remembering now all the work i placed into making letters, canvassing for the video, cutting to make stars. i just feel a wave of humiliation. i know i could never compare and compete materially with the things he was and is able to provide for me. so, i thought, the advantage lay in do it yourself stuff that was carved from innovation and love. what i lacked in money, i made up in creativity.

but it doesnt seem to be enough.

i recall now how he callously forgot about the card i gave him for valentine’s. only because he was too preoccupied with the tinkering he was doing to the bikes.

talk about being unfair.

it honestly felt so bad. the way he treated this admittedly simple but filled with LOVE gift. all my gifts must be nothing compared to a second hand full suspension bike.

you know what. no, there is no MUST about it. they ARE nothing compared to a 30,000+ bike.

talk about insignificant.

i have never really felt insecure about what i can bring to the table when it comes to this relationship. never, until now. i do not have his resources or experience. my naive-ity has just made me stupid and gauche. makes me ask the question: “what is there really left to offer?”

this all started because i wanted to mail him a letter, all the way to where he is overseas. i was so excited. i picked out the cutest card possible and just started to fill it up with all the pent up emotion inside me. i begged him for his address. telling him to email it to me when he had the time. and now, after yesterday’s fight, it makes all the preparation so useless. it makes all this excess seem not worth it, because they seem not welcome. so i tore the card up, and threw it. i did not want another reminder of how i was preparing these things like videos and pictures only to be taken for granted by the one person they were meant for.

how do you tell the person you love that you feel like you are insignificant to him?

when you find out how, tell me.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, out of no conscious volition, i committed the one true fault that M. has recognized in myself, I demanded too much of his time.

Apparently, with the intention of not “hurting” me but to explain his situation, his parents have implored him to talk to me. My phone calling ways have come into their attention and they are not happy. It doesn’t hurt, ladies and gentlemen, to be told that you have become a nuisance. Because, in all honesty, there is no other way to put it. I am a nuisance. And like truths professed during Alcoholics Anonymous, this particular one has set M. free.

however, that’s the thing with truth. It releases one party of whatever heaviness he feels but as a consequence it burdens the other to now carry this weight.

So…what to do know? How does one live with the fact that you are seen more of a troublemaker than a solution to the problem?

According to M., i have had him call too often for his comfort, or at least for the comfort of the built in schedule he has given himself. It is no longer plausible that we converse at any given moment. And that I should invest more in the paraphernalia needed to have a disturbance free conversation, if he should indeed call.

You only see one side of the coin, my friend. And again, its about what I’m not giving enough of…patience, understanding, commitment.

Perhaps, the lunatic in me thinks, I should go around wearing a statement tee with the words “DEMANDING BITCH” etched in it. That’s enough warning to anyone who decides to come into my life. And ironically, that might make M.feel better since it would quell somewhat the hoarding men he envisions surrounding me.

In order to make “us” work, then, the only solution i can see is to not call or communicate as often. he wants time to himself. time that he must be spending on his studies. so that means i must entertain myself elsewhere. look at other avenues to fill this need in me, because he is not able to do so. i shouldn’t ask too much of him since this is a 7Million investment after all.

i don’t help the situation any, it seems. because, instead of alleviating the pressure he feels, i only increase it. he is pushed by his parents to try harder than he has ever had. he is pushed by the program to excel faster than he has ever thought possible. so my needs as a gf are meager and shallow in comparison. I understand that now.

that is the stark and blunt truth he has revealed to me.

makes me wonder, what other use do i have? the trivial entertainment most probably. because looking at it, what i thought was  my most significant contributions to this campaign for higher education looks so stupid now. he must have been laughing behind his back when i edited his essays or reminded him about something he might forget. i was nothing more than a glorified secretary. an assistant with benefits.

i really have no right to ask him anything, if this is the case. and i’m not supposed to feel bad.

my friends would say, he’s a man and he’s reacting with testosterone. my answer to that is silence. demanding bitches such as myself, when faced with things they cannot understand, look in shocked quiet. the only adequate response is this…

