When I was younger, it was a normal thing for me to look for friends through the telephone line, by just randomly picking telephone number combinations and dial it, hoping that I’d be able to make friends out of it. It was a decade ago, sometime in February 2001 at around nine o’clock in the morning in one of my usual day, when I made a random call on the phone and I unexpectedly got the chance to talk to a lovely and accommodating lady. We had an interesting time talking and along the way we become friends on the phone. My first impression keeps me interested about her, so from our first conversation I call her up almost everyday just to keep in touch with her and after a couple of weeks of friendship on the phone, I decided to meet with her in person by setting up an “eyeball,” which she agreed as well. Finally, we met in a department store nearby her school and during our meeting, we had an enjoyable conversation and our personalities really clicked – a sign for better things to come in the future. Indeed, our acquaintance didn’t just end with our first meeting. In fact, we went to watched movies in the mall cinema, we went to watch concert, we hung out in the downtown, we hung out in the park, we hung out in the beach, I even went to her sister’s graduation, she visits me in our house and I visit her in their house as well. We really had a blast with all the times that we’ve been together within just an over a month. Our friendship really blossom and it seems like we’ve known each other for a long time and have done so many things together already. There has been a one incident which I can’t really forget when she visited me in our house and stayed overnight with me, when we woke up in the morning when my mom received a call from her mom looking for her, wondering how did her mom got my number but only to find out that her mom found my telephone number in her phone number list inside her room. I felt that was kind a critical for me because her mom caught her stayed overnight with me, so I got no other resort but to be held responsible for their daughter and decided to be with her when she goes home to face her mom but unexpectedly her mom didn’t utter bad words towards me, instead her mom accommodated me in a civil way. That’s one thing I can’t forget the way her mom and her family treated me in all my visits in their house during those times. A consciousness that our friendship has developed into a special bond wakes me up. A fear grows in me that I might mess up with her, the fear that I might disappoint her family and knowing for myself that I am only twenty one then and she was nineteen, too young to really get involved in a serious relationship. The fears that I may not withstand the pressure brought by a serious relationship and that I may not meet the expectations of her family push me to stop communicating with her and end up everything what we had at that time, to avoid my fears to happen because I respect her and her family so much, so our over a month friendship and bond has ended sometime in March 2001.
But our bond didn’t end forever, when sometime in the second week of December in 2007,that was nearly seven years after our last communication in March 2001, fate allowed me to find her name Nanneth del Valle on the Social Networking Site “Friendster,” which was so popular at that time. Only to find out later that finding her name on Friendster was made possible by checking my own Friendster account at the same time as a friend of mine in Friendster added her as friend in his own account allowing her name to be visible in my Friendster home, my memory was being refreshed as I was seeing her name and said “oh it seems familiar,” so what I deed was to check if it’s really her by clicking the name “Nanneth del Valle” for me to see the profile and by looking at the profile picture, indeed it was my long lost close friend. Oh, I was so amazed upon knowing that it was her, seems like our memories and bond come to alive again, so I send her a message through her Friendster account asking her “how she is and if she’s still single?” and the next day I received a reply from her saying that she just had a broke up with her boyfriend and told her that I am single too and after three days of exchanging messages through Friendster, we started communicating through Yahoo Messenger by chatting, in fact I remember our first chat, it took us the whole night and towards the early morning catching up with her for the lost time, shared the mutual feeling of missing each other and the amazement of having to found each other again after a long time. Since then, from the first time we chatted, we communicate everyday through the internet via yahoo messenger, she even made long distance calls in our landline telephone and it wasn’t hard for us to communicate that often because of the bond that we had before. A special bond made us familiar with each other, made us comfortable chatting and talking for hours, made us enjoy reminisce our good memories together and made us laugh about our funny memories over the phone.
Though this time we are being hindered by the distance, we constantly communicate with each other and it only took a week to revive the closeness that we had before. I can already open up almost everything to her, she’s treating me so nice, our chemistry was great and we both felt that it seemed nothing has changed though almost seven years has gone by. At that point of our lives, I felt something speciaI towards her and I was thinking that I am already twenty eight and she was twenty six years old at that time, we were both mature to handle a serious relationship and old enough to make right decisions on our own, so I didn’t wait too long to express what I feel towards her and made it known to her that the love and affection which I used to feel for her was rekindled and it is even more. Within a couple of weeks, after testing me, proving me and celebrating the new year’s eve together via the internet– love was undeniable in the air!!! It was so awesome for me because just a couple of days after new year’s day on the third of January 2008 our bond has continued to blossom into a love relationship, as we both found out and realized that “love for each other” reside in our hearts.
