It's easy

When I saw a poster advertising the Bootleg Beatles coming to Singapore, the first person I thought of was David.  He's the biggest Beatles fan I know in Singapore, so I asked him if he'd like to go as well.  My friends Wei Jing and Leong also wanted to go, so we bought tickets for relatively good seats.

I saw Paul McCartney live about seven years ago.  It was one of the most special concert experiences  I've ever had (I may or may not have violently kissed the kind friend who bought me the ticket afterwards), but Paul is not my favourite Beatle and he couldn't sing certain songs.

On the other hand, I'm not big on Beatles tribute bands.  I've never seen one in my life.  But for some reason, the little "and orchestra" tagline got me. I kept picturing the sweeping violins of Eleanor Rigby and the wild trumpet solos in Penny Lane.  And I thought: if there is going to be one good way to listen to the Fab Four for an evening, surely this must be it.

For a change, I wore a frilly dress, heels and a pendant my mother made for me.  The heels (New Look) are about three inches high but surprisingly comfortable - I danced at least half the night!

Apart from some slight traffic and timing snafus, the concert was WONDERFUL.  First of all:

I know, right?  That's not the actual Beatles.  I just made that photo black and white for comparison and had to do a double take.  Obviously they didn't look completely alike.  "Paul" was a little too chinny and "George" didn't have quite the same bone structure.  "Ringo" sounded nothing like the real Mr Parkin, but he was an amazing drummer.  The resemblance was close enough that I could watch them for two hours and not feel like it was a fraud.

They had all the mannerisms down, right to Paul's cheesy head shaking and John's wide-legged stance, and I spent the whole night doing what I would have done anyway - staring at "John".  That they spoke in Liverpudlian accents and did the same types of riffs and jokes ("Let's see your hands above your heads!" "Paul" shouted, to which "John" replied, "Now let's see yer feet above yer 'eads!") made it feel even more authentic.

And the music.  Oh, the music.

They went through their Rock and Roll period (my favourite type of music) and ended with Twist and Shout and just the right amount of "linen tearing" in their voices.  Then, they moved on to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Magical Mystery Tour.  Gotta love the costumes!

Obviously there was no way they could play all the Beatles hits in one evening, let alone touch every album, so they skipped Revolver and Rubber Soul, but thankfully, Abbey Road was kept in the mix.  (It's my favourite album and each time I listen to it, my mind is blown a different way).

The orchestra was brilliant.  If you've never heard All You Need Is Love with the live opening of La Marseillaise, please do.  Also, listening to I Am The Walrus in person was not something I ever imagined I would get the chance to do.

(Look at "John"!  He's a dead ringer.)  The acoustic version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps was lovely, and Wei Jing and I were pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of Don't Let Me Down.  There were so many songs I would loved to have heard (Revolution 9, David quipped), but with a catalogue of something like 600 numbers it was inevitable that many got left out.  Anyway, we still got to "Na-na-na" our asses off to Hey Jude and I sang till my throat was raw.

Right at the end, on the fast songs, the string quartet actually got up and starting dancing with their instruments, which was both refreshing and funny.  I saw the trumpet player jitterbugging with the violinist.  We did our fair shair of dancing, and as nights go, it was warm, fun, happy and filled with lots of Beatlesque love.

Two other things that cheered me up yesterday:

I love fluid looking sculptures like this one at Promenade station.

And two drenched mynahs, friends of my house, sat on the air-conditioning unit outside my room while waiting for the torrential rain to stop.  The one on the left has a bad leg and he often chills out on my balcony or outside my room since I don't have the heart to chase him away. 

This picture cracks me up especially because at that very moment, I was writing a bit in Nanowrimo where two mynahs - you guessed it - sit on someone's window sill to ride out a storm.  The universe works in mysterious ways.

