Me, being hopelessly romantic

I usually refrain myself from blogging about my romanticism if not password protected, except for the few times when I couldn't help myself. This is because I feel certain feelings (yes, even the good ones) are not meant for just anybody to read about me, things I wish to share only with a select few. Because I'm essentially a private person. I usually blush knowing if I've let out too much of my vulnerability for the world to see, especially the world that's far removed from the one that I build around me. This blog however has no password protection application, not like another I have where I basically password protect almost every other post. But i'm here to write romantics, this time open to the world, not intended to be private and slightly unsure why I make such a decision.

I have possibly mellowed with the prospect of me becoming a wife. I may possibly become less private about how I feel because it seems, feelings and emotions have become my centerpieces of my article subjects of late. I am a romantic; people just don't know that I am. Well, now you do. Apart from many other stuff I'm made of, romantic apparently is one of it, and very much so.

These days I find myself thinking a lot about my fiance. The man I am to be married to in just a month. There's no way to describe the feelings I have about where I am now, the feeling alien but welcoming. I am happy in a way that has never been felt before. I've always been a mostly happy person, but the 'happy' I feel right now, counting down to the days of me getting hitched, this happy is a new kind of happy. A complete kind. The unpretentiously wholesome kind. Like I'm not required to smile just to prove it. Like its there even if I'm crying. You know, that kind of happy, ever present, always enveloping me whole.

No matter what I do, how dreadful my day has been, just the thought of having him in my life makes me happy, and everything else just becomes endurable. I have thought many times of how big this step is that I'm taking with him, but since the moment I agreed to do this marriage thing for real, I have not had any doubts that he is the man I want to have my future with.

I find myself constantly filled with warm memories of him, quick, usually in my repose, sometimes mid-conversation, resulting in me mentioning his name unceremoniously out of the blue. I find pleasure in talking about him, then I remember he too is a private person and will stop just as abruptly. But I cannot help myself sometimes and the people who are constantly with me would tell how my eyes twinkle when I do what I did.

I thought about how when he was younger, he was already so independent, living away from his parents, growing up with relatives that at times denied him the privilege of being an only son. It taught him security in adversity. Things I felt I had it easy when I was younger and he had to do without. At times I wish I really could’ve known him when he was younger. Wish that I could’ve been at his football games and dentist visits. I have, at one emotionally overwrought hormone-driven time, felt how wasted that I hadn’t known him sooner all those years he has existed without me in his life and him in mine. I cried over it, thinking of the 20 birthdays he has celebrated without knowing me. Now, I still think the same sometimes, imagining how regrettable it is that we missed almost a quarter of our life not crossing path. Such is the depth of my adoration for this man, I had to cry over the years I haven’t yet existed in his life.

I believe that there is something that binds me and him, all those years we never knew each other; so strong the ties we couldn’t break free even if we wanted to. In one form or another, I believe in the force that connected us whether it was back when we were in our own preschool classrooms drawing our arts and stars on the cold tiled floor, or the times we were sitting for our definitive exams that have helped chart out paths academically, even if we didn’t know it and couldn’t feel it or didn’t believe it then. I was pretty matured for my age, I’ve always believed that. And though I may not have known him, but all those pre-pubescent years, leading separate lives in our separate worlds, I may have already pledged to love a man I haven’t met. Now, that man is him.

I can’t help thinking of the many times life’s harshest tribulations had threatened to sever our relationship. It hasn’t always been easy, your own heart playing tricks on you sometimes. If I had let even any one of those times triumphed over us, he and I would’ve been history in our own lives, but even when I had wanted to walk away from all the complexity of us, for some reason I stayed and stuck by it, by us. Now instead of him being just my past, he is my present and my future.

Sometimes I watch him when he doesn’t know that I am; and whether I have good thoughts or sad thoughts then, I always felt like, I cannot not have him around. Even when we argue, all I want to do is see make him smile even if it takes my tears to make it happen. He’s the only outside person I allow myself to cry in front of. Ever since I am conscious of my adulthood and this innate sense of privacy I have about myself, unless I could not help it despite my best efforts, I have almost never allowed myself to cry in front of anyone else but him. Not even my parents, or sisters or brothers or best friends. Just him. In fact, I’m such a bawler with him I am annoyed with myself because of it. Like I couldn’t stop myself and I had to cry and be vulnerable. But with him, I’m always vulnerable. Even when I wish I could help myself, be a little stronger and stop being such a snivel, with him I couldn’t help it. I have a hobby of creating poetry for him, about him. Then there were times in the car (his or mine) when he lets me sing and joins me at it, of key, and I let him. Times he allows me to give him language lessons and then mock my accent, and I let him. He would call me with his favourite nicknames, none of which sound romantic unless it comes from him, and I let him. I let him make me believe the names are indeed romantic, sometimes pinching my nose red because he knows I hate it and wants to purposely tease me, I let him, thinking. “this is it. This is the man I want to spend the rest of my life with.” He calls me his girl, most times just ‘busuk’ although he knows I’m not even remotely that. But I let him. Sometimes, because he’s used to being in control and to a certain extent unconsciously crave it, he dictates my actions which I hate, but I let him, first, before I tell him to stop. The tiniest things and the big things, things that drive me mad or make me sigh, the things that make me smile or laugh, things that tickles and things that cause me sulk, I let him. I let him because I love him. I let him because I am his girl.

I find it hard to just pin it down to one reason when people ask me what makes me love him. I love him for a myriad of reasons, even reasons that should make me hate him, make me love him instead. I love the way he sulks when I fail to pacify him after I hurt his feelings, I love the way he chuckles when he’s nervous that I was upset, I love the way he wants to wipe my tears for me when I cry, I love the way he nags about me not careful enough about my own safety. I love how he plans my birthday surprises each year. I love the way he puts in efforts to remember our special dates and the clothes I wear, I love it that he tells me I look prettier without any make up on and he prefers me more that way, which kinda soothes me cause I don’t do make ups very well. I love the way he makes silly jokes and try to make me laugh after he just made me cry, I love how he usually offers me an ice cream when I get upset, and I love him for many more reasons I may very well run out of space trying to list it all down here. There were times too that I hate the way he does things but still, I love him for everything else. More than any other reasons, and all other reasons combined, I love him simply because he is my very best friend when no one else can be.

This is not going to be the last I will write of him, about him, about loving him. And maybe in time, when he learns to grasp the sense of pride that I have for him, maybe, he will let me do so more freely, not minding so much my previously private romanticism about him being made public. This post here is meant to compensate for the times I forget what’s important to us and upsets him. This is meant to make him smile. He will not respond to it, but he will secretly gloat that I adore him this much and just in case I don’t tell him often enough, reading this at least will let him know, I do indeed love him, so very much.