no subject

If you remember the balloon game, this is for you. I hope by the time you're reading this, the ache has softened into something tender. Something you can hold gently, without flinching. There was once a boy — someone who made you feel like being understood didn’t have to be earned. He never shouted his presence, but in his quiet words and small jokes, you found safety. He called you clever. Said you were cute when you didn’t feel like it. Corrected your grammar, but never your feelings. He believed you weren’t masama — just misunderstood. And that mattered more than you realized at the time. You talked about cats, mermaids, and aliens. You sent each other TikTok links, talked about exes, and laughed over balloon games and Dora filters. He said "mas gusto ko ikaw nasa picture," and maybe, just maybe, he meant more than that. He liked Fireproof by One Direction, Cinnamon by Lana Del Rey, and The Night We Met. Now you know — maybe those songs were trying to tell you something. You didn’t know then how heavy memory could get. How silence would speak louder than any goodbye. How you’d scroll through chats that no longer exist, hold onto screenshots like proof that yes — he was real. And maybe you won’t find him again. Maybe the Jei you knew lives only in that version of you — the girl who stayed up late wondering what “nevermind” really meant. But this is what I hope for you, future me: That you've learned how to let things go without needing to throw them away. That even without answers, you've forgiven yourself for choosing what felt right at the time. That you’ve stopped calling yourself “bobo” for not reading between the lines. Because you loved — in the quiet, in the wondering, in the waiting. And that's never a small thing. So if, someday, by some wild chance, he finds this — May he remember the girl who told him about stray kittens, market errands, and dreams too soft to speak out loud. The girl who tried to understand him. The girl who cared. The girl who survived. With love, You — the one who still remembers