After going through something highly stressful or traumatic, some couples inevitably separate. I've heard many stories of couples who break up after losing a child, after one of the couple goes through an illness, or after some other major event. While it's true that some people grow closer after adversity, sometimes the event is so traumatic that you just want to forget about what happened for a while, and you can't do that if you're still with the person you went through it with. Vince and I got to that point. After 2 years of being together, we have decided it's best if we separate -- although we both have different reasons for wanting to do so.
I've never really wrote about our relationship. Part of the reason I haven't written about us is that I was embarrassed about our situation, and I thought only my really close friends would understand. But now I just really want closure on everything, and one of the ways I can get closure is to just write everything down and put it out there for everyone to see, regardless of what anyone might think.
I won't start from the very beginning, because it would take too long to explain everything that's happened to us. I'll eventually write about how we started, our good times, and stuff like that in another post. This post is all about circumstances and events that led to our break-up.
Two years ago when I finally decided that I wanted Vince to be my lover, I knew from the start that he would just break my heart. Yeah, at the time he was in other relationships and wasn't being faithful, but that's not why for some reason I knew he'd make me sad. Sometimes you just get that feeling about someone and you can't explain it. Despite that I took the risk since I also had the feeling that it would all be worthwhile.
Vince is an orphan. His Dad was murdered when he was a baby, and his Mom died of various illnesses when he was 17. Ever since he's kinda had to fend for himself, which has never been easy. His eldest sister is the only one who's ever really been able to help him with his expenses. However, his sister got into a whole lot of legal problems in 2005, around the time that we met, so she hadn't been able to send him funds on a regular basis. When she did it was usually not enough for all of the stuff he had to pay for (stuff at school, his rent, daily expenses, etc). So he ended up with a lot of debts.
I started helping Vince out before he became my boyfriend. One time when we went out, he mentioned that he was scared he wouldn't be able to pay his electric and water bills, and he didn't know what to do if his electricity and water were cut off. Because I thought he was a nice guy, and because I had extra cash, I offered to lend him money. At the time, I didn't want a relationship with him, and he wasn't even my type, so I was really just helping as one friend to another. Of course, we couldn't help but bond more after that, and how our relationship progressed is a topic for another post.
After he became my boyfriend, I helped out whenever his sister wasn't able to send him funds on time. At first it was OK, but then his sister started to not be able to send him funds for months at a time. My credit card bills were escalating pretty fast, and I wasn't able to save any money anymore. I wasn't too happy about what was happening, and I used to nag him a lot to call his sister to bug her into sending him money, but we really couldn't do anything if she really didn't have any money to send. So I was kinda stuck.
I've been asked why I still wanted to help him out even though I was having difficulty. I know I could have simply said I didn't want to help him anymore, but the thing is that I did want to help him even if it was hard, not just as a lover but as a friend. I believed in his dreams, and I wanted to help him make them come true. He was studying to become a nurse because he wanted to go abroad so he could earn enough to help out his other family members. When he had saved enough money, he was planning to study medicine and become a doctor. When his Mom died all he could think about was if only he knew what to do back then he would have been able to help her stay alive. How can you give up on someone like that? Though achieving his dreams meant that eventually he'd have to leave me (cuz I had no plans of going abroad with him), I didn't mind. I wasn't helping him out just so that he'd stay with me.
The first time my helping Vince really became a problem was when Rolly's Dad got really sick. Rolly was my ex-boyfriend, and I also helped him out financially before, though not to the extent that I was helping Vince. His Dad needed a liver transplant. He had acute liver cirrhosis cuz he'd be drunk almost every night after work. They couldn't afford the transplant, so they just needed help with the meds and the hospital bills every time his Dad got confined. His Dad was always nice to me and always made me feel comfortable in their home, so I wanted to do whatever I could to help. At first I was able to help out a bit, but then my credit card got maxed out and I didn't have anything to give him anymore. Rolly was desperate and I was heartbroken that I couldn't help him out. I'd talk to Vince about it but he'd get all jealous, in spite of the situation, so I kinda kept my helping Rolly to myself. Eventually Rolly's Dad died, and although I know it wasn't my fault I sometimes think that maybe if I helped Rolly more maybe his Dad would still be alive.