I’M SORRY.

because i have nothing to defend myself with, nor the effort to try. you were right, and as you pointed out, i was wrong. and I accept this now. it just took a while to penetrate the hard headedness that has accumulated over time. i am sorry it has taken this long to realize what i have. i am sorry that you had to get hurt in the process. i am sorry that i had wasted precious time. i am truly truly sorry. more than you know or can see from wherever you are. i apologize for whatever grievances i may have caused you. and i promise to not be this way again. take into consideration, however, that i cannot undo this fault overnight. but i am trying my damn-est. i am very sorry. i hope you’ll forgive me.

What it all boils down to? MISUNDERSTANDING.

Somehow, i find myself with the short end of the stick. But that is no one else’s fault but mine.

Even from the very beginning, i found it very hard to open up when it came to arguments. My defense strategy of choice, ever since i was a child, was one of a passive nature. I wouldnt mutter a single thing be it at the face of my parents, or in this case M’s. Instead i’d wait to enter the enclaves of my sanctuary before letting my real emotions surface. M calls it clamming up.

So that is the case with us now. It’s a standstill. As usual, i feel spent. First because i accepted the blame, it really was my fault. And secondly because i couldnt honestly tell him what i felt. It’s hard to carry both burdens because i’ve gotten used to having him as my confidante. But, perhaps the coward in me would think, the silence is prefferable to the storm of emotions that would be unleashed if i were to broach this testy sensitive subject again.

I ended our conversation by apologizing profusely and leaving him alone. He wants me to call but i can’t bring myself to do so. Nothing is alright, nothing at all, but its important to me for him to think everything is peachy.

There are only a few days left before he leaves and i cant allow myself to mar them with things he finds unimportant. I would prefer it that i kept these things to myself rather than have another “discussion”. He doesnt have to know. moreover, i’ve become an expert at projecting. He may think he’s got me pegged to the letter, obviously not.

some of you will say that this is not a good foundation for any relationship. But i argue otherwise. Put yourself in my shoes, you have only a few weeks left together. At the end of which you’ll find that there’s a bigger obstacle between you, distance, would you let something as trivial as hurt feelings get in the way of spending this remaining time the best way possible?

I would rather lick my wounds in private than waste our precious time together disecting every inch of our dialogue. He doesn’t mind the distance as much as i do, so the analysis wont really matter to him. But i mind, and it matters.

It scares me so much to know i have to face the disappointment alone. But i would rather have things this way.

That’s all I can think about. The selfish side of me just keeps focusing on the fact that he’ll be AWAY. Nothing else matters. It has gotten so bad that I’d wake up in the middle of the night, sweating with fear. Because the one true emotion permeating me when I think about it is FEAR. Blame it on the unfamiliar. If there is one fact in this entire chaos it is this: things will change.

The entire program lasts for 16 months. That will be 16 months away from me, approximately 540 days. How can I transition from having him right here, a 45 minute plane ride away, to being in an entirely different continent with a time difference..?

I am not one who is good with good byes. If anything, I find it very difficult to deal with good byes. And any remembrance of the date (Feb 24) when M., with all finality, leaves makes me cry.

But once again I am surprised by fate.

I downloaded the latest episode of Ugly Betty this afternoon in hopes that I could wile away time and forget. But even in this seemingly unconnected event I am reminded of the true lesson in parting ways.

You see in this particular episode Matt, Betty’s current fling, has decided to leave for a social campaign tour in Africa to help the marginalized and needy. It would last six months. That would mean, for the next six months he’ll be miles away. But as he explained, he needed to this for himself because it was Betty who inspired him to do so.

This is the kind of scenario I find myself in nowadays. How exactly can I be both supportive and selfish at the same time? I know leaving for the States is something M. has to do for himself and ultimately our future. But what about me? What about the people he is leaving behind? What about us? I don’t know if I’m ready for this big a change in our relationship. But I am willing to try. However, I have no idea until where my “trying” would be able to sustain the love. I know he has to leave and I even applaud him for doing so. It takes courage and determination to see one’s dream into actuality. But it is not without a price.

