And the boy(s).

Sometimes the words escape me, and occasionally a song comes along and sums up everything I feel in a verse or two.

"It's been days now and you've change your mind again. It feels like years now, and I can tell how time has bend your ideas.// and the boys go on and on and on and on again, And there's gold falling from the ceiling of this world, falling from the heartbeat of this girl."

Some kind of philosophy.

After an insanely unhappy day at work, where I obviously gave so much and got so little in return, I stood in the shower and reflected.

This came to me: "work hard, live harder".

Workhardliveharder.Workhardliveharder.Workhardliveharder.Workhardliveharder.Workhardliveharder

I chanted this five times in the shower and felt that the next step was just about living up to it.

I've worked hard, no doubts about it. No one sees it, no doubt about it. I'll keep at it, definitely. Next step, live hard. Play hard, party hard.

Be less concern about what they think about me. Shake it out, shake it up, live it out!

And so, this is building resilience. This is transforming angry tears into a reminder. A reminder to live a hard as my youth will take me and leave the old hags to their game of hide-and-seek.

Fathom

I cannot fathom life without Mr X, it's possible, just incredibly difficult.

Sometimes I wish he knew why I choose to run away from talking about our future. It feels like once we talk about it we are on a countdown till the end.That's why I constantly play hide and seek.

Bestfriends, version 2

They don't truly leave you :)

Friendship takes a lot of courage too, never knew that till couple of days ago. The results are just spectacular.

After countless sleepless nights I took a leap of faith, the passage was rocky but I had a safe landing.

To many more jumps like this one in our friendship.

On repeat.

Sometimes I make the same mistakes over and over again, and I don't understand why I make them either.

But for your case, I think it was a case of priority, you put yourself ahead of everything else. Time and time again we repeat the same argument and to frank, it's getting kind of boring and irritating to me. I don't teach common sense, I can't be teaching you how to act your age, or to act as a proper person all the time.

And I've decided too, I can't be always that forgiving. Second chances after second chances I've realised that instead of learning from your mistakes, the second chances have affirmed your decisions to push boundaries and leave me to fend for myself.

One day a little bird flew by and dropped me a message. It said this isn't what I'm looking for. I concur.

Best friends

Sometimes you try your best but in the end it's all about letting go.

On departures

I'm holding you close and tight in preparation of your departure. In due time you'll be as free as a bird, but please don't forget the girl you left behind in Singapore.

Inbetween

We are heading to China in about 5 hours, an unofficial grad trip and a good opportunity to see how well we hang together.

Back during our trip to Hong Kong my over-independence showed when I decided to venture off to grab my last minute shopping leaving him to watch TV back in the hotel (I thought he would prefer that but I was wrong..) and again in the morning I went off for breakfast without him as he looked so tired, and I needed to deal with my growling stomach (again, he preferred company to sleep so I was wrong again).

Well, in between HK and this trip I can safely say that I've accomplished quite abit in my academic pursuits. For one, I'm over and done with the Final Year Project (FYP), a 9-month long research on crisis Management. Crisis Communication has brought me far, or so I hope, from the conference in New York, presentation in Miami, meeting X out of that class,   FYP friends and maxing out my read-O-meter for journals.

Internship will start officially in June, that's when I can dump my school gear and slip back into my corporate skirts, 6am alarms and media monitoring.  The last part is tricky, sometimes I still can't believe that I am going to be doing media monitoring (AGAIN) in my 4th internship.

Dumping reality, I jump back into X. So we've been together for 10 months and I found the perfect description for the whole idea of us. I guess reading does take you to place, and for me, it was like time travelling.

Back to the first date, back to how I refuse to tell anyone I was dating this guy for fear of jinxing it.

 

Somethings never change, he will always be that elusive jackass who refuse to have a picture taken. It's fine by me.

"If you want a boyfriend to brag about, it's not gonna be me," he said in an ultra serious tone one evening. I laughed. Things I love about him, so god damn private. And in strange way this privacy keeps me very safe.

and so, onward to China!

Imagine me and you, and you and me...

no matter how we throw the dice, it had to be.

And here's Easter's little surprises:

Reincarnation

X: if there's a next life, I want to be a guy.
Me: ok...i still want to be a woman in my next life.
X: then we'll have to be together.

Cheers to those 15-second conversations that head nowhere.

Like Blood

, the disappointment flows through my entire system.

A strong dull energy engulfs my senses.
Over on the other side she must have laughed, or even mocked my comprehension of the question.

I can't let go because it was the simplest question I had to tackle, the first step, and I failed at it. This is the most unwilling defeat, in my entire life.

I simply can't sleep.
Everytime I close my eyes, the silliness of my own voice floats back into my ears. And I can see it so clearly, everything I've done for the last couple of years had easily prepared me for the job. "How are you different?" she asked. Yet, I gave her the lamest answer, and I despise myself for that.

We don't get second chances, at least not here in my world.

Someone you use to know

Somewhere in Singapore, Ms Y tells someone about you. That in her eyes you were suave, stubborn, bad-tempered yet charming. She would tell them how you stole her heart and how you broke it too. She goes on and describes your three years together, army, night cycling, chocolate buffets, sunflowers and trips together. She made plans for you to be her one and only, a future together, a home, a flat to be specific, children and dogs even. You disappointed her.