Not that Vince wasn't prone to being sick himself. When I first met him Vince was healthy. I knew though that he had a family history of illnesses. His Mom died of complications related to diabetes (hypertension and heart disease). If I remember correctly she had some cysts too. Vince therefore was prone to those illnesses, so we had to be extra careful about his health, and we didn't worry for the most part. That is until the cyst in his neck below his left ear started growing.
I first started borrowing money from friends to help Vince when we needed money for his operation to remove the cyst. The cyst was getting bigger and bigger each day, and I was getting more frantic. I didn't like having to borrow money, and I still don't, but Vince's life meant more to me than my pride. It still does. So we had the operation done, and I was able to relatively quickly pay back the friend who helped me. I was relieved, but sadly that event only turned out to be a preview of things to come.
A few months later (this was around June of last year), Vince told me that he had a checkup and his doctor told him he had developed a heart condition. It was an enlargement of the heart, and he would sooner or later need a bypass operation. Of course we wouldn't be able to afford that, so in order to make sure his condition didn't worsen, we had to make sure that he always took his medicine. However, his medicine was fucking expensive, a little more than 700 pesos a day, so we had huge problems trying to make ends meet.
Vince's sister was of no help at all. When she came to the Philippines last year, he had hoped to convince her to send him more money so he could pay for his medical bills. Instead she told him that she couldn't send him any money more. I hated his sister for that, and I still blame her for everything Vince and I went through. I probably shouldn't, and I'm pretty sure I don't know the whole story between her and Vince, but the fact remains that in essence she turned her back on her brother knowing very well that she was his only hope. So I hate her.
Since his sister wasn't going to help him out anymore, I was all Vince had left. His 2 other sisters here in the Philippines were both jobless, and they also had their own set of problems. Between June and November last year was probably one of the most diffult times of my life. That entire period I was constantly on the verge of tears. By then I had maxed out both of my credit cards, and was balancing what I had to give my Mom and my aunt here in Pasig with his bills, his daily needs, and his meds. Usually something had to give, and I always panicked cuz usually he'd have to either give up his meds or give up eating, and I hated always having to decide which was more important. There were times when I couldn't even go to work anymore cuz I didn't have more money to get to work. Needless to say the situation was very frustrating, and Vince and I argued a lot especially when I couldn't help him more than I had already done.
Vince was so depressed cuz eventually we decided that he would have to give up going to school and work. We couldn't afford to have him in school anymore. He would have to delay his dreams for a bit, and that I think was the most difficult part for him. At that point he had just started his internship, and therefore was really starting to get the feel of what it was like to be a nurse. He was so upset he'd have to give it up that at one point he tried to commit suicide. He slashed his wrists in his dorm's bathroom, but luckily his roommates were there to bring him to the hospital.
I was in Cebu at the time, and he didn't even tell me about what he did until I came back. I was so upset when I saw his wrists for the first time after. I asked him why he didn't tell me right away, and he said it was cuz I was always telling him how much difficulty I was having helping him out, so he didn't want to bother me with it. I felt like such a failure not just as a lover, but as a friend. I was devastated.
Thankfully we had a really long talk after that episode, and we cleared out everything that needed to be cleared out. By the time that school semester ended, I had managed to get a pretty big loan from Chinatrust, so I was able to pay back all my friends, and I managed to pay pretty much everything I need to pay for. The money I got from selling my stock options and my 13th month pay all helped as well. Vince also soon had job offers with several call centers lined up, so everything seemed to be falling into place.
The problem is that Vince wasn't able pass the training programs of either of the 2 call centers he got accepted in. The thing about a lot of call centers nowadays is that you don't actually get paid until after you pass training, so Vince in essence went through 2 months of training and got nothing in return. This was all during the early part of 2007.
Complicating things was that his heart condition was getting worse. We didn't have money for him to take his meds regularly anymore, so his heart attacks were becoming more frequent. It's actually one of the reasons he didn't get accepted at the 2nd call center. He had so many absences cuz he got sick during training that there was no way they were going to accept him.
Every time Vince wouldn't text I'd panic cuz I thought maybe something had happened to him. He had moved somewhere in Guadalupe, and didn't want to tell me where he lived for some reason, so I couldn't go to him to check if he was OK even if I wanted to. It even got to the point where I was bugging his friends from work to tell me where he lived, to no avail. I was so worried all the time, and I felt totally helpless. Luckily his friends were sometimes there when he got sick, and they helped out whenever they could.
