The fear

There's been a bit of upheaval in my life, and I only just decided that I would start blogging again.  I don't know if anyone still reads here or even remembers it, but I thought it would be cathartic and besides, I'm starting to get back into taking photos regularly and this is as good as place as any to display them.

Six months ago, I went and met someone and lost my head.  Again.  

I didn't see it coming.  A year of painful, unsuccessful online dating (one guy emailed me about the female orgasm after the first date) was enough to make me swear off men forever.  And just as I was starting to appreciate the solitude, my whole life tilted violently on its axis.

Of my last relationship, the one that ended in a heartbreak I thought I would never recover from, I talked constantly.  After years of having my guard up, I was so determined to experience and live it fully that I waxed lyrical to anyone who would listen.

This time, I am frightened beyond words.  In six months, I don't think I've truly talked about any of this with more than a couple of friends.  I am dumbfounded by the thought of explaining things to my family in detail.  My standard answer whenever people ask me things is, "I can't answer that right now."  Because there are a lot of things that I don't dare to say but I will say this: against my will and better judgement, I'm in love.  And if you've ever been in love second, third, tenth time around, you know just how terrifying it is.  You understand what it's like to worry that it's going to sour or disappear any second, just like the fourth time, the fifth, the seventh.  You've felt the way your heart quickens in the late night darkness when doubt is your only bedfellow.  You know just what I mean.

The thought of having to get to know someone new and growing and learning together all over again can be anxiety-inducing.  This isn't my first go-round.  I know what happens at the end and how difficult things can be.

What can I say though?  It happened.  I'm in love, and he is wonderful.  He was single for a long time too, and things took some getting used to.  After all, we're both older, more wary and all too aware of how things could go.  But that also makes us more careful, more gentle, more willing to try.  In the last half year, we've managed to weather death, job issues, disappointment.  Every day, I'm working on being more practical too, teaching my head to balance out my heart.

Unlike the last time, when I naïvely trumpeted the idea that things would spin out into a dream future, I am now more circumspect, the caginess of a dog kicked one too many times.  But you know what they say: if it's worth having, it's worth fighting for.  And something tells me this is absolutely worth fighting for.

I know that he understands.  "I'm scared," he said suddenly to me one night.  He tucked his chin into my shoulder and I felt the kind of butterflies I had forgotten even existed.  I took his hand, large and warm in mine.

"It's okay.  I'm scared too.  We can be scared together."

East of Patagonia

This is a silly, childish story, and I'm not even really sure it's one I should tell, but I'm sitting alone at home and I need to unload before I hunker down for the night.  So here it is anyway.

Ten years ago, when I was overseas, I met many people who were also living away from home.  One of them was a French boy I'll call Pierre, and as my interest in the language was already blooming then, I hung around him a lot and we became fast friends.

We talked incessantly, shared stories and meals and went off exploring places together and because we had so much in common, we got along surprisingly well.  

And of course, all that's neither here nor there, but the truth is, even though we were seeing other people, we secretly fell in love; in love in the way that people who will never be together are.  We never said it, we didn't have to.  We never kissed, or even so much as held hands because back then, it was important to us that we honoured our relationships, and each other.  

There are simpler ways to love.  Once, for example, he found a way to buy me a ticket to a sold-out concert of an artist we both loved.  He presented it to me on my balcony and for moment I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.  We had to sit on opposite ends of the stadium at the gig, but he wore a flashing button on his chest so I could see him blinking at me across a sea of heads all night.  Another time, we visited a famous cemetery together and drew what we wanted our graves to be like in his notebook.

Things like that made our time together that much more special, because it was easy, limited and innocent and somewhere between all the dreams and secrets and laughter that we shared, Pierre stole a piece of my heart.  

French made it into all our conversations of course.  I learnt silly phrases and my first set of conjugations from him.  I remember lying on my stomach on the floor as he patiently explained, "Je suis, tu es, il est..." and wrote carefully in his curly, boyish hand.  "Fais de beaux rêves," we would type to each other in conversation at the end of every night.  And on my birthday, he bought me two sets of the same books in English and in French so that I could teach myself through translation.

When we finally had to say goodbye, I was heartbroken.  We casually air-kissed before he was ferried off to the airport and I laughed cheerfully and waved as the taxi pulled away and then hid myself in my room and cried.  Pierre called me from the airport and left a voicemail message saying that he had something to tell me.  "I..." he began, and then couldn't continue.  We both knew anyway. 

_______________________ 

Of course, nothing happened afterwards.  Our separate relationships took centrestage once more.  We continued to be close friends for a few years, and then not so close friends and now that he's living a completely different life, perhaps not really friends anymore.  I met him once, a couple of years ago in Paris, and he shyly pulled me aside into his bedroom and showed me some old letters we'd written each other.  He still had the drawings of the graves in his old notebook, but that was all.  

I was sad that we drifted apart, but not surprised.  After all, as we'd agreed, all we would expect was to enjoy our time together.  What more could we want?  

I never did use those books to teach myself; it was too hard.  But I thought of him, and of French, often and with fondness, and when I finally had the time, money and courage to go for classes, I found myself falling quite easily and breathlessly back into it as if my spirit had been waiting for me to return to the language all along.  

And then, one week ago in the move, I found the French version of Dangerous Liaisons that he'd bought for me.  I remembered, even before I opened the book, that he'd written a message within, probably friendly enough to be innocuous.  I remembered thinking, when I first saw it, that I would probably never learn enough to understand.

But last Saturday, ten years late, I found the page and those words came to me, easy as speaking.  You see, he took a tiny piece of my heart, but I suppose he gave me something in return as well.

