A toast for someone

I delivered this speech last February 5, 2009. It was on an outside venue, and it was very special because it’s the first time I ever did  a speech for someone. It’s sort of personal, and I think that’s what I liked about this speech. It’s real. It’s as true as it can get.

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I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was around 10 or 11. When I figured that he was just a major sham, and that we didn’t have a chimney for him to pass through, I moved on with my life and stopped waiting up for him to fill my sock on Christmas eve.

I stopped believing in love when I was 17. With a heavy heart, I started thinking that love was this huge superstition, a cliché, and that I just have to move on with life. I stopped waiting for it, supposing that it’ll never come, like Santa Claus never did.

And weird enough, when I stopped waiting, it’s when it started coming.

The moment you lay your eyes upon that certain person, you’d never want to look away, to look someplace else. You’d want to keep him in sight, afraid that in that one second you take your eyes off him, he’ll vanish into thin air. When you’re alone in your room, you’d dream of an eternity of beaches and sunrises, spring rain and sunsets. You’d count your heartbeats, and notice that it skips when his name invades your mind.

He was there, closer than anyone, when I was going nuts over what to do about our production. He was there, although not physically, when I was burning the midnight oil writing articles for my journalism class. He called me when my heart was sinking into an ocean of tears, when I was unwilling to get up and face whatever demons were lurking in the shadows of my spotty mind. I never even thought I’d meet him in person. He looked at me, and I felt my stomach do a double back flip, and my heart high jumped. Everything else just faded into the back ground, and all I could see is him, and his brown eyes, staring at me like I’m something.

And there I was humming love songs again; oblivious to the hurly-burly that usually accompanies my toxic academic life. I’ve never been this happy in my entire life.

When you’ve found someone who’ll eat cake icing for you because you don’t, and who’ll sing to you even if it’s not his thing, who’ll tell you you’re the most beautiful woman in his world, that you shine even if you know you’re the most ordinary, most boring person who ever lived—you wouldn’t want to let go.

You might not be a knight in shining armor or a vampire in a shiny silver Volvo, but you’re the one, the only one.

Here’s to our first year together.