Tag / MySoCalledLife

by Gibran Cruz

Do you know what love is?

If you ask people this question, everyone will give you a different answer based on their perception and experiences. Love is a very strong emotion and if you asked me… You would get a mixed answer explaining how good it feels, how wonderdul it is  and how it makes you weak until it kills you. When it comes to love, I have only one setting and it’s called extreme.

It didn’t surprised me that when I saw the tv series Legion I fell in love (haha) with one character’s definition of love. Hearing it and actually watching the description complete with a scene from the documentary Planet Earth made that my favorite part of the show.

I made a post on my other blog simply because I wanted to share that part of the dialog. Of course, not everyone will agree… But it’s a funny and weird way to look at things….


by Gibran Cruz

Happy Birthday (My Love)

Birthdays are special occasions. When you are in a LDR it can be hard to cebrate it the way you wish. Today it’s Ahmad’s birthday and I hope my words reach where I can’t be so I wrote him a little note that I would like to share here. 

My only hope is that we get to celebrate many more birthdays together in the future. 

by Gibran Cruz

I Remember Everything

It has been more than a month since I posted something in my blog. Writing has always been a way to deal with feelings and say what I never had the courage to say to anyone, but I was afraid to admit that at this point in time, my relationship wasn’t where I expected it to be. 

I fell in love more than 3 yrs ago and that love grows with each passing day even when I know that people and feelings change over time. I like to think that the world is constantly moving so my love and my relationship move forward. 

Change is inevitable. We don’t always like it, we may not accept it but we certainly can’t stop it. It doesn’t have to be bad, but it may not be the change we wanted or expected and that was precisely my case. 

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately and I kept playing in my mind some of my favorite memories of when I was falling in love (I didn’t know I was) and couldn’t help to think about the amazing man I fell in love with and all the small details that made me stay with him all this time. 

I remember we used to talk every chance we had and to this day, we still do. We weren’t all that open with each other at first. It was really hard to get him to open up but once I could convince him to talk about his feelings, he would say the most romantic things. It’s funny because he was the romantic one, always sending me cute messages and stickers. He was the one who convinced me that it was safe to be myself with him and that I could tear my defenses down after I had build up walls to keep everyone out and my romantic side in. 

Our relationship has always been kind of a secret and even though I have fought for him to be more open about it, it’s still a work in progress. Because of that, we weren’t that open in social media but that didn’t mean we didn’t share things with each other. I used to mark every post that was for him and he used to look out for every single one of them. He used to pay so much attention to detail. He had all of my accounts and he would go through all of them, making sure I saw that he was paying attention. It felt great knowing someone care about all the things that other people found common. He celebrated every detail. So in showing my love I felt loved in return. 

As time went by our relationship became more open and I felt more confident in talking about my long distance relationship when people seemed rather skeptical about them. I talked to my parents about him, to my brother, introduced him to my son (Wow! This was big) and gave him a place in my family even though I’ve never had a place in his. By then, he had convinced me that we were actually a family. For someone who never knows what to say, he made sure he always had the right words to make me feel good, happy, to calm me down and even to convince me that I had to marry him. He made sure I knew that every single day. 

No wonder I always thought I had the perfect relationship and the perfect boyfriend and I made sure everyone knew when they asked who was the handsome man in the picture I had in my desk. I still smile every time people notice that the picture is gone… like I said, everything changes… but I remember everything. 

by Gibran Cruz

He Said/She Said

Love means everything. Those were the words he texted me while we try hard to fix all the damage we have caused to our relationship. Sometimes we talk about other people or other situations and then we overthink on the ways those situations apply to our relationship. No matter how hard you try, you can’t help comparing your relationship to others, even though you remind yourself (while comparing) that not two relationships are alike.

When I decided to be in a LDR, I knew it would be a challenge in many levels. We had distance and time difference, but I guess the biggest challenge was culture. Among all the differences that we had, the most difficult for me to absorb was that his culture is more closed, and not as open minded as mine. That includes the way they handle romantic relationships with people from the other side of the world.

Our relationship has always been kind of a secret. I must admit that I agreed to it from the start and got used to the way things were. But as I said before, the situations of others sometimes remind you of your own and in this case, it reminded me that to his side of the world, his family, friends… I do not exist. It reminded me of the struggle I have to achieve this sense of normalcy in my relationship. While I tried to include my boyfriend in every aspect of my life, I felt I had no real presence in his.

With all that we have been through in the last couple of months, overthinking about that issue (the secrecy) added some pressure. I was feeling bad about something I can’t change (and agreed to it since the beginning) and he felt bad because he couldn’t give it to me. We took turns to argue and hurt the other and then we would try to fix the damage we did.

But that wasn’t the only thing I was struggling with. Some time ago I told him that I felt things had changed. Somehow, our relationship didn’t feel the same (I dismissed it because I thought it was because of his time in army) but we did talked about it and even agreed to work on it. I felt that we were back to square one. Back to the way our relationship was when we started and it sucks because I know we put a lot of effort to bring our relationship to a point where we both felt happy before he left for army.