Unfortunately, the price is distance and even more challenges for us. I hope I can accept the situation with same quiet genteel Betty did for hers. But all I seem to be doing is cry and feel sorry for myself. Sometimes it gets better, days are easier to handle. But sometimes, not so much. I do love M and I can’t imagine myself with anyone else. Our futures have been so intertwined lately, with all our long term planning. It is just the short term that scares me. The one thing that sustains me is the knowledge that he loves me. I fervently pray that this is enough.

I hope with all my heart that our love will overcome the distance.

When I was younger this fear immobilized me. I did not want to make a mistake. I saw my friends get married for reasons of social acceptability, or sexual fever, or just because they thought it was the logical thing to do. Then I watched, as they and their partners became embittered and petty in their dealings with each other. I looked at older couples and saw, at best, mutual toleration of each other. I imagined a lifetime of loveless nights and bickering and could not imagine subjecting myself or someone else to such a fate.

And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old couples who somehow seemed to glow in each other’s presence. They seemed really in love, not just dependent upon each other and tolerant of each other’s foibles. It was an astounding sight, and it seemed impossible. How, I asked myself, can they have survived so many years of sameness, so much irritation at the other’s habits? What keeps love alive in them, when most of us seem unable to even stay together, much less love each other?

The central secret seems to be in choosing well. There is something to the claim of fundamental compatibility. Good people can create a bad relationship, even though they both dearly want the relationship to succeed. It is important to find someone with whom you can create a good relationship from the outset. Unfortunately, it is hard to see clearly in the early stages.

Sexual hunger draws you to each other and colors the way you see yourselves together. It blinds you to the thousands of little things by which relationships eventually survive or fail. You need to find a way to see beyond this initial overwhelming sexual fascination. Some people choose to involve themselves sexually and ride out the most heated period of sexual attraction in order to see what is on the other side. This can work, but it can also leave a trail of wounded hearts. 

Others deny the sexual side altogether in an attempt to get to know each other apart from their sexuality. But they cannot see clearly, because the presence of unfulfilled sexual desire looms so large that it keeps them from having any normal perception of what life would be like together.

The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to become long-time friends before they realize they are attracted to each other. They get to know each other’s laughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They see each other at their worst and at their best. They share time together before they get swept into the entangling intimacy of their sexuality.

This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall under the spell of your sexual attraction immediately, you need to look beyond it for other keys to compatibility.One of these is laughter. Laughter tells you how much you will enjoy each other’s company over the long term.

If your laughter together is good and healthy, and not at the expense of others, then you have a healthy relationship to the world. Laughter is the child of surprise.If you can make each other laugh, you can always surprise each other. And if you can always surprise each other, you can always keep the world around you new.

Beware of a relationship in which there is no laughter. Even the most intimate relationships based only on seriousness have a tendency to turn sour. Over time, sharing a common serious viewpoint on the world tends to turn you against those who do not share the same viewpoint, and your relationship can become based on being critical together.

After laughter, look for a partner who deals with the world in a way you respect. When two people first get together, they tend to see their relationship as existing only in the space between the two of them. They find each other endlessly fascinating, and the overwhelming power of the emotions they are sharing obscures the outside world. As the relationship ages and grows, the outside world becomes important again. If your partner treats people or circumstances in a way you can’t accept, you will inevitably come to grief. Look at the way she cares for others and deals with the daily affairs of life. If that makes you love her more, your love will grow. If it does not, be careful. If you do not respect the way you each deal with the world around you, eventually the two of you will not respect each other.

Look also at how your partner confronts the mysteries of life. We live on the cusp of poetry and practicality, and the real life of the heart resides in the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected by the mystery of the unseen in life and relationships, while the other is drawn only to the literal and the practical, you must take care that the distance doesn’t become an unbridgeable gap that leaves you each feeling isolated and misunderstood.

