Now I wind up staring at an empty glass                                                                                  Because it’s so easy to say that you’ll forget your past...

Another Valentine’s Day being spent on my own.  And truthfully, that’s pretty much the way I choose to be.  But it weren’t always so.  And it seems there is always something there to remind me when I wasn’t alone.

Delving through my old posts on the Philippines information board I frequent, I came across something I wrote back in August 2009 called “My Dilemma”:

So next month marks an anniversary. One year since my last visit to the PI. You guys with PPD (post Philippines Depression) can imagine how much worse it is when you don’t know when, or if, you will return to paradise.

See, next August I am eligible to retire and can draw a generous (and well earned I might add) government pension. I could live comfortably almost anywhere, but in the PI I could live like a rich man. And that has a certain appeal to me.

What’s the problem then? Well, as the old Elvin Bishop song says “I fooled around and fell in love”. With a Korean woman.

Now, this woman is 93% perfect. She takes care of all my needs in a way that is beyond anything I ever imagined. And I’m a man who likes to be taken care of. She does everything for me down to the smallest detail without complaint. In fact, she tells me it is “her pleasure”. She is an amazing lover and an old fashioned good hearted woman. I go to the bars about three nights a week for darts, and she never complains. She comes along and has actually become a pretty big fan of the game. All my friends think she is great and her family seems to have taken a liking to me as well. When I got sick last year, she was at my side in the hospital 24/7. Hell, to reference another old song, she’s like the gal The Band sang about: “up on cripple creek she sends me/if I spring a leak/she mends me/I don’t have to speak/she defends me/a drunkards dream if I ever did see one…”

Yep, I’d have a hard time finding anyone better for me in this world than her.

So, you may be thinking, “what’s the dilemma?”. The 7% of the GF that is not perfect is that she is extraordinarily jealous. Almost to the point of being insane about it.

And she found my collection of photos from previous trips to the Philippines. She says seeing me with those “young girls” just makes her sick to her stomach. She deleted them all.

Now, even hearing the word Philippines enrages her. And whenever there’s a Filipina in a bar she accuses me of staring at her and tells me “I love Filipino women too much!”.

She accessed my email and found communications with a platonic friend in the PI and went nuts.

If I go to a filipino bar I like here in Seoul she gets pissed.

She checks the messages/call history on my cell phone.

She checks the stamps in my passport when I travel.

She counts the frickin’ money in my wallet to make sure I’m not spending money on others.

In other words, that 7% is getting to be a real pain in the ass.

But damn, she does love me, and you know, there is something to be said for being loved.

But any future I might have with her, means there is no Philippines in my future.

And she is right about one thing–I truly do love the Pinays.

Hence my dilemma. One year out from retirement and I need to be firming up plans. If I stay in Korea with her, it means getting married (will need a visa). If I’m going to the PI to retire, well, I need to be going there and making some decisions.

I’m stuck at 50-50 on the pros and cons. I mean, I could pay someone  in the PI to take care of all those nice things my GF gives me free. But as the Beatles so astutely noted, “Money can’t buy me love”.

I guess it’s a good thing to have choices in life. But it feels pretty fucked up right now.

Well, of course regular readers know that I chose love over the Philippines.  And as it turned out, I chose wrong.  I’m still not really over it and I definitely don’t understand it.  But there is of course no going back.  I can only lament the wasted time.

But as Facebook reminds me today, there were moments of love.  I even made a movie about it, circa 2013.

Painful to watch now.  And for those who say it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, I call bullshit.

One thing is for sure, I am bound and determined to never love again.  Don’t need it, don’t want it.  Happy Valentine’s Day!

Mem’ries,
Light the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored memories
Of the way we were
Scattered pictures,
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were
Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we? Could we?
Mem’ries, may be beautiful and yet
What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So it’s the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember…
The way we were…
The way we were…