Resilience

Today was an infantile attempt at staring him straight in the eye, and opening my mouth to speak blurt out my mind. I was trying to narrow it down with J over pasta at Tiamo’s today – just what is it that I’m so afraid of, and it got down to a few (maybe two) dot-points.

• That raw, vulnerable emotion would be met with stone cold rationality. This is almost, always the case with you. It’s like a roadblock almost, that freezes me in my tracks and disheartens me from taking another step further.
• That my words would not give justice to the point that I was trying to bring across. This is a global impairment. I come head to head with it every time I feel a gurgle that starts deep in my stomach and bubbles up into my throat, threatening to be spat out in a cascade of – there’s no better word – verbal diarrhoea.

Turns out my fears in both senses were recognized. There was stuttering and awkward silence, sentences that tripped over each other, words that tumbled out in rumble-jumble, questions that were posed and met with quizzical stares. And yet, despite and in spite of it all, they were right, it wasn’t half bad.

Late in the afternoon, the psychosocial perspective guys gave a talk on resilience. They opened with a simple definition of it. With a little help from Wiki – it’s simply, the “positive capacity of people to cope with stress and catastrophe,” or the ability to spring back/recover quickly from difficult sitatuions. Derived from Latin, it simply means ‘leaping back’.

But what I gathered is that resilience is a frame of mind. Call it optimism, hope, it’s a perspective you take. All the evidence against can rack up, but quantity and quality don’t even seem to matter, because it is a choice. It is why not every son of an alcoholic father becomes an alcoholic himself. It is why it doesn’t mean that all sexually abused daughters will never get the chance to experience what it means to be able to experience real love in their lifetimes, or learn how to conduct a healthy, functioning relationship.

And that’s the beauty of it. That little seed of strength that lies in every person may even be what the whole field of psychology is banking on.

So all this talk of resilience has made me realize that I’m quite the tough cookie. No, not the glass always half full, blind optimist, or fanatic hopeful. I don’t even want to use the realist – it seems like a wastebasket category for people who are afraid to be associated with the naivety of optimists or the hopelessness of pessimists. The fence-sitters.

But I have choices. Someone quite wise said that it’s about choosing what brings life over what brings death. And today, I can choose to see the good in the conversation we had.

I choose to see it as a small step towards communication. I want to learn how to be comfortable sharing my thoughts and emotions with you. I pray that one day you will learn that emotions and feelings are just as important as, if not more than logic and pragmatics – and that love, in one grand sweep, can render all these irrelevant and show itself to be the greatest of all.

We’ll get there.

Surrender

Something always brings me back to you.
It never takes too long.
No matter what I say or do,
I still feel you here ’till the moment I’m gone.

You hold me without touch.
You keep me without chains.
I never wanted anything so much,
than to drown in your love and not feel your rain.

The past five days have been illuminating; as absences of you always prove to be. It is always a harsh lesson in identity, where strengths I never knew I had are called to the fore, and weaknesses long forgotten, rear their ugly heads.

J put forward an interesting distinction while we were having lunch in the graduate common room the other day, on the very different, almost oppositional effects of distance on a relationship. “Is it a matter of ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ or ‘out of sight, out of mind‘?” she boldly queried.

And I didn’t know quite what to answer.

The answer was plain to me of course. The former, for sure. It’s the only thing that could explain these feelings, this irrationality, this inexplicable attachment.

And then it occurred to me, that I had no idea what his would be.

Old friends come knocking on the door as the evening wanes, and promise to sit with me through the night.

I am still the same girl as I was last year. In spite of status changes and perhaps more outward shows of newfound affection, the insecurities linger, and I am trapped in the wild fears conjured by a restless mind, not quite sure how to picture an accurate reality.

So this is my lesson in surrender, and I will be all the stronger for it.

You loved me ’cause I’m fragile,
when I thought that I was strong.
But you touch me for a little while,
and all my fragile strength is gone.

