They say love used to be tougher back
then.
You had to court—like literally show up with flowers and prayers, climb
gates like Spider-Man, impress a father sharpening his bolo, and survive the
laser eyes of the tita who smells like Vicks and disappointment.
Now?
Just swipe right and pray you’re not talking to someone who cropped their ex
out of a 2014 photo but forgot to crop the trauma.
I didn’t ask for a TED Talk, but in the
quarantine facility, everything was communal property: the soap, the gossip,
the unsolicited life advice.
The guy beside me, older, married, and spiritually possessed by the ghost of a
Nokia 3310, started waxing poetic like he was applying for a slot in Maalaala
Mo Kaya.
“Wala kaming ganyan noon, yung
swipe swipe? Akyat ligaw kami. Pakilala sa pamilya. Kahit umuulan, dadalaw
ako…”
I nodded. Politely.
Half-agreeing, half-wishing a butiki would start a full-blown telenovela on the
ceiling to distract me.
But let’s be real: I couldn’t argue.
Dating had changed.
And there I was—lying on a folding bed with a busted foam and government-issued
hopelessness—swiping not for love, but out of boredom, low serotonin, and
chemically unverified hope.
But this isn’t a story about
quarantine.
And it’s not just about how lonely it got.
This is a story about how that
loneliness cracked something open—
And accidentally let something real crawl through.
Anomaly? Maybe.
Accident? Probably.
But love? Well…
It Almost Didn’t Happen
I matched with her without even meaning to. Just another swipe. Just
another name on a screen. I was jaded — worn out by the dating app circus:
perform your greatest hits, flex your resume, your abs (if applicable), toss
out a few witty lines and hope she laughs enough to overlook the existential
dread behind your selfies.
She messaged me. I replied.
Sort of.
Then I vanished. Not maliciously — more like a ghost who forgot it was haunting
someone.
She later told me she was this close to giving up on me on Day 1.
“Sayang,” she said.
She liked me already. And I ghosted her for hours. Classic.
But the truth? I wasn’t playing cool. I wasn’t busy. I was just tired.
Tired of pretending to be more impressive than I was.
Tired of showcasing intelligence to girls who couldn’t volley back.
Tired of selling myself like some discounted weekend bundle at Lazada.
So this time, I didn’t try.
And by not trying, maybe I accidentally did the most honest thing I’ve ever
done.
When I finally messaged back, it wasn’t anything grand. Not personal.
Just... stuff.
Random thoughts. Nonsense, really. A flight of ideas with no landing gear.
But she replied. Every single time.
Fast. Curious. Effortless. Like someone who didn’t just want a distraction —
she wanted me in the distraction.
And that’s when the sly little ego inside me — the schemer, the antenna
that twitches when someone’s locked in — perked up.
“Oh? We got a real one.”
So I tested it.
Called her on video.
And there she was.
Not a model. Not an influencer. No filters. Just real.
She wasn’t trying to impress me either.
She looked like someone who’d just survived a war — because, in many ways, she
had.
She was a frontliner. A pandemic soldier. Bone-tired, eyes heavy, still in
scrubs.
But when she smiled?
Man.
It was like someone opened the curtains in a dim hospital ward.
Like sunlight through a cracked window.
Like the trumpet of an angel... or maybe it was just my province Wi-Fi behaving
for once.
She lit up.
And suddenly, everything we’d said in those chaotic hours felt real.
That moment — that smile, on that pixelated screen — was when I knew:
This wasn’t just another match.
This was anomaly.
The 9 PM Pact
I felt like I accidentally swiped right on someone the algorithm didn’t intend for me to meet. Like the app glitched… and sent me someone real.
She wasn’t a “type.” She was a presence. First-time in love, barely in her 20s, yet already more grounded than half the emotionally unavailable women I'd matched with before.
Within 12 hours of talking to her, I knew this wasn’t your usual “hey haha wyd” that fizzles out faster than a birthday candle in a storm. Because I knew the pattern.
You match, you click, you fall into the rabbit hole of six-hour calls like there’s a prize for emotional nudity.
Night 1: Childhood trauma.
Night 2: What your mom did to you in third grade.
Night 3: Existential dread and your sad Spotify playlist.
By Day 5, you're already virtual live-in partners, and by the weekend?
Boom. You ghost each other like it was all just a shared fever dream.
