I don’t know if you can call my story a “sordid love affair”, but I like how it sounds so the title stays.

I’ve only had one love affair in my whole existence. Through that experience, I realized that I am not cut for love affairs. Some people can handle it, I can’t. I was on the losing end, but  I didn’t know that then. I thought I was fighting for something worth fighting for. In the end, I realized, I was desperately fighting for a delusional love that I thought I can have.

It took me months (maybe a year) to get over everything that has happened but up until today, every time I remember it, it feels like it has only been yesterday that I went gaga over something I know can never have. I twinge every time I remember all the crazy stunts I did.

I met “Smokes” through a friend when I was in college. I hated everything about the guy. I hated how he can sit so quietly in one corner and pretend like nobody existed around him. I wish I know how I started to have feelings for him but I don’t. All I know was that the affair started with a kiss. Yes, It started with a cliché – and it ended with one too.

One kiss, and my once quiet life turned to a noisy, chaotic war zone. It was during the affair that I learned how to lie to my then (now ex) partner. Little did I know that this love affair will haunt me until the end of my now- previous relationship. It was at that time that I learned to sneak out at night to meet Smokes at a coffee place not so far away from our apartment. I sneaked, I lied and pretended like nothing’s going on, just so I can have a few private minutes with him. I pretended that I wasn’t jealous every time I learned that he went out to meet his ex-girlfriend. Who am I to get jealous anyway? I put up a strong façade every time he talks about his problems while I crumbled inside myself and wondered why I couldn’t just have him. I’d like to think that I became his confidante, a person that is more than just a friend but less than a girlfriend.

Like most love affairs, mine didn’t have a happy ending. He left in the middle of the night without so much as a goodbye. I was hurt but more than that, I was disgusted by the thought that I didn’t even deserved a decent goodbye. I dreamed of him for months, searched for him in the crowd but every time I see him in school, I hurriedly walk the opposite direction to avoid him. I wasn’t ready for him to see me. At that time, I know I wasn’t ready to come face to face with the man who has brought sweet chaos to my life.

Here I am today, years after the affair, writing about him. No, this doesn’t mean I’m not over him yet. On the contrary, I have been for a long time, that’s why I am finally writing him down. In my mind-journal, this is his last page.

To Smokes,

You probably won’t see this, but I’d like to say thank you. I didn’t understand it then but I do now. You did us both a favor when you left. It was so complicated  I didn’t know what I was doing anymore. Your leaving gave me the space that  I needed very much. It gave me room to breathe.

The affair made me want to strive to be a better girlfriend to my partner today. No, I’m not going to let myself be in the same situation as before. I am not going to put my partner in the same situation as I did my partner then. Thank you, because if not for what happened, I wouldn’t know how to recognize and give importance to the value of love and fidelity.

In writing, you were like a draft, streams of unconnected emotions on a dirty piece of paper. I needed to write, erased and re-write until I became exhausted; disheartened to write.  In the end though, all I needed was a new page… and a fresher air to breathe.

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