His Love, His Ways

It's an ordinary Sunday. I was laying down, enjoying my 'me-time' slash lazy day, while K called.

"Hey, do you want Koi Teppanyaki?"

It was 6.30 pm and he was out with his family, you know, Sunday is family time. We dedicate Sunday for our family. It is how we manage our time. He will go to his parents' house or go to mall with them. Since my sister went back to my hometown, I was practically alone in this city, so other than having Sunday service, I have nothing to do but enjoying myself home. Sometimes I join K, but today I felt like I was staying home, to get some sleep. 

As you may know, I am into words. It is applied also in relationship. I need "I love you" now and then. But, K is different. Saying "I love you" is not his thing. I often tease him with "Do you love me?" which he always replies "No!". But I know he does. Lol.

He expresses his love for me in his ways. The question above is one of them. I'm a grown-up. I can manage to find my own dinner. But he knows that I am going nowhere on Sundays and he knows that I am too lazy to step out finding food. That's why he called asking me if I wanted some dinner. He had his dinner, so he only bought it for me. He always does that not just today. 

I know it's not much. It's something that parents do to their kids. But still, it is love. And I'm grateful for that.

We'll always have different ways of expressing our love towards each other. But I am okay with it, I am thankful, for I love the way he "says" it to me. 

God Entrusted

I am proud and lucky to have parents who allow me to do what's best for me.

One example is the getting married and having children thingies. Generally parents will suggest (or I can say "force") their children to get married and having kids. It is said that it is because they love their children, they think about their children's future so when they get older there are people who will take care of them. Is it true? Are we as parents, ask our kids to get married because we love them? Or is it just because the common norm in the society? Or is it just because for the sake of family's name inheritance? 

Back to previous statement, we have kids so when we get older, we won't be alone, there will be someone who will take care of us. Doesn't it sound selfish?

I'm not saying this so we break loose, so we flip to our parents. It is appropriate and feasible for us to treat our parents the best. We will never be able to return their favor. We are forever in debt wit them. I'm saying this so we, who now are parents to our children, are able to let our children decide and choose what's best for them. We do owe it to them. God entrusted us our children. They are not ours to satisfy out needs. 

Oh Please, Treat Me Well

Let me translate it for you. This statement says:

Find someone:
- who always greets you "Good Morning"
- who calls you back when you hang up because you are angry
- who always let you know his/her whereabouts every single day
- who carefully listen to your problems
- who says Good Night though he/she is tired after working all day
- who accepts you for you really are
- who guides you to the right path
- who won't force any situation when it's not possible
- who always says "I Love You"
- and who always tries everything to make your relationship works

Hmm... who doesn't want a partner with those qualifications? No one.
And "Where can I find someone like that?"

We are deserved to be treated well, or best, by our loved ones. So we make criteria that suits us in finding partners. We want someone who can and is willing to treat us well, to treat us like prince or princess. Is it wrong? Of course not. Again we are deserved those things.

BUT! Yes, there's a big but here. We tend to forget that our partners also have the same privilege. They have the right to be treated the same as we are. They also wish the same criteria. Vice-versa.

How can we expect our loved ones to be what we want them to be should we are not as they expect?

Instead of saying "Find someone", why don't we state "Be someone". You can always start a relationship with expectation, the truth is we have to keep hoping along the journey. But we also have to start it with willingness to treat our loved ones the same.

Let's say that we have fulfill those criteria we mention above. We greet them Good Morning, Good Night, we listen to their problems, we guide them, we say "I love you" thousand times, yet our partners do not do them to us. What do we do then? This is my favorite part, as you can read on my previous posts, and it's there on the list of criteria above. We can always ask ourselves "Do we accept him/her as he/she really is?"

So, my answer to my question about where we can find someone who is willing to treat us like princes or princesses is I don't know. Here is what I know, and I know for sure that you will find yourself keep looking that special someone for the rest of your life as long as you are not willing to do the same to him/her. And if you, by all chance, finally find him/her with those dreamy criteria, it won't last long should your demand level  is higher than your acceptance & willingness level.

Take Your Time and Do It

Before we decided to take it, it'd been filling up my mind since a couple months ago. It was not easy. Knowing that the virus was lethal was scary, let alone how it would effect our relationship.

I bet you don't know what I was talking about, eh? It was about taking a HIV test.

It came to me in the morning when I was chatting with my friend. We were talking how he was afraid to open the result of his HIV test. Then,dang! I even hadn't took any. Then I came home and talked about it with my better half. Too bad, it just hanged there, no conclusion, no decision whether we would take it or not.

The next couple days, I googled about HIV. It was new to me that our government gave free retroviral medicine for them who was HIV positive. Those meds should be taken twice a day and they could have a normal lives. Knowing more about it, I was convinced that being HIV positive was not as 'deadly' as I thought.

