SOURCE: SENDER OF THE "MEANTIME GIRL" EMAIL -- see "Meantime Girl" posted on 3/7/07

To the “Meantime” girl,

There are a lot of things that you have to know about how I think. I think you’re the most beautiful woman in the world. I think you deserve the best any man could offer. I think you are the greatest woman any man could ever have. I think I’d be better off with you than with any one else. But you know what? I can’t say these things to you. I can’t lose you. I can’t allow my feelings to get in the way of “Us.”

You know what? Those women that I go after, they’re not all great, we don’t share the same things that we share. You and I laugh at jokes that she doesn’t get. She doesn’t know everything about me (because I know if she does she would look for someone better). She doesn’t know what makes me cry, what makes me angry, and when I am angry, she cannot handle me as well as you do. She hates the way I drive, hates how I dress, and she absolutely hates it when I accidentally fart when I’m with her. But you can handle me, you can understand me. You love me in spite and despite my flaws and only a few lucky bums like me can have that. Those women may have the body, the face, the “sex appeal”, everything any woman would dream of, but there is one thing that they lack that is very important… substance. I like what I see, but it ends there. They cannot make me happy in real sense of the word. In fact, they do the complete opposite, they make me feel worse about myself every moment of my life, and that sucks.

You think I don’t notice you? I do that’s why I spend time with you. You think you are not as attractive as the “beautiful” women are? Honestly, you are. But I cannot compromise what we have. I value you too much to lose you. You know how relationships hurt sometimes and I don’t want you to have that, especially from me. I’ve shared a whole lot of my life with you and I can’t afford to lose that.

Well, all I want to say is that you’re no meantime girl… in fact I want you to be with me forever. I don’t know how to say it without losing you but maybe it’s the risk I have to take. You may be my best “girl-friend”, but you know what? You are the best girl for me.

Your “Buddy”

Wow, how come I haven't thought of that? Yeah, what if the time comes when he finally finds someone real to spend the rest of his life with? What will happen to me all alone? What am I thinking? I'm not a robot. I will definitely be broken when the time comes.

Kasi naman bakit ba di ako matauhan? Bakit ba pinipilit ko ang isang bagay na imposible namang mangyari? Ang kulit ko! Ang tigas ng ulo ko! 'Pag inuntog ko naman ang ulo ko sa pader ng makailang ulit, wala namang mangyayari bukod sa malamang na brain damage o kaya naman sakit ng ulo. Ayos lang sana kung kasabay ng pananakit ng katawan, matatauhan na ako at titigil na sa katangahang 'to.

Sabi ng mga tao sa paligid ko, ako lang naman ang bobong nagpapahirap sa sarili ko. Pero 'pag pinapakiramdaman ko naman ang sarili ko, nararamdaman ko naman na masaya ako kapag kasama ko s'ya. So, in fairness naman sa Sarili ko, di naman ako masokista. Ginagawa ko lang 'yung ginagawa ko kasi somehow masaya din naman ako dun. 'Yun nga lang, pagkatapos mapapaisip ako. At 'yun na, nagsi-sink in na sa 'kin kung ga'no kamiserable 'tong sitwasyon ko.

Dati, gusto ko sana magkahiwalay na lang kami ng landas. Dati ang naisip kong solusyon para matigil na 'ko ay 'yun nga sanang mag-goodbye na kami sa isa't isa, as in wala nang kahit anong mode of communication. Mahirap naman pala, kasi nga magkaibigan kami. So, 'di din nag-work. Mahirap sirain ang isang pagkakaibigan nang wala naman talagang kongkretong dahilan. Wala naman kaming maaamin na problema talaga. 'Di ko din naman kinayang komprontahin s'ya tungkol sa problemang ako lang naman ang nakakaramdam. Unfair naman na bigla na lang akong mang-iwan. Sa madaling sabi tuloy ang weird naming friendship.

Mas naging komplikado na ngayon. Kasi naman ako, matigas ang ulo, hopeless romantic, dreamer. Ayan tuloy nasasaktan na 'ko ngayon. Akala ko hindi aabot sa ganito. Kasi naman, sino ba'ng niloloko ko? Natural masasaktan talaga ako in the long run. So, pa'no na 'ko ngayon?

Alam ko naman na importante din ako sa kanya kahit paano. Sa ngayon nand'yan lang siya. Pero 'di naman palaging nand'yan lang s'ya. Mawawala din s'ya eventually. At ngayon ko lang 'to naiisip. Pa'no na ko pagdating ng time na 'yun?

Favorite Poems by my Favorite Poets

Sometimes with One I Love
by Walt Whitman


Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I effuse
unreturn'd love,
But now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay is certain one
way or another,
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return'd,
Yet out of that I have written these songs.)

*****

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You
by Pablo Neruda


I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

*****

If You Forget Me
by Pablo Neruda


I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

*****

Tonight I Can Write
by Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, "The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance."

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

*****

somewhere i have never travelled
by e.e. cummings


somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands