Foolish

Kimber fell in love foolishly.

I haven't seen Kimber in a long time. She manages several businesses and takes care of her aging parents. She looks like she's lost some weight.

"Kimber, this is a surprise, you actually have time to meet me for coffee?", I said as I entered the Coffee Beanery at Banawe.

"Yeah, and I managed to remember what coffee you like. Café Latte right? And they have really good cheesecake here.", she replied.

"Oh great, thanks. What's going on with you?", I said as I propped myself down on the pretty brown couch.

"What do you say to somone who fell in love foolishly?", she said.

"Foolishly? What do you mean by that?", I replied.

"Do you remember Charles?", she said as she dug in the cheesecake she ordered.

"Charles, the drag racer?", I said as I added sugar to my coffee.

"Yeah.", she said.

"Wait, what happened? I can't answer your question if I don't know what happened to you and Charles.", I said trying to understand her situation.

"Amici had a party a couple of weeks ago, and I had a long conversation with Charles in that party. Somehow, I didn't expect to be so attracted to him. You know, after all, what my type is right?" she smiled.

"Yeah, you like the good guys, because of your parents.", I said as I remembered her story.

"Well, Charles is exactly the opposite of that.", she said.

"No way, and…?", this is getting interesting.

"Well, let's just say I fell in love after that one conversation. And we swapped numbers and ventured to send text messages to each other." she continued. "Susie, I'm not the type who falls in love so easily…. But I can't help it. Then one day, I thought, I need to know if this is just me or maybe it could be something else.", she said.

"Ok…", I said.

"I asked to see him last Saturday. See, we don't see or talk to each other regularly. And you know how precious my time is right? I thought I needed to see him", she said as she sipped her coffee.

"Yeah, everything's on a schedule with you, even your sleep.", I said.

"Yeah, so I made arrangements to make myself available for him, just to see him. If we really are friends, I thought he'd make the time to chat like how we are now, right? And I thought this was the meeting that I would finally figure out if my feelings for him are authentic and if they are well ... mutual so to speak. I suppose I needed to get a better picture of what I think is going on." she said as tears welled in her eyes. "But see, he didn't show up."

"What?", I asked.

"Yeah.", she said.

"Did he explain why he didn't show up? Did he even try to reschedule or anything?", I said sounding a little frustrated.

"No. He said he got busy and he can't make time.", she said sternly.

"No way.", I said. I couldn't believe it. Here she is, invested in the friendship she has with Charles and he takes it for granted. I suppose he doesn't know how important Kimber's time is to her, and how hard it is for her to get out of her comfort zone. Meeting people is not Kimber's best suit, she's very shy. Plus, she doesn't have a lot of time for other people. In fact she doesn't get out at all unless she's dragged by her closest friends to stop and smell the roses outside her house.

"So, Susie, what do you say to someone who loves foolishly?", she looked at me as she sipped the last of her coffee.

For the first time, I didn't know what to say. Maybe Charles was just busy with something important and that he didn't know how hard it is for Kimber to go out. Or maybe Charles really didn't want to see her that day. Or maybe Kimber did fall in love foolishly.

"Kimber, I realized that I can't give you the answer you want me to say. If you are so sure of what you feel for him, then his showing up or not isn't the premise with which you are to classify your feelings for him as foolish or not. Love isn't foolish, it's the dichotomy of selflessness and selfishness. You love selflessly and seek it selfishly, as well. Right?" I said, as I struggled to make sense of what it is that I was telling her.

"You make it sound so simple.", she said.

"But it's not right? Look, there are ten thousand maybe's that we can come up with tonight, but all of those are irrelevant. If you are patient enough, you'll find the answer you seek. Are you ready for both answers, will you be ok if he says that the feeling is mutual and will you be ok if he says that it isn't?", I said clearly.

"I don't know. I haven't thought of it that way.", she said.

"Ok, then maybe that's the question that you have to ask yourself. So that when you finally meet, you will have the strength to manage whichever side he moves to.", I said as I finished my coffee.

Kimber finds managing her feelings painfully difficult because in the act of loving someone else, we strip ourselves of the security of comfort. The hard thing about the act of loving is that in order to complete the circle of loving, vulnerability is required and that means, possibly getting hurt in the process or possibly being loved back.

Mourning

Lvna surrenders daily to her misery.

