Love begins with an ellipsis

SANTA CRUZ, California—It’s been a while since the last time I found myself hammering my computer keyboard to write about something like this. This isn’t the first one I had written but this is undoubtedly the hardest. I don’t even know where to begin. I’m trying to gather my thoughts to see if there are things I haven’t told you yet. I’ve been sitting in front of my computer all day—scuttling through my emotion, hoping, praying that I finally realize what is it I would like you to know through this. Hours have passed and I’m still staring blankly on my computer monitor.

Then it occurred upon me. Although I have uncompromisingly told you how much you mean to me, I really haven’t let you know how amazingly you have added beauty to my life by simply being in it. I really haven’t told you how incredibly you make me smile with the sound of your endearing laugh. I have yet to make it known to you how you have wonderfully brought music into my mind-numbing, monotonous life.

It wasn’t until after that first telephone conversation, which lasted over 100 minutes, that I realized I was about to take another of life’s turbulent journeys—this time, though, I’ll have you to enjoy this extraordinarily beautiful roller coaster ride with. This is a journey that may be beset with ups and downs, with disappointments and satisfactions, with good and bad, with sadness and happiness, with failures and successes. But this is the same journey that is filled with love and affection, trust and respect, commitment and devotion—the dynamics of a triumphant passage that’s bound to see its destination.

I have asked for signs—flowers, butterflies, rainbows—and so they came along with life’s tumultuous journeys, which I shared with people who I may have not loved so deeply but from whom I have learned valuable lessons. And as these journeys failed to see through their respective destinations, I started giving up that “the one” will come to lead me to the journey I have, in my lifetime, dreamt of taking. I have surrendered…accepted defeat that it will never happen. Not now. Not ever.

Then came the ellipsis from where this wonderful journey has originated. Love, they say, begins with one hello. But the ellipsis taught me that, sometimes, the most beautiful of romances sets out without even a word uttered. The ellipsis transformed a “you and me” into an “us” faster than the wink of an eye. It has established a connection between two unfamiliar hearts. It has given birth to something remarkable out of the ordinary…something superb out of the mediocre…something breathtaking out of the average…more importantly, it has given birth to “US” out of “you and me”.

It may be true that love begins with one hello. But one great love story I know started with an ellipsis. And for that, I will eternally be indebted to (…). (Aldwin R. Fajardo)