I would be lying if I say that it didn’t hurt. And like I always told you, marupok lang ako pero di ako sinungaling.

You left without saying good bye. A year and three months after we met. Until the end, you wouldn’t tell me your name, but that’s fine because you did agree to meet me (over overpriced lobster and truffle pasta). I sat across the table from you and stared at you for a long time, so I will never forget your face.

I’m not sure why you didn’t say good bye. I know you’ve been distant for the past few weeks, and I haven’t been as chatty myself because I have someone I need to prioritize now, but I thought that we would always stay friends. That’s the way you said you like your friendships, didn’t you – low maintenance. The kind where even if you don’t see or talk to each other for a long time, when you do you just pick up where you left off.

I’ve thanked you multiple times – through time, gifts, food – but not in words, in the way that’s most important to me. You were there during the darkest times of my life, and you stayed with me even though it pissed you off to no end that I kept on crying over a guy who’s trash anyway. You gave me tough love, always told me to get up and go to work and never babied me the way everyone else did – but somehow you knew whenever I was really hurting, and you would be kind and just tell me that time has a way of healing (I found out later that this was a song lyric). 

For that, for all the funny conversations, for sharing your life and letting yourself be vulnerable around me, for being my person in a way that not everyone can understand, THANK YOU. There is a tinge of hurt over your leaving like this, but I will always remember the good memories, and I hope that you do too. My Whatsapp inbox will never be the same without your name in it.

I remember one of the comic strips you sent me before, when we just started talking. It said that sometimes a person is not the destination, but the journey. I told you that it’s sad, to be the one to ‘fix’ someone and then have that someone go to somebody else. You told me that no, it’s not sad, because sometimes it’s the journey that’s important and not the destination. 

 
I don’t know if we will ever cross paths again – maybe one day, when you’re the rockstar lawyer you always told me you would be, and I would be the bank FVP I always told you I want to be. Maybe you’ll come back, just like the first two times you left. Maybe this is where we part ways for good.

But to me, you will always be my Mayor.