Only, I don't know if I can tell him this anymore, and so I'm telling you.

Cactus Tree

"You know, I think if I were so inclined, I would easily be a junkie," I tell my friend, Kit, over dinner.

"Me too!"  His eyes widen in agreement and I know he understands.  We're both one kind of addict anyway.  Worriers, chewing obsessively over the same thought night and day.  Kit's learned to compartmentalise but I'm not as intelligent.  

I have to make do and since I can't be a user, I find other manias to build my life around.  Unfortunately, unlike drugs, they don't always come in steady or reliable supply.  Nothing gold can stay, I found myself thinking on my twenty-minute walk to work today, as the smell of newly-laid tar and drying cement steamed up around me, and I felt an indelible sadness.  

After my ex well and truly taught me how not to cling to people, I started to cling to things thinking that they couldn't possibly ever mean as much.  Except, it turns out, they do.  And things, too, change and end and maybe I'm just too worn out for one more set of goodbyes.   

In recent weeks, I'd been up late at night playing a game in which one tries to memorise all the countries in the world.  Then I moved on to memorising all their capitals.  Each round, after the timer runs out, I find myself reaching to restart it, to get one more hit of soothing routine.  During the day, I carry the names in my mouth and head to stave off withdrawal: Honiara, Belmopan, Tegucigalpa, Chisinau.  I repeat mnemonics and create mental imagery and tell my friends and cram my attention with lists and lists of places because one who feels so full couldn't possibly also feel hollow.  

I'll be done with it eventually.  But you know what they say.  Once an addict, always an addict.

And lying in bed in the dark, I recite the names of capitals over and over again, just as if they were prayers.

Conversation piece

My best friend Bec just sent me a TED video in which a woman talked about how she had managed to crack the code of online dating, find and marry exactly the kind of man she was looking for.  Amy Webb created an algorithm and point system to narrow down the men that she would go on dates or even consider having a relationship with and each time they fell just a few points foul of the 900 required, she said sayonara immediately.  

She's feisty and I really admire her discipline, but I while I fully intend to be as careful as she was, I'm just not built that way.

The truth is (and I wish it wasn't) that I'm too soft-hearted and I can't bring myself to be so regimented about it.

Of course, I'm getting better at this.  

When I first started online dating, I talked to everyone who wanted to talk to me with the idea that I shouldn't rule anything out; that maybe I should be as open-minded as I could possibly be.  "Babe!" Bec said one day to me after I'd told her I was considering someone patently unsuitable.  "Stop making exceptions!"  

Now, I am quick to cut things off at any lazy, casual pick-up lines, inappropriate conversation or any hint of a possible dealbreaker.  But I still find it tough.

Getting to know people that you meet at school or at work or through common interests is a delightful process.  Effortfully trying to get to know people who could be bots for all you know is altogether more painful.  It's tiring, so much so that I'm sometimes tempted to stop weeding the duds out with so much vigour and just give in to chatting with the people who want to chat with me.  

Even bigger than the inertia though, is the fact that despite everything I've been through, all the heartbreak and lying and cheating and pain, I still want to see the best in people.  Maybe it's naive and gullible, but I always wonder: what if the person on the other end is just like me?  Maybe they're shy to start with, not particularly eloquent but with the best intentions?

And so, despite what some people have warned against, I do my best to engage people, to give them a second chance because if I thought that I might really like someone, I would want them to give me a chance too.

I am very possibly wasting my time.  But if I accidentally said something stupid in a moment of folly or stuttered with shyness and failed to have a sense of humour when it mattered, it would break my heart to be written off.  Besides, as a former journalist, I've talked to hundreds and hundreds of random people on the streets and I firmly believe that most people are more interesting than they seem.  I suppose with that in mind, I'm willing to take a chance.

So I'm talking to a couple of guys consistently now.  I'm not necessarily sure about them, but unlike Amy Webb, I can't just put a sudden stop to it.  Eventually, natural attrition takes care of the people that aren't a good fit, but I have to admit that each time another contact crashes and burns, even as I tell myself it's just one person closer to someone that matches, I feel a little sad about it.

It makes me wonder how many such small endings one has to encounter before they find someone.  Or give up.

At one point, I was texting a guy I'll call George.  Initially, he seemed decent, smart, hardworking, fairly mature.  But a couple of days of conversation quickly revealed that things weren't going to get off the ground.  He had a couple of stock phrases that he would reuse in every conversation, stopping it dead in its tracks.  

One of his favourite lines was "Someone is working very hard".  

"What are you doing?" he would ask me, and when I told him I had just gotten home from work, he would invariably respond, "Someone is working very hard."

When I told him that I was making a powerpoint presentation on governance one weekend, hoping it would slowly ignite some kind of a conversation, he simply said (you guessed it), "Someone is working very hard."

In an attempt to be interesting, I sent George a picture of a Batman stamp I had carved out of rubber one day (my colleague Wan Ping gave us a wonderful lesson on stamp carving!) and all he had for me was, "Batman is interesting."  I suppose it is.

Contact between us didn't last for very long, but while it did, during that small window when I thought that maybe this was someone I would enjoy getting to know, I told Amanda about it.  

BFF that she is, she listened excitedly, asked lots of questions and then said, "Oh, George!  Come on, George!  I'm rooting for you!!"

And it was at that moment that I realised that no matter how much some connections missed the mark, I believed that most of them were just regular people like me, drifting around on the great Interwebs, looking for someone they cared for.  

And the truth is that I am sad when things don't work out because amid all the craziness, I am rooting for them too.