Set me free, leave me be.
I don’t want to fall another moment into your gravity.
Here I am and I stand so tall, just the way I’m supposed to be.
But you’re on to me and all over me.

Catching Up

I’d like to think that I haven’t been writing because I’ve been busy out there living my life

It would be an understatement to say that “things have changed around here“. I remember thinking to myself, about one and a half months in, that I had forgotten what it was even like, living I mean, before this. Things seem to have come a little more alive these days. From stacking groceries in the black basket swinging off an arm, scurrying around the aisles of Safeway, to meticulously mincing garlic over a chopping board, to labouring over a stack of dirty dishes with soapy hands – The little mundane activities of my everyday seem to have taken on new purpose.

And I have this sneaking suspicion that it is because everything is for a certain someone.

Of course, a wave of apprehension briefly catching my breath, just ever so slightly, when I realize the weight of my statement, and check myself before I utter the next. Then again, it seems silly to talk it down, to undermine the true quality of this experience I’ve been blessed with.

I am happy.

For the most part of it, anyway. And I’m determined to make that the part that counts.

So now, we’re approaching the next marker of 2. It’s still small, and very, very young. It hasn’t been perfect. It hasn’t been without its tears. And yet, it’s a moment nonetheless, significant in itself.

It still is a little unnerving to me though, how time seems to have taken on the elastic nature of a rubber band – months in name, years in actuality. On hindsight, it now seems like it was a progression so natural, that it would have almost been absurd if today hadn’t arrived. That small voice that insisted on persistence in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds is now amplifying a loud “I told you so”. And the better (more cautious) half of me scrambles to stifle it, like a superstitious granny wagging one finger disapprovingly, the other hand rapping the table, all the time hissing sage old sayings along the likes of, “Touch wood!” and “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch!” or “Pride comes before the fall!”

I think it would be wise to take heed.

On another note, I seem to be accummulating a small fortune, maybe the better word is backlog, of latent unresolved issues. A well-meaning friend gently nudges, nags, and then not so subtly prods me to speak up, to air my mind. So  I keep setting myself deadlines, scenarios that I conjure up in my head that would be most condusive, when he would be most receptive.

And I know it’s tired, but the truth is I really don’t know what to say. For heaven’s sake, where do I even begin?

After all, I’ve had 2 years practice in being what I’ve affectionately dubbed, a ’silent sufferer’. There is this curious part of the human condition that seems innately conflicted with the natural tendency to seek pleasure, or to pursue a self-centred happiness. I guess, you could call it, the act of ‘martyrdom’ for dramatic poise. And dare I say, some days, it feels like the martyr in me is almost working full-time.

But hold your horses. Is it? On closer inspection, I think I’ve misattributed my denial of self and meekness of character to a notion grander that it really is. Fear masquerading as sacrifice. Cowardice hiding behind selflessness, a facade so magnificent that the shameful face of the former is completely obscured.

Righteousness, or perhaps, the act of ‘feeling righteous‘, can be blinding.

Maybe what I really mean to say, is that I’m afraid to lose this, to lose you. It seems more convenient to sweep everything under the carpet, a quicker fix to haphazardly shove the mess into an old forgotten closet, almost temptingly easier to just pretend that everything is fine and dandy.

It’s just that I get so damn tongue-tied when I’m around you. It’s just that your straight lines of cold hard logic bore holes through my already-ineloquent discourse, exposing the gaps and inconsistencies, uncovering unfounded yet deeply-seated flaws and insecurities, dismissing emotionally-laden words and statements as erratic and, well, crazy -

… when all this time, what I’ve been trying to teach you is that love is anything but rational. I’m sorry to break it to you, but I am one of those crazy, neurotic girls you vowed to run the opposite direction of.

I dream of a day to come where the words aren’t so hard to come by, and to speak freely, without fear of repercussion. I would like it if you could ask the questions sometimes, just so that I know you’re thinking about it, that ‘we’ at least hang somewhere in the periphery of your mind, if not at the forefront. I wish you were that little bit more intuitive to the way everything you say or do, deeply affects me. I anticipate the day you find it in yourself to go extra-ordinarily out of your way for me, like I do for you, only when you’re ready.

