SINCERE HEARTS

Entry log august 29 1984

Happy birthday to me ! Happy birthday to me , happy birthday , happy birthday , Happy birthday to me - you old dinosaur.  Well cheers to me , I am now officially an adult , and an old hag. Years passed by and I hardly felt that I'm now a fully grown Hag errr…. dinosaur errr…. I mean adult by now. Seriously It never occurred to me that I have now reached that age and since it's my birthday. I am not going to write anything about politics or any other worldly affairs in the maritime community and on work , I can write that on the latter - for now I'm writing on something philosophical , something to think about on my life and what I had been through.

For now despite my advance age , I haven't gone anywhere in life beyond "settling down" - For now I could say that I'm a full fledge standalone bachelor. A lot of people at my age (and younger than me) are now saying that I should live in peace now and settle down , but of course I would really love that but apparently the situation I had been through in all those years are somewhat hostile for me to thrive and as a result my progress in life is has been suffering from "arrested development" . From my overall observation , I am ten years (give or take) late on what I should had been doing in life.

Anyway , for now I am going to write about my love life since I'm already an adult (and it's my blog anyway )

(MY) Love Story

So when does love begin ? Some people say that love begins during high school or maybe even in college , the thing when you're old enough (as in really old) to handle a connection with someone. Honestly I don’t think love starts at that period, it starts at an early age. People and society tend to ignore and this dismiss it entirely as some childhood fantasy , maybe so but perhaps they always brand this because they never understood it entirely nor even be open in talking about it.

For me love starts at an early age. Despite ages have already passed, I still remember my very first love and her name.  If my memory serves me correct I was in the third grade with her and she was my seatmate , things didn't exactly progress between me and her other than being classmates and just friends but it was very obvious that I like her a lot. Sadly things will never progress any further on the fact that both our parents hated each other.

The next love interest I got myself into was in the following year. On fourth grade , I met her at school and had been good friends since I lend her my notebook and helped her out on her homework. She has short hair and always wear a "head band" accessory on her hair. I still remember that her favourite class subject was science (same as mine) and dreams of being an astronaut someday (me a scientist) .

The most awkward moment between me and her was that one day our teacher caught me day dreaming and staring at her in the class room. Worst part was that the whole class saw it and instantly figured out I had a crush on her. She was so embarrassed at that moment that I saw her face flushed red. Sadly me and her got separated when she moved in on another country (her classmate told me it was in Australia) at the school years end. I never or never got to confessed to her my true feelings.

On the middle fifth grade and sixth grade, My love interest back then didn’t started out exactly as "friends" . She was basically more like a school rival or in some ways an opponent classmate, we competed on almost anything from grades to all the way done on the teachers attention. Turning point on our rivalry was one day I caught her cheating on one of our exams and told it to our teacher, I felt terribly sorry on what I did and should have turned a blind eye on it   after that incident i decided we had to have a heart to heart talk about it.

I guess little by little we got close to each after that until we became good friends and in some ways a romantic interest. Our classmates would always tease us being a couple. We were both happy at that time. I guess the mistake I made during those happy times was I should have decided to stayed with her all the way till high school. It was a big mistake for me to swap her with my ambition to join some elite high school during those times, a mistake that up to now i regret and had to live with. I still remember that day she asked me if I'm going to stay on our school and join her in high school, I said that I'd be changing schools for high school.

High school was a very turbulent time for me and was constantly plagued with problems both back home and at school. It was for the best that I shut myself out and my heart from all those problems, I fell in love I guess on the last parts of my high school years and it was all by accident. Never imagine her to be my dream gal at all, actually I just treated her as an "Assigned" (or arranged) prom partner, since proms here in the Philippines get "assigned" and not exactly invited or asked out like in western countries, yes I fell in love with her inadvertently .  Anyway I had got no option in backing out probably because of school pressure from our school advisor (teacher) , I back out - my reputation will terribly suffer and my grades are already falling apart back then , I had no other choice but to accept - reluctantly. Prom day came and wasn't really looking forward to it, but the thing to make me have a change of heart was that she was nice to me throughout the prom, took me by surprise and normally didn't expected to be treated nice.

It was a very romantic relationship ,though officially we never declared to be boyfriend and girlfriend. It lasted until my early years in college, but like any other sad ending in a relationship - we separated ways due to major difference on how we view our relationship.

I guess that will be the last time that I really feel in love head over heels with someone.

Over the course of the years my romantic love live fell dark and silent because , I was kept busy and left rebuilding my life on the aftermath of a series of domestic problems. Things were so bad back then that I had to set aside everything and focus on picking up the pieces reconstructing on what's left of my life, it was not even certain that I would finish high school or even reach college at all.

I got my hands full on those hard years focusing on necessity and survival, there is absolutely zero time and monetary budget to even create and maintain a love relationship. This hardship dragged on until I was back in college some years after. Although I was practically afloat , funding on my college could not sustain any romantic relationships.

For me the Filipino society is backward when it comes to love compared to other Asian countries, probably too conservative in the wrong sense. Anyway I don’t exactly think that love starts somewhere on college or beyond it, and don’t really believe in being too young to fall in love like most adult always say. For me they're saying that because they're so full of hypocrisy and never get to understand young people. Filipino Society is very judgemental on that fact, and very medieval. 

I haven't found her yet , and maybe there's a possibility that I never will. But to find the meaning of existence is to be that something is out there meant for me and I won't stop losing hope that maybe I will encounter her someday.