Change

It bothers me how we can be completely absorbed in just one person, and at the next turn, we are going through full days without making contact.

I know that if I were to press for an answer, that I still love you. What tells me, are those faint memories of moments when I am completely myself when I am with you, suppressed in the deep recesses of my mind. However faint, I know exactly when and where, but it is redundant to specify.

I never really wanted us to grow apart, especially not when our routines have intertwined that much, and when you have shown me a possibility that I never really believed in. But if I try just hard enough repeating to myself every night, maybe I will make it through the year:

Everyday it hurts a little less.

Mom

It was as if she could hear the sound of my heart being wrenched, that she asked in the gentlest and most rational tone I have ever heard her use in years. Then I spilled all the stories of that island boy and of you to her. I cried on her lap, I cried on her shoulder, I cried into her hair.

If there is one thing good that comes out of this, it is that I finally got my mother back.

I assumed that having let all that steam out, I would have managed to shift my gear and somehow, look at only what lies ahead. But by bed time, all it took was to shut my eyes for ten minutes, and the tears started again.

And honestly, I don’t even know why anymore.

My best friend

I can’t do this anymore. All the things you have said about me, I have a comeback. Because you are blatantly making cursory judgements of me. I thought of a million ways I would explain this if we tried talking again. But each word spills out like a revolting cliche. And I realise that this is it. When I have run out of words and ways to say what I think is the truth, I give up. When I can tune in to the hurt, and forget where it comes from, I can give you up.

I thought you understood me.

I thought you understood how affected I was when I walked out of that scam of a relationship, because you were there by my side, cajoling me to wait for better things to come. Because you were there holding my hand. And I let myself replace my friends with you. In this past year, you have become the person I trust myself with. You were my best friend. Because I thought you were the only one who understood that there is so much hurt in being cheated on. Because I thought you were the only one who didn’t see me as being stupid and weak for taking so long to walk away from a man who wasn’t treating me right.

Then there was you. Then there was being told I was not good enough for you. Then grad school became the last constant thing in my life. If you can’t understand why I latch on to that dream, you know nothing about me. It isn’t about wanting to leave, but wanting to mean something. Or be something.

I meant nothing when I was being two-timed. I meant nothing when I was too stupid and boring and too Chinese to be yours. I mean very little to anyone, and you have no fucking right to turn that one dream where I still believe in myself into something about me being selfish.

Morning rain

Something so simple, has been made so complex.

What do you do when you know that someone has the capacity to love you with their entire existence? Do you subconsciously realise how available they are to you and thus pick out all their flaws? Do you transition from love to hate to love to hate again, and make all the decisions for them — forgetting that the person who on the receiving end, who consistently loves you, is, a person:

Who is vulnerable to pain you inflict when you withdraw. Who is gullible enough to want you back each time you change your mind. Who sometimes try so hard to be strong in this game, to face you and the cards you deal, that outside your game, she becomes completely weak to strangers. Who hates being seen weak.

How difficult was it to love me?

Either or

This was originally a post about the lightness that I associate with you, and that morning when my fogged up lenses captured this moment. This lightness, this unbridled happiness that blankets me like warm kisses on a cold morning. That this morning, while having my Sausage McMuffin, I felt compelled to write about. Because in little occurrences like this, I find you.

But like the blurred lines of our relationship since last Christmas, I can no longer tell if I erased the lightness that once existed; or they existed exclusively in specific moments, like the picture; or maybe I’ve blacked out all the heaviness, dread and cruelty in my frame of mind, to keep just what I can call, love.

Perhaps it is time to step out of this comfort zone that I function in, and that imagine King Charles with. Like how the tangible evidences of the tenderness between us have stopped — it is time that my fanciful notions come to an end as well. If there are no more emails, no more telling texts composed while half-drunk, no more handwritten cards and pages; then the last three recesses where I keep hoarding stories of us, should not exist anymore either.