Even today I feel guilty about it. I feel guilty about telling him because maybe I’m the one stuck on a moment in time. The one who can’t stop to think that I knew the rules of the game before I decided to play. The one who is having a hard time shaking doubts creeping inside my mind. Maybe I’m the one who refuses to understand that things change and there’s nothing to do but accept it and move on to whatever comes next, even if you don’t have the same hopes you did before.

gibypea3

by Gibran Cruz

Hold on…

I think is rather sad how we feel the need to hang on to something or someone because we don’t want to break it when we finally let go or leave. We feel we can’t hurt someone else, we can’t break someone else’s heart so we continue to be there, cause we are afraid to shatter someone else’s world.

The truth is we are living, existing in someone else’s world and in that process we don’t move on to create the one we want for us.

by Gibran Cruz

Is it still My December? 

People close to me know that I overthink and obsess about things and it’s really hard to slow down my brain. One of the things I do is to convince my brain to “care less” about certain things and focus on simple, short goals to achieve each month.

This month I will…

  1. Finish the 2 books I’m reading simultaneously. Because obviously one wasn’t enough. Ha!
  2. Finish at least 3 of the 4 drafts I have sitting in my blog. Do I see a pattern here?

Last but not least… A relationship goal:

  1. Take a few steps back from my relationship. Not wanting to add to the pressure my bf has, I think the best thing I can do is give him some space. I’ve been kind of sad and my mind is racing in all the wrong directions so the best thing is give all the love stuff a break. I will train my brain Jedi style to not care about anything anymore.

 

gibypea3

by Gibran Cruz

App Review: UNVEIL

One of my favorite Instagram accounts is Unveil (if you haven’t checked them out yet, what are you waiting for? Click the link!). Every picture they post asks you a different question that makes you think about life,the future, relationships etc…designed to spark a conversation.

A few weeks ago I saw a post about their new dating app called Unveil. You see, Unveil is not your usual dating app where you go through profiles waiting for pictures to catch your eye. You have to interact with people using voice messages (little conversations) to get to know people and reveal their picture.

It works like this:

  • You sign up using your email
  • You fill out a very simple profile (people will see your name, age and where you are from)

unveil2

  • Select the gender of people you want to meet (male/female)
  • Upload a picture. You can adjust the picture by moving it or pinching on it. Your image will be visible to you while you edit but once you finish, they will see a blurry image like my picture below

unveil3

  • Record a message saying a little bit of yourself
  • Start meeting people! You will see profiles like this one:

unveilprof

  • After interacting with some people your inbox will look better than mine (hopefully) and their pictures will start to clear up (see pictures below)

 

Unveil is very simple to use. It provides a new way to interact and meet people. It gives you the opportunity to “click” with someone on a whole new level by hearing their voice and giving you the chance to connect with them based on personality. The exchange of voice messages will allow you to see the person’s profile picture (and for them to see yours).

I had fun using Unveil and would recommend it to everyone that wants to try a different kind of dating app. Just talk and have some fun! To download Unveil you can visit their website Here.

gibypea3

 

Notes:

  1. Logo picture is property of the Unveil team. All other pictures are screenshots (personal phone).
  2. The opinions on this post are based on my personal use of the app and do not represent the opinion of the Unveil team.
by Gibran Cruz

Thoughts of a LDR gf: Military Edition

A year ago on this very month I was dreading the inevitable: my bf had to join the military and was leaving in October (2015). The weeks leading to that event weren’t easy for me. I wondered each and every night what my reaction would be when he left. I knew I was going to cry even when I told myself (and him) that it was ok, it was just days.

It wasn’t ok. The day he left we spent the afternoon talking, laughing and trying to convince the other that we weren’t nervous. We failed. I couldn’t stop crying. In fact, I cried for days after he left. I texted him every single night knowing that his phone was off hidden somewhere in his room. I had faith that one of those nights those messages would be marked read.

It wasn’t just days. That first time, I had to wait for weeks. Praying and wishing for him to be safe, in a good place and just waiting for my messages to be marked read. I felt down for weeks and had to get used to the fact that he wasn’t going to be there all the time. He even programmed one of those services that send you an email every day just so he could say that he loved me.

Never underestimate the power of a double check mark in an app. Yeah, I cried the day those messages were marked read right when I was texting. Best feeling ever after so many days.

Time is the best healer. October 2016 will mark a year. Every time he leaves again after “holiday” has gotten a little bit easier. We can text or talk sometimes. I don’t cry anymore. I miss him every single time and I still pray for him to be in good places, with good people, SAFE.

Most of all I think I pray for the day he finishes… my countdown app says that day is Soon. I bet he doesn’t even remember that I still get an email every day at 5:30 am. 😉

 

gibypea3