Category / LDR

by Gibran Cruz

Love Like Waves… (love note #5)

There’s so much in my mind all the time, but words don’t linger enough in our minds and heart to keep them for a long time. Little love notes help me keep track of everything I wish I could say but I choose not to. Love can be so overwhelming at times, it’s one of the feelings that I can hardly manage and keep under control all the time. What can I do? I’m a hopeless romantic.

Sometimes it feels like floating in an endless ocean with soft waves carrying me effortlessly all the way to you. Why today it feels like I’m drowning?  I don’t even make an effort to go back to shore… So I let myself drift away farther and farther away from myself and all the way to you. Music plays in my head, I can hear Blue October as the sound gets lost inside my head…

“Sometimes it feels just like I’m falling in the ocean
Let the waves up and take me down
Let the hurricane set in motion
Let the rain of what I feel right now come down
Let the rain come down”

 

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by Gibran Cruz

Love Note #3

I always want to write about you. Since that day you asked me not to because you didn’t want to be “a story” in my life. I knew you weren’t going to be “a story” but “THE story” of my life. You are the person who turns my days into beautiful dreams. Today you are so far away from me and I miss you so much. Dealing with an overwhelming amount of feelings is not always easy. What motivated me to fight for this, is knowing you make me happy and wanting to be with you. I know this won’t happen today or tomorrow, but one day soon enough, the distance will be just another story I will write about.  All I want is to be able to hold you, sit by your side and look you in the eyes when I tell you how much I love you. You are everything I didn’t knew I wanted. I remember when you told me you would make me the happiest woman in the world. I wanted to tell you that you do it every single day that we are together. I know distance has its ups and downs but I promise you one thing: I WILL STAY. I want to be the reason you smile every day.

With Love,

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by Gibran Cruz

Look What I’ve Got!

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Got the most beautiful gift today. When I saw it my heart skipped a bit and I couldn’t help but to fall in love with every little detail about it; from the names to the little drawings… every little detail there spells love.

Thank You Marly for such a wonderful gift. We are both very happy and you can be sure that it will be one of many beautiful things that will last forever. Thanks for the memories.

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by Gibran Cruz

Love Note #2

My problem is that I don’t believe in half loves. Either we do it or we don’t. If we go for it, know that I’m serious about it and I will give it my all. Don’t expect me to forget about things. I’m here to create memories of a perfect life we can build together. my only fear is disappointment and I’m hoping you don’t break my heart.

Fate brought us together… if you choose to believe in that kind of thing. Now I’m hoping that time works on our favor because the future is waiting for us. Thousands of miles apart but what if I told you that you are one of the best things in my life? Without you my world wouldn’t be the same because I thought I could save you when you are saving me instead.

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by Gibran Cruz

Love Note #1

Every day I write love letters or little love notes in my mind. For some reason I can never find the courage to send all of them. Mostly they stay in my phone, as some draft here or  Tumblr. I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with my romantic side because I know that my feelings can be overwhelming. Maybe it’s time I start sharing some of them.

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Status: Delivered

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by Gibran Cruz

In Love With The Idea Of Love

i hate loveWhen I first read what the character Rose Walker said in The Sandman (by Neil Gaiman) I couldn’t believe that it was describing exactly what I’ve always felt about love.  The truth is that I’ve always been scared of it. Maybe not scared about love… maybe what scares me is the possibility of it ending and dealing with what happens next.

Sounds funny because I went through it some time ago and the possibility of meeting someone and falling for them made me  want to remind myself that I couldn’t do it all over again.

The problem most of the time is that while there are some of us who fall in love “for real”, there are others who only fall in love with the idea of it. This happens a lot when you meet someone “online” or “long distance”. You put a lot of effort into getting to know this person only to realize that your effort is not being reciprocated. Instead, they fall in love with the idea of having someone to send a few messages, call once a few days and say how much they “love” and “miss” the other person. After a while, when the person gets tired of “playing relationship” or doesn’t get what he/she wants, they leave breaking the other person’s heart in the process. They never worked to build something real.

But can we break our own heart with ideas and false expectations? the answer is yes, we can. We fall in love with potential, with what it could be, with what if… that’s when we give them a piece of ourselves, taking a piece of our souls when they leave us. Love does take hostages. We stop being ourselves; if we are not careful we start living for someone else. That’s when and why we hate love sometimes, yet we crave it.

In spite of all risks we choose to love. Someone once told me that the heart has reasons that the mind doesn’t know. We are afraid to be hurt yes but we build our defenses with windows so we can see what’s out there and give us one more chance. Always one more. We are afraid of having to explains our relationships and reasons to others, how we met and where. Afraid of what to do if it ends cause it’s like the song 50 Ways To Say Goodbye by Train, trying to explain why the other person is not with us anymore or why it didn’t work and we end up feeling not only broken but stupid about it. In my opinion, we have the wrong mindset. We should worry about building something real with a person who has more than just ideas. In the end, knowing the difference between what you wish it was, what you think you have and what really is will save you a lot of heartache.