Waiting for morning

I'm starting to write this at 1:30am.  I've just finished Nanowrimo Day 8.  It's incredibly gruelling for someone on a full-time work schedule, but I've been keep to it so far.  I remember someone telling me that you need to do something 21 times before it becomes habit.  Maybe this means that by the end of the month, I'll be in the habit of writing 1,600 words a day! 

After I hit publish on this, I'll crawl into bed.  It'll probably be two.  I'll put on a soothing YouTube video and if I'm lucky, I'll be out by two-thirty.  

I'm not usually lucky.

I've had insomnia for as long as I can remember.  I hate it.  It makes me cagey, out of control, and deathly sleepy in exactly the wrong places.

It manifests every time I'm stressed because I have the kind of mind that chases itself in circles.  I was an obnoxious child with very few friends and by the time I became a teenager, I was beating myself up over every little faux pas.  This is embarrassing to admit.  I was a massive Backstreet Boys fan (that's not the embarrassing bit) and I was crazy about Kevin, the oldest member.  When they announced on the radio that he was getting married, I didn't sleep the whole night.

I can pretty much recognise now what the triggers are.  Feeling bad about something that happened that day.  Loss.  Anger.  Pain.  Fear.  Stress and anticipation.  I couldn't sleep for days when my grandmother died. 

And of course, when we broke up and I lost that safe anchor, my sleeping patterns began to drift as well.  

Oddly enough, the exhaustion that comes with Nanowrimo hasn't exactly helped.  My current schedule is that I wake up each morning at about nine.  On late days, work (I'm a teacher) finishes around nine thirty at night.  I come home by half ten and decompress, sometimes for up to an hour.  Once I'm showered and calm, I start on leftover work and eventually work my way up to Nano.  Sometimes, sleep only hits at 3am.  It's a ridiculous schedule, and I have eyebags on top of eyebags, but I don't know how else to do it.  

I haven't found a cure-all for insomnia.  I listen to relaxation and meditation on YouTube.  Sometimes that works.  Sometimes I stay up and watch Bob Ross paint, or listen to Mister Rogers talk about being friends.  Sometimes, I try for complete darkness and silence.  Invariably, one night out of two, I'm still wired.  Now and again, I wake up in the middle of the night and can't go back to bed for an hour.  People get texts from me at six in the morning. 

So, I have no advice for you.

Mainly, I've just found that when the problem evaporates, sleep returns.  This breakup will take a long time to sublime.  He was a great, steadying force for me.  Knowing that he had my back in the waking world, I plunged into the sleeping one with ease.  I hate myself for getting so used to it.  For peeling my armour off and telling myself that just this once, I could have something to rely on.  But maybe I'm just human. 

So I continue to struggle and plough.  And at times, friends stay up with me.  They write, or text or sometimes, if they happen to have the next day off and planned to sleep late anyway, they carry on conversations.  Not many know of my trouble.  Some think I'm just energetic.  But it can help to know that in the big, dark night, you are not alone.  

Insomnia is fear itself.  It is painful and prickly and can turn you inside out with anxiety.  It is repeating things that happened over and over in your mind until your eyes sting with tears and you are less sane and more awake than ever.  

Yet, knowing that somewhere someone might be awake too can collapse uncontrollable insomnia into the tedious, but much less threatening, task of waiting for morning. 

Writing gratitude lists in my head can also turn looming dread into a chance to be thankful.  Here are a few things that I was grateful for today.

Victoria's Secret bath and body products.  I splurge on expensive skincare because nothing belittles nightmares like waking up and smelling something freshly, heavily luxurious.

Beautiful costume jewellery earrings that my mother bought me when she was on work in the United States.

The enormous Salad Stop! salad that I quaffed today.  Chock full of orange segments, pomelo, olives, lettuce, cucumber, corn, grapes, carrots, edamame and drizzled with a nicely subtle Japanese miso dressing.

The view from my office window.  Nothing beats watching a heavy storm descend when you are warm and dry inside.

Three things

My ridiculous fleece poncho, as worn in the office.  Impractical but soft and so, so lovable.

