Discreet HIV Testing This April

Love Yourself Platinum


Discreet, by-appointment HIV testing.

April 19 & 26, 2013

Location is somewhere in Makati. Details will only be given to those who register.

To register, click HERE.

For more details, click HERE.  

 

RITM Satellite Clinic: Holy Week Schedule

For holy week, RITM Satellite Clnic aka The LoveYourself Hub is closed from March 26 (Tuesday) to March 30 (Saturday).

Regular clinic schedule will resume on Easter Sunday (9 AM)


Announcement taken from the RITM Satellite Clinic Twitter account

I Am Not In Love And It's Okay

I am not in love right now. And it’s okay.

I’ve always wondered why I seem to have a really rotten luck at love. It’s not that nobody comes along, as a matter of fact I can’t say that I’ve been completely single for longer than two weeks since I was twenty. That’s six years of going through the “meeting a guy – falling in love – him or me or both of us falling out of love – breaking up – getting depressed – moving on – and meeting another guy” cycle over and over and over again. It used to be somewhat fun, when I was still the wide-eyed boy eager to relish love’s every taste, but now it has become exhausting. I can’t keep on having three-week relationships. It’s just not good for the heart.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why my relationships always seemed to fail right from the early stages. Eventually, it became apparent that my relationships were divided into three cases: one is where the other guy is not as invested as I am, one is where the other guy wants to invest but is reluctant to do so, and the last is where the other guy likes me just as much or even more than I like him.

Whenever I meet someone who seems promising, I always get inexplicably drawn to him. This is normal, I suppose, if I were thirteen and had pigtails. Yes, that’s the kind of infatuation that I feel. I completely obsess over the guy and it becomes my sole purpose for existence to catch his attention and impress him.

Things would be simple if he doesn’t respond to my advances. When that happens, I take the hint and back off. The trouble starts when I sense that the waters flow in my favor, because that’s when I start to expect. I take my courtship rituals to an even higher level, making it clear that I want to be his boyfriend and that I want to be the only one whom he will consider.

At this point, it becomes apparent that I am already an easy catch. For some guys, this appears as a huge flaw. For some reason, there are guys who get drawn to me because they saw me as this exciting boy who likes to collect toys. However, the moment they see that I am, in fact, after something a lot more long-term, they lose interest. This frustrates me and I try to prove to the guy that I am every bit the catch that he first saw me to be, but that just turns him off even more.

For other guys, my hopeless romantic tendencies would have been seen as an asset, but they cannot bring themselves to believe it. This is especially true when I date older guys. They think that since I am still young, I am bound to play around. This frustrates me just as much as the first kind, sometimes even more. I find it unfair to not be given a chance because of some random assessment they made on me.

Then there are those guys who are just as eager as I am to be in a relationship. When I meet this sort of guy, a committed relationship always happens, and we happily frolic in our love. That is, until I start seeing flaws in the guy and I ask myself if I had jumped into a relationship too soon, yet again. Then I start to think that maybe those people who called me a player were right all along.

As you can see, I am clearly conflicted when it comes to relationships, and I have come to the point where I have decided to accept that I am not yet ready for it. I’ve been chasing after love for too long already and I had let my life get shaped around my obsession with love too many times. Sure, love is indeed a beautiful thing, but there are too many beautiful things in life to be eclipsed solely by love.

That’s not to say that I’m giving up on love. No, that would be too melodramatic, even for me. I’m saying that I think I’ve been courting love the wrong way. In all my conquests, I’ve been following two fallacies: that I need love and that I have the right to be loved. Believing that I needed love has led me to chase everything that remotely resembled it. Believing that I had the right to be loved has given me unbearable pain whenever the love I gave was not given back. From now on, I will see love as a gift. Gifts are not something that you need to live, neither are they something that you can demand for.

I am not in love right now, but it’s okay. I’ll focus on all the other beautiful things in life. But if love does come for me again when I am ready, I will be grateful and I will appreciate it for what it is and for as long as I have it.

MANILA CHECK-IN - Free HIV Testing

For more details, CLICK HERE.

I Did See The Good Things

You said that I only saw the negative in what you and I had. That’s not true.

I love how you insist that the food court is your favorite food option in the mall just so you can claim that you’re not high-maintenance, even though you didn’t even have an idea at first where it was.

You are one of the very few people who can put up with me when I’m shopping. Heck, even my mom loses her patience with me.

I love how your default voice and speaking pattern is very baby-talk-ish. I am really a sucker for that.

I really appreciate how you took care of me when I was sick. You came for me even though you were not supposed to be with me that night. That was when I started falling for you.

You are really, really, really cute. I’ve had a crush on you since the day I first saw you. That hasn’t changed one bit.

You are always level-headed and can always pacify me when I’m angry. I’m sorry, though, because I should have worked on that more. You got more blows than you can take.

I’m sorry that I wasn’t more appreciative of your effort to clean my dumpster of a unit. I’m really sorry. Thank you for doing that. I saw how concerned you were for me.

I always long for your hugs and your kisses. That’s why I always want you to stay in my place, just so I could fall asleep with you in my arms, and then wake up to your kisses the next morning.

I didn’t tell you these things because then I’ll be admitting how crazy I am for you, and I know that you’re not yet ready to commit. You are a really great guy. And I was just so frustrated that you were not mine.

I just didn’t want to dwell on the good things too much, because if I did, and you decide that I’m not the guy you want, then I’d be left in an even more pathetic state.

But I did see them, the good things we had and those we could have had.

I wish you could have given us a chance. And I wish I could have been more patient.  And I just really wish you were mine.