I love being busy. I wasn’t always like this, but nowadays being busy is all I have. Being busy gives me no time. No time to relax, no time to think, no time to stare at the walls and remember.

I seemed to have been functioning normally, until it all came to a swift end. He never said a word, I never saw him go, but in my heart I knew that that was already goodbye.

Am I brokenhearted? I don’t know. Aren’t people “brokenhearted” because they lost something or someone? I wonder if I can lose something that I never really had. What was it that we had anyway?

I’m a flexible person, but one thing I can not stand is prolonged ambiguity. And that is what we had… although it wasn’t always like that.

Things happened much too fast that sometimes I wonder if I just dreamt it all. We were set up. We met. We dated. He asked me if it’s okay if I don’t date anybody else. So, I didn’t. He said he wanted me to become his girlfriend. We kissed. He was my first kiss. It was a long, passionate evening. And then I had to go. I was gone for a while. When I came back, things had changed, but we kept on. We both had erratic schedules and a long list of priorities. We ran to too many directions too fast too often. In the end, we had nothing left.

I pause and look at the paragraph I just wrote. Funny how an entire year of adventure and then anguish could just be summarized in a couple of words. Funny how these words are supposed to embody everything we had. Or everything I had. Because now I am no longer sure if he and I had the same thing.

When things started getting sour, my friends told me that he was a jerk, and that I should move on. Silly me, I gave him a second chance.

So, we danced the same dance… only to find out that we were not waltzing on the same pace. I liked him enough to commit to making “us” work, so I adjusted my steps to meet his. Still, it didn’t work. Now that I think of it, he might have been dancing a different dance altogether, and I was too blind to see.

I would hear from him, and then for weeks, he wouldn’t call. Then, just when I would already wise up, just when I would be ready to give it all up and move on, he would resurface, and everything would be alright again. This became a cycle.

That fateful night, I got tired of it all. In not so many words, I expressed how I felt. Things were simply not working for us. For the past few months, he really wasn’t there physically anymore. Worse, I felt that he wasn’t even there, emotionally.

Growing up, I learned that when it comes to men, one should never assume. In my naivette, however, I thought that if a guy tells me he likes me very, very much, I should believe him. When I think of it now, it is not doubtful that he didn’t mean what he said, and I was simply a fool to believe him.

I couldn’t put it in any better way than I did when I said goodbye to him in a dream: Mukhang hindi ka pa handang magmahal, at baka hindi pa kita kayang mahalin. (Perhaps you are not yet ready to love, and perhaps I am unable to love you.)

Maybe we were just too different, and we wanted different things from a relationship.

During the final months, he gave very little, and took even less from what we had. I, in turn, gave too much and expected too much.

I remember a mantra I made for myself during one of those bitter nights when I got so frustrated with us. It says: “I will not be the girl you will settle for on horny nights when you need female companionship and your other friends wouldn’t give you the time of your life. I will not be the girl you will settle for while trying to settle your issues with commitment and the other messy parts of your life. I will not settle for one-sided love. I will not be the girl you just settled for. I deserve to be loved and I will not settle for anything less.”

The words came from deep within. Feelings that I tried to hide, but in recent times have come to acknowledge. I couldn’t love for the both of us.

It was a simple ending. He didn’t even talk back. His last gift to me was silence, a chance to walk away without any ugly scene to tarnish what few precious memories we had. So, I picked up what little dignity I had left and went my own way.

Deep in my heart, I know that that silence is permanent. I know that I will never hear from him again.

“Never” is such a lonely word.

My friends say that it’s his loss, not mine. But if they are right, and that in losing “us” he lost a lot more than I did, then why am I hurting this much?

Did I love him? I don’t know. You tell me. I haven’t had the time to figure that out yet.

Tomorrow is a rest day for most people, but that doesn’t apply to me. My two jobs go on despite the holiday, and tomorrow is the busiest day of my week. But I don’t mind.

Busy is fine. Nowadays, I just love being busy.



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and months after i wrote this, he resurfaced again. i was ready to believe him, but good sense taught me to think again.