My four-year old godson Jaize Darren was here yesterday — I haven’t seen him in months and he seems so much older now..and still as inquisitive as ever! “Ninang,¹ what’s this / what’s that?” AND He kept asking about Jim. “Ninang, why does he have blue eyes?” LOL.

Then his dad, my cousin Jason, told me that Darren now has a girlfriend. haha. I think he was just looking for the perfect opportunity to tell me about his girl. LOL. Here’s what happened next:

Dinnertime.

I sit next to Darren and ask for a kiss.
He smiles but turns his head away.

Me: “Aww… Why won’t you give me a kiss?”
Darren: “I have a girlfriend.”
Me: “Hey! I thought we had an agreement. You can’t have a girlfriend unless I meet her first!”
Darren: “Yes, but you never come over to our house.”

His dad and I exchange looks. I wink at my cousin, laugh then go back to eating.

After a while, Darren starts telling me about his girlfriend.

We finish eating.

Darren walks over to me, raises his arms for a hug…
I bend down and he gives me a kiss.

haha! I grin. I’m still number one in his book!

Hmmn… It’s really nice to see that my cousin has started to straighten out his life. I guess he finally realized that we’ve given him all the help we could possibly give… Now it’s time for him to help himself. His son really looks up to him and I guess that’s one of the other things that pushed him to set priorities. He has another child to think about now. His youngest is just seven-months old. She’s a lovely baby.

Anyway, what I really wanted to blog about was this:
Darren’s words (”I have a girlfriend.“) really struck me. I’m so proud of him! He knows you’re not supposed to go around kissing other people when you’re “in a relationship.” My cousin has always been known to be quite the ladies’ man. Come to think of it, ALL of the men in my family are, in my brother’s words, VERY friendly with women. But I know Jim would disagree — he has a different concept of that term. Lookie:

Jim: Oh hun, I didn’t mean it like that. I meant I got the most beautiful one of them all, only a ladies’ man could have done that.

Okay, he’s my boyfriend. He’s biased.

Anyway, I guess my cousin has finally settled down. He’s faithful to his wife (they’re not actually married but they will as soon as they have money saved up — they have two kids to worry about and they’re definitely more important than planning a wedding), he provides for his family, and he’s given up most of his vices.²

My brother has too. He and his girlfriend are planning to get married, probably in 2010 — they’re still saving up for a house.

So here’s to reformed rakes! We all know their fate. They love only once and when they do…they can’t imagine being with anyone else.

Wait, that’s not exactly true is it? Let’s see… Imagining… Well, “they can look but they can’t touch.” You know what I mean. LOL.

See, I’ve never cheated on any of my previous boyfriends. I never even dated two guys at the same time. Even if you aren’t “officially” together, it’s just not right.

One of my professors told me, “If you’re going to enter a new relationship, you have to make sure that this new person is better than the one before. Because if he isn’t, why did you even break up with the first one? There must be some improvement or you’ll never be happy.” Then he went on to talk about fidelity.

I always think back on that conversation… For me, honesty and trust are the two most important things in a relationship because “Love cannot live where there is no trust.”

I truly believe that Jim is the most wonderful man I have ever met. I couldn’t AND wouldn’t cheat on him because then I’d have to find someone better than him. Before we officially started “dating,” there where some guys I liked enough to date (though I never did because I was too busy with school). I think about them now and I’ve realized that the things that attracted me to them are qualities that Jim already possesses. And on top of those qualities, there are so many other things..little things that he probably doesn’t even notice, that make me like him more. Why would I want to find someone else? He’s everything I’ve ever wanted.

I started writing this last night but I was so sleepy… I have some time now so I thought I’d go ahead and finish it.

The past two weeks have been really hard. So much drama. LOL. I have all these things going on with my family, friends, classmates - even pets!¹ Everyday something OR someone else adds up. It would be too depressing to blog about them all. I feel so emotionally- (and mentally-) drained.

My sister has threatened to tie me up if I don’t go back to my usual nice-though-sometimes-grumpy disposition so… In an effort to set aside these things that have been rankling me for days, I’ll blog about something that is, according to Tony Perez, “the frontier that Psychology will never conquer” (from An Author’s Notebook) — and to think that in my days as a Psychology major, we had sessions (lectures, discussions, forums, seminars, etc.) on love and relationships that went on for weeks at a time.

My sister and I have this thing… We ask each other every once in a while about the things we like and dislike about each other. I can always count on her to give me an honest answer because she knows that although I may not like her sometimes, she’d still be my favorite sister at the end of the day.² On my end, well, everyone close to me knows that I can be brutally honest.

“All too often, people have the wrong notions of what will make themselves lovable.” — I couldn’t agree more.

I’m starting to feel silly about that last protected post. Sarah was probably the only one who read it but…hahaha. I can’t believe I went through with it. It was a birthday gift that was also sort of a dare.

Anyway, I started writing this entry two days ago (before the protected post) but ended up rewriting it a couple of times. I figured no one wanted to hear about how sad I’ve been feeling lately. LOL. Besides, it comes and goes. If you ask me how I’m feeling right now, I’d still say I’m happy. I have Jim to thank for that.

A friend of mine shared something with me a few weeks ago — stuff about breaking up, letting go and moving on. I thought I’d blog about it because Jim told me something yesterday that reminded me of it — mind you, this is unrelated and is actually about someone my friend and I knew in college, let’s call her Kate (because I don’t have any friends named Kate).