It was that morning after, in Lumut.

Denouement

I repeated it like a mantra. Be detached, be, detached.

Now that I am somewhat detached, I am even unhappier than I was. I was lying next to him, listening to him talk about his fears. The subject of death is never a joke to me. I think about it all the time. I want to die young, I want to donate organs, I want to be cremated and have my ashes scattered, I never want to have a plot or a box with my name to it when I am done here. I have had a relationship with apathy and death this year, but not with him. At least not any explicit relationship that I agreed to, but I listened in earnest all the same.

When I left and drove home, I thought about how people’s reflection of themselves used to make me feel. I wanted to protect them, I wanted them to turn to me because I empathized. But not in this instance. It wasn’t that I can’t be bothered about his insecurities. It wasn’t like that at all. I felt sad for him, I thought about how it affected him, I thought about how it would affect myself if I was in his place. But it did not spark off the possibility that I could love him. Which was something that used to be my “weakness”. I was often enamoured of the story that makes a person. Somewhere along the way, I think I have lost that.

Right now, it all feels like one of those multiple choice question that you really have no clue about. All options seem like the answer and the wrong answer at the same time.

A. I have learnt to detach, I have learnt to be stronger.
B. None of this objectivity applies with the person I love.
C. I am selfish.
D. I am less of a person.

Saturation

I’ve reached a point of saturation. For days since I confirmed that suspicion, words and ideas have been simmering. I keep putting it off, waiting for it to spill over, but it won’t. It just keeps becoming heavier.

I want to talk to you, talk about you, talk with you, talk over you, talk after you — unfurl all of the words I have collected in this year. Phrase after phrase after phrase. It revolves entirely around you. Yet you doubt how much I care for you, or take you into consideration. I have always done.

I just don’t want this to be a monologue.

Dates

Just a speculation.

If one has a soul, they weigh something instead of floating aimlessly through the days in a week. If they have weight at all, they exist in the now. They are either exceedingly pretty, making heads turn in the shopping mall. Or looked at because they are so plain. Or looked at because they have such pale legs. Or looked at because their hair is so disheveled. Or looked at because their waists are so narrow. Or looked at because their derrieres are so perfectly formed. I mean, these people have, weight. In even very little ways, they are a change in someone else’s life.

But I think I have lost my soul when I deferred a dream, and when that anchor in my life stopped being an anchor. Everyday I feel this insignificant. And honestly, my sense of time has whittled down to, waking up at 6am, leaving for work by 7.15am, must reach office area for parking before 8.45am. The days, months, and dates are numbers and letters that are so meaningless, that if you asked me to think about what they imply, I can’t.

Sure, maybe all I need is time to return to that self who gets psyched about events in the near future. But, this numbness is sometimes so comforting, I am not sure I want to anymore.

Birthday

It is the birthday week!

The question of what would you like has been asked, and I really don’t know. The things I can afford, I don’t need gifted. The things I can’t afford, are too much to ask for as gifts. But somewhere between the two extremes, there are some inexpensive options, so here, I will try.

1. Xanax. I have approximately eight 0.5mg doses left. I’m saving up for the rainy days but if you are worried that I would OD if I had a convenient stash on hand, I can’t. It takes over 30mg for someone to get high, and even then, you’re not close to killing yourself.

2. Someone to take me out all day. No phones. Belle and Sebastian playing as we drive to the zoo, for fish and chips during lunch, for sushi in the evening, then to a fancy bar at night — because I haven’t had a drink for the longest longest time.

3. Get drunk with company. Listen to my madhatter talk, try and answer my madhatter questions, hold my hair if I get sick.

4. Dedicate me a song. Sing me Skinny Love, ideally accompanied with acoustics and an envious audience. Note: you don’t have to mean a single word you sing.

5. Therapy. Be an earnest listener for just two or three hours. Or if it is beyond your capacity, buy me a visit to someone who would.