Unexpectedly cute crocs from my mother.  

A half finished sketch from my very talented, very good friend, David.  I've been admiring his drawing for over half a decade now, and it just keeps getting better.

Remember, remember

It's Nanowrimo Day 5, how's everyone doing?  While I've been on my word count so far, other things are slowly piling up.  I just keep reminding myself to hold steady and avoid turning around to edit.

I suspect that one day in my exhaustion, the story will descend into meaningless mush, but I'm telling myself that today will not be that day.

In the meantime, here are a few things that are making me happy and keeping me sane:

One of my favourite books from my childhood.  It's a story about two kids who are exasperated by their mothers and decide to live at each other's houses over the weekend.  It's funny and sweet, and because I didn't get along very well with my mother when I was a wee lass, she used it to remind me that we had things to be grateful for in each other.  (Now we could not be better friends.  She swung by my workplace today and bought me a cup of coffee and a pair of Crocs.  Don't judge.)
 
See the sticker on the top left hand corner?  That means I stole it from the class library when I was about eleven, and have kept it since.  I'm highly anti-crime but to me, leaving an unloved book on a dusty classroom shelf is a far bigger delinquency than bringing it home to cherish forever.

A delicious fig cake that one of my colleagues brought in to an early morning meeting.  The ripe figs were light, sweet and subtle.

Dinner with my good friend Diana at French restaurant Poulet.  The prices were reasonable and my very sinful Iberico pork belly was a great comfort.  She had a very moist and wholesomely flavoured half chicken.

The cup of coffee that's keeping me going right now.  Not pictured: the very giggly bout of impromptu shopping that followed.  I bought, among other delights, a very ill-advised but much loved fleece poncho (I know, right?) and we slunk around Sephora trying on skincare products and shrieking with laughter when SK II's "miracle water" ended up smelling like feet.  The perfect, low-key evening ended with a long cab ride in the dark where we talked about our lives and our simple hopes for them. 

And now, two thousand words of genius await.

Nanowrimo Day 2

Things needed for writing: one snoozing dog, toxic-looking Super Ring and chopsticks and lots and lots of caffeine.  Onwards.

Ready, get set...

Not that I meant to be an insufferable hipster with the picture (okay, maybe just a little), but Nanowrimo started today!  I just got home from work (yes, it's 11pm) and have just sat down to attempt to thump out my first 1,600 words.

I'm not terribly optimistic about my prospects of licking this thing given work and other random commitments, but I close my eyes, imagine the sound of thousands of other people clicking away on their computers and tell myself to man up. 

So, I've got my laptop and my hot tea.  Now I just have to find the words.

_____________________________

PS  I wore a grey pinafore over a pussybow blouse and brogues today.  My students asked why I was dressing like them.

PPS  Many people have been asking me what Nanowrimo is.  Basically, November is National Novel Writing Month.  People all round the world sit down and attempt to whack out 50,000 words by the end of the month.  Regardless of what happens after that, hey, at least you've written half a novel (half to me because the standard novel in school was considered to be 90,000 words)!  It's pretty damn cool.  Read more about it here.

The things that helped

'Tis the season.  I know more than a handful of friends whose relationships have recently come to an end, just like mine.  

I've been through breakups before, but never one that affected me on this scale, and as eager as I am to come across as cool and self-sufficient, I won't lie.  Coping has been hugely difficult.  Sure it sounds trivial and frivolous, but I've been through loss and death and all kinds of nasty out-and-out pain and nothing has derailed me quite like this.  

It's really about more than just the guy.  For one, it was the end of a lot of dreams and plans that we'd made, and a lot of hopes that I'd harboured secretly.  It is terrifying to wake up and find that someone you thought would always love you doesn't love you anymore.  