There are many other keys, but you must find them by yourself. We all have unchangeable parts of our hearts that we will not betray and private commitments to a vision of life that we will not deny. If you fall in love with someone who cannot nourish those inviolable parts of you, or if you cannot nourish them in her, you will find yourselves growing further apart until you live in separate worlds where you share the business of life, but never touch each other where the heart lives and dreams. From there it is only a small leap to the cataloging of petty hurts and daily failures that leaves so many couples bitter and unsatisfied with their mates.

So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will have chosen a partner with whom you can grow, and then the real miracle of marriage can take place in your hearts. I pick my words carefully when I speak of a miracle. But I think it is not too strong a word. There is a miracle in marriage. It is called transformation. Transformation is one of the most common events of nature. The seed becomes the flower. The cocoon becomes the butterfly. Winter becomes spring and love becomes a child. We never question these, because we see them around us every day. To us they are not miracles, though if we did not know them they would be impossible to believe.

Marriage is a transformation we choose to make. Our love is planted like a seed, and in time it begins to flower. We cannot know the flower that will blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom will come.

If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the bloom will be good. If you have chosen poorly or for the wrong reason, the bloom will be flawed. We are quite willing to accept the reality of negative transformation in a marriage. It was negative transformation that always had me terrified of the bitter marriages that I feared when I was younger.

It never occurred to me to question the dark miracle that transformed love into harshness and bitterness. Yet I was unable to accept the possibility that the first heat of love could be transformed into something positive that was actually deeper and more meaningful than the heat of fresh passion. All I could believe in was the power of this passion and the fear that when it cooled I would be left with something lesser and bitter.

But there is positive transformation as well. Like negative transformation, it results from a slow accretion of little things. But instead of death by a thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand touches of love. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings, two separate presence, two separate consciousnesses come together and share a view of life that passes before them. They remain separate, but they also become one. There is an expansion of awareness, not a closure and a constriction, as I had once feared. This is not to say that there is not tension and there are not traps. Tension and traps are part of every choice of life, from celibate to monogamous to having multiple lovers. Each choice contains within it the lingering doubt that the road not taken somehow more fruitful and exciting, and each becomes dulled to the richness that it alone contains.

But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand and be leavened by the knowledge that two have chosen, against all odds, to become one. Those who live together without marriage can know the pleasure of shared company, but there is a specific gravity in the marriage commitment that deepens that experience into something richer and more complex.

So do not fear marriage, just as you should not rush into it for the wrong reasons. It is an act of faith and it contains within it the power of transformation. If you believe in your heart that you have found someone with whom you are able to grow, if you have sufficient faith that you can resist the endless attraction of the road not taken and the partner not chosen, if you have the strength of heart to embrace the cycles and seasons that your love will experience, then you may be ready to seek the miracle that marriage offers. If not, then wait. The easy grace of a marriage well made is worth your patience. When the time comes, a thousand flowers will bloom…endlessly.

That’s what I see lately. I feel like I am the walking joke. Especially when it comes to my relationship with M.. Nothing I seem to say is important enough. Granted that most of the things that come out of my mouth are frivolous things—but they are there to take his mind off work, problems and his applications. But, if you know me well enough (as I thought M. did) when it comes to the serious things—they should be taken seriously.

Just last night I wrote him an email. Poured out everything I had in that 100+ worded email. Even while the waterworks were on. I had placed so much hope in that piece of communication, hoping that my words would finally get through. After sending it, i texted him three times that same night to tell him in subliminal terms to check his account. Only for my attempts to be pointedly ignored. And the reply I get for that poignantly written and thought of letter?

Thanks for reciprocating the feelings, babe. I really expected so much more than a three-framed comic as a reply for that emotion-filled email. Perhaps that is what you get when you pour yourself out like that. A joke.

