A year before 2023

Chapter 2: Before marriage

How will you know if you really love someone? 

When you wanna spend the rest of your life with them by means of marriage. 

Being single for 23 years then finally getting engaged before the start of my mid 20's feels surreal because I promised myself that I will only enter a dating to marry relationship once I turned 25 in the year 2023. 

Maybe it is not the year 2023, maybe during my 23rd year that I finally realize who and when will I get married.  

- - - 

 Almost Dating to Marry 

DECEMBER 21, 2017 

At around 08:00 PM in the evening Mak asked me out to go to the night market and when we saw each other again, he just holds my hand and kissed me in public. I started attending the 'Simbang Gabi' on December 16, 2017 so maybe it was a blessing from God to see my first love once again, Mak gave me the best Christmas before the start of my 20's. 

JULY 15, 2018  

One of my classmates named Pam tried to befriend me because I was close friends with her townsman who has an older brother that is friends with Pam's ex-boyfriend, I became friends as well with Pam because she was always helping me out with our studies not until she told me honestly that she can see my Twitter where I was ranting about Mak. She told me that she added Mak on Facebook and tried to see what was happening in his life until they started flirting but it stopped when Mak got engaged on July 15, 2018. 

I was so in love with Mak last 2017, only for him to get engaged to another woman after 7 months. I thought that he would be my first and last love but turns out, he finally dedicated his whole life to be with another woman.   

Unexpected Husband material  

April 2019  

Only a few months left to graduate and I met Joshua, we were always together we're groupmates on every subject that semester. We clicked that we became comfortable teasing each other as kids enrolled in daycare, I even slept in his apartment a lot of times and all we do was do song covers where he was playing his guitar. 

I realized that I always want to be with him, that it irritates me when there's a typhoon that cancels our class so I can't see him, that it irritates me when other girls try to flirt with him and wants to join the study session that usually includes only the two of us. 

But I was in denial even though all of our common friends, acquaintances, and department mates noticed that there's something going on between us. 

I even forced myself to forget about what I felt for him from January 2020 until December 2020 that made me really miserable, because "Absence makes the heart grow fonder."

I tried to stay away from the man that I want to marry and it kills me big time, I tried to meet other men but no one can replace him.