Papercuts

Sometimes I think that rather than growing, people are diminished.  That we are all chiselled, or whittled down, by the experiences of life and that what is left right at the end - the shapes, the dark hollows - is what makes the man.

We are only who we are in the moment, until another piece is cut away.

This evening, my mother pulled down a stack of my old notebooks and photos and made me pore through them and decide what to throw away.  They were cluttering shelves we needed for my brothers, she said.

There were pictures of me, a nineteen year old bridesmaid at my best friend's wedding, seventeen and awkwardly smiling next to a crush at a class barbecue, twenty four and pretending to be worldly far away from home.  

There were old planners in which I had made tiny, confessional notes in the margins of the day:

"In which the cab driver looked in the rearview mirror, told D and I 

that we made a nice couple, and I couldn't answer for laughing.  

Later though, at work, he sent me a message that said, "I think he's right".  

There were old letters pieced together from quotes from Beatles songs and catchphrases that I used to throw around with friends that I don't see anymore. 

And there were photos such as this one, of a girl who knew what it was to be loved and held and to be loving, and holding. 

Whenever I'm faced with memories like this, I experience a strange mixed feeling.  One part of me wants to drink them in, absorb them, scatter them on the floor like shards of glass and lie in them so they become imprinted forever; hundreds of tiny cuts on my skin.  Desperate, I want to gather them in armfuls and kneel and weep for everything gone by.

Another part of me can't get away from them fast enough.

At first I wonder if I should save the photos, every last one of them, then wonder what I'm saving them for, if anyone will ever care as much as I did.  I start throwing them out indiscriminately; who cares what I looked like in my prom dress?  Who cares who my best friends were if they're now just shavings on a woodshop floor?

In every photo I see a woman in a new phase of life - a friend, a girlfriend, a first time lover, a newly-minted wanderer - and I see the face of someone who thinks she's finally found her place.  But I put the pictures down and it's back to me, just me, whose priorities and centres of gravity have changed yet again.

The thing about life is that we move through so many experiences so quickly that we have to try and keep something from each one.  And so we think we know who we are and each time, we are wrong the moment we lose something else.

I don't want to juggle rusty razor blades.

What does it matter, I think, if the memories go forgotten?  I don't need reminders of what's been cut away, of who I am not anymore. 

I think that's why I was a serial monogamist, once upon a time.  Each time you move on to someone new, it's easy to forget about what has been left behind.  Now though, there is no dulling the sensation of each cut.  At least I'm finally feeling honest. 

I threw away a great deal tonight.  But I kept that photo. 

Maybe something in me still believes - looking at that picture of a girl who was once loved with a joyful, almost obsessive abandon before it all went sour - that not everything has been lost in vain.

Grub and gossip

If you told me the picture above had been taken in some far-flung part of the British countryside, I wouldn't have any trouble believing you.  The truth is that the stream wends through the less exotic but no less beautiful Bishan Park.  

I hadn't properly been to Bishan Park for ages (exhausted stumbles around in the darkness after the newspaper went offstone don't count) and when I headed there for brunch before Pink Dot last week, I was really impressed by the landscaping.  

There are now bridges arcing through misty green vegetation and an abundance of fish, and I stood over the brook for quite a while, savouring the moment.  Of course, I there to have brunch with friends including my very dear buddy, Kim.

When Kim and I used to work in the same place, we often had great laughs together, sneaking off to pursue stories or have illicit lunches together.  I'll never forget the time our friend, Jamie, and I attempted to work on an undercover story while Kim drove the getaway car and we ended up screeching out of the neighbourhood laughing in nervous hysterics.

I don't think I've ever said though, that Kim was a big reason why I started this blog.  Right after the break up, I was meeting a lot of good friends and trying my best to put up a strong front.  I couldn't help vacillating between tears of despair and anger and the night Kim and I went to Wild Honey for coffee, I was a massive mess. 

I remember plastering on a smile and telling her that I was reading all these books and they were doing me a lot of good, and she calmly leaned across the table, put her hand on my arm and said, "Your books will tell you a lot of things, but your books don't know you the way your friends do.  And I just want to say, as a friend, that you are a really special person."

That simple gesture of kindness undid me - I still tear up thinking about it today - and we ended up talking for a long time about relationships and break ups and how it isn't your fault if your partner ends up changing their mind because you're not in the same place in life.  "You're going to be just fine," she had said, "after all, what are you going to do?  Curl up and die?  That's not an option."

That night was an illuminating one for me.  I walked into my house feeling peace for the first time in weeks and I sat down and wrote about it, and wrote, and wrote.

The feeling has come and gone since, but every time I feel on the brink of a breakdown, I close my eyes and go back to that moment, to the sound of the ticking engine as we sat in her cooling car in my estate, and I feel calm again.

This time round, the group of us hunkered down over coffee at Grub and talked about life and love and fear and learning and growing and changing, and friends you trust and people you don't.  And just by talking about it, we somehow set life right again.

The gift of peace is rare and restorative and I don't think I could ever thank Kim enough for it.  I do know that even though we don't meet very often, I think of her a lot and even as she goes through a new phase in life now, I send nothing but peace and love in her direction.

Plus, who doesn't love a girl with a killer sense of fashion?

All off

It sounds stupid but one of the things I was sore about in the breakup was that I couldn't get my hair cut.  

More specifically, I couldn't get that drastic, post-breakup, defiantly fabulous haircut that everyone seems to get shortly after they're dumped.

Unfortunately, I had cut my hair right before I saw my then-boyfriend for the last time and even though I was in the throes of misery afterwards, short of shaving my head (not work approved), there was nowhere to go.

