Me after you

I will be what I could never have been had I stayed with you, and you with me.

I will be the girl who couldn’t swim, the girl who couldn’t run a 10k marathon, and not be ashamed of it. I will accept that not everyone was born with superb kinesthetic skills. I won’t think twice in admitting that a six-pack won’t really make you more attractive to me, but intelligence will be something I’ll undoubtedly adore.

I will be the girl you couldn’t bring to the club and to rave parties because they’re just “not her thing.” I will learn that not being an extrovert like you is okay. Taking more time than others to come out of my shell is okay.

I’ll stop caring about not being able to sing along to songs you and everyone else know, and sing. I’ll listen to Mozart, keep my indie folk tracks, and forget that I once tried to like EDM for you.

I will do the things that you don’t care about.

It wouldn’t matter if you don’t understand how lovely Sylvia Plath’s works are, or if you don’t care about what Murakami writes.

I will stop seeking your approval.

I will learn to accept the parts of me for which nobody claps.

I will realize that I have beauty of my own, and that just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

And I will wait.

I will wait for the right one.

I will do my best to overcome my impatience and try to remember when insisting on my own timetable led me to the wrong one, to you.

In the end I will thank God for saving me from the wrong person. And I will be grateful that some things did not work out the way I once wanted them to.

Chenee Clea Gumalo, 19, describes herself as “a millennial potato on her last teenage year.” She is studying agricultural engineering at Visayas State University (Baybay City, Leyte).