But being in a long distance relationship is quite challenging, and so for the first ten months of our relationship, we have to deal with the fact that we haven’t seen each other for quite a long time and we can’t be with each other at the moment and all the longings for each other’s physical presence, so we just make use of the technologies like the cellular phone, telephone and computer in trying to defy the distance between us and make sure our presence be felt by being so thoughtful and creative in relaying the message that “we’re just around for each other.” So I sent her messages almost everyday through the social networking sites, through her cellular phone with a roaming sim card and talking to her on the phone. On special days like our monthsaries, valentine, birthday, Christmas, new year and other special occasions I made sure that I would send special greetings through the internet that would make her be surprise and she as well do her creativity on the internet and an internet call or a telephone call. And on our regular days, we don’t last a day without even communicating on each other, whether through an SMS message, a chat or voice call on the internet or a call on the telephone or cellular phone to make her feel cared and loved. So, these are the ways that keep our relationship interesting and burning.
After ten months into that kind of relationship and haven’t seen each other for more than seven years, she had her vacation and visited me in Cebu, Philippines , the place where she also originated from and finally I met with her again after more than seven years. Oh! What a joy to see her back and for the first few minutes I can’t believe that she’s standing in front of me, but her usual smile approached me, and by then it all did sink in that she’s for real, so we got closer to each other and felt comfortable right away, it feels like we didn’t lose each other for so long and that more than seven years was just like yesterday for us, though her weight can tell. It seemed to us that we just continued what we left more than seven years ago but more definite and confident this time that we won’t lose each other again the way we lost each other more than seven years ago. During her three months vacation, she decided to stay in our house together with my parents and brother and shared my room with her and made use of her time in enjoying ourselves through relaxation, escapades and bonding time together. We went back to the places in Cebu where we used to go more than seven years ago and enjoyed reminiscing all the things we used to do in those places and we also went to different spots in Cebu. We went to Masbate, the place of my mom and introduce her to my aunties, uncles, cousins and other relatives of my mom. Thus far, we had a blast during her three months vacation and most importantly we sealed our love by expressing our love in person and manifested intimacy. But the best three months of our lives seem so quick, her time to go back home in Auckland has come and has become one of the saddest goodbyes of my life and I even don’t want her to leave because I know I’ll be missing her a lot, considering that within three months, I am with here and being with here to talk, to laugh and love. It’s the first for both of us to be in this kind of situation, so it was so hard for us to deal with and adjust with it, we still wanted each other so much but she has to leave to be with her family and for her work in Auckland.
So, back to be away from each other and rely again to the internet for our communication but thanks to Facebook for updating/chatting and Skype for video calling which lessen the missing that we have to deal with . But to be with each other in person is still different, in April 2009 she visited me again and stayed in my place for a month but time went by so fast and she has to leave for work again. Back to internet life again and she even calls me on the phone. Then after five months, she visited me in October 2009 and stayed in my place for two weeks only because of her work. And as usual, we go back to internet communication again, but last year August 2010, she visited me and celebrated my birthday with her for the first time and we even bought a female puppy because she knows I love dogs and we named it Winbian representing her when she’s away from me. Not only that, she stayed in my place for six months, the longest time that we’ve been together and had enough time to go to some tourist spots like bohol and camotes to enjoy the beautiful beaches, underground cave and beautiful sceneries as we cherish the time being in each other’s arms and to top it all we celebrated our third Anniversary of being in love and going stronger, though it’s simple but it’s memorable for the both of us. After being in a relationship for three years, we have proven enough for our love towards each other through the ups and down for three years and still we remain in love and even getting stronger, so we got engaged and officially declare our love will be till forever.
Just last February, she flew back to New Zealand and as usual goodbye is always the hardest word as I send her off to the airport, I was trying hard to hold back my tears as she bid farewell. It was always an exciting and happy feeling when she’s about to visit and be back in the Philippines to visit me but every time she goes home to New Zealand has never been easy for the both of us. That’s always been the case for us, flying back and forth, so we intend to end up the long distance kind of relationship and to live with her in New Zealand and manifest our love ultimately by getting married and raise a family with her. With the fulfillment of our intentions to live together in New Zealand would definitely make me so happy and we will become one of the happiest couple on earth.
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