Everything that I'd been indirectly working towards was pulled from under me in one fell swoop.  It followed the end of the best year of my life when I was away doing my Masters degree, a slightly tumultuous change in jobs and the deaths of both my grandparents.  I'm not a big fan of uncertainty.  Now, each day holds uncertainty in spades.

And unrelated to this most recent fiasco, a whole lot of resentment, hurt and fear that I'd never quite dealt with over relationships prior began to surface.

So I have a long way to go in getting back on even keel again.  But I've spoken to all my friends about this - all the friends who chose to walk out on years and years of commitment, the friends who took seven months to stop crying, the friends who had picked out rings and houses.  And we all agreed that there are certain things that help staunch the pain, just a little, just enough to carry on putting one foot in front of the other till consciousness takes over again some time down the line.

I'm not at the stage where I can talk about healing grief yet.  But I know that when the wounds were freshest, I'd have loved a big ol' post like this to tell me where to put my energies and my attention.

So here's my contribution to the ever-growing museum of broken relationships: a list of the things that helped me right after the event.  Maybe they'll help someone out there too.

Changing Up

Trust me, girls, shopping has it's place and time.  There's nothing like a brand new dress and neon shoes (speaking from experience here) to make you feel like you can take life on the chin again.  Before that however, there are a few other things I think it helps to buy.

Two days after the fact, I went on a mad rampage and threw out and replaced things that remotely reminded me of him.  Not things like pictures or letters, you understand, prosaic things that needed a clean slate.  My daily planner for example - previously it had been littered with special days and dates that we had set aside.  I also changed the SD card on my camera because I couldn't bring myself to either curate the pictures or delete them and bought a blank sketchbook to replace my old journal.  Doing simple things like that - changing the background picture on your phone, even switching your perfume because scent holds so many memories - can make you breathe easier in a few minutes flat.  

Fun and Games

One of the things I jumped on almost immediately was getting into new hobbies.  Lessons or classes in particular are a great way to focus your mind on something new and while away time productively.  Because I'm such a "handsy" person (meaning that I get very restless if my hands are not occupied; not to be confused with "handy" because well, I'm not...) I signed up for knitting classes and started making blanket squares as I watched The West Wing on DVD with my family.  The need for concentration stills my mind instantly.

TV on the Radio

I don't know about you, but I love music and planning a soundtrack for my day used to be something I relished.  Now, unless it's Taylor Swift singing about how we will never get back together (ever ever ever!), I can't listen to a damn thing.  Because the radio at my workplace has indie ballads that turn me into slush on repeat, I had to figure out a nifty way to plug into something else.

These days, I listen to the BBC constantly.  It's amazing - there are two hour-long news podcasts a day, countless documentaries on everything ranging from gay couples growing old together to the Iranian currency crisis and even a hilarious short programme that collates the week's newspaper headlines.  The newsreaders are just the right balance of proper and dryly witty and while I couldn't tell you what's top of the pops right now, I can actually hold a conversation about the Somali elections.  If you ask me, that's two for the price of one.

The right programming

It's also natural to want to wallow and watch tonnes and tonnes of TV, but I quickly discovered there were some genres to be avoided at all costs.  No one wants to watch sappy romcoms or depressing dramas so it's best to stick to things that emphasise independence and are light-hearted, witty, comforting without being maudlin and if possible, even a bit camp.

In my humble opinion, there is one show made for just this purpose.  At the end of Season Two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy kills her demon boyfriend, Angel, and sacrifices him to the Hellmouth.  This makes the start of Season Three the perfect companion to anyone who's just lost a lover - Buffy runs away to a different town and changes her name, grieves, and then takes emotional revenge by calmly creaming every demon in a five mile radius.  Great for stirring those indignant girl power feelings.  

Also highly recommended: The Golden Girls, an '80s sitcom about four women who move in together following bad divorces or being widowed and their lives together as they travel through fear, sorrow, joy and the societally shunned idea that there can be love and life in one's golden years.  