I hated the fact that I wasn't able to help him as much anymore, and I had nobody I could borrow from anymore. I had already borrowed money from everyone I could possibly borrow from, and everyone else's budget was tight. The bills and loans I had to pay were racking up, so I couldn't give Vince as much as I had done before.
I asked Vince to ask Earvin, his bestfriend, and his family to help him out, since they were able to help him when Vince got hospitalized and I didn't have enough money for the bill. Vince had known Earvin's family since he was in grade school, and since his Mom had died he was always at their place during holidays. They were like his surrogate family. He didn't want to ask them for help cuz he didn't want to burden them with his problems, and no matter how I tried to convince him that they would understand he wouldn't budge.
Then I remembered that last year when he went to Cebu to visit his Mom's clan for the first time, some of his relatives offered to help him out if ever he needed help. I begged him to call them. He didn't want to. Maybe it was because he had only met them for the first time last year, and he didn't know them all that well, but still. Now was not the time to be embarrassed about asking for help. I was honestly on the verge of stealing his phone just so I could get their phone numbers and call them myself. I was that desperate.
In the end, all I could do was give him whatever little I could give him, and pray that he'd be OK. What I gave him was never enough to cover his rent, meds, food, and what he needed to apply for work. I was so scared that he'd feel helpless and try to commit suicide again, but luckily he didn't get to that point.
The sad part was that Vince mistook my not being able to help to mean that I didn't want to help, which was definitely not true. I did want to help, but what could I do? I was all out of funds. I exhausted all possible sources of help, did everything I possibly could, and I still came up short. I didn't want to argue to with him though, because he was sick, and when he's sick he's a completely different person. He's unreasonable and views everything negatively, and he doesn't listen to anything I say even if I'm trying to help. He's also constantly cranky and pissed off.
He'd always ask me to compute how much he owed me and swore, in a pissed off tone, that he'd pay me back. When I first starting helping him, I did keep a tab of how much he owed, cuz he was about to graduate from school and he promised to pay me back for everything once he found work with his sister in Canada. However, I stopped computing how much money I gave him once his sister stopped helping him, since I knew the chances of him getting to Canada were now slim, and he would never really be able to pay me back. I didn't care though. I wasn't helping him anymore thinking that the money would come back. I just did what I could, and hoped things would work out.
After realizing that I really couldn't help him out as much as I used to be able to, Vince decided to take matters into his own hands. He didn't look for another job, an he didn't ask for help from either Earvin or his family in Cebu. He decided that the best way to earn enough money to get by was to become a callboy. I felt so helpless when I found out that was what he was going to do.
The first time he asked me what I thought about him selling himself for cash was back when we were first having difficulty paying for his heart medicine. Back then I was adamant that he not resort to that, and I told him that I don't care if I'm the one who doesn't have enough money to eat, I don't care if I'm heavily in debt, just don't sell yourself. The thought of the man I loved being with someone else, let alone being paid to have sex with someone, was enough to make me break down in tears. I told him that if he ever sold himself, that would be the end of our relationship, cuz I would never be able to handle the fact that he had been with someone else.
I held out as long as I could. I'd always try to find a way for him not to have to do that. This time was different. I couldn't help him out anymore, and he was always out of food and meds. He didn't want to ask help from anyone else, so I couldn't say no anymore. If selling himself was what he wanted to do in order to be able to buy food and meds, if selling himself would mean that he would stay alive, then so be it. I hated that he felt he needed to do that, but I was willing to let him because his staying alive was more important to me than my wanting to keep him for myself. Though I had told him before that we'd break up if he'd ever sold himself, the truth was that I couldn't bear to be apart from him, so I just decided to turn a blind eye and pretend it wasn't happening.
Vince wasn't happy that I finally agreed to let him sell himself, and said that if I was a real boyfriend I shouldn't have let him get to that extent. It was like he was testing me. He said that I should've done more to help him. He couldn't understand that it wasn't that I wanted him to sell himself, because I honestly didn't, but that I understood why he needed to do so and agreed because I knew that was the only option he wanted to take. That's when he started shutting himself away from me. He wouldn't contact me for long periods of time. Since he wasn't working anymore I couldn't text his friends to see if they knew what was happening to him. When I'd call him he wouldn't answer the phone. Whenever he would text, the only thing he would text was to ask if I had any money he could borrow to buy his meds. He wouldn't answer any of my questions. Whenever I'd say that I didn't have anymore to give, and I really didn't, he would tell me to erase his number from my phone.
