When it was the groom’s turn to say his vows, there was this long silence and then he asked for a tissue. He was crying. When he finally had his voice back, this was what he said: “Do not be afraid of the one who wants to love you.”
I thought this is what love (and the wedding) is all about: We are afraid of stepping off into the unknown. Who knows if this relationship will work? There are no assurances, but one’s fear is assuaged because the beloved is there to hold your hand while you both jump.
We have always had a tumultuous history when it comes to weddings. We had attended three, one for each of the years we were together. In that first wedding, I was the host for the reception, so I asked my friends to look over her while I was busy. The second one ended with her walking out on me because she was jealous of this guy my friends had set me up with years before. I didn’t like him, and I thought I had made that clear by telling him I was with her at the wedding. But we were all together at the same table, so when she found out that it was that guy, she upped and left. I followed her out of the banquet hall, into the street, into a cab to the nearest mall, to a coffee shop.
I never wanted to give her a reason to be jealous, or to ever doubt my feelings for her. Half the time, I wasn’t even sure what I had done to piss her off, why she had walked out on me. But always, every time, I made sure to follow her. To make amends. To try to make up for it. Whatever it was. I should have known why.
She went home for the weekend for that wedding, and I refused to let her go with bad feelings. I insisted we still go out of town to salvage the rest of the weekend. But luck wasn’t on our side. I had a bum stomach, and we ended up staying in the inn watching Britney Spears on VH1.
She had a birthday coming up a month or so after the Wedding Walkout. I wanted to surprise her by showing up there, but I had but depleted my savings with the back and forth we did those first few months. So when it was time for her birthday, I had no money for airfare or a gift to surprise her. All I had was little banner of little paper hearts cut out from travel brochures and airline tickets and the thin tissue from the bouquet of roses she once gave me and a mix cd.
One of the tracks was this Eraserheads song. We were together for a little over a year when that offer came. I didn’t want to be selfish; I knew that for her dreams to come true she would have to go to another country. I didn’t want to be the one to say, “Don’t go.”
“Huwag kang matakot” was the prayer that I prayed over and over to convince myself that there was nothing to fear. We could make this work. I believed that if I were to fall into a precipice, she would be there to catch me. And that I promised the same to her.
In my mind, if we had a wedding, one day, those songs were the promises I wanted to keep, the dissolution of fear by a playful reassurance: You are the god and the queen of your world. Matakot sila sa iyo.
It turns out that CDs were banned from being sent by courier. Anti-piracy and all that. I was near tears. The courier shop’s owner must have seen the banner of paper hearts and heard the desperation in my voice.
In the end, he let me ship my birthday present: My heart on a string, singing songs to reassure her that we could make this work.