Sherlock recently took me through an especially bad patch.  I love Jeremy Brett as much as the next purist but while I have issues with the newest iteration of the Conan Doyle canon, Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal of the brilliant but emotionally tone deaf super-sleuth really cheers me up.  Watching him and Watson stalk across London alone, solving fiendishly difficult puzzles, while being beholden to nothing and nobody calms me down. 

For the same reason, I imagine any kind of murder mystery would suffice - think Alfred Hitchcock, that series of extremely fey movies starring Peter Ustinov as Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, or even something laugh out loud funny like Woody Allen's Manhattan Murder Mystery.

And this is going to sound cheesy but when all else fails, clips of Mr. Roger's Neighbourhood on YouTube restore my faith in mankind.  

Pick your poison, just make sure it doesn't involve french kissing.  

Talking to people

Though it may feel like the least desirable thing in the world, I cannot overemphasise the importance of speaking to your friends and loved ones.  Get up and get out of the house - even if it's just to get coffee from down the road - and it especially helps to dress up a little while doing it.  In the two weeks after I was unceremoniously dumped, I planned to meet a friend for dinner, lunch or brunch every single day.  It was just the thing that kept me from going over the edge.

Of course the key here is looking to people whom you know will make you feel better:

1) People who don't ask too many questions.

One of my guy friends drove straight over to my house and sat silently with me on the curb as I cried for a full hour.  Later on I would be ready to discuss the whats and what-ifs in greater details with my girlfriends, but just then I needed someone who wouldn't make me relive the drama while it was raw.

2)  People who make you laugh.

Mel, one of my best friends, sent me a picture of a stuffed animal on her desk because she thought it was so cute that it would make me feel better.  When the animal she indignantly claimed was a raccoon turned out to be an African meerkat, I almost fell off my chair laughing.

3)  People who genuinely care.

My friends have been so unbelievably incredible through this.  They've offered to drop everything to come straight to my house, bought me several expensive sets of dark chocolate, brought me out for coffee and long drives and sent me postcards and emails from faraway lands.  You will be humbled and overwhelmed by just how much people care for you and you will come away feeling better for it.  Every.  Single.  Time.

The worth of a book

The last thing on this list, but by far the least, are a couple of books that have helped me tremendously.  Friends and loved ones will do everything in their power, but books can be there for you in the dead of the night when you are torn between tears and propriety.

There are two in particular that I would recommend and I have not hesitated to buy them for friends who are going through the same things.   I feel like these two books work in tandem and that one tends to pick up where the other left off.  

It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken by Greg Behrendt and his wife, Amiira Ruotola, is the kind of book you want to read when you're so shattered you can't get out of bed.  It's written in an infectious, high-energy cheerleading style that helped me find resolve when I thought that I had none.  It's the book that got me through work the first week because I read a chapter every evening on the train home.  It reminded me that I was better off without someone who didn't want me - something that is perfectly commonsensical but easy to forget.

The second book is the one I offer for the hurt that runs darker and deeper and unrepaired from disasters long forgotten.  Getting Past Your Breakup: How to Turn a Devastating Loss into the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You is a book that treats your sadness as grief and makes no bones about it.  Consequently, the advice given teaches you how to get over that grief through slowly gaining new perspective on old happenings.  There are serious workbook exercises that you can disregard (I have nothing to lose and will try anything once) and the author, Susan J. Elliott, who has been through everything and more, takes an empathetic but no-nonsense tone that would make your mother proud.

Best of all though, for those who are hesitant about dropping cash on the book, there is a Getting Past Your Breakup website right here.  Whether you read an article every morning before you hop out of bed or join the chatter in the comments, there is relief and peace in knowing that you are not alone.

If you're reading this, if you've stumbled upon it because you've gone looking for something like it, I hope this list helped at least in some small measure.  I hope that you'll build a list of your own because having a stockpile of things to turn to when things get hairy is precious beyond measure. 

And most of all, even if it takes a long while to come by, I hope you find your happiness.