If you start your year with a stomachache and a trip to the bathroom every 7 minutes, it should be enough for you to know this is not going to be a good year.

Dylan is having a hard time finding a job.  I was there more than once, and he really lifted my spirits with never-ending pep talks and words of encouragement.  Since the year started, I’ve been doing the same for him.  After all, I managed to land a job that pays like shit but I love like hell.  Then again, he can’t seem to appreciate it.  Just this morning, he called my pep talks "PMS effects".  He’s nowhere near charming since yesterday.  I think the only instance he was genuinely kind to me this year was on my birthday (and even on that day, he was preoccupied with his brother’s fraternity brawl).

I don’t blame him for his foul mood; the circumstances have been stacked against him, and everything he planned in the latter part of 2008 is not going as well as he hoped.  Come to think of it, has anyone else’s plans came to life at the right moment?  I planned to be employed by June; I landed a job by the end of September.  I planned to have at least 15,000 as my ending balance for 2008; I had 2,345.95.  I planned to be a staff writer by 2010; I just landed a writing gig.

I guess pointing out those facts would be meaningless for him because it’s been years since he graduated and passed the local nursing boards and still, he’s never had a job that pays.  He volunteered for a community hospital for three months to gain experience, and yet local hospitals refuse to notice.  We continuously say that our hospitals are understaffed, but their administration never adds anything to their census. 

I understand his frustration, but I don’t understand why he refuses to believe so.

He’s been so antsy lately.  He’s been saying things to me that continuously break my heart.  That may be overly dramatic but it is the truth.  Maybe he’s right.  Maybe he shouldn’t be in a relationship right now.  Maybe he’s one of those guys — always in love but never a step closer to settling down.  Maybe being with me is resisting is actual nature.  Maybe being with me is changing him — an act that he’s not willing to do for anyone, not even for the girl who never left his side for the last 3 years.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love him sincerely.  I have constantly ignored my religious beliefs just to be with him, and doing that is not an easy thing to do.  I have been with him through everything — a drift with his dad, a fight with his childhood best friend, moving houses thrice, landing a job, not landing a job, with a pocketful wad of money, with three coins in his pocket… I am telling you, I’ve been with him through everything.   I guess a part of me thought maybe — just maybe — when he sees all these things that I’ve done, he’d realize I’m worth believing in faith again.  I’m worth tying the knot.  I’m worth the big change. 

Last night, I sent out a text to almost everyone in my phonebook (except him):  Do you want to know what’s wrong with "sorry"?  It gives people the wrong idea that any mistake can be solved by a single word. 

He knows exactly how to hurt me and he doesn’t even have to raise a finger.  He knows exactly how to break my defenses, and all he has to do is smile and say that solitary word, that pathetic excuse for everything said and done purposely, that one word that makes everything better, at least, for me.  I don’t know which one is stupider — him or me.

I guess in a girl’s lifetime, there’s always going to be that kind of challenge, whether or not to put love and understanding above her own sanity.  Or maybe I’m just a big fan of hyperboles.  Or maybe I’m the modern Machiavelli, a modern paradox walking the streets as if she has the world left to offer to him.  Or maybe, just maybe, he refuses to be the one for me.

I don’t know how we got here.  I don’t know how we got to a point where I am the one who gives more than what I receive.  I know that’s a sad way to view love, but isn’t a relationship supposed to work that way?  Isn’t a relationship supposed to be give and take?  Isn’t a relationship something you work hard for, something you fight for, so that in the end, you’ll know that it’s worth hanging on to?  They say, between a man and a woman, there’s always one that loves the other more.  I really wish it wasn’t me.  But apparently (and evidently), it seems to point in that direction. 

I love him.  I’d move mountains for him if it meant he wanted a better view of the sun.  I’d leap, I’d jump, I’d hold my breath.  I’d do anything just so he can see I am worth everything he does.  I know that’s selfish, but do you know a girl who doesn’t dream of loving this much and being loved as much in return?

I wake up everyday, wishing that today would be the day he’d take that leap of faith, both in me and in us.  But everyday, he keeps showing me how there is no us, maybe not yet, maybe not ever.  Everyday, he keeps showing me that I am not his number one.  Everyday, he keeps showing me that I am not enough.  At least since 2009.

Priorities… that’s what he kept telling me.  We have different priorities.  He wants to be rich and provide for his family; I want to be there for him.  So can you tell me, how is that different?

He went to bed last night without telling me he loves me.  Loves, loved… makes no difference, he never said either.  Before, he can’t even shut his eyes without saying those words over and over.  The days that he despises me now overweighs the days when he’s crazy about me.

After all I’ve been to him — and it’s not because I love to count how good I am — after everything I went through with him and for him, am I still not worth being crazy about even when you’re mad?

I hope he realizes that I am the one for him.  I hope that he realizes that I will never stop being there for him, even if he asks me to.  I hope that he realizes that I am worth working hard for, leaping, jumping, walking through fire for.   I always wait for that day. 

I just hope he won’t make me wait for so long.