Week 1: A Love Letter

When we are at our lowest and feel that nothing is going right, our natural human inclination is to turn to home - whatever or wherever home is for us.  To me, home is spending quiet time in solitude and writing on my journal.  Home also means reading psycho-spiritual materials as I'm a firm believer of biblio-therapy.    

Travels with Myself, a blog I follow, inspires me to work my way through my present transitions by taking up a 30-week writing challenge (originally 30 days as she works her way to her 51st).  The author lined up topics adapted from Pam Pastor's list for the Philippine Literary Festival. I could resonate with the challenge and the topics as mid-life and peri-menopause and transitions in my most significant relationships are among the realities I am currently facing. I might do some tweaking myself but let me keep her list for now.  

• A photograph from childhood
• Your first heartbreak
• Your parents
• A love letter
• Something that comforted you as a child
• A kiss
• Someone from your old neighborhood
• Your best birthday under the age of 10
• A memorable summer
• Someone I met on a flight
• Morning rituals
• Your first friend
• That thing called regret
• Family quirks
• Something you’d like to learn in the next five years
• Some places I’d like  to visit within the next 10 years
• The one that got away
• A life-changing moment
• Finding love
• By the time I’m 60 (or 70, or 80…)
• Sunset
• What makes me smile
• The meaning of life at this point in time
• Hope
• When dreams come true
• Work – Life balance
• Family
• Life lessons
• Rejection as re-direction
• Begin again

(https://storiesbykate.wordpress.com/2015/09/16/writing-my-way-to-51-the-30-day-mid-life-challenge/comment-page-1/#comment-246)

So, here's my week 1 entry - A Love Letter. 

To gaze at the beloved, lovingly and faithfully (a lotus pond at my "secret garden")

Dear SV,

Joey Ayala is singing "Walang Hanggang Paalam" on the background as I write this.  I know that sounds both tragic and G&D, but didn't we say this song says it all?  

Ours was an unexpected love.  Ours was a love best treasured between the two of us (and a few other very intimate friends).  It's a love that doesn't exist to many, and so how do I externalise the grief and mourn something that does not exist in the first place?  Hence, I work out the pain in the deepest corners of my soul.  I wake up each morning wondering what it would look like not to see you in person for three years, not to hold your hand for what now seems like forever, not to have you by my side to explore new places - both the world out there and the world within, not to feel the warmth of your embrace when tough times come.  

The thought is unbearable and so I hold on to the promise to nurture our relationship given our new realities.  I take comfort in messages of assurance that change and painful transitions always bring out the best in us.  I lean on our promise to continue to be each other's co-journeyer.  

A few weeks ago, I finally articulated to myself and to you that ours is the greatest.  Truly, our relationships get better as we work on our relationship wounds and become more ready for the healthier and the right persons.  I think the greatest pain about this change is that you need to be away at a time when I feel we've finally gotten "it" - that rhythm, that sensitivity to each other, that understanding and appreciation of how best to express love to each other.  Does life really have to be so cruel?  A part of me feels so, but another part also believes something beautiful will come out of this change.  That doesn't make things any easier, but that makes the change and the pain that goes with it a little easier to embrace. 

And so, we continue Cruisin' and keep faith that real love grows even in the most adverse of conditions as long we continue to nurture the relationship and allow the Beloved to lead us.  

Your NP