He was in love with the chase,

She was in love with the distance

They were two cars on a race,

Trying to outrun circumstance.

I received some sad news today that we will be transferred to work in the diner. Apparently, the restaurant was a temporary one until the diner opens. I overheard one of my managers talking to our boss about keeping me in the restaurant, and there are also some talk circulating that only three or four out of the five of us are actually being moved, but no one pulled us aside to explain anything clearly, so nothing is sure for now.

It snowed a lot today. It was nice to watch from across the window, but it made me miss the Philippines. I used to hop on a random bus especially on a rainy day to calm my mind, and I couldn't do that here. It seems like all we do these days is work.

I found some pretty crucial information today that I'm not comfortable sharing here, but it's a terrible one to bear, to assure you. I wonder if I'm being self righteous for feeling like this or maybe I judge people too easily. All I can say for now is that I'm so thankful I have self respect enough to help me know when to stay and when to walk away, because, as I've found out recently, not all people do.

I've been in America for almost a month now. I have earned enough, mind you, to feed a Filipino family for two years or so in the three weeks that I've worked a minimum wage job.

Anyway, I've been reading some of my old posts lately, especially those in August and September of 2010. I had so many problems that I thought I wouldn't get past back then, but looking back now, I see how easy it all played out in the end.

There are some hurts that just never leave. I carry these in my heart at all times, to all places, and when I'm not busy, I open my mind and welcome the pain. It is a buttersweet distraction from the emptiness I zone out to when I have nothing better to do.

I miss my home country very much. It's very cold here although for the locals, this is warm. It snowed the other day, and Pau and I were very excited, we kept glancing giddily out the window in between seating guests. Elena, our manager, thought it was hilarious how happy we were. She said we were like kids watching TV, which, in a way, I thought we were.

Although it can be pretty sad here sometimes, I have met a lot of kind and interesting people. My favorite would be Alisha, since day 1, she has been nothing but kind to us, and she always gives us her sweet smile. When you see it, you can't help but have a good day. I'm not even exaggerating. Elena is the kindest of them all. She shares with me some stories from her home country, that is Romania. I wish I could give her their local brands of chocolates because she said she misses those! With her, I don't even have to ask sometimes. She's just always there to help whenever I mess up or put myself in trouble. She's really pretty, smart, funny and approachable. And then there's everyone else who have been very understanding and patient with us: Amy, Krista, Sir Marius, Sir Alex, Courtney, and the servers who I know get tired of us always making mistakes but they forgive us anyway.

I'm loving my life here. This has been mu dream for years, and I still can't believe that I'm living it now. It's hard to be so far away from home, from all things safe and familiar, but this new adventure is worth it. I just wish it was a little warmer.

Four years ago, I never thought I'd be where I am right now, lying on an empty bed, words pouring out of my head.

I miss you. I miss you so much that I could embrace the air around me and make myself believe that I am holding a part of you once again, which is sad because you had not even been here. For four years, I've been trying to convince myself that I am only supposed to have you in my life for a short while. Four years, I've been tearing myself down and building my life back up around your absence, but it seems now, tonight, that this loneliness is all i have ever known.

I have goosebumps on my arm, hearing your laughter in my mind. For the first time in the longest time tonight, I see a glimpse of your laughing face in my mind, and everything crumbles. The ground shakes beneath my feet, and tears pool inside my chest. Still, the world spins on...the wind sings on....the sun shines on. Everything is the same, and yet everything has changed.

You would have been so happy for me. You would have listened to me rant endlessly about the most trivial things, but you are not here where you promised to be - beside me. And yes, even after all these years I soent pushing your memory to the deepest corners of my mind, I haven't fully covered the screaming hole you left when you took my heart with you, six feet under. Four years ago.

You were my best friend. You held the switch that turned my night sky on, and now all I have are a few dying stars. I was so wrong to think that somedy, I'll get over it, because even now, with all the new people in my life, I keep looking for you in the sounds of their laughter, in the crinkle at the corners of their kind, smiling eyes. I keep looking for any sign that you have come back to touch my life again, and I keep finding more questions instead of answers.

Will I ever find you?

Will my soul learn to live with this pain?

Will I wake up one day and find that I am finally, truly, freely happy?

Hello.

I used to be the girl who waited for the phone to ring three times before answering your call, because I didn't want you to see how eager I was to hear your voice an hour after we've parted ways.

Hello.

I used to be the one you turned to every night, recalling the best and worst moments of your days, reliving your liveliest childhood memories, laughing at your most embarrassing deeds.

Hello.

I used to close my eyes and hear you peacefully breathing on the other line, out of things to say; never out of new ways to feel.

If I had known where you would go, I would have followed.

As it was, there was one click, and since then, life was nothing but a humming static.

Hello.

I used to lie in bed, under the blankets even on the hottest nights, afraid to share with anyone the happiness I found in you.

