48 - Beartime Stories

 

Do you believe in fate? I do.

You see, there were a lot of times when we could’ve met before we actually did, but did not. If our story is a soap opera, these are the times when the boy passes by the street and a few seconds after, the girl arrives. All building up to the scene when they finally, finally meet. I want to believe our meet-up story is years in the making, that God has prepared us by letting us grow on our own and when we were ready, He allowed us to cross paths - all in His perfect time.

And it was indeed the perfect time - 

We met each other when we were both not looking. We met each other when we were both already content with just ourselves and by ourselves - or so we thought. There’s happiness and solace in being alone - one a person experiences as he grows to love oneself. But there’s also happiness in loving someone apart from oneself, and being loved in return - one that I have found in us.

I still sometimes can’t believe and would sigh (in a good way). Oh what a beautiful, rare thing it is - to fall so effortlessly and naturally in love.

06.15.2022

47 - To all the dogs I've loved before

It's been a while since I last wrote anything of value. What prompted this journal entry is a random thought while I was trying to go to sleep a few nights back. Coco (my baby Beaglet) was sleeping soundly beside me, while I was caressing his tummy and I suddenly remembered Candy, and then Chiqui, and then Choco, and then Casper and then Coffee, and then thought of Cloud & Cotton & Chuckie & Champy (who are still with us until now), and realized how a dog's role in ones life changes over time, as we grow older. 

Bestfriend

Candy was the first dog in our household that I can remember. I was told by my siblings that they had dogs prior Candy, but when I started to walk and talk, it was Candy who was there. Candy was my constant companion at home. My parents were workers - they were not home most of the time as they work incessantly Mon-Sat. My siblings on the other hand are 10 and 8 years older than me, and already have their own barkadas/group of friends that they hang out with. They were teens in highschool when I was in Kindergarten. So it was either Kuya Sanny (my yayo) or Candy who would play with me. We live in what seemed then as a faraway subdivision from where my cousins live. Candy was really my best friend. I even remember promising her we'll leave this world together when we get old. I didn't know then how limited the years of a dog was. 

A printed photo of Candy, found in my HS Scrapbook,
taken at our childhood house in Pines City

Sibling

When I was in 5th grade, we had both Chiqui & Choco. So a year later when we changed residences to a three-story commercial/residential building at the heart of Antipolo, we had three three dogs in tow. The move I'd assumed stressed Candy the most. She was a big dog, and the house that we lived in didn't have greens and grass and enough space to run around. My parents decided it would be best for Candy to be given away, and asked one of my Titas to take care of her. It was sad and heartbreaking, but inevitable. I would visit her some times and would feel guilty about it but I was just a gradeschooler and no amount of tantrums can reverse this decision. Candy later died of old age. 

It is to note that four years later, we've  transferred (again) to our now current house (my Daddy suffered from a heart attack and was half paralyzed; living in a house with stairs would be challenging,  they decided to move to a bungalow. This is important because we again have a space for MORE MORE dogs :))))) ) It was around this time when we had Coffee, our official bunso. He was my parents' delight. My parents doted on him. He was also like a sibling to me. He was there for my parents when I was busy in college and in my OJT, and eventually when I started my career and left home. 

Coffee's 1st day with us

Furbaby

Since the two sernior dogs (Chiqui & Choco) were really old and their health were declining, my parents decided to have another dog. Cloud was supposed to be my baby (he was like a baby I'd have when I had just graduated and was starting in life). However, since I had to move to Makati, away from our home, it was my parents who took care of him. Cloud mated with a she-dog, and we were given one of the pups, whom we named Cotton (supposedly my grandpuppy).

Cotton & Cloud

I never really had a furmom-furbabies relationship with Cloud & Cotton. It was probably because they spent puppyhood not really knowing me (I only went home during the weekends when we had them). Plus, when they grew bigger, Daddy didn't allow them to go inside the house. Huskies are energetic and I think there might be an incident where he almost fell down the floor so it was kept that way up until now.

Nephew

When Coffee died in 2016, it was heartbreaking for the whole family. I remember getting the call while I was at work and I really wanted to go home. A few months later, we suddenly got a dog delivered to our doorstep. We named him Chuckie. He's my brother's first born dog, and I'm the tita who took care of him while his furdaddy was working abroad. 

