http://iamandei.wordpress.com/2011/09/10/rae/

September 8, 2011. He said it for the first time tonight.

He started pressuring me within a month of our relationship. During the first two weeks, I would always deny him a kiss. I told him I only kiss people I love. “Ibig-sabihin hindi yun ang nararamdaman mo,” he told me. I don’t want to love him actually. Our relationship was only a deal for simplicity’s sake anyway – not necessarily feelings but more of interest. And I’m afraid he can’t handle me or give me what I truly want. Mapapanindigan ba niya kung ma-inlove ako sa kanya? He was grunting and was frustrated. “Tangina, sabi na nga ba sa feelings!” He couldn’t say ‘that’ even to his mom, he told me. But he tried to say it to me, and both attempts failed. “Pasensya na,” he said. Hindi man lang niya kayang masabi na ‘I love you.’

One night, he forced a kiss on me upon knowing some past lover had already done it. “So siya successful, ako trying hard?” He said. And he kept on doing it even when I pleaded for him to stop. But I wouldn’t push him away. I could only feel deeply saddened. The next day I cried myself to sleep.

“Diskarte,” he would call his plans to get me – to be his girlfriend, to get a kiss, to achieve his checklist of goals. I don’t want “diskarte.” I just want you to love me. And I just want to love you back.

After letting him hold my hand (which I was vehemently against), after being his girlfriend (a “deal” to make our status less complicated), after surrendering to his kisses, and after letting him take things farther and farther each time… I’m afraid to seek out the limit to which his desires escalate. I won’t be able to turn back. He wants more and what’s next, while I am satisfied falling asleep in his arms.

I cried again. I’m not a crybaby. But I had promised myself I would love myself and I won’t allow myself to get hurt, but here I am in this situation – letting my boyfriend take from me things I’m not ready to give. If I don’t give in to him, he’d get frustrated and would stop talking to me, conflicting with my genuine wish to keep him happy. As dramatic and cheesy as it sounds, in this world I perceive as empty and dull, he’s my only happiness. So I get hurt when I realize he only loves me to a point. He loves me because I entertain him. He loves me because he knows I’d feel guilty if I don’t please him.

I cried because it all seems like a plan to satisfy himself and get the maximum out of things. Love waits. He wouldn’t. Once, he wanted to get off. He thought twice about it because he had an upcoming class. So he did it in a snap – almost forceful, almost demanding, almost unemotional. I felt harassed and used. I almost cried, but I had to hold back. It hurt me too much, and to console myself, I didn’t want to show him that it did.

Even when I try not to love him, I do. Even when I get hurt, I go back to him. And after crying myself to sleep for the second time, I awoke wanting to see him again, so I ran to meet him like my happiness depended on it (and it did). I call myself a fool, but isn’t love a fool’s game?

Tonight on the way home, he kept on noticing something about me. He said I seemed sad and looked pitiful. And so he took my heavy bag of clothes, embraced me the whole ride, and planted kisses on my cheek. I smiled and laughed, and repeated to myself that I had sworn I wouldn’t let him take advantage of me. But I love him – And now it’s perfectly clear and steady. I reminded myself that he courted me to change up his routine life, to be there whenever situations required him a girl. I reminded myself that he always forces himself on me and doesn’t respect me, when to be cherished is what I want to feel. But tonight it changed. His arm was around me as he held the umbrella. He had been carrying my big bag and his. And he waited with me under the rain for my ride home, when he despised the rain. Then it seemed, it all didn’t matter anymore. Because there it was. “Love you!” He said. It was short, somewhat spit out, somewhat vulerable and obligatory. Love you, he said, when he gets all tied up trying to say it. I didn’t quite capture the moment. But right then, my complaints, they all suddenly became invalid.