Still counting...

...the days till the weekend, the hours till day ends, the moment of truth and the gift of life. I find myself once again anxious, agitated and frustrated about so many important and mundane things in life. I tell myself maybe I just lack sleep or maybe I had too much of that steamed crab siomai again or worst, maybe my sugar is too high reason why I have been too lethargic lately. I wish I could say I'm pregnant and these mood swings and crabbiness is because of the little angel inside me but nah! not yet!

My unromantic defintion of LOVE...

We all know this. Much have been said about love, stories were told, poems were written and songs were sung to bring life and meaning to love. Each one of us has their own definition of love, we've all had our own share of sweet and not so sweet memories of falling in love, being in love and falling out of love. I don't mean to sound cynical...why would I when I have just embraced a new life of eternal love. But if being cynical will make me less of a romantic illusionist and be more of a strong-willed wife living not in my white picket fence fantasy, then cynicism it will be.

Love is indeed a decision you consciously make every single day at any given moment. Loving for me is more divine in the face of deception, betrayal and animosity. After the hurt and anger...disgust even... you still end up with the decision to love. Love in this light is not at all romantic. It's peeled off its magic, electricity and fireworks. It is always easy to hate and give-up. To walk away and move on. This is always the easiest way out of anything. Telling ourselves that we've had enough and cannot take anymore and just turn our backs and shrug off whatever is left. But is it always what is best for us? For others? Making decisions based solely on emotions almost always end up in regrets. The what if's, what might have been creeps into you in your moment of solace. And this is when the vicious cycle starts.

But if one is to take the road less traveled and see through things and persons beyond who we thought and want them to be, loving then feels like a burden too heavy to bear. The person we share our life with feels more like a liability than a partner. I have known for myself that during this difficult time, it is when loving becomes more than what we so beautifully defined it to be. Love becomes more than just quotes in love letters and greetings cards. It becomes more than just a feeling and a fleeting emotion. It becomes one's strength and guiding light. It becomes an answer. It becomes a voice that lets you move on... not away from the person but walk through and with that person, so that together you find a deeper meaning to why God has brought you to each other. Love then becomes a decision and pact you make to yourself and God.

Unlike decisions to walk away and give up, deciding to love inspite of doesn't bring feelings of doubt and regret. I even find myself in a love so serene and perfect inspite of the unruliness and dejection. It doesn't make the hurt go away, nor make the problem dissapper, it just makes it bearable as you're filled up with new hope and strength and believe that this too shall pass by God's grace.

I have come to realize what love truly is. It is not all that sweet. It is far from being perfect. It is not always about happiness. To embrace love, you have to unmask yourself, bare yourself of any insecurities and let go and let your true self guide you to wherever it leads you. Armed with God's infinite love and mercy, you continue to thread on new heights as you continue and look forward to yet another adventure in our so called journey of life.

For those Looking for the Magic of Partnership & Marriage...

It's true marriage is really a transformation. From a princess you turn into a maid. From hatid-sundo, you learn to take the shuttle to an unfamiliar place you now call home. From a sleep all day weekend, you now wake up to cook and feed your uber famished mate and wash the dishes after while he goes back to bed to watch tv. From dvd marathon of your favorite series and mushy movies you now just sit quietly and wait for your turn to take control of the remote only to find out you have to sleep in a few minutes coz your lifetime partner awaits you in bed. and you awaken to unbelievable soreness because your loving better half almost squashed you to death in your sleep.

But still... you wake up with a silly grin in your face, amazed by how much you have changed... then the silly grin turns into a monstrous laughter because you are secretly planning how you will work your charm to being rewarded soon by this creature and wonder why you married in the first place. But then when he smiles at you like a little boy, all angst just fades away and then you realize this is what life should be.... bittersweet just the way you've always wanted it be...

Here's an article about Partners and Marriage...