But everything in it’s good time, yes? I think I have enough hope in me yet to let things , to wait for you to catch up to me in certain respects, to continue trekking through this passage of life – me learning from you, and you from me, trying to put the destination out of my mind for now, and move along, ever-forward, thinking of nothing more, doing nothing beyond simply,

putting one foot in front of the other.

So for now, I shall release myself into the bliss of the right here right now, and to baby-back ribs.

Sunshine and Sand

I haven’t had this much reason to be happy in a long time. And yet, the sombre voice of reason and realism always issues the same stern caution to a ludicrous and foolhardy heart – that, more often than not, these episodes are but short-lived and fleeting.

As if in retort to my complaints of a seemingly boring and doldrum-y 2007, 2008 has indeed begun with a bigger bang than I’d ever imagined. Then again, maybe I did run through all the possibilities in my mind, indulged myself in its every guilty pleasure, but laughed it off as nothing but a silly daydream.

Hm. But well, well.

I never picked myself to actually have the opportunity to witness the thrills and spills of a ’summer fling’. Although now, slowly waking from the heady intoxication of the sunshine and sand, I am slowly but surely mentally fortifying myself for the very real possibility that I may be a victim of this phenomenon I’ve only seen played out in movies like The Notebook.

I still can’t seem to trust you. I still can’t say for certain, statements laden with belief or wishful hope. I’m still haunted by the shadows of your past, feeling the sting from your scars, and deathly afraid of how that might taint, discolour and discredit the sanctity of a future.

So I still don’t know what this means to you, but as the song goes, I’ve learnt, that -

Love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

I sincerely hope that this isn’t some conquest to you – one that you know you’ve already won. I pray with all my might that this isn’t some sick game – the one you picked up and read all those years ago and have now relegated to a far corner of a dusty bookshelf.

Because I’m more than just a pawn. I’m not some dispensable piece you can sacrifice for some greater victory. Surprise, surprise, I was never that selfless.

I want to be the last one standing when we make it through.

At the end of the day, love reduces us to nothing but a place of brokenness. It is like a bottomless pit, or perhaps for the more idealistic, a well that never runs dry; its sole purpose but to give, and give, and give some more. Every new day, bringing renewed patience and refreshed hope, no matter how deep and thick the darkness of night may fall.

Well, I think I can safely say that I’ve given everything I’ve got. It takes a particular kind of utter vulnerability, to strip yourself of everything in front of and for another; and I mean that both figuratively and literally.

When you’ve reached such a point, of stark nakedness, there is nothing left to do, but cry for mercy.

So here I am, at the mercy of your hands, and Your hands.

To you: I really want to believe that you’ll pull through this time. For my heart is fragile, and can almost bear no more.

To You: Have Your way, oh Lord. And having just said that, I’m so afraid of You doing just exactly that, if it means that I have to surrender the pictures and plans that I’ve wilfully drawn up for my life. I’m sorry for the things that I’ve made, if they have indeed been of my doing. I still cling to the hope that You have had a hand in the transpiration of recent events. But just for now, would You give consideration to a desperate plea – Soften his heart, oh God, and if not, give me the strength to find another way.

So let it be.

Downtime

I sold myself to a multitude of pain for a moment of bliss.

Should I be worried? Because it is in your arms that I’ve found a somewhere I’d like to rest, at the end and beginning of every day. And I meant it, when I whispered softly, “This isn’t good. I think I’m getting used to you”. At the same time, clutching myself tightly to your chest and feeling a wave of sobering fear ripple through my consciousness. Morning would come, and with it the desperate wish that it could always be like this.

So I grasped fervently at every minute, hung on your every word, lingered in every tender gaze, suspended in every circle your dancing fingers swirled and swished over my back, breathed in the intensity of every kiss; but waiting on tenterhooks for your hand to pull out of my clasp, or your body to recoil from mine.