So I stayed with the hair through the straggly growing out stage and found other ways to reinvent myself (knitting, anyone?).  

Lately however, since I was starting to feel more and more like my old self (and also a new version of myself that I hadn't met before), I thought it was time.  And I really wanted it all off.  I thought about all the people I knew who rocked very short hair (Pri, various girls from pole class) and I was absolutely certain I was going to make it work no matter what.

Friends told me to think about it carefully, just in case I regretted it, but I'm not a girl who is married to her locks.  It's just friggin' hair and it grows back, last I checked.  I hack it off every two years for fun and this was going to be no different, except that now, I'm even less worried about what anyone will think and more sure of what I want.

So I made an appointment with my regular guy and I went down this morning.  

It gets wavy and flippy and frizzy and messy and when I run my fingers through it I look like Robert Smith

But I have never felt more attractive in my life.

And I regret nothing.

A life alone

When I first started this blog, I thought it would be a lot of venting and crying and moaning about singlehood.  Instead, while I talk about it now and then, there are also other things I want to share like stories or photos with friends or of places I've been, and I think it's because in some ways, I have been used to the idea of being "single" for a long time already.

It's been long enough after the breakup now that I have mixed feelings.  Sometimes I miss what I thought we had and what I thought it was going to be.  Other times though, I really appreciate my alone time.  More than anything, I've been trying to imagine how all this would translate to living alone in the long term, a thought that used to scare me.  

When I first got dumped, some kindly friends told me that I had to get used to the idea of being by myself, that I had to be comfortable with the person that I was in order to move on.  "Eating alone isn't so bad," one said sympathetically.  The thing is though, they didn't get my despair.  I've long been cool with all those things. 

If you enjoy writing at all, a part of you is naturally introverted.  And for the last two years, being in long distance relationships meant that I spend a great deal of time alone anyway.  When I was dating people who lived continents away, we would sometimes only have a few minutes of contact a day and it never bothered me as long as I felt our hearts were true.  

I have never come home in the quiet of the night and felt empty or lacking because of my solitude.  After all, I'm the girl who loves eating alone in restaurants, who leaves for work an hour early to spend time people watching in a cafe.  I've always gone to movies or concerts alone, travelled solo and I frequently go wandering by myself. 

The thing is, I've always enjoyed doing these things.  I like being in my head and I've never felt the need for a partner or for extra attention.  I've never been one of those people who feels awkward with or by myself.  

The pinch I was feeling, I realised, stemmed from a greater, much further away fear.  

I've always worried about dying unloved.   

My real desire for a special someone lies in the hope that someone will love me enough to want to undertake special adventures with me so that at the end of the day, when it is time to lay down my things, I can say that in soul, in spirit, I had a partner-in-crime.  

Maybe it is vanity.  Maybe it is ego.  Maybe I want this because I don't believe in the afterlife and so I want to grab all that I can in this one. 

Whatever it is, as much as I enjoy doing things by myself and want to continue doing so, I also want to be with someone so that we can be each other's rock when all other life has faded, when my mother is long gone, when my brothers have grown up and have their own priorities.  

At least, that's what I thought until most recently.  Now that some time has passed and I've had a chance to get some perspective, I've been asking myself if an entire life alone would really be so galling.  

Look at the bigger picture: if one enjoys spending days on one's own, then months, why not years?  Ultimately, what is the worst that could happen?  

I can still achieve all my dreams of owning my own house, travelling and learning lots of things.  No matter what I do, my parents and my family will still love me.  And I know I won't have a problem with time, or peace or quiet. 

Even my one big fear, that I will lie dead in an apartment for weeks, slowly being devoured by my dogs (or cats) has become almost comical with the realisation that while it is horrible, I won't be around to be horrified in hindsight.  

Suddenly, things don't look so bad.  I'm starting to think that I can imagine a life of solitude, not with defeat but with great optimism.  I'm even looking at the idea of moving away for a bit because of the tranquility that it promises.  

Long story short, I'm finally reaching that point that all broken-hearted people yearn to reach one day.  If I meet someone suitable, great.  Sound the trumpets!  I'm sure it'll be every bit as fulfilling as I imagine it to be.

But if I don't, cool.  I think I can totes handle it.  I'll be spending most of my time as I do now anyway, and that's absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.  

In the meantime, I'll just keep all my pets well fed.

Still missing

Source: http://www.dearmichaela.com/2012/02/age-progression-2012.html

We all have our soft spots.  

My friend Ann-Marie feels very strongly about children who have gone missing, who are unable to find their way home.  She follows many of their stories closely, reads about updates and keeps her eyes peeled.

Given that yesterday was Mother's Day, she requested that I share a story that she really cares about on this blog in the hope that the right someone, somewhere might see this.

 I think she overestimates the readership, but every little helps.  And if I were a lost child, even a child forty years later, all I would think about day in, and day out was finding my family.

Michaela Joy Garecht was kidnapped in 1988, when I was just a few years old.  Her mother, Sharon, has never stopped looking for her.  I'm not a mother, and I cannot imagine what it must be to lose a child.  But I know what it is to feel alone.  And maybe somewhere out there, Michaela knows it too.  

If you have some time to spare, you can read the whole story here or on the Facebook page here.  Maybe you are the right someone, somewhere.  And if you aren't, maybe you know someone who is. 

Ma

A year ago today, I was having an argument with my mother in the car.  We had been straggling to the hospital in shifts and we were tired.  It was hot.  I was wearing something unbearably ratty and I hadn't had time to shower.

My father had made me go because he couldn't and after the three years of fighting, my grandfather's death six months before and the last week in SGH, it was feeling interminable for all of us.  I had barely known her before she came to live with us, and by then, she was deeply ill.

