Walled Up

Previously on L'Heure Bleue 


Docking Into Orbit
The Phoney War

I was exchanging sweet nothings with my boyfriend on Viber when a phone call from an unknown number cut our cheesy banter.

"Hello," I said in a groaning voice. I was pretending to be stirred from sleep.

"Natatandaan mo pa ako?" The guy on the end of the line said. I paused briefly, unable to answer his cryptic question.

"Yup, kamusta?" I finally replied, albeit a little shaken. It was easy to account the people you had to let go, if you were able to stay away from troubles during the long years of singlehood.

"Gian?" It wasn't his real name. But I still remember who he was and what part he played in my life a few weeks before dating the Gundam Pilot.

"Nasaan ka?" He asked.

"Heto papasok na ng work." Rooster crows can be heard in the background. "Panghapon na ako ngayon eh."

It was all lies.

The phone call was his latest attempt to reach out, to which I was caught off guard. The SMS messages he sent, asking for a meet up (and hangout at my place) were left unanswered. They were swiftly deleted. There was no use telling that I'm happily taken when I have no idea how he would reply. I'd rather disappear from his contact list, to be forgotten, the way people get erased from someone's phone directory when ties are too shallow to even consider that person a friend.

But I learned that he was back in the city, taking review classes at the same run-off-the-mill school he attended last summer. He stays near my place, at the same dormitory he rented the first time we met. I have to say that it was a short, dispirited conversation, where I didn't even ask how long he would stay for his studies. A polite small talk, hoping he gets my sentiments between the words I didn't say.

While this trivial encounter should not have been made a blog post, the impersonal telephone exchange has to be written, as it was a refutation, a personal disproof to the collective belief that everyone is bound to cheat. I won't deny that I did acts of transgression in some of my past relationships, but I was young then, and too eager to mount a rebellion when strife and neglect used to be the issues of the day.

Not anymore.

Just by reminding myself of the two years I have been unbound and the short, fleeting encounters, whose recollections suffer the most resolute of purging, it shouldn't be a surprise that I came off as rather cold and distant with Gian. For when your goal in life - and in a committed relationship - is to shun all avenues of distraction, you would do everything possible to stay walled up and wait for the threat to go away.

The boyfriend would never get to hear this confession. But should he find a way to read this blog entry, let it be my strongest assurance that he can sleep soundly and think of happy thoughts knowing his partner would never cause heartaches.

I have come too far to let someone destroy what my idea of love is.