself.

There I was a moment ago, wallowing in my “tampo” to Bolo. I was contemplating the soundness of texting Bolo a very “hurting” message, painting him a very dramatic picture of how I spend the last three days practically sleepless tending to a very sick Baby while he did not bother at all to move heaven and earth just to text me how he was.

We have just gotten off the phone. I’ve been trying to contact him all day, owing to the fact that Baby really looked so bad this morning I wanted to take him to the hospital until Mama told me to observe him for a little more time. When I heard a very irritated voice explaining to me why he could not text and asking about how Baby was, I felt my temper rise.

I don’t know what I was expecting really but I sure did not expect to hear that tone of voice from him. Maybe I was expecting to hear a hint of concern, or him asking me how I was too… So when I got that reception instead, I think I blew my top a little.

Seeing how bad the weather was the past days, I have also been worried about how he was. It had rained the whole weekend here so I could only imagine how it was up there. I’ve spent the entire weekend erasing the thought of him slipping from some boulder and lying hurt in the ground. I keep reminding myself that thoughts become things and how much I wouldn’t want any of that to happen to him. Every night for the past three days I’ve been praying that he come home to us whole, alive and well on top of praying for Baby’s getting well real quick.

So when I got the message asking me to call him, I was quite ready to ask him how he was and to share with him Baby’s condition but instead we got into an argument. I guess we were both tired and sleepless. I guess he and I are both exhausted and thus quite short of patience.

I felt stung after our phone conversation. I was really fighting the urge to send him an “emotionally nagging” text. But of course, common sense eventually prevailed. What good will that amount to anyway?

This was not the first time this happened. More often than not, our arguments stem from some kind of misunderstanding. Most of the time it’s me blowing my top for him not being able to meet what I’ve expected of him.

I’ve been observant enough to know that this happens to a lot of couples too. My friends tell me about it. So do my peers and the women I work with. Often times, women wail about the significant others’ insensitivity. Detaching myself from the situation I ask myself, “But what is being insensitive really?” Can someone please give me a clear definition of the word?

In my experience, I accuse Bolo of the crime when he would fail to acknowledge the “sacrifices” I’ve made, no matter how “little” it may seem. In some cases, it’s his not being able to give me special attention on special occasions. It’s him putting other people’s comfort over mine. And so on and so forth.

Unattached, I could see that it’s all drama really. I guess this is what reading all of those fairy tales and love stories do to a woman’s psyche. We tend to believe we are all damsels in distress and it is the men-in-our-live’s job to “rescue” us and to give us everything that we need. I guess this is also the reason why there are women out there who think their lives incomplete if they don’t have a love life of sorts.

In truth, it is really just up to us to complete ourselves. Well, we are pretty complete as we are. Broken maybe, but never incomplete really. I guess it’s not really the “lack of something” that haunts us or that makes us unhappy. It’s really just the failure to acknowledge that life in itself is a wonderful gift already. It is one’s being unaware that there are a lot of things in life that we ought to be thankful for. It’s being ignorant about the fact that we only need to look within and not out there for the very thing that would make us happy.

I’ve known this truth a long, long time ago and yet every now and then I still find myself right smack in the middle of a melodrama that at times I even orchestrated myself. I ask myself now, “for what?” Why is it that despite learning this truth I still fall and stumble and commit the same mistakes? Most especially so if it concerns my relationship with my significant other?

Is it some kind of a chronic need? To be constantly a figure in a love-hate melodrama? Is it to answer some kind of need to be reassured that the man in my life loves me like Prince Charming would Cinderella? Or is this borne about by years of conditioning reading all those love stories and watching far too many telenovelas? By doing so, have I unwittingly fed my mind with some distorted notion of what love between a man and woman should be?

For all my uncertainties, there is only one thing I am certain of. It’s that I would not want to waste a lifetime feeding some kind of distorted need. Spend my life chasing some kind of fantasy in my head, moving heaven and earth -- making the lives of the persons around me hell – just so I could satisfy the need to make my reality fit the “perfect” picture I’ve conjured in my head. I think, looking back, I’ve been guilty of that. Only, I wasn’t too aware at that time. And it is causing me sorrow now to have realized that. Because, those people that I could have loved well are no longer in my life now. I could no longer atone for all the unloving actions I did in the past borne out of my own ignorance.

Now, I have grown over the years and have learned to love better. And it’s just sad that there are some persons in my life who have gone ahead and not benefited from this change in me. Persons who really matter like my Dad and brother.

I love them so dearly and I’m sad knowing that they were in my life when I was still groping with truth and trying to define who I really am as a person. If there is one thing I regret in this lifetime it is that I feel I was not able to love them well. Oh I know that I have, somewhat. It’s just that being a mother myself now, being a wife, having gone through so much in life than I’ve had in the past, I am somewhat a better person. And things are a lot clearer to me now than it was then. I just wish they have come to know the love I could give them now… I love you both Pa, Nin and I sincerely wish for your peace. The soul is eternal and I know we will come to meet each other again some other time. I look forward to the day.