It was a frail, fragile one, but it was the best thing I've had. It all went downhill from there.

Don't you know? Didn't you know?

Goodbye.

You were my sunset. You took away all the light there was, and I had to teach myself to get used to the dark so that I could finally see the stars.

Goodbye.

The only word I never heard from you; the one I needed the most to close the door you left open when you went to chase things that made you happy, things that did not include me.

Goodbye.

You were the sizzle on my skin, the fizzle in my blood. You were all the things I never thought were possible. You were my lightest flight, the ethereal flutter of my wings.

You were my greatest fall.

The hardest part about leaving without knowing where you stand is that all the days when you're away, no matter what you're doing, you'll trace your thoughts back to the place where you left your heart behind in someone else's hands.

You start counting the days. You take comfort from the fact that you're still living under the same sky, even though his bright, sunny days are your long, insufferable nights. It's not easy, making things work. Sometimes, they just would not go according to plan. You mark the days on your trusty old calendar. He counts the remaining weeks in his tired, trembling hands.

Somehow, you still don't know where you stand.

And you go through the motions because what other choice do you have? You see clouds and endless rolling hills where you used to watch his footsteps linger. There is little assurance that one day, the other end of the couch that is not your side will be filled with that presence again, that one that sinks the cushion but lightens your insides. Love, you think, takes so much effort, but not once do you ever ask if it is worth it.

Albeit slowly, time passes. He changes. You do, too. You realize that there was no use wasting all that time trying to count the days - they come in their own time. You take one step after another. He reaches out to you, the way you imagine a newly bloomed flower stretching up to meet the sun. 

The truth surfaces when you see him smile.

You are his sun.

I want to travel alone. I want to go to distant places, lands unknown, with unfamiliar people and unfamiliar sights. I want to meet their locals and try authentic dishes. I want to walk through the populated streets of China, shoulder to shoulder with its residents. I want to stand under a cherryblossom tree in Japan, get showered with its petals. I want to ride a bike on a deserted street in South Korea. Eat desserts in Paris. I want to experience everything the world has to offer. I want to live, to find myself, to fall in love with the person I will be. I want to be happy. I want to be truly, genuinely, startlingly happy.

It's thirty nine after midnight, and tomorrow looms overhead, an uninvited forecast of yet another nightmare.

You tell yourself it's fine, you're almost there, you're almost over it. But eight weeks from now, you'll look back and see that you've barely taken a step forward, for your back foot is stuck in mud.

You wish to be able to claw at your brain. To unfold each corner of that great, gray mass, and scrub away every memory you've been trying to get rid of. You wish to shed the skin you're in, to grow a new one, cause maybe then you'll be new, too. Maybe then you'll be you again.

The thing is, you can't. You have to force your eyes shut at night and drag yourself off your bed in the morning and live with the fate you've drawn. You live, knowing that no matter how fast you run or how swiftly you hide, you can't fool your monsters. They are of your own making.

So you live. So you watch sunrise after sunrise, day after day, wishing you were anything else, anywhere else. So you live, with people telling you it's normal to feel, you're human, after all.

You live.

And you spend every minute of it wishing otherwise.

The enormity of it all hit me like a truck: your intermittent goodbye, always hovering, always threatening, but always just almost leaving your patched, pale lips, the hazy blur of the last five years, the jagged glass edges of those memories swimming in my brain. Your quick smile, your lack of patience, the grainy sound of your voice that I poorly remember now...you. Just you, trying to make me as happy as happiness allows, giving in to my whims and demands. Where do I even start? How? Why do I need to?

It has only been five short years, but it feels like you've been in my life forever. Now that I feel your hand slowly slipping from my hold, I wish I knew what to do. I've lost you a million times- to an idea of a better me, to someone else, to bridges I've been burning to keep the past from catching up. But you've always been here, haven't you? You've been that perfect song on the bus when I thought I was going through life alone. You were the perfect stranger's warm smile when I was hiding behind clouds of my own making, so why can't I feel you now? Where are you?

You're a speck of dust I caught in my eyes on the windiest day in history. You'll never know, but you made me cry. More than that, you made me laugh. You made me happy. Why do I feel like now is the time to let you go, when you've always been my hero? You were here once, always. Why did you let me be comfortable with the thought that you'd never leave if you never really planned to stay?

I still love you, but not with the burning kind I felt in the beginning. You still make my heart jump, but I can breathe now. You still say things that make me blush, you still do things that make me want to melt right then and there, but I can get over it now.

I've learned to contain my feelings for you because I realized that if you really care, I wouldn't have to wonder. I shouldn't have had to make excuses to talk to you and to see you all the time. I loved you enough. It was obvious enough, but you just didn't get it.

So now, however sad it makes me, I'm happy to miss the goosebumps....the moments that reshape my eyes into two beating hearts. 

I still love you, but it doesn't hurt anymore.