A few thoughts on dreams

Parang kailan lang, ang mga pangarap ko'y kay hirap abutin...

These lyrics from Florante's Handog leaped out at me from a video posted by Will, from the current Glee Club, on my Facebook wall this evening.

Bigla kong naalala na noong kaedad ko sina Will, pangarap kong tumira sa Europa. Hindi ko alam kung paano ko gagawin, pero lagi kong iniisip na sana, balang araw, makabalik ako at makatira dito.

So ang ibig sabihin, dahil nandito ako ngayon, nagkatotoo ang pangarap ko.

Kiddies in Prague, 2001. Slight digression: why did I think I was fat?

I sometimes lose sight of the fact that I'm living a dream fulfilled: when it's cold, rainy and gray for what seems like the umpteenth day in a row; when I see other people living in fantastic locations; or when I'm slogging through a ten-page immigration document written entirely in Dutch.

How easy it is to forget that my dream came true. So when I do remember, the realization can hit so hard it sometimes brings tears to my eyes.

Though it may seem like it to people who don't know me or Marlon very well, it may seem like I got to Europe by latching on to a jet-setting expat type (or an expat-to-be) with a career that would take him around the world. But I'll tell you something not a lot of people know.

When Marlon and I first started dating, the plan was very different. I was dead set on living in Europe (how, neither of us knew... but I was going to do it!) and Marlon needed to follow me, somehow. That was why he took his overseas job with a multinational company in the first place: because he thought it would give him the best chance of following me wherever I decided to end up.

This is the first step that the man of my dreams took in making my dreams come true. He believed in me. He saw me as a person who could, and would, achieve some whacked-out dream like that. Never mind that I had zero plans. Never mind that every time I thought about what I wanted, I wanted it so bad and felt so far from having it that I easily wound up bawling every time. He simply believed in me.

Over the course of the next four years, he took another simple but very difficult step. I can sum it up in four words: he stuck it out. I mostly mean the long-distance thing, but there are other, bigger things that nearly blew us both in separate directions. But he just hung in there. And because he did, so did I.

Then, last year, when I started getting itchy feet and questioning our life in Singapore, he did one last thing that bridged the gap from there to here. He listened. It wasn't easy for him to consider such a big change, with the career he had built and the comfort we enjoyed. But he listened, and that single act encompasses so wonderful things. Being someone I felt I could talk to about anything, enough for me to open up in the first place, is one. Sharing my sense of adventure and love for travel, valuing what we agreed our marriage would be, and not being bound to money or comfort, were others.

And this is why I—why we—are here.

Thanks to PKF for the photo!

There are as many dreams as there are ways of making them come true. All I'm saying, really is that this life, and the man I'm living it with, has been one of mine.