But you didn’t. You came back for more.

Perhaps that’s what I needed to know. Maybe, all that I needed to know, for now. That Sydney wasn’t just a one night stand, a cruel trial, an un-redeemable mistake. That you could perhaps, on some level, find me desirable. It would be a sign, that there was something keeping you here – a residue of feeling somewhere in there that never went away, an ounce of courage to take a stab at the future, a sliver of hope that you might step up, a hint of some repressed love you never dared to attest to.

Things have changed. “This is good. Lots of talk, lots of sex,” you murmured into my earlobe in jest. So I can’t help but notice the subtle shifts in our strange relationship, both said and unsaid. You no longer shudder away from me when my fingers brush against yours, or when our skin touches when I lean ever so slightly against you on the bus. We’re now able to engage in the cheeky banter and playful flirtation I’ve often found myself all too often envying, as I watched but was never able to participate.

And there’s no reason why things shouldn’t have taken the slightest of turnarounds. I’ve as good as given myself to you. After all, I’ve felt you, and you’ve felt me.

And now that I know… I feel like I can taste what it means to be loved. And if this is but a mere foretaste, what people might deem a cheap imitiation, a pariah breed of its real form… I suppose I can only begin to imagine the fulness of love in all glory, the day it arrives.

Even if life inevitably drives us down divergent paths. If a day should come when I no longer have the strength to hold on. If you should ever forget what we shared in these 8 days. If you could ever find it in you to leave me for good. If my heart should ever find another -

It was worth it.

There are a million reasons why this was wrong, and why it wouldn’t and could never work out. And yet, all I can think about, is when I’ll see you again, or when I might next wake to your sleepy smile.

Goodbye,

Every time, is a slow and agonizing exercise of having to tear myself away from the things, the places, the memories, the someones, that have been seeded and now implant themselves in my heart – whether by painstaking, back-breaking efforts to sow, nurture and cultivate; Or the ones, like stubborn weeds, that have slyly managed to escape my notice and take root all the same, more resilient than ever.

I can’t say how much I tire of this annual ritual of severing and re-attaching, breaking and mending. Both ways.

It’s really quite brutal.

I wish you knew how incredibly hard it is for me to sit out (again), to miss yet another milestone. Sometimes, timing can be such a bitch. Second time fate seems to have dealt me a cruel hand. Each blow seems to be a confirmation how this just, maybe, is wrong. Just isn’t meant to be.

I also wish you cared that I wanted so much to be there.

I realized that it’s been a while since I’ve travelled alone. For the past 2 years, there was the reassuring familiarity of you – jostling around in the same bumpy taxi ride to the airport or in the seat next to me, donning headphones and eating my share of aluminium-tinted plane food. And again, this dangerous dependence decides to un-cloak itself, revealing the extent of its destructiveness. Whether I leave you at the arrival hall, or at the door to my apartment at 3.30am, the goodbye is still haphazard, still tentative, and still very painful.

And this time, there’s a sense, which has hit me a little all too late as I sit here sleepless on the eve of my flight, a half-empty suitcase sprawled in the middle of my living room, that I bid fare well to an era that will pass and never return.

Quite honestly, that scares the hell out of me.

Standstill.

Y’noe what,

Nothing should matter at this point. Not how much you want to be there, or how much you care, or how much you think you might be missed, or how much you wish you could be a part of his music, an integral piece in his journey. The point very simply is:

He didn’t ask you.

And he should. He should have explicitly requested your presence, if you were that important. You at least afford that amount of respect, that little ounce of recognition for hours talking him through how he should steward his finances and invest in his craft; for all the times you’ve silently willed with all your might that the floodgates of inspiration may be opened; that one day, he would finally discover that he has a far greater story to tell than one that just revolves around another single human being.

But the truth of the matter is simply – He doesn’t want to let you in, you simply have no jurisdiction in that all-important part of his life.

Even though you’ve tried. Oh, God knows you’ve tried.

