[ sa susunod na habang buhay - ben and ben ]

 

 

You are a broken promise.

 

Something I've tried so hard to escape from, and yet everything leads back to you.

 

Pangako.

 

Ang daming pangako na hindi ko natupad sa'yo.

 

How you laugh, how you make me feel like I'm everything, how you make me laugh as well, how you make me feel happy—my very soul always tries to find you every time.

 

More than myself.

 

My soul yearns for you.

 

It reaches for you like you are a puzzle piece that would complete me, and I just know that my soul would choose you every time—more than anyone else, more than myself.

 

It was always you, after all.

 

You were the default choice my soul always picks, no matter what, and it felt strange the first time that I didn't choose you.

 

Because you were no longer the first choice.

 

Because my soul now hesitates when given the option to choose you.

 

What changed?

 

I didn't know.

 

All I know is that your name now lost its luster, your name felt foreign upon my lips, and it was something I did not know would come sooner than I had imagined—not that I imagined falling out of love with you.

 

No, I never imagined that day to come, and yet it came faster than I could comprehend, and I could no longer stop the day that came.

 

The day where I woke up, and my soul did not yearn for you anymore.

 

It felt incomplete, yes, the thought that you wouldn't be the first one I would seek to find when I wake up like always, but it did not hurt. Strangely, I was getting used to the hole left by not choosing you, and slowly the gap in my heart felt familiar.

 

Like it was something I had gotten used to in the moment that I didn't choose you.

 

Katarina, you're my greatest love.

 

But like every great story, the love I had for you then reached its end.

 

Hindi ko kinayang sabihin sa'yo ng harapan.

 

How so, when my heart still felt full upon seeing you happy like this, happy with me?

 

That even if I told you that day that I found someone else, that was a lie that I had unwillingly let escape my lips when you demanded for a reason on why I was leaving you like that.

 

No, no one can replace you.

 

You are irreplaceable, and it would be a long while before I find someone else—or I might not even find anyone at all.

 

There's no one else like you, and that is a truth that exceeds all the lies I had told you that day. Kasi you're you.

 

I know you're still waiting for me.

 

Still waiting for me to come back, to turn back upon my feet to run back to you, and tell you that everything is a lie that I still love you no matter what—but how can I tell that when I don't feel love for you anymore?

 

You're a promise I broke, over and over again.

 

Sorry, Karina, that I wouldn't be able to fulfill the promise that I gave you.

 

That we'd stay together until the end of our lives.

 

That I wouldn't leave you—I just did.

 

I wish that your memories of me would all be replaced of pain and suffering you felt when I left, so it would be easier for you to move on.

 

Easier for your soul to forget me.

 

To forget loving me.

 

Even if it takes a long time, I do hope you forget me, Karina.

 

I hope I would never be Winter, your lover, again.

 

Only Winter, the stranger.

 

Till our next life, I'd make sure to love you till the end of time.

 

 

Hindi ba, pangako mo nung una? 

Tiwala'y iingatan, baka naman

Sa Susunod na Habang Buhay?