u/tutang_ina

this morning i realized i’ve mourned you enough.

i spent time with you.

i loved you the best way i knew how.

i cried, i stayed, i held on for as long as i could.

and maybe that’s enough now.

Grief cannot be a home forever.

i don’t regret loving you.

i think part of me always will still love you..

but i’m tired of carrying the hurt everywhere i go.

so this will be my last day grieving us like this.

not because you meant nothing,

but because you meant so much to me that i almost forgot myself trying to keep you.

i loved you.

i really did.

and now i think i finally have to let you go.

Paalam, Mahal ko.

​

I think I am at my all-time low.

I sprayed your perfume on my pillow just so I could pretend you were still here.

So I could hold something and lie to myself for a few minutes that you hadn’t gone anywhere.

And I think I finally understand that this is real now.

Losing you feels like withdrawal.

Like my body got used to your voice, your presence, the comfort of simply knowing you existed somewhere within reach.

It’s strange.

I can finally think about you without us fighting.

I can talk about you softly now.

Just me, alone with the memories, turning them over carefully in my head.

Sometimes it even feels nice to miss you.

Nice to remember you.

Nice to love you quietly where nothing can ruin it anymore.

(gagi parang pinatay haha)

But I think I’m crashing.

Because I have never loved anyone the way I loved you.

And now that you’re gone, it’s showing in every small pathetic thing I do when nobody is looking.

In the silence.

In the longing.

In the way I still reach for you in places you no longer are.

Oh, L, kung naririnig mo ako, galawin mo ang baso. hahaha. Hawak mo ang beat. Joke lang.

Nagpapatawa lang ako.

P.

The Museum of Fine Arts has a café now.

You asked me out on a date during the very same day you had already decided to erase me from your life entirely. But I still answered, yes.

I wanted that date to happen and at the Natl Museum of Fine Arts cafe.

Truthfully, I would never want to go unless it was with you.

These past two days of silence have made so many things unravel in my mind. Beyond the fights, the jealousy, and the ugliness that grew between us, I finally understood the quiet ache beneath all of it.

I simply wanted it to be me.

Just me.

I wanted to be the first person you ran to. The first person you chose to build a life with. The one beside you through every milestone, every small victory, every ordinary day that eventually becomes a lifetime.

But when your ex reached out to me, and the lies that followed began to surface one after another, I realized I was never truly going to be that person in your life. Something broke inside me on that very day.

I kept trying to stay. I kept choosing understanding, even when it wounded me. Yet whenever the subject of her arose or the other women, it always felt as though your instinct was to protect them, even at the expense of hurting me.

And so the one thing I once told you remains painfully true:

you always found a way to choose everyone else before choosing me.

Even the smallest memories we shared, our little traditions, our cafés, our hotels, our corners of the city that felt sacred to us, somehow carried the shadow of someone else having been there or been shared with.

I loved you deeply, L.

And perhaps that is why part of me resents you just as deeply for the ways you allowed me to feel unseen within a love I gave so completely.

Still, despite everythingg, there is a cruel part of me that continues to look for you in places we have not even been to yet. In quiet cafés, in passing songs, in cities I visit that you've never been to.

And I think that is the saddest part of it all. Even after being left behind, some part of me is still waiting for you.

P.

L.

L,

While I was playing John Mayer music, I saw that their album was your online name and it was gray. Lol.

Crazy how you are everywhere while I am trying to forget you.

Is this where you got it from?

One more question I will never know the answer of.

P.

You asked me out on a date.

I said yes.

Now even if you deleted your IG,

a promise is a promise.

I will let you know when I'll be there.

I know you're stalking me.

I just so know.

P.

​

I’m about to watch TDWP alone tonight, and somehow every corner of this cinema feels haunted by you.

The smell of buttered popcorn, the dim lights, the cold air that settles on your skin before the movie starts. They all carry pieces of us I cannot put down.

I keep remembering Hoppers.

How chaotic that night was.

The woman spilling her popcorn everywhere while we stared at the mess on our way to claim ours.

The way I held your hand when we finally found our seats,

like the world had gone quiet for a second despite all the noise around us.

And then the water splashing straight onto our faces and seats like we were trapped inside some ridiculous rollercoaster ride that made me very dizzy btw.

We were slightly laughing, complaining, stealing sips from our big ass sodas, eating popcorn that was far too salty but somehow tasted perfect because it was with you.

Now I sit here alone, holding the same kind of popcorn, hearing similar cinema sounds, breathing the same same air, and it hurts how quickly a place can turn into a graveyard for memories.

I hate how cinemas smell now. They smell like you. Like us. Like a version of my life that no longer exists.

I wish you were here beside me again, reaching into the tub and finishing yours quickly,

nudging my shoulder whenever something funny happened, sharing a drink like we still had forever ahead of us.

I miss you so much, L. More than these empty seats will ever understand.

P.

My Dearest L,

I know when you find this, you’ll know it’s from me.

Not because I signed it, but because no one else would carry you this gently, even in absence.

I don’t have the courage, nor the strength, to send this...not after how we unraveled.

But there are days like today, quiet and heavy, where missing you feels like a second heartbeat I can’t turn off.

I still find myself reaching for a version of us that no longer exists.

You beside me, a small TV screen glowing between us, sharing delivered food from Grab while you finish my leftovers like it was your quiet habit, our laughter soft and familiar, dissolving into the background of some Tagalog show on Cinema One.

Ordinary moments—but they felt like a whole life.

I really believed I would end up with you.

In some other version of this world, maybe we did.

If circumstances had been kinder.

If you hadn’t chosen to hurt me the way you did.

If our issues stayed where it belonged... between us.

I’ve tried to understand why.

I’ve turned it over in my mind like a stone, hoping meaning would reveal itself.

It never did.

And still… despite everything, I find myself rooting for you.

For your dreams, your plans, the life you once spoke about in quiet moments.

I want you to become everything you said you would be even if I’m no longer there to witness it.

I loved you.

In ways you may have never fully felt, or maybe never believed.

I know I wasn’t always as expressive as you needed me to be,

but what I gave you was real, and it was everything I knew how to offer at the time.

I miss you, L.

I really, really, really miss you.

more than I admit, more than I show.

There are days I catch myself staring at nothing...just a wall, a ceiling, the silence..

and suddenly I’m back in those moments with you,

like my mind refuses to let them fade quietly.

I’m learning to let go. Slowly. Unevenly.

But not without first forgiving you.

Not because what you did didn’t hurt—it did, deeply.

But because carrying that pain forever feels like losing twice.

So wherever you are now, I hope you are healing too.

I hope you are becoming softer, kinder especially to those who love you.

And if love ever finds you again,

I hope you hold it with both hands this time.

...And sometimes.. quietly, selfishly,

I still hope it could be me.

Yours,

P.