I met you in Moalboal, in 2022.
At the time, I did not think I was walking into a story that would ask so much from me. You were simply someone I met in South Cebu—someone who made the place feel different after that.
And maybe that was why I kept going back.
Cebu became more than a place I visited.
Moalboal had always felt like a second home to me—though, at times, I wondered if it was my first, or perhaps my third, depending on what home was supposed to mean.
I would find reasons to be there: a vacation, a business trip, a weekend that I somehow managed to make work. Sometimes I would spend only a few days in Cebu just to see you. Sometimes I would stay for weeks because of work, then make my way to Moalboal when the weekend came.
For a while, it was good.
We had our moments. We laughed. We rode together. We made each other happy. We had a private kind of love that may never make sense to everyone else, but it was real enough to me that I kept choosing it.
Every time I left Moalboal for Manila, I cried.
Not only because I was leaving you, but because I was leaving behind the version of myself that still believed we could become something more.
Maybe I chose it too carelessly.
I gave myself to the feeling before I had learned whether it was safe. I loved with the kind of hope that keeps explaining things away. When something did not feel right, I tried to understand. When I started losing trust, I told myself to be patient. When dishonesty began to feel like a possibility, I still looked for reasons to believe you.
Not because I was blind.
But because I loved you, and loving someone has always made me want to see the good in them before I see the reason to leave.
You were not a bad person. I have never questioned that.
But I think you were still too young for the things I needed from love. I needed honesty that did not leave me guessing. I needed consistency that did not make me question my place in your life. I needed a future that we could both look at without pretending we wanted the same things when we did not.
And eventually, I got tired.
Not of caring for you.
I got tired of having to convince myself that love could survive without the things that made me feel secure.
I gave up because I had already tried my best to stay.
My devotion was real. I gave more than I should have, sometimes putting your peace before my own. I do not regret that I loved you deeply.
What I regret is how long it took me to return to myself.
Because loving someone deeply is not the mistake.
The mistake is forgetting that love still needs honesty. It still needs trust. It still needs to make room for your values, your peace, and the life you are trying to build.
I will always remember Moalboal. I will remember the trips, the weekends, and the version of us that was happy in those moments.
But I will also remember what I learned from leaving–I can love someone with everything in me and still choose to go back to the things that keep me whole.