She gave up the will to be a person involved in the world's happiness two years ago, when her boyfriend died in a tragic car accident. She's then never taken a day off from work, never called in sick, never been late for a meeting. She hardly has any friends, except for me and Peter. Her parents had passed away during her 20's.

She's basically on her own.

Since having lost Martin, she hasn't worn anything but black.

On one sunny day, I decided to go see Lvna in her posh corner office in Corporate Manila. I brought Peter, again let me repeat, we are her only friends. I didn't call her office to say that we were coming so naturally, we had to wait for her midmorning coffee break to chat with her. After waiting for nearly an hour, her secretary called us in to her office.

"Hey", she said, looking surprised. She's lost some weight since I last saw her. She's beginning to wither away.

"So, Lvna, this is a huge office!", Peter said. "This is remarkably bigger than my shoebox of an apartment!", he remarked. "I'm glad you guys came to see me today.", she said softly.

I can't help it, I have to state the obvious, I have to skip the small talk and get right on to business, I know I don't have much time.

"Lvna, it's time to let him go.", I said.

After a long pause, she looked me in the eye and said, "Susie, I feel the pain everyday, in my heart, this is who I am without him, I died with him.", this was the first time I saw Lvna declare her pain so openly.

Since Martin died, she's never shown a tear in public, never acknowleged her intense sadness. She claims that this was how she handled the loss of her parents. If people don't think you're in pain, they naturally think that you are strong -- that you can cope therefore you can manage moving on with your life. They feel safe with that therefore they don't hover above your head, watching your every move, forcing you to eat, inviting you to mushy family dinners. This then gives you time to be in your little corner, painfully striving to move on.

I remember how I admired her for that, coping with the loss of both of her parents and then her boyfriend, 4 years later. I suppose authentic strength has a tipping point, at some point, the strongest give up their shields.

She stood up, stared out the window and held the locket hanging from neck.

I didn't know what to say, so I took her hand and I saw that she was still wearing her black ring, the last piece of jewelry Martin gave her, it was to be the predecessor of her future engagement ring. She wears it on her ring finger of her left hand.

It's been two years exactly to the day Martin died. I chose to drop in on her today, knowing that maybe she still sees herself in that time, that in her mind, she is still freshly widowed from her one true love. The pretension of strength has backfired on her.

Then Peter said, "He still loves you Lvna, and I know you love him too. Part of that loving is letting go. You can't keep him alive by quitting on the possibility of happiness in your life. I know that he wants you to be fully alive in your life, in this time.".

Then a soft knock, the secretary came in with a bunch of papers. And spoke softly with Lvna, I think her 10 o'clock meeting just arrived. Lvna brushed her head to the side and stood up. She hugged me, then Peter without saying anything.

Nothing was going to break Lvna from her attachment to her loss. I doubt that our quick chat will change anything.

I just hope that in time, her healing may begin.

In Love

Zamora wasn't always too honest when it came to his love life.

What is it with boys and their love lives?

Then one day, as friends always test the boundaries of friendship or maybe I was just really bored, I ventured to ask him through internet chat, "Have you ever been in love?". I thought, hmm, this is going to give him a platform to discuss his uber private love life.

He replied, "Are you sure you want to know?"

That puzzled me so much so that I went on the offense, I had to beat this story out of him.

Zam and I had been friends a long while. I thought it was odd that I know him well enough to predict what he would order in a coffee shop yet I had no idea what his love life's like. Sure, we don't need to know everything about our friends but still, I felt like I needed to ask, needed to know. There's something fishy about his guarded never-discussed-before love life.

Ok, so I braced myself, stared at my computer screen and waited for him to open up. Of course, I wasn't very patient, in fact, after five hours of chatting, I got tired of his evasion of my quesitons, the cryptic texts, the odd riddles. I wanted answers that were as dry as last month's baguette.

Then finally he typed it, I think it took him 5 full minutes to type this sentence: I am in love and I am gay. I wasn't shocked. In fact, in our exceptionally long chat, I knew we were going down that alley.

I just had to hear or rather see him say it, as assumptions are as reliable as corner street gossip.

A couple of weeks later, I met his boyfriend. Damn! I envied him!

Gay people shouldn't have to explain their choices. See, right from the very beginning, I didn't ask him whether he was gay or straight, I asked him if he was in love.

And I got my answer, he is happily in love.