Just the day before when I had seen my grandmother, she was lucid for about five minutes.  Between the rattling breaths she was drawing over the feeding tube, she looked at me.  Her eyes wavered over my face.

"Ma," I said gently.  "Zhao An!"  It was how I greeted her every morning at home.  When she could still speak, she would say, "Zhao An!" cheerfully in reply.

At first I didn't think she had heard me.  Her eyes glazed over.  Then with an effort, she groaned around the tube.  An approximation of the tones and syllables.  "Ao Ahh."  I started to cry.  She slipped out of focus again.

In a break in our argument, my mother sighed over the steering wheel and the phone rang.  "Come quickly, Shu," my aunty said, tinny from the hospital payphone.  "She's going."

When we got there, she was dead.  My mother stood, crying silently by her bed, stroking her chest again and again and saying, "Mama."  We brushed her hair away from her yellow face.  Tied her jaw shut with a bandage.  Talked about her in hushed voices.  The other patients kept staring at the curtain round her bed.

We chose the casket.  Dressed her in black and gold brocade.  Planned the flowers.  Laughed and cried through strange Chinese descriptions of incomprehensible coffin-lifting rites.  

Just before her funeral service began, it occurred to me that Amazing Grace wasn't in the hymnbooks.  "Aren't we singing it?" I reminded my mother.  I was shocked no one had thought to ask the pastor about her favourite song.  We sang it in the end.  I couldn't make a sound.  I crumpled, hunched over the entire funeral, dripping silent tears while people gave thanks and prayed around me.  Until then, I didn't know how much I had grown to love her.

On the way to the crematorium, they put her in their fanciest car.  The speakers blasted Amazing Grace all along the highway and I thought she would have been so proud.

Four days of non-stop crying passed.  I went back to work.  We all spoke about how much of a mercy it was that she had left peacefully.  I started to think of her and my grandfather together again, in some place filled with light, beyond pain.

The thought comforts me a lot now.  That they are happy somewhere, in the way that they couldn't be in the last five years of their lives.  Walking in slow, bow-legged steps along back streets.  Reading.  Eating soft-boiled eggs.  It's a happy knowledge and I can forget that she suffered and slowly lost her mind.

Every now and then though, the one memory that catches me off-guard and undoes me is of the last time my grandmother wished me good morning.

Gratitude list: Day by day

If you're out there and you're sad, and wondering why this is taking longer than you thought it would, you're not an anomaly.

I'm working on it.  I really am.  But things are sometimes harder than ever.  I have moments where I feel like I'm almost out of the valley, I can forget all the days we'd spent together, how close we used to be, how much I trusted him.  There are times when I think, yes, the only person you can lean on is yourself, and I'm almost used to it.  Almost.

It all comes crashing down in the stupidest moments; a text from a mutual friend asking if I can make my way back to London.  The launch of a friend's book we spent hours reading together.  An email from a school colleague to say he'll be in town in two weeks.  

And I think, I know I shouldn't think it, but I think: why keep reminding me of the one that got away?  Then I'm furious, furious for even considering bestowing that title on someone who kicked me around when I was at my most vulnerable, who once held me and whispered, "I promise I will take care of you.  Will you take care of me?" and asked me if I felt safe so that in that short moment, I did.

All these people from our shared past who can't see me, who only guess my feelings from texts and emails riddled with cheerful exclamation marks think I'm okay.  Selfishly, I want to shout at them, "I'm not!  Why can't you possibly guess that and leave me alone?" and curl up and cry and cry until it just doesn't hurt anymore.

So I stop. 

I take a deep breath. 

I pull myself back, because it's not their fault.  It's not their fault that I sometimes want to appear stoic and it's not their fault that I still want their friendship even if it means being reminded of the connection I once had with him.  

I think of the people I have here.  I think of how many times they've had my back and I feel ashamed of myself. 

And I remind myself that we all have our trials and tribulations and we are, many of us, just pushing through, just living day by day.  I look at the clock, and today's almost over.  Tomorrow it all starts again, but that will be over too.  And so on, and so on, putting one foot in front of the other, I'm helped out by small daily moments of cheer that remind me that by and by, I'll walk my way back home.

1)  Cheese on toast 

 

I'm partial to smoked cheese of any kind and the simple act of melting it on toast and enjoying it with a hot cup of tea can make my morning.  Even better, since I told my father about the smoked cheese preference, he started keeping the larder regularly stocked with it.

2) The excellent office pantry

There's even a wishlist nearby that we can fill up with suggestions.  My poison?  Wasabi prawn crackers.  Sweetest pantry ever.

3)  And what really makes me smile: preparing some love to send to friends.

Stupid cupid

"I don't believe you will always feel that way," she said to me as the three of us sipped on our swanky drinks in a swanky speakeasy.  

"When someone feels about love like you do, that they want someone to meet them halfway, they don't just stop feeling like that.  I think right now you're probably just resting, recharging your batteries.  But you'll come back."

I think she's right.  I also think that I'm really starting to recognise just how important the resting period is, the time by myself, the time to think and heal and grow.  

Maybe one day I'll feel like I'm ready to let my guard down again, to let myself think seriously about the prospect of "together".  Right now, I have friends who take me for meals and drinks, and family and the barristas at Starbucks who say, "Happy Valentine's Day!" and hand me a free Belgian waffle that they've been saving for when I come in at breakfast and fill my mug with a golf-ball sized dollop of whipped cream.

Whaddya know?  It's enough.