Occasionally he would text about the customers he had the night before. That hurt me the most. Yes, I agreed to let him sell himself, but I never said that I was happy about him doing it. I couldn't take the pain. I would cry everytime I imagined him being with someone else, and I was sad that he was telling me about the men he had been with as if he was blaming me for the situation he was in. The last straw for me was when he texted that one of his customers wanted to make him his boyfriend. The mere fact that he told me about that meant that he was giving the idea some thought, and it really signalled that as far as he was concerned our relationship was over. I begged him to stop telling me about his customers. So he did stop. And that was the end of our relationship.
After all that we had been through, after 2 years of being together, I didn't want to end our relationship through text. But I didn't have a choice. He didn't want to see me anymore. Everytime I begged to see him he wouldn't reply to my messages. I wanted one last chance to tell him everything that he meant to me, one last chance to tell him not to lose hope and that his dreams could still come true, but he wouldn't let me have that chance. He thought that everything that needed to be said had already been said.
A few days ago he said that he got arrested. He was asking for money to post bail. Of course I didn't have any spare money, so I said sorry but I can't give you anything, even though I really wanted to. He said that since I can't help him out anymore we should both just forget about each other. He then said that I destroyed his life and all his dreams. Though I knew it was his illness talking, it was still the most hurtful thing anyone has ever said to me. Still, again I didn't argue. I told him not to give up, and that he could still achieve his dreams. I knew he just wanted to pick a fight with him and I didn't want to give in. Even if he's always trying to find a way for me to give up on him, I won't. I may have given up on the relationship, but not on him.
Vince still texts me sometimes, mostly to ask if he can borrow money. He's still in jail at the moment. I'm not happy, but in way I'm relieved that he's in jail, cuz that means he's not selling himself. It also means that he hopefully gets fed at least something everyday. I don't know when he'll get out, but hopefully something good will come out of this.
Not for one second do I regret helping Vince out as much as I did. Things might have been different if Vince had parents who were still alive, if he had a sister who was still willing to help him out, or even if he had friends who had work he could go to. But he didn't have any of that. Though I can't say I was more than happy to help, I can say that I did everything I could to help Vince out, and I did the best I could given the circumstances. It's just sad that it wasn't enough.
Would I ever consider getting back together with him? When he's financially stable again, when he's not sick anymore, I honestly would consider it. Vince was going through so much and was sick for so long that we never really got the chance to experience being a real couple. We spent most of our relationship solving all his problems. I think that with different circumstances things could be different for us. I'm well aware though that it'll be a really long time before any of that happens, so the chances of us getting back together are slim to none.
I will truly miss him. I'm afraid that this post will make some people think that our relationship was all about me helping Vince financially, but it was more than that. I think one of the reasons I held out so long is because I kept thinking about the man I met 2 years ago with all these dreams, the man who wanted so badly to change his life and make a difference in the lives of others, and that's the man I fell in love with. In spite of what he has done, in spite of the man he has become, whenever I think of Vince I will always remember the man I fell in love with. That will never change.
I'm so heartbroken that we've ended our relationship that I haven't told everyone that we're not together anymore, and even the ones I have told don't know the whole story. It's too painful to talk about, even now. Even what's written here isn't even half of everything we went through, everything that happened to us. Overall, I guess I'm OK though. Things had to happen the way they did. I'm not happy, but I'm relieved. I still worry about Vince. I hope things work out. I will always hope that Vince is OK, and I hope that eventually he manages to achieve his dreams.
Around the time Vince and I were breaking up, my friend lent me Madonna's Confessions Tour DVD, and I've been obsessed with the version of "Erotica" that she performs. The lyrics have been modified to make the song sadder, and they're very apt for how I feel about Vince.
You are who you are
And I wouldn't want to change a thing
In spite of all the pain that love can bring
Tell me what can I do
I'm so in love with you...I'll write about how we first met, our good times, all the stuff that's not in this post another time. For now this is all. I'm still sad but fine. Thanks to everyone for understanding. I appreciate the love.
