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.