According to him, in his defense, he wanted to deflect the seriousness of the situation with a joke. As if a Garfield comic could adequately make up for the fact that, possibly, in a few weeks he’d be going off to school in the United States while I stay here in the Philippines.

Guys don’t get it do they? They really are the throwbacks people say they are. It’s hard to get through their bone wrapped brains in order for them to realize that something like this is not a matter to joke about.

Just spoke to him too.

He came from a wake and as tradition here I told him to do the “pagpag” before he started the long drive back home. In addition, I asked him to pray the Cleansing Prayer along with me. This is something my family does, being charismatic and all. But he just scoffed at the idea. Laughed alongside his best friend but went along with it. Maybe he’s forgotten that church is important to me. So much of what I have been able to do and have done is because of the church and the people I have met there. And to scoff at our traditions? Traditions that I have come to believe as truth? That really just takes the cake.

So yes, I am the big joke of the season. This multiple month long “limbo” has gone long enough. Just because he is twiddling his thumbs waiting for schools to accept him doesn’t mean he can take out his frustrations on me. He is not the only one who has to wait for the “law”. He isn’t the only one who has dreams on hold too. He isn’t the only one who is trying to make things happen.

M.,

I may not be in the same place right now as you are. I may not be busting my ass to get into a good school. But you know what? I am trying my hardest too at what I have right now. Work isn’t as easy as I make it seem to you. We are still being evaluated, my worth is still being tested. And that is not a very comforting thought to have when you know your job is on the line. And in case you haven’t noticed, I am as frustrated as you are. The waiting is killing me too. I also have to know whether or not you are leaving at the end of next month. I have to emotionally and mentally prepare for our goodbye. And the fact that the future is soo uncertain, even our immediate future, is gnawing at my guts. But you joking around about my feelings and taking things that are important to me for granted is not something I can accept. I draw the line right here.

Read on if you too want to be enlightened.

OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Protocol Society

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: December 22, 2009

In the 19th and 20th centuries we made stuff: corn and steel and trucks. Now, we make protocols: sets of instructions. A software program is a protocol for organizing information. A new drug is a protocol for organizing chemicals. Wal-Mart produces protocols for moving and marketing consumer goods. Even when you are buying a car, you are mostly paying for the knowledge embedded in its design, not the metal and glass.

A protocol economy has very different properties than a physical stuff economy. For example, you and I can’t use the same piece of metal at the same time. But you and I can use the same software program at the same time. Physical stuff is subject to the laws of scarcity: you can use up your timber. But it’s hard to use up a good idea. Prices for material goods tend toward equilibrium, depending on supply and demand. Equilibrium doesn’t really apply to the market for new ideas.

Over the past decades, many economists have sought to define the differences between the physical goods economy and the modern protocol economy. In 2000, Larry Summers, then the Treasury secretary, gave a speech called “The New Wealth of Nations,” laying out some principles. Leading work has been done by Douglass North of Washington University, Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago, Joel Mokyr of Northwestern and Paul Romer of Stanford.

Their research is the subject of an important new book called “From Poverty to Prosperity,” by Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz.

Kling and Schulz start off entertainingly by describing a food court. There are protocols everywhere, not only for how to make the food, but how to greet the customers, how to share common equipment like trays and tables, how to settle disputes between the stalls and enforce contracts with the management.

The success of an economy depends on its ability to invent and embrace new protocols. Kling and Schulz use North’s phrase “adaptive efficiency,” but they are really talking about how quickly a society can be infected by new ideas.

Protocols are intangible, so the traits needed to invent and absorb them are intangible, too. First, a nation has to have a good operating system: laws, regulations and property rights.

For example, if you are making steel, it costs a medium amount to make your first piece of steel and then a significant amount for each additional piece. If, on the other hand, you are making a new drug, it costs an incredible amount to invent your first pill. But then it’s nearly free to copy it millions of times. You’re only going to invest the money to make that first pill if you can have a temporary monopoly to sell the copies. So a nation has to find a way to protect intellectual property while still encouraging the flow of ideas.

