It’s been a rough couple of years, many things have happened and many things have changed for pretty much everybody, but for us this story starts a little bit differently.
It all began by a spawn of a like on one of his IG photos (this one), we then started exchanging messages. Two years forward there we were when we first met in the Philippines. It was insanely amazing, meeting the person I was dying to meet, it finally happened! After that trip we did not want to say goodbye, and is after that trip back in 2018 that we started making plans for our future.
We had (still have on our plan) New Zealand in our minds but for allowing him to meet my family as well and vice versa, we opted to meet again in Italy. At that time I was working in the UK completely alone, and him in his country with his family. That made me wanting to see him so badly every single minute of the day, if I wasn’t working I was mentally destroyed … Weekends were my deepest enemy, they killed me softly every hour I wasn’t occupied.
Work.
During that time work was my best friend, where I luckily had amazing colleagues to keep me going through those rough patches of my existence.
Enough of depressing memories. Let’s go back to our plan to meet again, oh yes, we so did after few months. This time I made the call buying a ticket as soon as I could take some time off work. Therefor we travelled together from the Philippines to Singapore and Malaysia, but still not a chance for our Italian plan.
After this trip everything changed again, the plan was clearer then ever, so we focused our every single energy on making it to Italy.
It was 2019, so yes. It did not work.
First rejection of the Italian visa, was a bullet straight in our hearts. I got the news on a quick 5-min break that my colleagues kindly gave me. Coming back I couldn’t even move a finger, I was devastated. I weren’t able to work as fully as usual: I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t laugh on my colleagues jokes, I couldn’t go on with the rest of the day. It was a hard step back we both had to face.
Few weeks had been passed, but I still couldn’t accept that failure, I had to do something.
I made one of the greatest and most difficult decisions of my entire life: I chose to follow my heart and put aside the business part of it. My off-days were over, I had to leave my job. I was on a heart rescue mission: my other half of my body was missing and I had to find it again.
So I went back to the Philippines, oh gosh, it was so good to see him again, the butterflies came back right where I left ’em, smitten than ever. This time I was on a mission: we both promised to ourselves to not leave each other until this visa will be approved, because we both knew that one way or another it had to.
So we did flew back to Cebu for our appointment to give all the required documents to an embassy office, anxiously waiting and boom. Another huge devastating news. And when you think there isn’t anything worse that could happen, life hits, stabbing you in the back with other shitty unfortunate events. It was indeed a very rough time for him, and so me.
I decided to not going anywhere without him, I couldn’t leave him in that state, nobody would have.
Fast forward 2021 we decided to dust off the documents, revising everything, and flying to Manila in a pandemic era for submitting those documents once again. It was the first time since I came back in the Philippines that we took an airplane, it was a bit unusual but we got the hang of the idea of traveling again, we were happy. While the files were being revised by the embassy of Italy, we flew few islands south back home.
The wait wasn’t long, after 15 days a postman came in our subdivision, there was a letter for him. That was it! We were both super scared to open it as we noticed a paper inside, and if there is a paper inside it we knew it would probably be the rejection reasons.
We were wrong!
Tears of joy came out on both of our eyes, grandmother couldn’t believe it either, we were laughing, hugging each others in tears: the visa was on his passport!
I didn’t realize it even days after, it was literally UNREAL. Finally our huge sacrifices were worth the chase!
After two years of living together in his motherland Philippines, we can finally move on and start a wonderful new chapter of our lives, were we cannot wait to put that damn ink on paper.
We’re so excited to show you!