Tag / Relationship

by Gibran Cruz

Maybe We Are All Made Of Stardust

Not everyone is meant to be great and go on adventures. Some people are only allowed to dream their wholes lives and maybe I’m one of those people who are not meant to wake up. Life is full of opportunities but they are not for me, maybe I’m supposed to help others to see where those opportunities are and grab them. Giving is in my nature. I do not love thinking in what I can get in return, but I do love expecting to build beautiful things that will last forever. 

People like me, we want to be the architect of someone else’s life, someone else’s dream. Not because I think they need me to design a life for them, but because I think they deserve the best they can get out of life. The life I feel I will never have. 

People like me think everyone we love is made of stardust and we see how they can be a shooting star… so we build them up and make them shine knowing we are allowed only to wish upon that star as we see them light up the sky if only for a second before they are gone from our lives. 

I’ve never felt I have a place where I belong. I don’t even think this world is made for people like me…but we sure try to make it perfect for someone else when we love them as much as I love. 

by Gibran Cruz

He loves me. He loves me not. 

He loves me. He loves me not. Those were the words we used to say while plucking the petals out of a flower hoping that the last one would mean that he/she loved us. If they didn’t all we had to do was take another flower and start all over again. Having a crush or “falling in love” was so simple when we were kids. 

We are not kids anymore. Having a crush or falling in love means we “put ourselves out there”. We take a chance, were risk it all by letting our feelings flow… But what happens when that love is not corresponded? 

A bit of insight on a delicate topic called one-sided love:
We’ve all been there once or twice in our lives, and the best way to describe the feeling about this particular kind of love is that we all wish they’d love us back the same way. But it doesn’t go that way. We struggle, fight, stress inmensely, we hurt, get angry, jealous, hopeless and needless to say suffer in silence over that special person. We go thru leaps of faith, post, write things that they’ll never read, that they’ll never know, yet our feelings never whither for them. 

One thing about one-sided love is that you endure the most purest of all loves, because face it if you really love them their happiness is yours as well. Even when we have to face the facts that they’re bound to not end up with you on our side of that sweet love story. 

Still we can’t give up on the object of our affection so easily:

It sounds difficult to process but they’re oblivious and clueless to our devotion and that makes our mission an even more impossible one to complete because we dream they’ll wake up to love us and see stars over us as we do over them.

Bearing our hearts has never been an easy task but our neverending tries go further and beyond words or actions. Our hearts speak so desperately for us as the tears we shed over the simple thought of them.

What can we possibly do?

Actually not much, it’s like a crush when our S/O is totally off course from our heart’s desire, yet there’s love anchored in it for them. They’re either blind or in some cases already know but choose to ignore leaving some of us in constant pain because you’ve either become ignored or friendzoned.

Being friendzoned is one of the most painful phases we all endure. You’re always available to their needs, be it a shoulder, or anthing they wish you to be, you’re always their shelter, their refuge, but once their need of you is over it’s back to square one…only you are in your hearts company.

In the end, love is all about the choices we make and the chances we take. A famous writer said “To love is great. To be loved is wonderful. But to be loved by the person we love is heaven on earth” – Paulo Coelho.

        

Writen by: Gibran Cruz & Dua E Maryam

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

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.

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by Gibran Cruz

January Goals (Because I can’t stick to resolutions)

I was thinking of a few things that I wanted to accomplish this year but then I thought about how bad I was at sticking to my resolutions. So maybe it would be easier to keep it simple and keep making short term goals each month (commitment has always been my problem).

Going over last month goals, I finished reading one of the 2 books I wanted to finish and posted 2 of the 3 drafts I planned. That’s not so bad! About my relationship goal (take a few steps back) I’m making progress training Jedi style but more work is needed.

Now that I reviewed my progress, this month I will…

  1. Finish the other drafts I had. If that takes me a year I will be calling them resolutions ha!
  2. Start renovating my closet space. I fell in love with a closet organizer and I think I will start making changes around in my room.

Last but not least… A relationship goal:

  1. Work on my relationship. Things have been a little crazy and I know both of us could do better – copy/pasting this to his messenger – .

Next month I will be sure to check on my progress.

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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

Dear 2016…

This is the last day of the year and I couldn’t be happier. This year was filled with many challenges and lessons that I won’t be able to forget. Everything seemed to be frozen in time, including my relationship.

As you all know… Shit Happens (in 2016):

Faces we see, hearts we can’t know. This year my relationship was truly tested. We dealt with people that tried to break us up, insecurities, trust issues, you name it. It was a lot. I feel like I lost something that I won’t be able to get back.

You can take the guy out from the army but you can’t take the army out from the guy. I learned firsthand that people who go to the military change. I’m happy because he has built a strong character and has become an amazing man. But nothing that good is free… he is stronger, tougher and now it feels like it’s harder to see his feelings and make him express them, even during arguments.

A blast from the past. Before he went to army I was very happy to see our relationship move forward and the way we felt comfortable expressing a little bit more in public. Now it seems that we are back to square one and it’s like we are stuck in year one of our relationship. But at least there’s hope…

dear2016letter

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have to admit that not everything was bad. Here are the good things I will take from 2016:

Achievement Unlocked: Survived Army.  Our relationship survived his time in the military.

Achievement Unlocked: Rings to Bind Them. For my birthday he bought me a beautiful ring. I did the same for his. Ehh… does this means we are engaged?

The Strong Woman Award. After all the challenges of this year, I’m still standing.

Medal of Hope. I know things will change for the better. We need to have a little bit of Faith and what every couple in a LDR has, plans (lots of them).

So before this year comes to an end, I have one more thing to say…

dear2016txt

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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.

 

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by Gibran Cruz

Happy Anniversary (Love Letter #3)

On November 23, 2013 I heard myself say the words “I Love you too” making that a very special day. Anniversaries are not just dates in a calendar. They are reminders of special events in our lives. In my relationship they are a reminder of a decision we made to be in love and keep this love alive for years to come. It is a reminder of the commitment we have towards  this relationship and each other.

Love should be celebrated. We should look back with pride at all the years we’ve been fighting for love and conquering everything that life has thrown at us. We should look forward with confidence that we will still be fighting in the future. We should look forward and plan for our “forever”because I read once that “Forever is composed of Nows” (Emily Dickinson).

Our “nows”should lead to each other. Just like every big decision in  my life, every choice I make leads me to you, brings me closer to you. After all, you are my relationship goal. You have been for 3 years and I can only hope that you will be forever. You and Me turned out to be Us November 23, 2013.

Happy Anniversary Mi Amor…

love-letter-3

* The letter above was written during a hardship in our relationship. I thought that I had lost part of it during this time when some external factors were threatening everything we have built together. The letter is a reminder that we chose to fight for what it’s ours. Love.
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