July 18, 2024
Abbey of Transfiguration
Malaybalay, Bukidnon
Dear S,
It was a decade ago when I first met you. I still remember it clearly. You were coming down the attic stairs, wearing the same clothes from the night before. I had just arrived early that morning from an assignment in Mindanao. While I was away, the housemates had moved my things to a new place. So from the airport, I took a taxi straight to a new address forever leaving behind that Mahabagin Street warehouse we used to call home.
You were wearing a white undershirt, and at the time, you were still with my best friend. You had stayed the night at our new place. I remember how you’d play the cello while he played the violin. You were both artists, creative souls. I kept my feelings buried in a place so deep I didn’t even know it existed—at least not until a few years ago.
We met again after a few years. I reached out because I knew you were working at an offshore bank in BGC, and I had just tried my hand at corporate work there. I landed a job at a forex company. Back then, BGC was just a patchwork of scattered buildings surrounded by empty lots. On my first day, we met up for a quick lunch. We kept meeting now and then until I left that job. Corporate life wasn’t for me, and by then, you and my best friend had already broken up.
The next time we saw each other would be years later.
Fast forward to 2021. That was the year I told my live-in partner that perhaps God was still calling me to be a priest. I saw you on social media and decided to reach out. We met for a meal, and afterward, you insisted on bringing me back to the little store I was about to open. It was a July afternoon. The rain played with the light, painting everything in soft colors. When I was left alone afterward, I felt something, something like a spark. Did you feel it too? Did I ever tell you I was discerning a calling?
From that point on, we became inseparable. Maybe it was me who insisted we spend almost every weekend together. We tried new things. You introduced me to the art of coffee. We explored hidden spots: run-down Chinese restaurants, old bakeries that stopped selling bread by midday, and this old Japanese resto in Timog where I could gorge on unlimited sashimi and oysters. You were crazy enough to drive me to my errands: meeting old nuns in Tagaytay, chatting with rural women who made coco jam in Quezon, walking around unsafe neighborhoods for the sake of my penchant for less-touristy spots. And when I was away for weeks trying to find God in the waves and watering holes of Siargao, it was you who picked me up at the airport, excited to hear my stories. I told you I found God there. But the truth is, God found me.
“Let’s try the mountains this time,” you said. So a few weeks before your birthday, we went to Baguio. At the hotel, we shared the same bed. You didn’t mind. Sex was never on the table. But that week, sleeping beside you, I could feel something shifting. First, my labored breathing. Then, the awkward way I’d position myself so I wouldn’t have to look you in the eye. Then, at night, when we said goodnight, my heartbeat would finally slow down, and I’d fall asleep next to you. You looked incredibly beautiful in the golden light of sunset. Your smile glowed. I’ve never looked at sunsets the same since those afternoons in that mountain city.
I knew how much you loved the stars, especially at night. But it was always cloudy. So on our last night, I had an idea. We drove through Pinewoods to look at the city lights of Baguio, like a manmade galaxy of a hundred million stars. We stood there in silence, as close as two friends could be, staring at that artificial constellation of lightbulbs, streetlights, and headlights.
Every night we parted, we’d hug tightly. I’d wait until you got home, and our goodbyes would continue in the chat. I spent holidays with your family. Your mom and I would spend long afternoons talking about everything and nothing. We said “I love you” to each other in ways we never defined, but we were deliberate in saying them. Maybe to you, it meant something else. And to me, it meant… something. Before you, I never knew intimacy could look like this. This fine, fine line between platonic and romantic. To me, and perhaps more truly to you, it was enough.
You knew my deepest desires. My darkest secrets. Even the ones I hadn’t yet dared to name. You saw how I wrestled with a string of lovers, inebriated sexcapades, family baggage, and ego-driven rants about work. Through it all, you looked at me with tenderness. Maybe that’s why I was - am - so drawn to you. Why did I meet you again in the strangest of times? God, are You somewhere in all of this?
Perhaps it was your understanding of the universe that made me fall for you. While I talked of faith and religion, you spoke of the cosmos and the human condition. Yet somehow, we always arrived at the same truth. Elegantly, and without disagreement. We talked about the universe in ways that stirred our souls. Consider this: we all came from a single point. That the stars had to die and explode. That our atoms have been traveling together through time and space, only to become you and me, at this moment in the history of humankind. I often wonder: what did it take for you to become this gentlest, wisest, kindest soul I’ve ever known?
In one of my medieval philosophy classes, I learned about two kinds of time. One is nunc transiens, the “now that passes.” That’s the time we all know, a chronological sequence of moments. But the other is nunc stans, the “now that stands.” It’s time as God sees it: one eternal moment where everything, everyone, everywhere exists all at once. Looking back on our years of shared moments: meeting and parting, finding and losing. I begin to understand this eternal now.
I could’ve told you, with courage, that I wanted you. That I could walk away from this calling I’ve obsessed over my whole life. But I let time pass. I was foolish. I stayed silent. Not because I feared you’d run away. No, it was something else that held me back.
But there comes a time when a man must choose. I didn’t want to keep sitting on the fence, keeping every door open. So one day, I told you: I wanted to try this call to priesthood one last time. Try . That was the word. Going back to the seminary doesn’t guarantee anything. You knew that. But what was clear to me was this: I needed to find out, once and for all, if my desires were God’s desires too.
You congratulated me. You affirmed my decision. You said you wouldn’t have it any other way.
The last time we saw each other, you picked me up and drove me to the seminary. You waited until I was indeed, inside the hallowed walls I will call home for many years. Then you drove away and never looked back. That was three years ago. No calls. No messages. Almost no trace of the time we once shared.
S, did you really give me away to God?
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From the right perspective (and yes, unfortunately one that three-dimensional creatures like us can’t see), all of time would be laid out before you, every instant that has ever existed or ever will exist.
There’s really nothing more real about this moment right now than moments that are billions of years in the future or millions of years in what we think of as the past. Not only am I made of life and death, but I am, individually, all those things at once. The earth has not formed yet. The sun has died and all the stars gone dark for uncountable trillions of years. Now.
I think of that when contemplating love and loss; it helps me, honestly just a little, but it does help me, to deal with the fear and loneliness that are as much a part of my life as breath. I’ve said to my husband, “When the universe began, I was holding your hand, and when the universe ends, I’ll be holding your hand.” And we actually believe that to be literally true.
Michelle Thaller, Finding meaning in the vastness of the universe
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