Dear Jeffrey,
I was wondering if you’ll be up to edit my first paper for this semester but you’re in deep sleep as I started to condemn the speed of Philippine Internet connection as I have only 25 more minutes left to go before I miss the deadline of this academic requirement.
I am writing this at 1:45 a.m. I’ve been trying to finish one module for school because I have another crazy week this week. You know what I mean…
You don’t understand me most of the time.
I get it.
I am moody and that happens five days a week. I juggle several responsibilities and I seem to thrive doing all of them but I can’t, in all honesty, manage to wash dirty dishes in the sink. I’ll screw it up is what I always say. You usually give me THE Italian look — the one that your mother gave you when you said or do something out of line as a boy — and then your face lit up as your expression softens… your lips form a smile. “I’ll do it,” you would say.
We both call me “nerd” because I know I am one while you can’t quite pinpoint my main motivation for taking one graduate degree after another.
You are the more vocal party in this relationship and you make that known in different languages of love: you say it, you do it, you make me feel it. You are love personified because you didn’t give 25 or 85 percent of yourself to me, you put in your 110 percent. Often times, you don’t even leave anything for yourself. And you are consistent with it in the five years that we’ve been together.
I would forever cherish the support you gave me when I declared that I’m going to fulfill my childhood dream of watching Miss Universe live. Nobody would ever think that your nerd wife loves pageants but when you learned that I love to predict and analyze this mundane mortal event, you didn’t laugh. Instead you asked me: “Tell me the story why you love pageants.”
My world as I used to know it turned upside down when I decided to let you in.
I was guarded and cautious, skeptical, suspicious and calculating.
I wanted to walk away because you felt familiar, you built a feeling of home in my consciousness and that was frightening. Because I knew that people are bound to leave. I needed to guard my heart to avoid getting hurt.
Your presence though was hard to ignore. I’ve never been so scared about my future. I turned into this scared puppy trying to make sense of what was before me. For a while, I let fear overpower me and there was a time that I doubted your sincerity.
But you didn’t stop.
Oh you and your persistence.
You wrote me a love letter.
And another.
And another.
I printed that love letter.
And that other love letter.
And still that other love letter.
Until I felt guilty about printing them all because there were just too many of them.
You came into my life when I thought I wasn’t ready to love again. You made me better. You still do. I suspect homemade spaghetti sauce and meatball paired with angel hair pasta and a million dashes of parmesan cheese have something to do with it.
You are my rock Jeff.
I don’t say that very often because I say a lot of things but fail to tell you the most important ones. But know this my dear husband that at times when I feel like I’m not enough — in the work that I do and in my responsibility as a mother to the mutants — I just bow down and look at my ring finger. There you are… you and your promise of forever even when religion and culture try to tell us there’s none.
I love you Jeffrey.
There can only be one you… the one and only you whom I love with all my life.
You’re irreplaceable,
Cris Evert