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by Gibran Cruz

My Love For you…

This might come a bit late but I had a hard time deciding if I should write about my little Valentine’s Day project or leave as it was, a gift I sent directly to the one who has an apartment in the condo of my heart.

A week before Valentin’s Day, I decided that as a VDay gift I would show Ahmed how far love can travel. I used social media to ask people all around the world to help me by writing a little note on a piece of paper or card and taking a picture of it with a background of something or somewhere that represented the country they were in. i gave an example and two messages to choose from.

With a little help from some people in different parts of the globe, I was able to show Ahmed that the heart doesn’t know bout distance and that love can reach anywhere when we want to share it with someone special to us. Even when I didn’t expect it to be possible for him to take residence in my heart.

In the end, I decided to share it because it’s only fair that I give Ahmed the place he deserves in my life when his family and him has given me a space in theirs. It’s up to him if he wants to do the same…

 

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by Gibran Cruz

Lost in Translation…

The universe has approximately 8 planets, 169 countries, 807 islands, 10 billion people and the internet allows us to connect to almost every place in our planet. Social Media has enable us to reach out and meet people from different cities, countries and cultures and that’s how I met who my friends know as “soccer guy”.

Lostintrans I have no idea how we ended up having each other in a social app, all I know is that he sent a message and we connected… or so I thought. The messages he sent were in Arabic and I replied in English. Didn’t take that long to figure out that it was going to be very difficult trying to communicate and develop a friendship. To my surprise, neither of us gave up trying to get to know each other.

Now here comes the fun part: he is six hours ahead of me, so every time we talk, one of us is falling asleep. The language barrier itself is another funny thing. He speaks Arabic, like 10 words in English and maybe 5 in Spanish. I can speak Spanish, English and a few words in Arabic, most of them romantic or very basic. We can understand half of what the other is saying. We have to make up for the rest. He talks to me in Arabic and I love it but can’t understand 3/4 of what he says. The same with my English, he just looks at me and laughs.

You may be wondering how we are able to video call and have a conversation. Easier said than done… we use 2 phones, one to video call and the other to translate and show the other (or play the audio). In my opinion, Google Translate gets approximately 20% of translation wrong. It doesn’t help that he is Egyptian and his Arabic is a bit different. We try to get meaning from the other 80%.

He says our language should be Arabic but he will try to learn English or Spanish out of love. He is perfectly romantic (in his language) and he knows I only get half of what he says so he laughs and says “I love you so much” and while I know he doesn’t mean it, it sounds sweet and it’s too damn funny.

While we are lost in translation most of the time, we have fun. We congratulate the other on all the wrong dates (holidays) , we talk about our (yes ours) cat that I think is missing,  the apartment he is saving money to buy because he doesn’t get that vacation means I will go there for like a week or two  and the marriage that I think we both agreed to without realizing what we were saying yes to. Though we managed to clear all the misunderstandings, this is a funny guy I would love to meet.

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by Gibran Cruz

A & J : A Love Story In The Making

Everyone who knows me knows I’m a sucker for a romantic story. So I’m sorry for the friend who complained about me writing about love… I promise I will tell you some other stories, just not this time.

This time, I will tell you about A and his friend J. I met A last summer, he was working a summer job through one of those youth government programs and was placed at my office (another government agency). Like any other teenager, A was involved with sports, friends, and social media. What really caught my attention was that the highlight of his summer was the visit of a longtime friend. For the time that he was working at my office, I heard a lot of things about J. His eyes would lit up every time he talked about her and I just wanted to know more as days passed because this was a real love story in the making.

A and J were best friends growing up together until J’s mother moved her to the U.S mainland. You would think that they would grow apart since they were not only physically apart, but both involved in normal teenager things. To my surprise when I asked A about it, he told me how they decided to keep their relationship long distance by calling each other, texting, video calling and of course, the help of social media, our ally in the battle against long distance.

I was clearly impressed by A and his commitment even when other teenagers didn’t seem to have his level of understanding and faith in a relationship like this. He is very mature in everything regarding his LDR and his future plans with his S/O. Now this here is something you don’t see every day – a guy with a plan! They have one more year of high school before they can start to close the distance and they are not taking any steps back. He is very sure j is not only her S/O but her soul mate… he was sure of this since they were younger.

I know a lot of people will think or say that they are too young. But let this be an example of dedication, effort, commitment…all key ingredients to build a lasting relationship. Let this be an example of what love can do if we learn to nurture it from a young age. Let this be an amazing love story (in the making).

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