Sound familiar? Yeah. It's practically a TikTok trend.
But this time? I wanted to resist that modern madness.
I wanted to preserve the mystery. Sustain the spark.
Not because I was being clever, but because I was finally tired of burning too bright, too fast, and getting ghosted by my own expectations.
So maybe cutting out our convo at 9 PM wasn’t such a bad idea.
She was a hospital frontliner — a radtech pulling pandemic shifts, while I was just out here counting quarantine days and trying not to spiral over whether a lion could beat a tiger.
She needed rest.
I needed pacing.
So we made a deal.
9 PM. No matter what.
Even if the tea was boiling.
Even if she was mid-sentence about her dramatic cousin’s love life or her high school nickname.
Snip. Curtain call. Fade to black.
Was it romantic? Not sure.
Was it effective? Oh, absolutely.
It wasn't manipulation — it was preservation.
Not a leash, but a lighthouse.
A way to keep us from sprinting into the same emotional walls we both quietly feared.
She appreciated the restraint, the rhythm, the idea of not trying to wrap all the lumpia in one night.
We shared the same logic as in that McDonald’s movie:
“Good things come to those who wait.”
And we did—till the next day, every day.
I wasn’t curbing desire.
I was building value.
Every day had its flavor:
-
Mornings were light roast — coffee convos, random quotes, little “how’d you sleep” check-ins.
-
Afternoons were trivia, memes, life hacks, and “did you know you can boil eggs in an air fryer?”-level nonsense.
-
Evenings were prime time — like that Rosalinda episode where she finally met Fernando Jose (I know, I went too far back on that one… sorry na agad, nostalgia hits weird sometimes).
And then always — 9 PM sharp —even with questions still hanging, fade to black. Done. Bukas ulet.
She passed the test I never told her she was taking.
And that pause — that space — that discipline?
It made the anticipation marinate.
We both became Pavlov’s dog — hungry for the reward that would unravel the next day.
We weren’t clinging.
We were choosing.
Quietly. Consistently.
The Girl Who Stayed in the Room
She wasn’t the loudest in the chatroom.
Didn’t flood the convo with emojis or weaponized “hehe”s.
No thirst traps. No “hey” every five minutes to stay relevant.
But she stayed.
Like a well-written line that didn’t need to be bold to be remembered.
That’s the kind of girl she was.
Not a fireworks show. More like a lighthouse — constant, understated, quietly
saving ships.
She didn’t come in guns blazing. No dazzling monologues.
But when the digital dust settled, she’d still be there.
Soft-spoken. Tuned in. Like the last light still on in a quiet city.
Kung may award for “Best in Replying Without Making It About Herself”,
she’d win with a unanimous vote and a standing ovation from every emotionally
unavailable man who's ever texted a wall.
And here's the kicker — she never tried to be impressive.
No flexing, no philosophical TED Talk monologues about life.
She didn’t curate her replies. She just... showed up.
Fully. Honestly.
Like she didn’t need to audition for affection.
Like her presence was enough — and damn it, it really was.
I was used to two kinds of people in chats:
The show ponies who tried too hard and burned out by Day 3.
And the passengers, who barely said a thing and let the convo rot.
But her? She had this rare gift of pacing.
She wasn’t rushing toward a climax.
She was walking. Beside me. Matching my tempo, heartbeat for heartbeat.
If I were a song, she didn’t skip to the chorus.
She played the intro.
Listened through the awkward instrumental.
Heard the cough in the background and smiled.
Because she was the kind of person who stayed through the quiet parts — the
ones most people pretend don’t exist.
And maybe that’s why the 9 PM rule worked.
It wasn’t a restriction to her — it was a rhythm.
A beat we both somehow agreed to dance to.
No push, no pull. Just a quiet choreography.
And in that soft discipline, something powerful was growing.
We didn’t say it, of course. That would ruin the magic.
But somewhere between the cut-offs and callbacks,
between the silly debates and slow reveals…
We weren’t just chatting anymore.
We were building something.
And she was still in the room.
The Comet That Didn’t Mean to Stay
It was one of those eerie lockdown nights — the kind where even your dog
looked like he was processing the global crisis. No karaoke. No tricycles. Just
curfew sirens in the distance and the hum of anxiety through the walls.
Around 7 PM — prime time for nonsense — she mentioned her birth year:
1998.