Again I talked to my better half which came to a decision that we would take it. I made an appointment with Angsa Merah, a general health clinic, specializing in reproductive and sexual health. I knew Angsa Merah, from TemanTeman, an organization which founded by The Thai Red Cross AIDS Research Centre. But then, I cancelled it, because I thought I wasn't ready for the consequences, for the result.

Last Wednesday, when we were watching a TV series, my better half said that there would be a free HIV test in Senayan City on Saturday. Apparently it would be held by TemanTeman. True that we were afraid we were infected, but more, we were afraid how if one of us was infected, how it would effect on our relationship. There was silence, but I knew we would be okay, we would stay together no matter what.

The day before the test, I prayed so that God let us not be infected, but if we were, I asked Him to give us strength, to give us open hearts to accept it and to continue our lives, I said in my prayer that not our will, but Thine be done. It gave me strength right away, I knew I would be okay, no matter what the result would be.

The next morning, after we had our hair cut, we headed to Senayan City. We had to wait almost an hour to finally had ourselves get into a van, to get tested. We talked to a counselor whom  I was sure that he knew that we were couple. He enlightened us about HIV. Then there was the time. I was first. A middle-aged nurse took my blood on my middle finger, my hand was so cold that she could not take enough sample. I told her to take another from my ring finger. This time, she got enough. She then dropped it to a stick that looked like a pregnancy test, then dropped another chemical fluid on top of it. I wondered how she knew whether it was HIV positive or negative. And exactly like pregnancy test, there would be one bar if the blood was HIV negative and it would be two bars if it was positive. My heart rushed. I kept smiling but I couldn't get my eyes out of that thing.

It was my better half's turn, before I knew my result. We had to wait another 10 minutes to know the result. It was the longest 10 minutes I ever had in my life. When the nurse told us that we were negative, it was like a 100 pounds of millstone was taken from my shoulder. I was so relieved. I thank God for letting us to be okay. It was His grace, really.

The counselor then asked me, "H, what if K was HIV positive?". See, he knew that we were couple.
I answered, "I think it will be just fine."
He smiled and replied, "It sure will be."
It was nice actually. It is still nice to know that there are some people who accept us for who we are. My friend said that they didn't accept us, they were just ignorant. Well at least, they aren't homophobic.

After getting free t-shirt, we thanked them and left the van. The rest of the day was amazing.

Writing this, I am not suggesting you, whom haven't had a chance to get tested, to have one immediately. But I do suggest that you will think about it, get yourself ready and take it. Fill yourself with as much as information about HIV. For me, it is encouraging. You can find those information everywhere, they are as far as your fingers. Just type 'HIV' on Google and you will find everything you need to know about it. You can go to TemanTeman for starter. I need 2 months, more or less, to finally take the test. You don't need to rush, but by the time you do it, you are sure that you are ready for every consequence that will come. Like I said, being HIV positive is not as 'deadly' as you may think. My counselor said that he had a patient that had been living with HIV for 18 years and he was still healthy. From what I read, the virus can be 'frozen'. You can have a normal life. You can have kids without worrying they will be infected. It may not be able to be cured today, but who knows, someday, it can be.

Growing Old Together

It's been a while since my last post. I couldn't find anything interesting to be written about. Ahhh.. Scracth that, just call me lazy, lol.

Living with someone for quite some time, we will adapt more and more. It is what happening with me and K. 

The way we press toothpaste, either from the middle or from the end, which for some people is a problem, doesn't annoy us, luckily. But he is bothered with me wiping my so-called-dirty-hands on my pants. They are not that dirty for me. For example, I just pick a cracker and eat it with my hand, then I rub my hand on my pants. He will feel annoyed with what I do. I felt irked the first times he scolded me about it. But now, I don't do it as often as I did, it is good I guess, and eveytime he rebukes me, I just laugh and haste to wash my hands.

Until today, there are still many small things we admonish each other, how he doesn't close the wardrobe, how I move the doormat after bath, how he folds used plastic bag, how I don't return hangers to where they belong. The list will flood this blog if I continue. 

But hey, it's the essence of growing up together. To accept and to adapt for a greater purpose. 

Moreover, we somehow become more similar to each other day by day, especially our habbit. It's funny, really.

K used to mock me how I looked like an idiot when I was moving my lips (somehow) mimicking him telling a story inadvertently. But these days, I laugh everytime he does the same (of course he doesn't realize while he is doing it). Once he knows what he's doing he will swear, "Ah, shit, it's contagious" while trying to pinch me, oddly iritated. 