Eduardo Calasanz was a student at the Ateneo Manila University,Philippines, where he had Father Ferriols as professor. FatherFerriols, at that time, was the Philosophy department head. Currently hestill teaches Philosophy for graduating college students in Ateneo.Father Ferriols has been very popular for his mind opening and enrichingclasses but was also notorious for the grades he gives. Still peopletook his classes for the learning and deep insight they take home withthem every day (if only they could do something about the grades...)Anyway, come grade giving time, (Ateneo has letter grading systems, thehighest being an A, lowest at D, with F for flunk), Fr Ferriols had thislong discussion with the registrar people because he wanted to giveCalasanz an A+. Either that or he doesn't teach at all...Calasanz gothis A+. Read the paper below to find out why.------------------------------------------------------------------

PARTNERS AND MARRIAGE

By Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz

I have never met a man who didn't want to be loved. But I have seldommet a man who didn't fear marriage. Something about the closure seemsconstricting, not enabling. Marriage seems easier to understand for whatit cuts out of our lives than for what it makes possible within ourlives.

When I was younger this fear immobilized me. I did not want to make amistake. I saw my friends get married for reasons of socialacceptability, or sexual fever, or just because they thought it was thelogical thing to do. Then I watched, as they and their partners becameembittered and petty in their dealings with each other. I looked atolder couples and saw, at best, mutual toleration of each other. Iimagined a lifetime of loveless nights and bickering and could notimagine subjecting myself or someone else to such a fate.

And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old couples who somehow seemedto glow in each other's presence. They seemed really in love, not justdependent upon each other and tolerant of each other's foibles. It wasan astounding sight, and it seemed impossible. How, I asked myself, canthey have survived so many years of sameness, so much irritation at theother's habits? What keeps love alive in them, when most of us seemunable to even stay together, much less love each other?

The central secret seems to be in choosing well. There is something tothe claim of fundamental compatibility. Good people can create a badrelationship, even though they both dearly want the relationship tosucceed. It is important to find someone with whom you can create a goodrelationship from the outset. Unfortunately, it is hard to see clearlyin the early stages.

Sexual hunger draws you to each other and colors the way you seeyourselves together. It blinds you to the thousands of little things bywhich relationships eventually survive or fail. You need to find a wayto see beyond this initial overwhelming sexual fascination. Some peoplechoose to involve themselves sexually and ride out the most heatedperiod of sexual attraction in order to see what is on the other side. This can work, but it can also leave a trail of wounded hearts. Othersdeny the sexual side altogether in an attempt to get to know each otherapart from their sexuality. But they cannot see clearly, because thepresence of unfulfilled sexual desire looms so large that it keeps themfrom having any normal perception of what life would be like together.The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to become long-timefriends before they realize they are attracted to each other. They getto know each other's laughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They see each other at their worst and at their best. They share time together beforethey get swept into the entangling intimacy of their sexuality.

This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall under the spellof your sexual attraction immediately, you need to look beyond it forother keys to compatibility. One of these is laughter. Laughter tellsyou how much you will enjoy each other's company over the long term.

If your laughter together is good and healthy, and not at the expenseof others, then you have a healthy relationship to the world. Laughteris the child of surprise. If you can make each other laugh, you canalways surprise each other. And if you can always surprise each other,you can always keep the world around you new. Beware of a relationshipin which there is no laughter. Even the most intimate relationshipsbased only on seriousness have a tendency to turn sour. Over time,sharing a common serious viewpoint on the world tends to turn youagainst those who do not share the same viewpoint, and your relationshipcan become based on being critical together.

After laughter, look for a partner who deals with the world in a wayyou respect. When two people first get together, they tend to see theirrelationship as existing only in the space between the two of them. Theyfind each other endlessly fascinating, and the overwhelming power of theemotions they are sharing obscures the outside world. As therelationship ages and grows, the outside world becomes important again.If your partner treats people or circumstances in a way you can'taccept, you will inevitably come to grief. Look at the way she cares forothers and deals with the daily affairs of life. If that makes you loveher more, your love will grow. If it does not, be careful. If you do notrespect the way you each deal with the world around you, eventually thetwo of you will not respect each other.

Look also at how your partner confronts the mysteries of life. We liveon the cusp of poetry and practicality, and the real life of the heartresides in the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected by the mysteryof the unseen in life and relationships, while the other is drawn onlyto the literal and the practical, you must take care that the distancedoesn't become an unbridgeable gap that leaves you each feeling isolatedand misunderstood.

There are many other keys, but you must find them by yourself. We allhave unchangeable parts of our hearts that we will not betray andprivate commitments to a vision of life that we will not deny. If youfall in love with someone who cannot nourish those inviolable parts ofyou, or if you cannot nourish them in her, you will find yourselvesgrowing further apart until you live in separate worlds where you sharethe business of life, but never touch each other where the heart livesand dreams. From there it is only a small leap to the cataloging ofpetty hurts and daily failures that leaves so many couples bitter andunsatisfied with their mates.