Chuckie when he was a puppy
This was taken on the day that he was given to us

The REAL Furbaby

It was the year 2020, when the pandemic happened, that I finally have a REAL furbaby. REAL furbaby in a sense that I feel like a furmom to this furbaby -- he sleeps beside me, he wakes me up at 6AM, he barks at me at 5PM (he knows 6PM is the time that I should get off from work, or my laptop for that matter as I am working from home. I take care of him when he's sick, we regularly visit the vet, we celebrate birthdays together, and I felt my heart stopped when a tricycle accidentally rolled over his tummy - he's safe and no broken bones thank God).

Coco, on his first year

It is just so amazing how dogs help us cope in every stage of our life. How they were there - sometimes as a friend, most of the time - as a family. I can't imagine life without a dog in it - in fact, I've never lived a life without a dog in it. I sometimes wish they have more years to their lives, so we can spend more days together. But I guess, what makes living so special is the very fact that our time is so limited. 

To all the dogs I've loved before, if I may say I still love you now. You are all remembered, and have left your pawprints in my heart!

PS. It is Coco's 2nd birthday in a few days. Happy Birthday Coco!

PPS. Year 2021, when Champy was given to us. I thought he would be Coco's brother, but he developed an affinity with my brother and has now become his second fur-baby, and my fur-nephew.

Champy

46 - On the Pandemic, Old Friends, and Death

If you are my age or younger, you might be guilty of this: boasting about tomorrow, thinking and actually believing that tomorrow will always come. It may be because of faith or naivety, or maybe both. Or maybe our human ego that feeds us the idea that we'll still be here tomorrow. That we still have time left. That we're still young and we have our lives ahead of us. Only to be knocked off our feet, proven wrong. When somebody in their late 20s die, there is a sense of dread, there is an element of surprise. We all never see it coming - especially when we're talking about a healthy person. But who are we to tell how much time we have left? Gore as it may sound, we are always one second, one minute, one day closer to our demise. Tomorrow is never promised. It is never certain. It might come for some, but not for all. And when it does not, how do we properly greet death?

I regret not doing what we've promised. We've always deferred it, until days became months and months became years and we're now a decade away from the first time we talked about it. A lot has changed - we lost touch, we lived our lives differently, and when our paths crossed again, it was as if time did not pass - you still can talk comfortably about your personal life,  we talked about how far we've come as good old friends do, and then we still deferred it - our counterstrike death match. It is a time of a pandemic, after all. We'll do it after these trying times, except we'll no longer be able to. Death knocked on your door. Guess I can not kill you anymore - in game.

Goodbye my friend.

PS. Fvck COVID.

45 - First

And for the first time in my life, I feared Death. I've always known that people come and go, that we live and die, that nobody can boast about tomorrow, and I've accepted it. Or so I thought. When I got that call saying my mom was dying in the hospital, I prayed to the Lord and somehow, I was peaceful during the whole ordeal. I was in pain, a lot of pain, but there was no fighting over what happened. Life without mom will never be the same but I didn't feel scared. Is it because it was all so sudden and I didn't have time to ponder on how life would be without my parents? I don't know.

But now with you, I think about death sometimes - passing thoughts. And I can't even imagine how the world will suck if there's me without you in it. I don't want to experience loss - specifically, the loss of you. So darling, I pray and hope and wish that should time come, I go first.

“If the breaking day sees someone proud,

The ending day sees them brought low.

No one should put too much trust in triumph,

No one should give up hope of trials improving.

Clotho mixes one with the other and stops

Fortune from resting, spinning every fate around.

No one has had so much divine favor

That they could guarantee themselves tomorrow.

God keeps our lives hurtling on,

Spinning in a whirlwind.”

- Seneca, Thyestes, 613

44 - Happy Hallow's Eve

I'm sure a lot of us, if not all, has experienced how it's like to have a nightmare. Bad dreams that will make you jolt awake at night, sweaty palms and racing heartbeat. But have you ever had a dream that felt so real? Something that kept you from moving, like your body's paralyzed and somehow you know you're dreaming and you want yourself to wake up in the real world, but it's a struggle? A dream so creepy it makes even your baby hair to stand just the thought of it? I do. Ever since I started trying to keep track of my dreams (telling it to friends the moment I wake up so I don't forget) ; I have noticed that there is this particular bad dream that re-occurred, and this is how it goes.