Second, a nation has to have a good economic culture. “From Poverty to Prosperity” includes interviews with major economists, and it is striking how they are moving away from mathematical modeling and toward fields like sociology and anthropology.

What really matters, Edmund S. Phelps of Columbia argues, is economic culture — attitudes toward uncertainty, the willingness to exert leadership, the willingness to follow orders. A strong economy needs daring consumers (Phelps says China lacks this) and young researchers with money to play with (Romer notes that N.I.H. grants used to go to 35-year-olds but now they go to 50-year-olds).

A protocol economy tends toward inequality because some societies and subcultures have norms, attitudes and customs that increase the velocity of new recipes while other subcultures retard it. Some nations are blessed with self-reliant families, social trust and fairly enforced regulations, while others are cursed by distrust, corruption and fatalistic attitudes about the future. It is very hard to transfer the protocols of one culture onto those of another.

It’s exciting to see so many Nobel laureates taking this consilient approach. North, the leader of the field, doesn’t even think his work is economics, just unified social science.

But they are still economists, with worldviews that are still excessively individualistic and rationalistic. Kling and Schulz do not do a good job of explaining how innovation emerges. They list some banal character traits — charisma, passion — that entrepreneurs supposedly possess. To get a complete view of where the debate is headed, I’d read “From Poverty to Prosperity,” and then I’d read Richard Ogle’s 2007 book, “Smart World,” one of the most underappreciated books of the decade. Ogle applies the theory of networks and the philosophy of the extended mind (you have to read it) to show how real world innovation emerges from social clusters.

Economic change is fomenting intellectual change. When the economy was about stuff, economics resembled physics. When it’s about ideas, economics comes to resemble psychology.

Bob Herbert is off today.

I have known her since I was a kid, a toddler. My brightest and most carefree days, back when I was all bone, were spent with her. She was my primary confidant, and we treated each other like sisters. My first taste of liberation was because of her, a weekend with boys to the beach. I was fifteen? She was the perfect balm to my cautious nature, always rebellious she stirred in me the desire to be uncaring of what anyone taught.

So it is a surprise for me to find out that her life now is the antithesis of what I though she represented.

I have known for a very long time now that her family has had desires of relocating to greener pastures—the United States. I never did understand considering they had a very fruitful life here, or so I thought. Her mother worked for one of the country’s premier institutions, her father was respected in our community. So I could not comprehend why they would want to leave all the luxuries they had, to move to a country where they had no roots or foundations. But slowly, they did. First her eldest sister, then her next eldest sister, now my friend’s turn.

Their stories are all the same. Acquire a visa, book a flight, spend a few moments with relatives then somehow they end up the same—married/living in/to be married to an American. Coincidence I thought. But after finally talking to her I got hold of the ugly truth—they need these husbands to be able to stay in America indefinitely.

Ironically, their lives are no better now then when they were here. Sure the Philippines isn’t the most sought after place to reside in, but with hard work and dedication it’s possible to scrimp up a lifestyle that is fulfilling and content. In the States, one sister has turned into an alcoholic married to a man that has beaten her. Another has seemingly found happily ever after having just got married. However, in traditional Filipino lifestyle, marriage comes first before pregnancy. And my friend? She’s living with a guy she’s had a relationship with online. This is of course against her parents’ wishes but she’s always been rebellious.

I still honestly don’t get it. I guess people do change drastically, enough that I cannot even recognize someone who I have spent almost my entire childhood growing up with.

Just for a green card?

I thought I was far from unsupportive. I joined an organization that he was highly active in to be able to share in one of his life’s joys- helping others. Even if I feel like a nuisance member in my own chapter, and could be perceived as in it for the drinks and fun, I joined. I have had my hesitations but I finally agreed because it meant much to him to see me there. I braved asking my parents for me to join regional and national conferences because he wished for me to experience it. Additionally, I dont exactly roll around in dough and I literally and figuratively broke the bank to get the capital to be able to travel to where he was.And more importantly, I want to be there when he shines. I want to witness first hand that glow he gets on his face when climbs the steps up the stage as proof of a job well done. I want to be one of the few who would be able to capture the unadulterated happiness in his eyes. And he thought me unsupportive.