Report card

It's been a pretty productive day.  I've half packed for a work trip, cleaned and polished two pairs of shoes and of course, this whole morning, I was occupied with the last day of the student conference I'm chaperoning for.  

I'm was just sitting around decompressing, and it hit me that it's been several months since the break up now.  I still think about it a lot (obviously) but things have changed a little bit.  For one, I don't even remember now actual date, which is probably a good thing because that means I can't and don't keep a running count.  And though I spend a lot of time feeling sad and angry, some people (ex included) tell me that I'm handling it great.  And even more surprisingly, with grace.

The truth though:

Number of days I was fully non-functioning:  Two, but only right after.

Number of days I was sort of non-functioning:  About ten.  I faked my way through.

Number of days I bunked off work: None.

Number of days I broke down at work: One.

Number of times I've lashed out at him: About three.  

Number of times I've done other related undignified things: Two.

Number of times I've broken down in front of friends: Countless but probably not in the last two months.

Number of people I've told the deepest, darkest secret about this whole ordeal: Three, and they've kept it so far.

Number of times I've broken down alone:  Countless.  And on-going.

But the amount of time I think about it on average each day: 20% - 30%

I guess that even though I'm really not in the best place ever, I've managed to fake being close enough.  I spent a lot of nights crying (and worse) and at the time, if you had told me that this veneer of dignity was the best thing I could've done for myself, I would've spat in your face.  The pain was bone deep and I wanted to throw things.

But now, a couple of steps removed, I can see just how much pretending grace means.  I can hold my head up high (even if I don't feel like it).  I slipped up a couple of times, but beyond that, I decided I wouldn't allow myself anything more.

I can say that I didn't Facebook stalk or badger my ex about his whereabouts or his love life.  If I ever felt insecure about any of those things, I fought it out with myself.  My friends love me enough to grant me the tears that I needed when I needed them, but I can say that I stood on my own at times as well.  

And even though I'm all raw and cut up and I really don't feel very dignified, I can actually say that I did most things with class.  

For someone who is as emotional as I am, that was a surprising lesson to learn.  And it was also startling to find that the more gracefully I behaved, the more graceful I wanted to go on being.  No matter how angry I got, or how much I wanted to send nasty texts, I sat tightly on my hands. 

I suppose that people are right about living honourably.  I have a long way to go and there will be many chances to fall along the way.  But I guess to all visible intents and purposes, I've been doing okay after all.

Little joys

It took me a while to realise it, but I'm still holding on to a lot of anger about time gone by.  Up until last night, I was raw, seething.  

Sadness is bad.  Denial is painful.  But sometimes, I feel like anger is the worst possible feeling for the human heart.  Anger has all the undercurrents of betrayal, fear, humiliation and mistrust that plain sadness lacks.  And unlike pure grief, it eats, from the inside out.  

This morning, I woke up.  It had rained all night.  A torrential thunderstorm to a quieter prickle.  The world was quiet.  The delicate beige of a washed out eggshell.  The sun was taking a slow shine.  I tested my weight on my emotions.  They held, and I felt all right.

Just like that, the new year felt like a good place to start letting go. 

My father sent out a Tennyson poem to friends and family this December and one line kept crashing around in my head: "The year is going, let him go;/ Ring out the false, ring in the true".  Let him go, indeed.  

Today at coffee, my friend Dawn and I discussed failed relationships.  "You have to remember," she said, "that things didn't happen because of you.  They happened because the other person is who he is, right down to the core, and nothing is going to change that.  It's not your fault."

We spend a lot of time hurting ourselves with playbacks, with hurt and indignation, with beating ourselves up over things we cannot change.  Why not just stop?  Slowly, even though it will be difficult, it's time to gently unloose the claws of all the rage, even, especially the anger I have against myself.  I can't change anything about the situation, but I can try, little by little, to work on how I feel.  

I don't doubt that there'll be good days and bad days.  Scratch that.  Downright horrible days of tears and struggle and loathing.  But I can do the work.  And being thankful for little joys - like the fact that the day involved skyping with one of my best friends, Becky -  is not a bad start.

A couple nights ago, I went over to my friend Ben's place.  This is the cat he shares with a Amanda - a blind-in-one-eye Persian, Crumbs.

Crumbs is docile and friendly, but I really took to Rusty, a little orange rascal who reminded me of Chip because of his curiosity and mischief.

Amanda's carefully placed decor never stood a chance.

In the end, height won out.

New Yankee Candle from my friend Sook.  It smells just like a good vanilla sugar cookie!

Last night, I cut myself pretty badly.  You might not believe it, but as I was bending down to pick something up, I shuffled my feet and kicked my hand with my own foot.  The side of my thumb got sliced open by my toenail, a move both gross and bizarre.

Remember when Burnol used to look like mustard paste and stain everyone's scabs a noxious yellow?  At least it still smells the same.

My coffee outfit, except I didn't really wear the cardigan.  I brought it with me but we sat outdoors.  Sometimes I just like to pretend Singapore is colder than it is for just a split second.

First latte of the year and my gorgeous friend, Dawn.  Every time I take Dawn's picture, I'm like, "Dawn.  You are so hot," and she gets annoyed and shushes me.  Well.  She can't do anything about this.

Me with my favourite delicate silver necklace.

And my greatest joy of all:

Brand new year, same old Chip.

Rag week

One thing about getting dumped is that it really does a number on your self-esteem, particularly if there is no ostensible reason for the break up.  

I've never had the best esteem to start with, but I'm pretty good at faking it.  After all, you have to be thick-skinned to have once started a blog about what you wear every day and even more thick skinned to have told people about it.  I don't actually like being in front of the camera a whole lot, but my love of clothes and my interest in dressing better overcame that.  A hugely healthy sense of humour helps.