So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will have chosen a partnerwith whom you can grow, and then the real miracle of marriage can takeplace in your hearts. I pick my words carefully when I speak of amiracle. But I think it is not too strong a word.

There is a miracle in marriage. It is called transformation.Transformation is one of the most common events of nature. The seedbecomes the flower. The cocoon becomes the butterfly. Winter becomesspring and love becomes a child. We never question these, because we seethem around us every day. To us they are not miracles, though if we didnot know them they would be impossible to believe.

Marriage is a transformation we choose to make. Our love is plantedlike a seed, and in time it begins to flower. We cannot know the flowerthat will blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom will come.

If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the bloom will be good. If you have chosen poorly or for the wrong reason, the bloom will be flawed. Weare quite willing to accept the reality of negative transformation in amarriage. It was negative transformation that always had me terrified ofthe bitter marriages that I feared when I was younger. It never occurredto me to question the dark miracle that transformed love into harshnessand bitterness. Yet I was unable to accept the possibility that thefirst heat of love could be transformed into something positive that wasactually deeper and more meaningful than the heat of fresh passion. AllI could believe in was the power of this passion and the fear that whenit cooled I would be left with something lesser and bitter.

But there is positive transformation as well. Like negativetransformation, it results from a slow accretion of little things. Butinstead of death by a thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand touchesof love. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings, two separatepresence, two separate consciousnesses come together and share a view oflife that passes before them. They remain separate, but they also becomeone. There is an expansion of awareness, not a closure and aconstriction, as I had once feared. This is not to say that there is nottension and there are not traps. Tension and traps are part of everychoice of life, from celibate to monogamous to having multiple lovers.Each choice contains within it the lingering doubt that the road nottaken somehow more fruitful and exciting, and each becomes dulled to therichness that it alone contains.

But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand and be leavened bythe knowledge that two have chosen, against all odds, to become one.Those who live together without marriage can know the pleasure of sharedcompany, but there is a specific gravity in the marriage commitment thatdeepes that experience into something richer and more complex.

So do not fear marriage, just as you should not rush into it for thewrong reasons. It is an act of faith and it contains within it the powerof transformation.

If you believe in your heart that you have found someone with whom youare able to grow, if you have sufficient faith that you can resist theendless attraction of the road not taken and the partner not chosen, ifyou have the strength of heart to embrace the cycles and seasons thatyour love will experience, then you may be ready to seek the miraclethat marriage offers. If not, then wait. The easy grace of a marriagewell made is worth your patience. When the time comes, a thousandflowers will bloom...endlessly.

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A beautiful piece. Pls pass it on especially to the young people who are starting to get into relationships or are in a relationship. Itwould save them a lot of heartaches and bitterness down the road."Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means you'vedecided to see life beyond the imperfections. So, don't Say you're happybecause everything is alright. Be happy because everything sucks butyou're just fine..." >-anonymous

Our 1st Wedmonthsary...

Today, we celebrate yet another first in our married life... our 1st Wedmonthsary :) Oh! How time truly flies. Just a month ago, I woke up giddy and worried about the weather. Goofing with my buddies at our Spa Suite while battling whether to take a bath already or enjoy for a few more minutes my last remaining moments as a single woman. Of course the taking a bath won as I was instantaneously hounded by the gurls waking me up from my daydream coz my groom is still snoring his brains out in the boys room.

One to break traditions (expect those I and We made), went galloping into Pao's room to wake him up. So unromantic I know... what happened to "we will not see each other till we get to the church"? well... if only our friends had the guts to kick Pao's ass, then I wouldn't have to march down the hotel hallway in my jammies. :)

This morning, a month later, I still woke up earlier than usual, still woke up Pao but this time, there was no Spa Suite and definitely no parading my jammies in the hotel. I need not walk any farther for I was and I will be sleeping right next to my Pankee for the rest of my life. :)

Day One...

My first attempt to finally put my thoughts into writing, taking that risk of letting people (some known other unknown) read my mind, not that its surprising for I have been regarded as someone who speaks her mind (to a select few). If that is a compliment, I am not quite certain.