I flinched. Not because of the age gap (we were already past that
existential minefield). But because... 1998 meant something.
“That was the year after Hale-Bopp,” I said.
“Hale what?” she asked, head tilted in curiosity.
Game on. I leaned into full nerd mode.
Told her about the comet — this beautiful, massive celestial beast that
streaked across our skies in ’97. I was ten. Standing in my grandparents’ yard,
arms itching from mosquito bites but eyes glued to the heavens. It wasn’t just
a ball of space ice — it was a presence. Something cosmic, vast, older
than everything I knew, flying past my sleepy little town like it had somewhere
better to be.
She was quiet, then. Not distracted — locked in. The kind of
silence where you know someone’s traveling with you in their head.
So I said, half-teasing:
“You were born the year it left. Maybe that’s why you showed up like one, too.”
She laughed. Called me dramatic. I said no — I was being mathematically
accurate.
We weren’t just chatting. We were crafting metaphors in a collapsing
world. While others were counting COVID deaths and watching Netflix, we were talking comets, myth, and whatever fantasy could keep the
shadows at bay.
I told her Haley’s Comet was coming back in 2061.
“I’ll be 74,” I said. “You’ll still be younger, but old enough to guilt-trip me
about forgetting our vitamins.”
She laughed again. But she didn’t move on.
And in that moment, I wasn’t trying to “lock her down.”
I was offering a strange, poetic version of the future — one where we were
still weird, still curious, still us, long after the world stopped
burning.
What she didn’t know — or maybe she did — was that the comet wasn’t just
astronomy trivia.
It was my anxiety, disguised.
My fear of losing something I didn’t want to grip too tightly.
My attempt to say:
“I won’t hold you captive, but I’ll be here. Still watching the sky.”
And here’s the sick irony:
I made that promise without realizing how prophetic it would become.
Years later, I’d write about her again.
And yes — she’d be gone by then.
And yes — I’d still be waiting.
When the Exit Is Already Planned
You ever feel the punchline land wrong?
Like, you're mid-laugh and then suddenly you realize… the joke was on
you?
That's how it started — a slow ache disguised as banter.
She’d throw a jab. Something light, even flirty. “You’re too good at this. Baka
madami ka nang ka-chat dati.”
And I’d laugh, of course. That’s what I do. I’m good at turning daggers into
confetti.
But that laugh would die in my throat later, when I was alone.
Because beneath the tease... was a test.
Beneath the test... was a truth neither of us wanted to unpack.
We were building something. Or at least, I was.
And when I say building, I don’t mean flirting or wasting time.
I’m talking architecture — late-night scaffolding made of vulnerability
and restraint.
That 9 PM rule? The patience? The pacing?
That wasn’t randomness.
That was me, trying not to fumble something sacred.
And then she dropped it — Dubai.
The word hit like a fire alarm in a museum.
She said it casually at first, like she was mentioning a grocery run.
“Baka by next year, Dubai na ako.”
Smile emoji. No fanfare.
My brain paused.
Dubai?
As in not here?
As in a different country where time zones stretch and connections
fray and people like me get reduced to messages “seen 4 hours ago”?
I wanted to ask — When did you decide this?
Was it before you called me your safe space? Before we made Hale-Bopp jokes
and built rituals like our own little religion?
But I didn’t.
Because I’m not a beggar.
And she wasn’t being cruel.
She was just doing what she’d always planned to do.
And that’s what made it worse.
Because I thought — stupidly, maybe — that love, or whatever this
fragile, glowing thing was between us, might rewire the trajectory.
But nah.
I was never the plan.
I was...the pause.
The unexpected pit stop before the great escape.
And it stung harder because I knew her heart.
I knew about her father — the cancer, the quiet grief in her voice when she
talked about him like he was already fading.
I knew how she carried her family on her back like she was twice her age.
I knew her joy was rationed, like electricity during brownouts.
So I understood why Dubai made sense.
But understanding it didn’t make me bleed less.
That night, something cracked.
She made another joke — something about me getting too attached.
I replied with a wink emoji and silence.
Because if I spoke, I might say something real.
I was already spiraling.
Not yet drunk — but I felt it: that sharp thirst not just for alcohol, but for numbness.
That urge to find something that hurts less than this slow-burn
heartbreak.
Because how do you mourn a future that was never promised?
How do you cry over someone who hasn’t left yet — but already packed?