After the breakup though, I sometimes struggle to feel good about myself or see the humour in things.  I won't lie, I strut through life a lot and people don't realise how affected I am, but large chunks of my day are devoted to an internal monologue along the lines of "What the fuck is wrong with me?".  I'm trying to accept this as part of the healing process and just get on with life.  

It sounds completely frivolous but feeling good in your clothes can be a real boost to your self esteem.  It's not even about fancy clothes or new rags.  It's the difference between lying in bed and crying (which let's face it, I've done my fair share of) and putting on some fabulous armour and blazing out the door and through the day.  

In the spirit of blazing through the week, I took pictures of everything I wore this week to make sure that it was at least semi-presentable and I could go to work with my head held high.  And what d'ya know, I felt better almost instantly.

Last Sunday, I promised my students I would wear my Iron Maiden shirt (I'm quite a big fan) and attempted to make it more formal with a lace blazer, my H and M chinos and Timberland loafers.  Feeling guilty about looking so casual, I slunk around a bit, but then one of the senior teachers stopped me in the corridor and said, "Your outfit is so cute", and I calmed down.

I went Diptic crazy on Christmas Eve - I'd privately agreed with my friends that we'd dress festively for work, so I broke out my pink/red cropped pants from Uniqlo.  The earrings were a present from Becky and have little paintings of birds in them.  So cute!  Balto the sock monkey came with me to class for show and tell.

An overcast Christmas day with wellies, a hooded dress and a gingerbread man my mother got me for my birthday.  (That's me going nuts over the Christmas fern if you can't tell.)

Wednesday was a long day and I was still half asleep in the morning so I just grabbed the zebra shirt off the top of the pile and spent the rest of the day lying low.  The students liked it though.  Those are the same H and M chinos I wore on Sunday, yes.  I have a couple of pairs in different colours and rotate them a lot.  They're functional, super comfortable for bending and tiptoeing and relatively work-worthy.  Plus they cost less than $30.

On Thursday, the last official day of my work week, I went with a maxi dress, see-through sweater and the Zoroastrian farvahar David got me when he was travelling.  I'm not a religious person but I don't mind wearing religious symbols when they come from people with a lot of love and good wishes for protection.  After all, love is the basis of all great religions and something all humans subscribe to.

I do a lot of this cosy sweater over other less cosy stuff thing because the office can be freezing.

And yesterday, I wore this when we went out to watch Les Mis (which I think was hit and miss).  I'm very much a jeans and t-shirt girl and if I could wear them 90 per cent of the time, I would.  I get a lot of flak from people (particularly those in my parents' generation) for wearing these ripped knees and they do look a bit silly but they are so comfortable that they are my go-to jeans.  The wash has long since faded from blue to almost white, the little tears have become huge holes and the fabric is soft and breathes and makes it easy for me to bend and kneel.

I attempted to dress them up a bit with tomato red heels and my beloved LV bag.

Now, we're back at Saturday and I'm about to commence doing some work at the kitchen table in some very unglamorous sweats and a loose cotton tee.  You know.  Because I can.

A year from now

Yesterday, I had lunch with my friend Mel.  

I have several very good friends whom I would move mountains for, and whom I know would move mountains for me.  But over the years, there have been two that I can truly call best friends and who always have my back: Becky and Mel.

While Becky is a rational, safe, stabilising force for me, Mel is the friend who has managed to inject humour into every situation, no matter how bleak (and I'm sure she won't mind me juxtaposing her with some scallops).  Even when she's going through a tough time, as she is now, she finds some small happiness, sometimes with my help.  We've both been through many ups and downs this year, but each time we meet, we do everything we can to get a good laugh.  When my grandmother died in April and I cried my face off, she came to the wake and we hunkered down at a table, giggling silently over cake.  

Yesterday, we talked about lots of serious things but ended up horsing around, too.  She's going through some tough times and I admire how well she's holding it together.  We discussed what it meant to find ourselves after having been through a storm and how things can change at any time.  We talked about staying positive and what it meant for the future; how it was important that we stood up for ourselves.

She posed for pictures (thank goodness she isn't camera shy) and we went shopping.  Well, she shopped, I watched.  When she asked whether I wanted to buy anything, I pointed to the new Canon and said that I'd just spent a lot of money at once and was planning to hold off for awhile.

She considered this for a minute, then cackled with typical Mel mischievousness and said, "Yes, but who's going to the UK anymore?  Who cares?"  (My ex is from the UK and I had been planning an expensive trip up this November.  It turned into Krabi instead.)  We laughed a lot about that, and I felt better. 

Afterwards I came home and started on some work.  On a break, I stumbled across a blog and read this amazing post.  I'm not religious so I don't necessarily subscribe to other things she says, but when I read this story, realisation suddenly hit.

The truth is that I'm there myself.  I try very hard, every day, to get through work, to put my best in, to be a functioning member of my family but I'm so tired.  On the outside, I seem like I'm handling things well, but on the inside, I'm a crumbling mess.  And in all honesty, I just feel like there's a big dead space in the centre of my chest because I don't really care about anything anymore.  

The books and the people tell you that "one day you'll feel normal again" and "it'll creep up on you and suddenly realise you're okay".  Some friends say things like "one day you'll love again".  But I'm not even sure what that means.  I can understand this intellectually, but I can't feel it.  I can't even see myself being with someone else in a meaningful way.  I just keep going through the motions and hoping that no one will notice.  

For once, I just don't care.