I am in the middle of a living room in a house that I'm not familiar with. My cousins are with me, and we were looking at a closed door leading to a room, Nobody in the dream wants to open the door because there's a demon (lady in white with black face as I imagine it in my dream) inside. The room itself was emanating negative energy. But like how most horror movies go, I'm the protagonist of my dream who is so brave and so curious that I would actually march up to that door. Both my legs and arms feel heavy and I hear a cacophony of crazy and scary voices, but I still manage to hold the knob and turn it. And the moment I open the door, I wake up -- screaming.

When I had this dream last March 2020, I told a friend about it. How batshit scared I was and how the dream felt so familiar, like I've seen how it played before. I had to look up at my messenger chats to my other friends in search for anything - because if I have dreamed about the same thing, I'm sure I told someone, and there it was. I read that on the same day of March 2019, I had the exact same dream and I was telling someone else about it. Imagine the horror when I realized.

Will I get the same dream this March 2021? I wonder.

Happy Hallow's Eve.

43 - They say

You know what old people say, wait for a year or two, maybe three in a relationship and the feelings will eventually fade. They say that the first couple of months is the honeymoon stage and once you get to know each other on a deeper, more personal level, you'll see each other's flaws. They say that those flaws you may love in the onset, but if you give it time, those might be the very things you will hate about your partner. They say you never truly know a person until you marry him and you live together and you see him on both his highest and lowest points.

They say when all those strong emotions fade, what matters is character and the friendship and respect that you've built over the years. That when you're looking for a partner, you should go for someone who can make you feel secured, someone you can imagine having kids, even grandkids with. That above everything else, this is a companionship. Our bodies will eventually get old and our youth, energy, beauty they will all wither.

All those things they say in hope to enlighten us about the realities of relationships. That having a life together is not all about romance. That there will be hard days - and tweetums will not be enough to save you on those days. And I think. And I ponder. And I contemplate. But no matter how hard and long I look at it, at us, the future seems neither scary not discouraging at all. 

I have come to a conclusion that what they say isn't wrong. But I refuse to believe that would be our only reality. I hope we can take a look as to when we are old and gray and still together and tell our children, our grandchildren, how love transcends time. That even in our 70s we're still never past the honeymoon stage that we got in when we're in our 20s. That while there are so many mediocre things in this life, our love is not one of them. G?

42 - You

I have always believed that life has already disillusioned me about love. I have learned the following points growing up: that your first love may not be your last love, that someone you have known for years can still betray your trust if they choose to. That someone can be a good person, and still hurt you when things are no longer convenient for them. That someone can spend as much time as he wants to with you, and still fake it. And as much as you do not want to admit it, sometimes, you're the one hurting those who love you.

As much as I prayed for a love that's not mediocre, I also do not long for it. Forgive me when I was skeptic when I met you. I thought to myself that it was just a passing affection, that you, like the others before you, will just further disillusion me about love and relationships that I will end up saying, there it goes again. Thank you, next.

But I was wrong.

You make me feel like I haven't loved at all.

You are my first real great love, who has not yet in any way betrayed my trust - and if someday we hurt each other I hope we go back to this day and remember how much love we have and just get over it, -

You give more than what you take.

You are a good person, and you, as much as you can, choose to understand even when I am the one being unreasonable.

You always make time for me, despite and in spite. No excuses.

Above all, you make me want to be a better person. 

We were on our way to the office. You carried my lunch box which we didn't know had a leak of adobo sauce, which then stained your pants. I thought to myself, today is the day that I will see how you handle life's accidents. Are you hot-headed? Do you have a temper? Do you have a desire to control, even the uncontrollable? Are you someone I can handle? Will you blame me for it? Will you blame the lunchbox for it? I was holding my breath. For seconds, all those questions flooded my mind. And as much as I want to sympathize with your predicament, I also want to know the answer to these. I never expected what happens next. -- There were no hisses / tsksss. There were no angry remarks. No curses have been uttered. Just a simple, calm, "Oh well, shit happens. Can you go to the office first? I'll wait for the mall to open so I can buy a new pair of pants." There you were, flashing me a genuine smile, concerned if I can walk my way to the office even when it’s just a footbridge away. And God in that moment, I fall in love with you even more.