So pray now, pray for your life, pray your darndest. Pray for strength to stand tall and upright, pray for peace to fall asleep at night, pray for wisdom to carry yourself through tomorrow. Do not succumb to tears. Do not fall back into the throes of despair and crumble to weakness. Take it, accept it now, as a reality. At this point, there are more pertinent issues that hang in the balance. Issues that demand your resource and head-space. Be present to the people that are here. Be attentive to what He is trying to get through to you. Be receptive to the lessons that are surely, albeit harshly revealing themselves to you.

It’ll be alright. You will get over this. Happiness is still possible.

Love,
Me.

Sigh.

I miss you. And you’re just here. How am I ever going to survive weeks away from you?

The saddest thing is that you’re probably out, gallivanting somewhere. Plotting your next big social takeover. How to win friends and influence people. Getting that girl you always wanted.

It’s not fair that I’ve been given these feelings.

______________________________

Father,

I feel myself slipping again. Into this shame-blame game. I blame You for seeding these desires in my heart. Why do they take such a specific form? Why does happiness seem to only culminate in that one person? Why does he dictate my everything? I shame myself for not being good enough, for not being beautiful enough. I blame him for not knowing better, for being blinded by superficiality, for not growing up quickly enough to see what is good and right under his nose. I blame them for taking my place, for their selfish and shallow pleasures, for their blatant insensitivity.

And now I have all this time on my hands – Time to bemoan days that have passed, to antagonize the things of the present and to worry incessantly about tomorrow.

I pray that you will help me use the days wisely, productively. May I learn to feed my soul with the richness of a Word that is alive and relevant to my current day, fill my mind with the knowledge of Your, our world. May I yearn to keep You close to my heart, every second, every minute of my every day. May I preserve my hope in a better day, a brighter future be grounded firmly in You as my solid Rock, my strong Fortress. May I guard fiercely my faith in a God that will provide, that will see me through the long and narrow path. 

I may not always make the right decisions. More often than not, I succumb to the wilful desires of my flesh, fall prey to the tantalizing potential of momentary gratification. Just like how I have broken my fast, time and time again for the sake of convenience, yielding to the hunger of my cravings, bowing to the pressures of the people who sit with me at the dinner table, or to he, who has the uncanny power of pushing me beyond the boundaries of anything I’ve known till now. 

But Lord, have mercy. Be patient with me. For I am, and hopefully will always remain a work in progress, yet to be finished.

For the Record:

So, I know I’m making a huge mistake.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t some brave show of martyrdom, or some warped version of a Saviour complex. The stakes are far too high, and the costs… well, more than I have to give. Perhaps it is a kind of sado-masochism, this obstinacy, this devotion, this, strange sort of love. Love that can’t seem to take ‘no’ for an answer. Love that knows no shame, driven only by desperation. Love that is given disproportionately to what is received.  Love that just simply, won’t back down.

I hate it that when the clock struck twelve, I was by your side, watching you fall asleep.

I hate it that I spent my birthday with you and N, lazing away a glorious afternoon outside listening to the drawl of weird, alternative indie music that sent us half to sleep. Truth is, I missed it. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

I hate it that the very thought of losing you sends my heart plunging into my stomach. I could have sworn it was you, and my insides wrung themselves out.

I hate it that I couldn’t feel anything on the date yesterday. Pink roses, now drying on the clothesline, were not enough. Neither was bold initiative, or forward questions. It all stacked up, balanced out, and yet, meant nothing at all.

I hate it that on the way to your house, all that flooded through my system, was the wash of relief. And when I dialled the familiar number, checked my reflection in the lift mirrors, rapped politely on the door before letting myself in – into the warm, orange glow of your lampstand; the faint sweet smell of your mother’s potpourri lingering in the air; you, poring over your laptop on the coffee table, in black-framed glasses and one of your favourite white t-shirts.

It just felt like home.

I wonder if this is just a fear of the unfamiliar. Maybe, the right one hasn’t come, the one who will erase all the pain, and make me forget.