In all my navel-gazing, I've figured out that it's not just because of one breakup but because of all the other relationships lined up before it and all the deeply co-dependent people I have ever known in my life.  I'm so tired.  I'm so tired of dating people who tell me they're depressed because they don't know where their lives are going or they have no clue where they see themselves in five years but aren't willing to at least work towards some kind of understanding.  I'm tired of having to be vulnerable with and put trust in these people anyway.

I'm so tired of being in a relationship where my other half whined to me that they didn't know how to study and so the nights before my exams were spent memorising facts for them instead.  I'm so tired of people telling me that they felt like I filled a hole if only for a while, as if I was dispensable.  And I'm so tired of vampires who only get in touch when they need help or a placeholder.   

I think there is nothing nicer than being in a partnership (even if it's with friends or family) and having someone to hold your hand and walk the difficult bits with you.  Maybe even carry you at some points.  And I am more than happy to return the favour.  It's a special kind of something to weather a storm with someone and it creates bonds that are not easily broken.   

But I've realised now that that's entirely different than actually walking the road for somebody.  It's not the same as having to wake up at six in the morning because someone is throwing a temper tantrum a thousand miles away, and needing to suggest solutions to a problem that's already occurred three times prior.  

I'm so tired of being with people that don't meet me halfway.

When you get desperate, you will try anything.  Enough is enough.  And I'm starting to get to that point where I feel like it's just better to be on my own and work on whatever I please and solve my own damn problems at last.  I spent so long fixing unhealthy relationships that I have a whole slew of baggage about not getting any help in return.  

It sounds whiny to say and maybe childish to have come to it so late, but I really do need to be my own person, and a whole person at that.  Even if I start off feeling broken and emotionally detached inside. 

Later, on the same blog, Chantel recounted how she had given herself a year to do whatever she wanted, just to feel like herself again.  I've been attempting this in bits and pieces with some success, so I thought I might as well see if I felt any better in a year too. 

There is no ambition for anything big. Just to develop personal peace and cultivate relationships with strong, problem-solving people who love me and are happy for me to be strong and problem-solving too.  I want to do all the quietly nerdy things I love without having to answer to anyone or worry about being a rock.  

And I've told myself that if at the end of this journey, a romantic relationship has no place in my life, then so be it.  Mel's right.  Who cares? 

Starting today, I am learning to let go of the hopes I had with all the co-dependent people and rebuild hope for myself, partner or no.  

Three hundred and sixty five days is a long time.  I hope I can make it work.

Over if you want it

I can't be the only one who marks the advent of the holiday season by Starbucks' range of Christmas merchandise.  It's the one place where I feel the spirit, hackneyed and commercial as it might be, with its candy cane handled mugs and softly melting Toffeenut Lattes, a shiny whipped cream ski slope into fragrant foam.  

I don't do holidays very well and apparently right after a break up, they're even worse.  In the first place, my family doesn't celebrate the end of the year.  While others hold gatherings and enjoy ham and turkey and warmly lit trees and good cheer, we chill on the couch and my father, a staunch atheist, grumps persistently at the various functions.  When I was much younger and belonged to a cheesy female acapella group, we were invited to sing at midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.  I thought how lovely it would be to be surrounded by song and laughing people for once.  I wasn't allowed to go.

In 2010, on Christmas, I met with some new friends from around the world on a snowy, desolate English campus.  There was no roast but we made our own magic with alcohol and instant Chinese food and a mini tree dangling with wooden baubles.  One of the boys drank a noxious mixture of rum, hot water and pepper to stave off a cold and the kitchen made my nose prickle.  We fought, fiercely happy, in the thin layer of snow on the lawn outside and came in panting, long past midnight, drunk on being young.

Last year, when the ex and I were still together, we lay in bed and Skyped and laughed.  He texted me a picture of his parents smiling and hugging on the couch.  He showed me all his stocking stuffers and the Kindle that I had convinced him that he should get.  It became a running joke between us, that the guy who had shunned the thought of electronic reading out of principle had become an even bigger Kindle advocate than I was.  He joked that he was so in love with me, I could convince him to do anything.  In January, I was going back to graduate with him in England and everything in life was looking up.

This time, my parents won't be at home for half of December.  One brother will be finishing school overseas and the other will be leaving for four long years of University halfway round the world.  The house will be empty and too quiet and I will be imagining people thousands of miles away, celebrating the season with everything they have ever dreamed of and everyone they've ever loved.

And I will work through the whole of December as I always do, to try and rack up leave for Chinese New Year or another festival that is more meaningful to me.

But I don't say all this to earn pity points or because I want to wallow.

Rather, if there's one thing I've come to learn from the grief process, it's that the fear of things is almost always worse than the things themselves.  I can't be any sadder than I am when I'm grieving.  Not as its happening.  After all, what is worse than already reliving the moment again and again?  And even though these weeks will be difficult and occasionally lonely, dealing is invariably better than dreading.

Sure, it'll be tough, but I'll have Starbucks, and silence and moments for reflection and writing.  I'll have friends and thunderstorms and fleece ponchos and scented candles in every flavour.  And I'll get the rest that you so badly need when you're trying to make peace with yourself.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if someone out there is reading this, if you're going through the same thing, hang in there.  We're all doing it, alone together.  It's not a bad thing to just sit with the sadness and let it work itself out.  And no matter how bad the idea of the holiday seems, thinking through, writing about and ruminating on things can end up being unexpectedly healing. 

Facing your hurt head on can be pretty tough.  Often, it's instinct to push it away or sweep it under the carpet just to keep the pain at bay, even if it just balloons there.  But now, instead of expending all my energy trying to fend off the thoughts, this Christmas, I'm just going to go there.