I’ve been seeing posts about Through Night and Day starring Alessandra de Rossi and Paolo Contis on Facebook. I rarely watch Tagalog movies these days but when I saw their faces on Netflix, I got curious long before all these Facebook posts about it cropped up. So I watched it, by myself, around 1am last week or so as I was relaxing in between shifts at work. I knew it would be a tearjerker and I was craving for a good cry.

I’ve forgotten all about it until Lorelei, a Facebook friend, asked me if I’ve already watched it coz she’s waiting for me to post about it. I said yes but I chose not to say anything about it coz it got me depressed. Now, all the emotions are flooding back… so now I need to blog about it…

You see, with all this pandemic going on, my life now revolves around my family and my work (oh, and food! lol!) No more time to travel even if I want to, no more time to spend chatting with the small group of friends I have left coz I’ve been accepting online work left & right, no more time to just really sit down with Mahal and talk about us because he’s so busy too with mushrooms, and the last few times we did get to talk about us, it ended up with a breakup… which lasted for a minute or two… but it broke my heart into a million tiny pieces, and even as I write this, I’m still actually healing from those few moments that he wanted to leave me because of uncomfortable issues that keep cropping up between us. We managed to overcome that big tiny hiccup (ang ironic noh? big pero tiny..) but yeah, I needed a good cry….

So cry I did when I watched Through Night and Day. I didn’t tell Hanz that I already watched this film way before I asked him to watch it with me last weekend. Maybe because I was just trying to process my emotions at that time, and the 2nd time I watched it, I wanted to do so again with fresh eyes. We ended up laughing about the movie (although I still cried at some parts).

The thing that struck a chord in me about it the first time I watched it was the whole thought that a guy who has been bf/gf with a girl of 13 years can easily leave her the moment things become uncomfortable or relatively unbearable for him. I resonated with that part because, in my own point of view, it doesn’t matter that I gave up my former life, that I made lots of sacrifices, the moment things get uncomfortable,  Mahal will leave me… just like that. Goodbye to the life we’ve built together! Waaahhhh, now I’m crying again…

Men just want things chill, happy, and stress-free. I am an emotional type of girl (I think most girls are). Add to that the fact that I’ve been suffering from hormonal imbalance since God knows when so there are really times when I can’t control my emotions. Before, when we were just best friends, it’s easy to tell him everything that goes on inside my head and my heart. Now that we’ve been together for almost 6 years, it can take its toll on him, which I understand. He said he wants to live until 100. But if I will be the cause of his life span shortening then he will leave me, just like that. So now, I just process things on my own… by crying by myself when the emotions I carry get too much; I watch tearjerker movies just so I can have a good cry; and this, I blog when I feel like I’m gonna explode. I choose not to fester my girlfriends with my emotions because I know my emotions pass and when they do, I don’t want to regret saying stuff to my friends that I will later take back because I already feel fine. So I just suffer in silence, until I’m able to cry it all out and/or write about it.

Then, of course, there’s a bigger reason why the character of Alessandra (named Jennifer pa talaga, same as my name!) is the way she is. And it got me thinking that maybe, maybe, I am sick too… not just the hormonal imbalance stuff, but sick like her too. I do get debilitating headaches from time to time, I have this urge to urinate when I drink lots of water, I get cranky when it’s that time of the month… or maybe I’m just relating myself too much with the character, lol!

In a way, the movie was an eye-opener for me. Though I’ve been reading lots of things about how men behave since Hanz and I became a couple (because he is a regular, typical guy, and I never really dated before him or before my ex, so I don’t know how guys’ minds really work), the movie reminded me once again of how guys really are —They want things easy. They want someone who will support them in their happiness. They don’t want stress. They don’t want hardships. They want to feel like they’re winners all the time, which is what I learned from anewmode blog which I highly recommend for those wanting to know how to understand men. But hey, we women want that too! Who doesn’t want to be happy and stress-free, right? Men can take an emotional toll from his girl up to a certain point but even then, women have to know how to talk to men (like use the “duck and cover” technique by John Gray of Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus.. see? I studied men! Lol!) But even with all these learnings in my head, of course, I’m only human and I falter from time to time. The last was when he broke up with me… for a few minutes.

I guess the point of the movie is, regret really comes in the end. And when things do end, it could also be a fresh new beginning of something better.  It’s good that they had some sort of closure and got to spend Jennifer’s last few days together… but yeah.. regret is in the end. And yeah, new, better beginnings come after that.

It’s good that Mahal and I got to patch things up after those grueling few minutes of breaking up, but our relationship continues to be a work in progress… I guess all relationships are. I understand him better and his quest to live until 100 years old and hopefully he understands me better too and my need to release my emotions from time to time so I get to live with him until we’re both 100 years old too. I believe I’m the type who learns from life’s lessons, some I learn easily, some a little bit harder to learn but I’m getting there, so… for now, we’re good.

When I watched the movie again with him, it wasn’t so saddening anymore. Though we cried a bit towards the end, we ended up laughing about it for the most part (this usually happens whenever we watch something together, which is one of the things I like about us… we love to laugh together!)

Kudos to Alessandra de Rossi for writing a really good script and to both of them ni Paolo Contis who really brought the characters of Ben and Jen to life! Raw emotions at their finest! Galing talaga!

For those who haven’t watched it yet and would like to watch, enjoy! And bring a roll of tissue paper with you.