Tied With You

Kabanata 1

Kabanata 1

I don't seem to understand the concept of saying I love you. Do we say it because we love the person? Or do we just say it because it's a requirement or part of a relationship to say it to the other person? Perhaps, because of the essence of reciprocity?

Since I was a kid, I've always heard my parents say to me that they love me, always heard them say they miss me. But, often they say they will have to leave. Why do they say I love you but then they always leave me?

May dalawang rason akong nakalap bakit sila nang-iiwan. Si Papa kasi, iniwan kami upang maging padre de pamilya ng iba, at si Mama na umalis papuntang ibang bansa upang maging padre de pamilya samin ng kapatid ko.

Sucks that till now, their promises were supported with reasons, and three-worded 'I love you' and 'I miss you' and still those couldn't justify the longingness of a child left behind.

Nangako, tapos nang iwan?

Thinking about their promises, I've always wondered whether it's even worth a breathless word to say 'I love you' and 'I miss you' when we don't even mean to say it or we can't even stay to fulfill it for the people we love.

Pitong taong gulang pa lamang ako ng maintindihan ko ang tunay na ibig sabihin ng pag-ibig at ang kahihinatnan na dulot nito sa mga umiibig.

I thought when you fall in love with someone, every day you'll be showered with love and it stays that way for as long as you live.

That, loving is long-lasting and it goes on forever. But, I realized as time goes on, loving someone could never stay that way. It's not going to be infinite, long-lasting, or even forever through the high and low, the spiral, vertical, and horizontal progress of life.

Maybe love can, but loving someone deeply and forever that way? It can't. Proven and witnessed by the lovelorn of my parents.

It was the moment when I witness how my parents look into each other's eyes. When my mother cried at our dining table, her hands were numbly shaking, her eyes never shining like the stars now with lost lights, her cheeks with a dried trickle of tears, and her mouth... even when she said everything was okay, speaks lies.

My father on the other side of the table, with his eyes that stares at my mother's face, used to glimmer with admiration, used to sparkle with love, and it was soft and calm like a painting hanging on the wall or the sea at sunset. Now, it's just the 'used' to that I could say... because he's not the father that I used to know anymore. He lost sight of the shining stars in the night skies and turned to look at the day's burning sun. Completely forgetting us.

Kahit na ipaliwanag niyang mas mahal niya parin kaming mga anak niya. Kung paano niya man minahal ang aming ina ay ganoong paraan din namin nadadama ang pagmamahal niya. Limot at inabandona.

Iniwan kami ni Papa upang makasama ang unang pag-ibig nito. Ang babaeng unang inibig at mahal niya parin hanggang ngayon. The person people call as their first love that never dies.

I love my father so much, I tried to understand his feelings as a man... but never as a father to us. Moreso, as a husband to my mother.

Pero natutunan ko din na sa batas ng pamilya at pagmamahal, na dapat kami ang piliin at pipiliin niya pa rin hanggang huli. Kahit na masakit. Kahit wala ng pagmamahal basta't nandiriyan siya. At dahil kami ang pamilya niya, tunay at legal.

But he left. We weren't enough to make him stay with us. Perhaps, his love for that woman is greater, long-lasting, eternal and the one that goes forever and we were his I love you's that he failed to fulfill and the ones he can't commit to settling over.