So I stayed quiet.
She changed the topic.
Laughed a little too hard.
And in the tiny gap between her sentences… I heard everything I needed to.
Not a goodbye.
But the preparation for one.
The 9 PM rule just started to be a countdown.
A Love Meant to Leave (But Fought to Stay)
I wasn’t stupid. I knew what I was walking into.
This wasn’t a forever kind of setup.
We weren’t soulmates — we were a phenomenon,
a rare alignment of two pandemic strangers
who probably weren’t meant to orbit each other this long.
We were a guava tree growing in a forgotten lot —
accidentally planted by a bird,
nurtured by storms,
never meant to be permanent.
But still, it grew.
Gave shade. Bore fruit.
And then there was her:
The comet I never expected to witness.
Blazing. Beautiful.
Gone before the world could deserve her.
She never promised forever —
but she never stopped showing up.
Even when the days started blurring,
even when our conversations lost their novelty
and became ritual —
the 9 PM curtain call still held.
We kept showing up for it.
For each other.
And somewhere along that tired calendar,
where the days all looked the same
and the silence outside our windows screamed of the world falling apart —
I fell in love with her.
No fireworks. No big confession.
Just… a slow decision, made daily.
Every time the clock refreshed,
and the date changed,
I chose her again.
No matter how far,
no matter how doomed it all felt,
I chose her.
And maybe, deep down, I still hoped —
That before Dubai,
before her flight and her farewell,
we could meet.
Even just once.
Even just enough to prove to the universe
that we really did exist.
She had every reason to fade —
a future she didn’t choose but had to follow,
a life her family mapped out
long before I ever logged into that app.
But she didn’t fade.
She lingered.
And I?
I didn’t resist the pain.
I welcomed it.
Because loving her, even from a distance,
was better than forgetting her at all.
So yeah, maybe we were both just rebels.
Fools who saw the fire exit
but stayed for the burning house anyway.
And when it ends —
because it will,
like all rare things —
I won’t call it wasted.
I’ll call it sacred.
Coffee, Mountains, and Other Versions of Goodbye
That morning, we both had coffee in hand.
Mine was strong and bitter.
Hers? Probably sweet, with too much creamer—the way she liked it.
The sky behind me was unusually clear—one of those rare,
cinematic blues that seemed to apologize for all the gray we'd endured.
I showed her the jagged line of Bicol’s mountains, their peaks still wrapped in
soft morning mist.
It was beautiful.
But what I remember... was her smile.
Not because of the view, but because I shared it with her.
God, I fell in love with her again.
Just like I did yesterday.
Just like I knew I would tomorrow.
She smiled — that kind of unfiltered, quiet joy that made
the call feel less like a screen and more like a window.
But then... she turned her camera briefly.
When she came back, the smile was still there—but worn differently. Like a coat
that didn’t fit anymore, but you wear anyway because someone expects you to.
That’s when I saw it.
Just a flicker. A quiet fade.
The kind of shadow you only notice when you're already in love with the light.
She didn’t want me to see the weight she carried.
The exhaustion. The anticipation of the life she was heading into.
The version of tomorrow that didn’t include this call, this view, this us.
Still, she stayed on the line a little longer than usual.
She stared at the mountains with me, then whispered,
“I wish I’m with you right now.”
She didn’t even look at me when she said it.
And I didn’t panic.
Didn’t beg.
Didn’t cling.
I just took a slow sip and said,
“In time, my dear. In time.”
Then she waved. Said something soft like “Ingat.”
And the screen went black—the kind of black that feels heavier than silence.
I stared at my reflection in the monitor, still lit by the
glow of her absence.
Still holding my mug.
Still hearing the echo of her laugh lingering somewhere in the corners of the
room.
And that’s when the thought slipped in—
uninvited, quiet, and devastating,
like guilt in a quiet church.
Maybe one day, someone will build on that guava lot.
Maybe they’ll never know something once bloomed there—by accident, by magic, by
survival instinct.
And maybe in 2061, Halley’s Comet will streak across the sky
again,
and if I’m still here, I’ll look up and whisper her name like a prayer.
Was she the tree that bloomed where no one looked?
Or the comet that stayed longer than it should?
Maybe she was both.
Maybe I was too.
And maybe—despite the clock, the silence, the looming
departure—
we were still choosing each other, in quiet ways, every single day.
To be continued.