In a few months time, if everything goes as he has planned, he’ll be leaving me for even longer times apart and farther distance away. He’s going to the States for a masteral degree. And believe me, I applaud his efforts for personal development but a part of me hurts at the thought of being left behind. But I have done my part, admittedly with difficulty at the beginning, to help him in what way I knew how—limited as it is. I would try to edit his articles, read through his essays even at the expense of my job. I’d offer suggestions or areas of improvement, and be critical when I had to be. And still he thought me unsupportive.

The crux of the argument was yesterday’s race. According to him I have never been there in any of his races. I was always absent for the finish line ending. I guess memories can only go so deep. Perhaps he has forgotten that I was there the first race he has ever organized. Choosing to run a 5k distance, without no prior training or exercise. Not even complaining that he wasnt there for my first finish line ending, or that he didnt even watch me run. I guess he also chose to dismiss the fact that I was there for his mountain bike race and his first 21k run, for the Men’s Health Competition, even brining along work. I had a major exam the next day, and while waiting for him to finish I studied and multi tasked—I was both cheerleader and photographer. And still he thought me unsupportive.

I won’t lie. It hurt a lot. Because I have sacrificed too, just to be able to be there when he needed me. Just the same as he does for me. Perhaps his sacrifices are more visible and emphatic because he has the luxury of a bigger pay check. This affords him the possibility of flying back and forth from Legaspi to Manila. I can’t do that. But I try my best to bridge the distance. Emails. Letters. Photos. Kisses. Hugs. Texts.

Do these things seem so shallow and meaningless compared to his feats? Are they not enough? Just because of one incident, I was judged as unsupportive. If I could, didn’t he think I would? If I had access to more money I’d use it all up for him. Even now when I don’t have as much I spend most of it on him. If I had access to unlimited leaves, I’d spend all of those shuttling myself to Legaspi to be able to experience it the way he does. If my parents weren’t as strict about propriety, I’d stay up late to go where he wanted to go.

I got my Christmas wish gift, red ipod nano, last Friday. However, it seems like a shallow gesture to me now—like a bribe of some sort. Do I project myself as materialistic? That I have to be given these things in order to be supportive?

I don’t know. Apparently I didn’t know a lot of things.

You know, nearing the end of last year, I was in full bloom. And it is surprising how things can start to whither within a year. Ironically, while taking in the bad some measure of good is absorbed as well. And despite all the unfortunate events happening lately, God finds a way of reminding me that I am loved.

I have not been completely up to date with my prayer life, nor have i been consistent. But, I am not completely lost. Happy to announce, that despite our constant bickering our nightly prayers with M have been our ritual. And lately, after perusing my song lists, “Hallelujah” by Hillsong played and I could not get it out of my head. Perhaps these are all reminders of what I am missing—this divine connection with God. I know i have outgrown the youth, but I am counting down the days until the next Singles Encounter Weekend. I am in need of some change.

Things at work have changed as well, and I am still reserving judgment whether it is for the better or worse. We’ve moved forward to phase2, and even if I am happy to let go of the classroom setting, I am not at that much pleased with the way hands on training is looking up to be. Things now are taxing, but in a different way. Success is not nearly as wonderfully felt nor is it as fulfilling. Looking at what my next two years will look like, it leaves me quite disheartened. The silver lining in this is the fact that I was apparently made for the job. Hard work, perseverance and determination does get you far. Not deterred by my novice and naive expectations, I have passed the program so far with semi flying colors. I hope I can do as well with the next two years, especially with the final revalida in May.

I really need to find some sort of perspective in all of this, some sort of way to put things in order or at least my goals. I’m loosing footing in this and I don’t know if finding my foundations will be the answer or should I just begin with new hopes and work from there?