I’m starting to think that maybe he doesn’t exist. And that’s perfectly alright, for once, I feel like I’m okay being by myself. There’s only one I want. And if I can’t have him, I’d rather have nothing.

It sounds like the rant of a petulant child demanding her way, throwing a tantrum in the middle of the department store floor, kicking up a ruckus to the dismay of her father. He stands by, tall and immovable,  waiting for her to exhaust herself crying. Are You folding your hands in the corner, God? Shaking your head, with an almost-smile creeping across Your face, chiding kindly, ‘Oh you don’t know what’s best for yourself, my dear child. Stop kicking me with your feet, and beating your fists against my chest. Stop fighting back. Something better’s coming.’ ‘

Perhaps.

But somewhere in my mind, a resolution seems to have been passed – against the better of rationality or good wisdom. Heck, even against the interests of selfishness or pride.

But I simply can’t help myself, I can’t help the way I feel about you.

And if that is going to lead to my destruction, perhaps that is what it is going to take for the foundations of my world to be rocked to the ground, shaken to ruins by a seismic earthquake. And then we rebuild, from ground-up. I pray that my mind will be able to bear it.

Are these the kind of letters you wrote to her? Did your words use to spell a hungry, almost mad desperation? Is that why she thought you were fresh out of the psych ward?

So, call this a suicide mission, my kamikaze.

Maybe, I have to die trying.

Conversations

I find that I’ve been learning things from the most unlikeliest of people – garnering truth and perspective from the uncanniest of sources, leant on unfamiliar shoulders for strength and comfort.

It is a period of night – the darkness seems to settle more thickly, sink more heavily. Sleep is a mischievous imp, chasing circles around me, daring me to catch him if I can. But I am too tired to play games, and finally, even when he catches up to me in my non-compliance, it is Rest that truly eludes me. The flurry of thoughts scattered through my mind transform into fantastical dreams. Fantastical yes, but monstrously so. They twist and contort into a mangled mix of fact and fiction, of tender emotion and raw instinct. And I wake from them bewildered and disillusioned, and slip into my shell, ready to take on the day.

Even still, I’d like to think that this shadow of the valley of death that I find myself wandering into is going to be a time of strengthening. A time where the fragments of the puzzle are starting to consolidate; where my worldview is beginning to take shape and form; where I am gathering a storehouse of experience, from which to speak truth into others’ despair.

They say curiosity killed the cat.

Admittedly, I wanted to know about her. I wanted to see what it is, who it was that I was truly up against. And true enough, I found myself face-to-face with a Goliath of emotional baggage, now having to wrestle with a ghost of the past. She remains faceless. Like a legend, almost as if she might not even really exist. But wow – fantastical, perfect.

And that’s the last I want to hear of the matter.

I’m going to take a different approach this time. I’m going to say that I don’t need this. No, I don’t want this. And truth be told, it pained me to hear of the person that you were that I will never know; to finally learn that you are never going to love me like that.

Sigh, we are very similar people, you and I. We are jealous lovers. We allow ourselves to be consumed by our love; we make, no we want, our passions and our life-goals to revolve around another person whom we can pour our all into. We also had to learn the dangers of such a love the hard way.

A pity that we aren’t each other’s worlds. Perhaps, so that we would not swallow each other into a vortex of self-consumption.

And so, I can say that we have reached quite a few conclusions today:

• Faith is not the same as saying ’stuff it’.

• It’s okay to say ‘No, I can’t handle this anymore.’ Even though, I desperately want to. There is strength in being able to turn off the taps, and stop. Haaalllttt… There is strength in throwing in the towel, and that there is nothing wrong with saying ‘I can’t handle it anymore’ or finally conceding that ‘You are a bad thing for me’.

• I don’t want to write anymore beautiful things about you.

• “There is something in [me] that won’t be beaten.” Thank you, and I’ll cling to that for dear life.

And finally, a line that sprung from my own lips, in the most unexpected of ways -
“Don’t let this be the other boat you step into because you don’t have the faith to walk on water.”