One Sunday Afternoon

Sunday's best :)

Meet Up.
I agreed to meet my friend’s ex-girlfriend to pick up my pasalubong from Japan, guess what? Of course, one Hello Kitty item.

It felt a bit awkward because they just broke up a few days ago. We had talked, yes, by the power of technology, Dude would usually pass the phone to me and let me talk to her when we are together on our usual casual catch-up times. Just to let her know he is with me, not with someone else. We would exchange hello’s and hi’s and chitchat about dude’s craziness and other usual girly stuff. We are connected via facebook and twitter,  so her looks was not really a mystery, mine as well, we seem to have a virtual connection.  That Sunday  was the initial meet up- call it eyeball if that’s appropriate.

Dude is in Japan taking up further studies in Public Administration at Tokyo University under an international scholarship by Asian Development Bank.  It was a dream come true, we really thought he didn't make it but one of the first ten chosen backed out, lucky number eleven Dude, got in! I can still remember that phone call he made to let me know that he is leaving soon for Japan and would need help in disposing his stuff to make additional pocket money for the immediate departure, his girlfriend was kind enough to advertise the stuff and make some money out of it.

The girl just had a published article last February 9th  at Philippine Daily Inquirer's Young Blood Corner describing her moments of waiting and their Long Distance Relationship. It was posted just a few days before her flight to Japan to meet him for Spring Break.

Here's the link: 800 days of waiting

Him and Her.

They used to be a great couple, Dude would usually tell me how great of a girl she is and how much he loves her. How his mom totally likes her and how easily she can get along with any of his friends. That was really obvious since we got along pretty well. A peace advocate, she also has plans of leaving for Costa Rica to study at University for Peace for eleven months with the hopes of helping in instilling peace in the great Mindanao Region. But she is still working on raising 1.1 million pesos , half of the cost for the study since she was already able to find a sponsor for the first half. Getting a bank loan will be least of the options she says. Our conversation over coffee and her cigarettes let me discover her intense love for that southern region and for their culture. She also has thoughts of converting to Islam, saying that it could be where she can find the peace she is searching for. Of course, that’s one issue that they are in debacle- faith. She is one tough girl. Someone I am proud to have known and I know she will be someone who will make history in the southern regions of the Philippines.

View from CBTL, Prism Plaza

Dude tells me she is his comfort zone.  Comfort zone in the sense that he said feels constrained by her. He even said that saying “I love you” felt a responsibility not a declaration of affection anymore. He said, he wanted to be out of the comfort zone because he feels being limited when he is with her. He needs to be free, to explore whatever possibilities his experience in Japan can offer.

She tells me Dude is her priority. She has other plans yet, she had always put Dude as number one on her list. She is young and full of idealism. But she is never relaxed and carefree. Probably, working as a political staff had made her so serious and had totally forgot the meaning of “chill”. She even took the effort of travelling all the way to Japan for Spring Break to spend time with him. Thinking that that one week stay may patch things up, fixing whatever misunderstanding and doubts they had for each other.

Decision.

Even the most intelligent people gets lost when in comes to love. They can also become victims of the so called “circumstance” they are in . Even the most sane person can go crazy when it comes to love. What had gone wrong? I really thought that since their both rational beings, they can put logic into whatever their going through right now.

Love can only work for  a couple whose looking at the same direction. Putting someone as a priority yet the other looks at you as a comfort zone is never going to work. They know love yet they define it differently. Maybe that’s the complication of being intelligent? You get to put your own definition of things and get to live with it? Not being able to meet halfway? Compromise had not become an option.

They decided to end the “love” thing and be friends for now. I really hope that when that perfect time comes, they will see each other both as comfort zone and priority all at the same time.