You called her decent, you said communication had become obligatory towards the end and you said getting together with her could be said as "convenient".

.

Although sitting through stories of the ex-gf is painful, I am ever so grateful that you tell me about what's on your mind when it comes to her. Your friend S told you she made it to become the company's top performers. You said leaving you was perhaps what made this success happened for her. I sat quietly, stared out of the window and tucked my hands under my thigh. I was trying to take it as a normal conversation, and for you, it probably was. Somehow this grown-up world defined by money and success seems even further away from me. I bit my lip as I struggled not to encourage contact, at the back of my brain I was thinking "tell him to congratulate her", but my mouth only formed the words "...have you...congratulated her..?". You said you probably would, I kicked myself for asking. *mental note to self - Don't encourage contact.

What did you make of my silence in the car I wonder? Did you sense my silent rebellion? I doubt so, and you rattle on half in effort to fill the silence, half maybe to comfort me.

"S asked me if I regretted breaking up with her, I said No," you added. You said there comes a point in the relationship whereby couples meet each other because they have to, not because they want to. It was like that for you, with her. I looked at you, and all I could think of was that it must have been the novelty, it worn off for you. I quickly shook the thoughts out of my head.

I meekly and in an off-tangent manner said: "My heart still skips a beat when I meet you." You laughed, and for a moment the conversation ended.

Yes of course, insecurity is the root of this evil, but here I am as a student, dutifully spoilt by you monetarily till I got use to it, till I feel like I need to break away. I was living the life/the relationship you had in the days of Ms Y. Sometimes you tell me, for better or for worst, I am your karma, because I reminded you of the days you spent as a student.

At this point of time, I can only guess that the insecurity goes away as age catches up, as I transit into the next working dimension and as we prove to be able to weather storms together.

Until then, Ms Y and her stories, will stay as a little prick in my heart. A prick that digs deeper everytime I try to pull it out.

And so, I wish for Ms Y to be just someone you use to know.

A case of bad intuition

When I was 15, I remember meeting someone I strongly felt I was "destined" to be with. Funny thing is, we barely got started and we never worked out. Since then (a whopping 8 years) nothing ever felt like anything was "destined".

Fast forward to 2010, somewhere in October I agreed on a casual lunch with X. Funny how I remember it so vividly, air-conditioned school canteen, Japanese food VS Gong Bao chicken, my favourite blue pants and a pretty bad conversation on prawning. There was no instant chemistry (so unromantic), and I even remember praying "please don't let this dude have any funny ideas", since I was heading to the US 3 months later and for the first time was TOTALLY not in a romance-seeking mode. I proceeded to look at his phiten necklace (titanium ugly chain that supposedly relieves backaches?!?!) and immediately failed his sense of style (or lack of). Unknown to me, he was failing me in the style department too. HAHAHAHA Some kind of perfect symmetry.

Right there and then, my intuition told me this was yet another case of a "one-time offer". Therein lies the case of bad intuition, cause when I was dating the guys that did't work out my intuition kinda goes into shutdown mode and "i-don't-give-a-damn-not-gonna-churn-out-an-intuition-for-you-lauliangtong". Well, there was something there I guess.

Maybe I was quick to judge (as my besties always point out), terms like overbearing, egoistic, self-absorbed and even silly and transparent, were actually my first impression of X. MCP was an ideal description too (sorry!).

I never knew how he felt about that lunch, except that I had hideous pants and was super chatty. What led him to ask me out for another date, to want to see me again, to start texting me, that is pretty unclear to me.

Yet despite my initial assessment of him, I never quite said "no" to him the entire time we started something. Well, unless you count the time I turned down his offer of lunch after crisis class and not wanting to start anything prior to leaving for the US.

.....


Last night I sat beside him in the car, a long quiet drive out of Marina yacht club, and I re-lived those moments. How fast we've pass certain stages of a relationship, honeymoon (so definitely over though I honestly still kinda wish I get to see him for abit every other day), and now enter this phase where we constantly get to know each other better, sometimes for better, sometimes for worst. I often wonder what kind of couple we are.....

We hardly take pictures together, we fall into routines easily, hold hands like we can't do without it, constantly jab fun at each other, surprise each other, fight and makeup, makeup and fight, get bored and start a fight, laugh at stupid fights and vow never to go to sleep angry at each other...the list goes on. I do find that we are bad at being a public couple, taking pictures together is a rather awkward affair for us.

So, after all's said and done, I find it funny that my intuition about guys have never been accurate, and X is the best example yet.

I am...

dating an elusive jackass.

Safety.

I've long assumed safety with being at home, with my father/mother/brother/grandmother's hug, snuggling up in bed with my favourite book (essays in love by alain de botton) and my diary sitting under my pillow, drinking my mother's soup...

Lately I have found a new (hopefully not transient)kind of safety. There's this wave of warmness that surrounds me and its hard to resist. Arms that tell me "relax you're home", "we're going to make it through", "dont worry, there's nothing to be kan chiong about" - a touch that renders me....helpless.

22 years of my life, and this is the first time a stranger, with no blood ties, has warmed my heart with his brand of safety.