Before all this, what did I miss?

It only occurred to me yesterday that perhaps things would’ve been different if we had started off as friends, not the way we had.

We jumped headlong into this, so sure that we knew that this was right, and that it was meant to be, since I never left for California. I’m not saying that I regret everything we’ve had thus far. Not at all. But have you ever thought of what would’ve happened if we had tried to be friends first for longer? What kind of friends we would’ve been? How we would’ve spent weekends and coffee breaks? If (not when because nothing’s ever set in stone) we would’ve eventually become a couple? Or would you have eventually realised that I’d make a lousy girlfriend, and in turn, stopped entertaining those possibilities? Maybe you would’ve thought that I was a complete bore to start with, and assuming that you would even want me as a girlfriend is me getting ahead of myself.

We never had the luxury of time to discover more of what the other was like. But it had been so simple that night. God, where is that simplicity now? I wonder if that luxury that you’ve now had has bestowed you with the thoughts I’ve dreaded – that had you had time, you would never have wanted me in the same way. All the what-if’s keep unraveling – just the way I am.

‘It’s been a long year
since we last spoke.
How’s your halo
just between you and I?’

(Strays Don’t Sleep’s For Blue Skies)

Why does it feel like it’s been a lifetime since we last saw each other?

Nothing.

Remember when you drunk-dialed me once? I never told you that it doesn’t count for anything. Drunk-dialing is when you think it’s the most sensible thing in the world to call someone when you can’t even stand up, and it doesn’t hit you at all that you’d really regret it later. It’s when you don’t know what else to do and think that no one else understands; everything else will be okay once you hear that person on the other line. Drunk-dialing is when you feel this urgent need to speak to that someone even if you really have nothing to say. You can’t explain it and you need to press the buttons on the bloody keypad, even if your friends warn you that you will fucking hate yourself for it in the morning.

I imagine that if I called you now and I was completely drunk, I’d have nothing to say. Kind of like how I still can’t find the words, even in sobriety.

* * * * *

So I’m stuck in this repeated moment when I don’t know what to say to you. There really are no words that I can find to tell you how it is, how it’s gonna be. How do you forget about the repercussions? On one hand, I want time to rewind, for it never to have happened. But on the other, it’s not the first time, and you can’t promise me that it was the last, for always. You can’t tell me that you’ll never make me feel like this again.

As I slammed the car door, I wondered why it was so hard for you to understand. I wanted to hear the bottle shatter because I wanted something else to break, besides me. When I walked amidst the evening crowd, all I wanted to do was scream and disappear. Instead, I twisted the bottle and gripped it tightly. I seriously contemplated going back to my car and taking off just so that I could take the wheel and stop feeling as though everything is beyond my control. I sat on the steps in between two levels, unmoving, as I kept wondering why things haven’t changed.

Yet I feel completely incomplete. A big part of my day and night and waking hour is missing. And it’s you. I try to remember that in the grand scheme of things, this will be just about nothing. Perhaps we will reach this point in time when it will fade away. But I can’t forget. And I can’t let go. Forgiveness comes easy, but not forgetting. So I’m still here, sitting in the past, wondering when it’ll be my turn to move along. The hurt has grown dull and I have become numb. I don’t know what happens now, but I’m so afraid to start again only to have it come back to this part. Again.

I don’t want it to metamorphose into some kind of bitter, but this ought to be as ugly as it gets because I think I can’t bear any more.

* * * * *

I looked at the picture on my phone, and wondered if things were just as hard then as they are now.

Clues which tell you that I had a bad day:

1. I slammed the car door.

2. I came so. fucking. close. to smashing the bottle against the wall.

3. The stairwell between Level 4 and 5 – yes, I sat there. And ignored everyone’s stares (it’s public space, jeez).

4. I disregarded my two-a-day rule and had my third coffee of the day.

5. Hugs were very much welcome.

6. I wasn’t thinking when I ate. Neither was I hungry.

7. I still don’t wanna answer my phone.

8. Recurring thought: boys are (really) stupid. And inconsiderate. And thoughtless. And unkind. And hurtful.

9. I sang along shouted along, when Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova’s voices emanated throughout my car with ‘lies, lies, liesssssss’.

Vicious cycle.

I’ve never been able to describe how it makes me feel. There’s a certain crazy, senseless, old world beauty about it that still portrays elegance, despite the new school sluttishness that has emerged. And then of course, now they know, and they tell you with their noses in the air that it kills you, slowly, eventually, ticktocknonstop. In the beginning, it was about a certain naiveté, whispers of how it’ll make everything seem slower, better, more understandable. I grew up afterwards, remembering a friend’s words that none of it will make the troubles disappear. After the first few moments of desperation, the relief stays there to hug you for a little longer before the light goes out or you reluctantly extinguish it, and reality comes crashing back. Wash and repeat.

But the thing about it that I can’t let go is that it would be mine. Just for me. Screw everyone else. And so I daydream about being able to do it again without fear. I walk a little quicker when I watch others indulge because I think that if my pace slows, I’ll give in; I’ll cross over without looking back anymore. That’s another issue: I’m weak. Who knows how long I’d take to kick it off? That is, if I’m able to. But I guess I live too much in the future to surrender the present and just give it what it fucking wants. I keep praying that I’ll remember that I’ve gotten through this before, but of course, it’s a simple matter of classical conditioning – and I’m only human.

Stranger.

He smiled at me as he walked past.
I smiled back, thinking that he looked rather familiar.
Maybe we’ve seen each other in class or the cafe, I thought idly as I sent more documents off to the printer.