Talking about pinching, K has thousands way to make my body in pain. It's not that massive pain, it's, ahh.. it hurts. He has a bigger muscle than me, and when he wrestles me, it always ends up, I am in his arms. Of course it is alwas a joke, it is always how we laugh about stupid things. 

K loves to squeezes his knuckles, and when he's done with his, my knuckles are the next target. I tell him many times that I don't like it. It's like my knuckles are gonna pop out everytime he does it, I think it's my phobia. I will be mad and he will works his charm saying "Can I please?" Of course I will say no. And of course he won't accept my answer and we will wrestle, he is trying to reach my knuckles while I am defending them. You know what will happen. I end up being crushed by his body. My secret weapon, my counter-attack by tickling him never does any good. Damn!

Despite of all the pain he causes me everytime we wrestle, I won't change it. He's my man. He's the one I wanna grow up with. I still believe my secret weapon will work, eventually, maybe when he's old enough. Lol.

Older Yet Wiser

Woohoo!!! I am 31 now! 

2 days ago I celebrated my birthday. It was special indeed. I got a cake from T, my beloved brother, who drove from Tangerang at 12.07 am. Very nice of him. Thank you dear....

While I was eating the cake, yes, eating, in the middle of the night, so what, it was my birthday, lol, my topless better half (I had no idea why he took off his shirt half hour before. Well he said that something was in his shirt, but I didn't believe him), came into the room and wore an old shirt with his writing, clearly, said "You are my treasure". 

I laughed yet I was happy. My "Bruno Mars", I posted his picture wearing that shirt. It was nice. At least, he tried something. 

In the morning, I invited some of my closest friends to have a simple brunch with joy here and there with us. It was lovely. I thank God for His abundant blessings. He has given me such a great family, friends and most of all, boyfriend.

Too bad I couldn't see my family this time, but I felt their love. It was more than enough.

Blowing my birthday candles, I had so many wishes in my prayer, I wanted to be wiser by days. I will learn to be one.

My path mate, L, congratulated me and said "don't put your focus on the older word ya". Oh yeah. Realizing that I am 31 is a little bit scary but, it's noted. I don't dwell on it, and like I said it was my responsibility to grow wiser. 

So thank you all, for all thoses wishes and prayers. Thank you for being dearest to me. Love you all.

First Anniversary

Dear K,

It took some moments for me to write this. I wanted to post a poem, but I realized and it surprised me a bit that somehow I wrote poems only on sad moments. I'd tried hard, but there was no idea. So, I decided not to make one.

It's our first anniversary. Congratulations is in order for us, I guess, LOL.

I remember 15 months ago when I started being close with you. It surely wasn't love at first sight, because I met you before. Both of us had never thought that we would be together. And as you said, we became close because we felt comfort at each other's presence. We felt that we were genuine to each other. And after some conversations, we knew that we shared common dreams. So I think these three, comfort, genuineness and dreams that brought us together.

After spending some weekends (and couple of weekdays) together, we knew that we wanted to reach our dreams together, to build a real relationship. We didn't want to rush this, each of us wanted to be sure that we were meant to be, that we were fit together. It wasn't smooth, the road that we took. It was 3-months of laughter, joy, tears, dreams, shouts, cuddles, offensive-defensive, hopes and love-growth.  

A year ago, February 21st, I knew our time had come. An awkward proposal made us together, put grins on our faces (well, at least on mine) for a whole day. It was easy-uneasy relationship since. The fights became more intense, especially when it came to our preparation to live in one place. Amazingly we survived that because it wasn't only arguments and differences that came to our relationship but this relationship also brought understanding and stronger bond that united us. I believed that commitment that we planted in our hearts worked in every step of our ways.

Four months later I woke up to you every morning (except for those times you were abroad, works matter). Days of laughter, days of tears, days of fights and make-ups filled our home, our home sweet home. We learned how to work this relationship. We learned each other's habit. We shared chores.

Until this day, we still have our differences, we still have arguments here and there, but I do believe that we have a healthy relationship, a strong one that I hope will last forever. We support, we hold and we are there for each other. For one reason and one reason only, we are committed to each other. And by this commitment, our love grows each and every second of our lives. It grows every single pull of our breath.

Our bond and our story ain't a prince-prince fairytale. It wasn't a lullaby your mom sang you every night. But it is a happy one.   

I don't fancy nor glamourize this anniversary, I'd rather use this moment to be thankful for the journey we have been traversing together. I can't ever thank God enough for every thing that happen to me, to us. And I may never thank you enough for every happiness that you bring in my life. You were, you are and you will be always the love of my life.

Happy Anniversary, Love. I wish us more happiness and dreams for both of us.

I am proud to call you my better-half and I am proud you are my better half.

With love that never goes out,

H.