it's about time

It feels like 2019 all over again. It's now 2024, five years have passed since 2019, who would have thought I would still be rushing to go to school early for my 6PM class to catch a glimpse of the sunset on the 4th floor of the building every Tuesday? 

Today is February the 14th. Same old, same old. I oddly feel the same compared to 5 years ago. Before-- young, hopeful, and full of love. Now-- still feeling young, still full of love, but not so hopeful anymore.

Why do I feel like it's harder to love and find a relationship now than before? There is something about how we can easily access now to people through technology but find it hard to really... connect. How is it that in this age of inexpensive ways of communication, it's now harder to say things what we really mean and easier to hold back what we really feel, as easy as the unsend button? Why is it that the faster the messages are being sent, the longer we say what we really feel? And why is it now harder to decide when we have options than we have none?

These are the things that have been bugging me lately, maybe because of the Valentines' blues (even though I try to deny that it is)? or maybe I am just back to where I was 5 years ago where I now have a lot of love to give... again. 

(Disclaimer: These are not just the thoughts that have been bugging me. I still have so much to post in my blog yet-- my Thailand and Vietnam adventures in the past year and my recent Siargao trip pictures surely are rolling their eyes at me already. Second semester has been going on also and I really should be working on my thesis adviser. BUT the introverted me with a lot of introspection going on inside my mind every day rarely gets to write it down. Haha and why am I being defensive? Just in case, someone's judging me wrongly here.)

I am the kind of person in a group of friends who bravely asks the group the question "where do you see yourself five years from now?" and guess what, I am now in that "five years from now" future and I am back to where I was five years ago, just in a different location.

But just because I feel the same, it doesn't mean nothing has changed. 

This is what I realized when I watched About Time again tonight. It has been my Valentine's tradition, with or without a valentine, to watch this movie every time since I don't know when. It doesn't matter when I started doing it but I just remembered that I really felt moved the first time I saw it. There was something about the simple love between Tim and Mary that I really long for. It was not pushy-- yes, Tim kinda altered time (spoiler alert!) so that something could happen between them but that was after they had really fallen in love with each other in that literal blind date. 

Rewatching it again, I still feel the same about Tim and Mary. I totally love their relationship and it is the movie that always reminds me to "marry someone kind" and "not everyone nice is boring". All the time traveling Tim did for Charlotte and they still did not work out, except for that one time. But at the end of the day, the decision Tim made to say No to Charlotte and still choose Mary is really the changemaker. Fate can only do so much, our decisions matter. 

But what made me sob tonight was the Tim and Dad part. I totally missed the importance of these parts before maybe because I wasn't mature enough and my head was full of things about love. I miss my parents, and as a person who doesn't miss people that much, I really do miss them it makes me cry. I did not realize the significance of the part where Tim had to choose between having another child and losing the chance to spend another time with his father until now. I still can't imagine the time when I would be in the same season Tim had. I really don't want to imagine.

So yes, I may have watched this movie many times, but I learned something new about myself tonight because of it. I still feel the same love I want to give but something has changed about it. This time around, I am more cautious, and I have set my non-negotiables and boundaries before giving out love once again. I now have more self-control and I am not much of a people pleaser anymore (me thinks haha). And I know now to whom I should pour my love and time more on.

So how to find love in this age (of an awkward late twenty-something phase) and time (of situationships and too much options in online dating)? I don't know hahaha that's why it's a question? 

But what this movie taught me tonight was that to find love in this age and time is to notice the small things we experience in our day-to-day lives. To be more present in the moment. We tend to focus on worries and tensions in life, and all these hopeless thoughts about love, that we forget to just... notice.

And realize that it's not that bad after all.

The future may be so uncertain, but to just be in the present does not seem so bad at all.