Then he came up to me.
‘What’s your name?’
I hesitated but I told him anyway.

‘Are you from Malaysia?’
‘Yes.’
Good guess, I thought.
‘You’re very pretty.’
At this point, I’m rather stunned.
‘Um… thanks.’
‘Apa khabar?’
‘Khabar baik.’

He grinned, and then sauntered back to cutting his papers to size.
I felt extremely self-conscious, like if I moved a certain way, perhaps I wouldn’t be pretty anymore.
I forced myself to concentrate on the screen but I couldn’t stop myself from hearing him speak to another Thai girl.
When I looked over, the scene looked unbearably cute.
He made her laugh.

As I exited the shop, he took leave as well.
‘So where are you off to?’
‘To the newsagency, then the library.’
‘Ah okay… So how do you like Australia?’
I silently thought, I’ve been here long enough now for me to think I’m half-Australian.
‘It’s nice.’
‘It’s pretty good, hey? I love Malaysian food. It’s so good.’
I smiled.
‘Yeah, it is.’
He smiled back.
I didn’t have anything left to say.
He said, ‘See ya around.’
And he wandered off.

I wonder how often he does this.

Can’t fight in the battle when you’re standing on the other side.

I want to shrug it off, I wanna pretend it never happened, and there should be a big fat red STOP button for me to press hard and incessantly like an addict in need of her fix till someone drags me away. But this all just shouts how much I do care. Usually, when something like this happens, I can’t wait for it to be over. I don’t care who makes the first move, as long as someone talks, the other listens, we switch, and it becomes okay again. I call, just to say that I want a fucking apology. I turn up and take a look at him, and it’ll all be over yesterday. Our voices raised, breaths quicker than usual, tempers flaring and then burrowing under pillows. Suddenly, it’s quiet again as everything slips back into place. The next week, it becomes a bit of a joke, or something someone’s forgotten.

But it’s different this time. I had bared my heart and told the truth and prayed that I would keep walking no matter what. And yet… you had no sensitivity whatsoever. For all those times you told me about how important I am to you, I suddenly became the storybook character that you tore apart within seconds without hesitation. Tell me, please: what am I to you? Did you forget that you love me this morning? Could you have hurt me any less?

Today, I feel like you don’t know me at all. That you could question my feelings sent me reeling. Did you have no inkling whatsoever as to how hard it was for me? How awkward it was? And I wanted so badly to tell you about it, to tell you that maybe… just maybe, I have made peace with myself, and I don’t have to keep fighting with me. Now I’ll be a bit better. Instead, I find myself suddenly wondering where my boyfriend has gone. You’ve told me things about me that I’ve never even wanted to admit to myself. What have you done to the man whom I thought knew me inside out?

It’s like that bad dream when you try not run away and with your voice shaking, you finally tell a boy that he means the world to you, but he laughs in your face and tells you that to him, you’re just one girl, a girl he can easily live without.

The questions come and for once, I’m silent. I have nothing left to give.

No longer a secret.

I put it out there last night. I quietly nodded and said ‘yes’. No way of taking it back now. But she didn’t have anything to say to that, because the girls at the back shouted at us for seemingly ignoring them. In a way, I was grateful that I was behind the wheel; I had the excuse of looking straight ahead. All the nervousness positively ate at me. God. What did they think of me now?

But then… I didn’t feel judged at all. Slowly, I revealed that only one other person had known and now, I had told a carload of people. And all that happened after is that… we shared stories. We laughed at funny bits. We gasped at what couldn’t possibly be true (oh, but it was). And it continued even out in the car porch where we wound down the windows and used the best code words.

It’s funny how you never know how much you truly worry about something until relief turns around to greet you. And you fall straight into its welcoming arms.

I’ve never been so grateful for having such great friends.

Everyone should be so lucky. =)

Awakening.

It was so cold; I could barely feel you on my skin anymore.
‘Please come back’, I whispered.
But my sweet angel didn’t.
As my head spun, and the shaking and shivering continued,
I sunk into the black and gray spirals of never-coming-back,
slowly losing all sensation,
my last memories leaving despite my begging them to stay.
One last goodbye to consciousness.
Suddenly,
I could feel his hand on mine,
and then the threads of warmth and heat and life flowed through my veins;
and ribbons tied me to the present, the future that I surrendered to you.
Oh, it was as though I had never lived before this…

Where’s Dreamland?!

All I can think of to describe the pain is it hurts like I ate a whole cow. :/
I have to interview my lecturer at 3 and I only have half my questions ready. The easy ones, of course.
And I have a craving for white fricken Toblerone.
WTFIDON’TEVENLIKEWHITECHOCOLATEFFS.
It’s 6:54 am.
FML, I just wanna sleep.

Thought you’d take me to the stars

… but we never reached the clouds.

I never thought that this was how we’d end up: me trying to hurt you, make you hate me and love me, or plainly just feel something about me. But I’ve given up now because you simply don’t care. In the beginning, you tried so hard to even get me to look at you; you couldn’t take that there was someone in this world who didn’t care about you, just like she did. So I fell for you, just as you had planned. It was then that you let go.

This apathy you carry with you in your heart is what you embrace to keep everyone else out, to prevent yourself from falling. It is what that I cannot bear. After all this time, I am finally learning that this is what I cannot become; I cannot be you. I cannot fall without being ready to catch someone else. I will not take without expecting to give. And I accept that love is love, for all its misgivings and pain and barbs come with strength and kindness and soul. You will try to prove yourself worthy as you take on more and shrug off the rest, and in the end, you will be cold and alone.

I’d rather have loved and lost than to have more notches on my bedpost.