departure
Monday, February 07, 2011
♥ Monday, February 07, 2011
People say the cup half empty and half full, because they think you can choose perspectives. You might be a pessimist but you can choose to be an optimist. Start seeing the up, and you wont pay much notice to the downs. But what happens when the very reason I feel up is why i feel down? What happens when you pour a cup half empty into a cup half full? You do not get a full cup. You get a sense of what i am feeling.
I can think of the great times that we have had. It's Universal Studios and Karaoke, Steak and Durians, Friends and family, Chinese new year and Christmas. Its spending almost everyday with each other infused with a certain sense of fun and purpose. But I know full well that i am using the past tense in its description. "It's" is only short form for "it was". The cup half full into the cup half empty.
Trying to console myself with the heaps of work to be due soon only reinforces that reality that require such consolation in the very first place. And there is much to do, there are essays, take home papers and research. But there is that huge gap within me that is growing by the minute.
On the other hand, the cup half empty can sometimes be poured into the cup half full. I can regret about the times I have fallen short of my promises, realizing that those moments were times of grace for the dialogue it conjured
I can tell you that i am blissfully happy, and yet incredibly sad.
It is a battleground for emotions with an overarching resignation. Tomorrow is that day that we will have to part for some time. It is tearing me up. Maybe when you pour a cup half full into a cup half empty, you get a broken cup. I do not know.
That is the thing about tomorrows. Most dont even pay attention to it. But before you know it, there wont be any tomorrows. Before you know it, you will be wondering how many tomorrows are left. I feel paralyzed by tomorrow. It is like watching an event unfolding, from a distance. Unable to change the direction of fate and simultaneously resisting its happening. Resisting its happening, even though the cause and consequence of that happening are really, really beautiful things.
the glorious realities of being with the perfect girlfriend
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
♥ Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Tip toeing up the stairs to fetch her over for reunion dinner, i noticed the dark stairwell which meant her door was closed, shutting out any lights from her window. I was surreptitious and in half excitement. I have not seen her all day. Knocking on the door, I heard two replies- first, curt and second, irritated. And i opened. She lay on the sofa set, a quarter sedated, half weak from a stubborn flu and the last quarter i could not discern- was that a look of pleasant surprise? I know i hoped it was.
Our days in Singapore had been both assaulted and blessed by the manifold activities we've embarked on. A talk that highlighted the great transition from conception to execution, or from ideal to actual, or from dreams to reality took up both time, energy and emotions in preparation. This happened by grace, as all things do. But grace in particular gave me a girl who walked with me with her mind and her heart- that twofold dimension that encompassed Giving's full meaning. And when all is said and done, she said she was proud of me.
From a boyfriend's vantage point, there is nothing really more triumphant than that. Call it what you want: mythological heroism, masculinity or purely egoistic. But its biological and in any man with a decent amount of self-respect. A channel 8 drama recently showed the carthartic dialogue between the estranged wife and the philandering but contrite husband. She told him to come back to her when he found his own "self-respect". Now, disagree with the drama and the acting if you will, the message still holds: a person incapable of loving himself is simply incapable of being loved by another. A person without a degree of self-respect cannot invoke the respect of another. And paradoxically, it is in such moments that all the actions to demand self-respect just becomes a negation of it. On that same note, a person who already has it, experiences it all the more. The rich gets richer.
Doses of irritation highlighted the equally true converse: that the poor gets poorer. I lost my spirit of gratitude. And for about a week straight, that loss generated bite-sized doses of irritation that instead of chewing it silently, i had to vomit out unglamorously. She observed that I became more irritable. The general theory suggests that is what happen when a couple is so close: friction becomes a part of the lifestyle. But i rather be close and frictional than distanced and polite. Our relationship if anything is marked by distance. She agrees. That is why she fights. And from anyone's vantage point, you know that you are loved when you are fought for.
The reunion dinner was an array of seafood, vegetables, soup and meats. Chats were merry and shared intimacy by among many other things, the first-ever reunion prayer that my dad opened dinner with, brought warmth to a rather cool evening. Drama ensued soon after dinner. She and I walked to buy ice cream. A tiny dose of irritation then prompted a dialogue which morphed into the emotional equivalent of a quarrel. About two hours later, with the sharing extending itself all the way into the car ride home, we made a decision to love our remaining days in Singapore more together. That's my perfect girlfriend, for you.
