Heartsong

Sometimes things appear from thin air. Appear out of nowhere, and leave you dazed, confused, by the unxpected turn of events.

"Where do you see us going?"

"Us? Is there an us?"

We were friends first. Introduced through a mate, and always hanging out together as we went out in groups. He was endearing, charming, good natured, and hopelessly cute. I was naive, cautious and open. We grew close as the months passed by, to the extent of being speculated about by friends in our social circle. We were friends, or so I was blissfully adamant.

As the year grew to a close, so did my increasing awareness of an undercurrent that seemed to pass between us. Attraction? Lust? I put it down to hormones, and smiled and laughed and went about things as usual, denying the emotions I felt for him for fear that I would be plunged headlong into something I knew nothing about.

We came from two different worlds. We spoke the same language, could talk for ages on different topics, but there were so many fundamental differences between us. Differences that ran deep, that I was aware of from the first moment that we met and realised that nothing should happen, for I would become attached, and so would he, and then the inevitable question.

Now what?

Yet I felt happy with him, safe and comforted and cherished. I cared for him more than I would admit. More than a friend. The plateau of friendship was the safest route, and it was the one I took.

I left for Malaysia and left things hanging between us, unresolved issues that ran underneath the veneer of flirting and friendship that was always between us, for I felt like letting time and distance make things clearer.

Some things would have ended in heartbreak. And this was one of them. I knew it. He knew it.

We kept in touch despite the distance, through the convenience of the Internet, through mails and texts and MSN conversations and when I returned, we went out. Friends going out, music, dancing, the normal shebang. And when he pulled me aside to sit down, I didn't expect him to ask me what he did.

"Where do you see us going?"

"Us? Is there an us?"

I was so comfortable with the idea of being friends that I had ignored the attraction I felt for him. That's when it came out. How he felt for me. How the issue had been playing in his mind ever since I left, how his emotions were involved as well, but like me, he too could not see us going the distance.

Shock, denial, happiness followed by sadness, and acceptance. I had a million and one questions, flaring hope followed by what I had realised months before, my wayfaring emotions followed closely by cold rationality. As he shared his feelings, I did mine, and I could not quite comprehend why it felt like we were 'breaking up'. Breaking up something that hadn't even begun yet.

We promised to remain friends. Some things remain private. Shared between only me, him and my friends who were there to witness the events of the night. The night shook me to the core, and things passed between us that I do not care to analyse, nor wonder about.

And the future still remains uncertain. Except for the fact that I will always have cared for him. Deeply. He remains in my heart as a question leading on to even more questions, of which none I have the answer to. For only time will tell.

Venom

Don't cry for me. I'm not worth your tears.

I'm not the person you thought I was. I'm not the person I thought I was. Apparently I've turned into a stranger, a stranger that no one really knows, and least of all me. I get colder every day, my insides turning to shards of ice and my feelings frozen.

My smiles are plastic, the motions of socialising feel more like the mechanical manipulations of a puppet master as opposed to genuine feeling.

I can be evil. True that. Well, I've re-evaluated my life. And perhaps being a bitch and being cold and being that stranger that wakes up in place of me is where I'm supposed to be heading. Perhaps it's easier not to care, knowing that if no one cares for me, I can no longer disappoint. It's difficult living up to the expectations of others.

And all this while I thought it was for me.

Well. Screw you all. Everything I said before? Every single piece of advice? That's in the past. Stop reconciliating the woman that stands before you with the person you used to know. Stop asking me what happened to the person I was. Principles change. And even I am influenced by the people around me.

Good influences and bad. To different aspects of my life. The way I think? The way I dress? Maybe I need to reevaluate. From what you tell me I'm hypocritical. Well, I seem to have some warped sense of what I want to wear, what I feel comfortable wearing, and what seems proper. So is my warped sense of ideals. Of what's right and what's not. So maybe after all that I need to change.

I barely know damnit. I barely do. I know right and wrong but it's so much harder to sift through the shades of grey. And when I do something it does NOT automatically mean it's right. Just because I do one-off things that are different from what I say does NOT mean that it is the way I choose to live my life. So stop bringing it up as an excuse to justify the things you do.

I don't care. Really I don't.

Screw that. I do. I do care. I need to feel again, to recapture the happiness I once felt, the content in my life, to stop feeling this mechanical. Like a robot. Smile more. I say the right words, laugh the right way, smile the right times, and half the time I barely feel it anymore. I want to feel again. I do.

I do.

The Winds of Summer

So that's what they call a summer fling.

He came unexpected, with the winds of chance. I was attending a friend's open house, and he happened to be there as her older brother's guest. He caught my eye briefly, and I thought he was cute, but other things distracted me. We barely spoke, barely exchanged the slightest of social trivialities. And then I left without a second thought.

I didn't expect for him to get my number through a third party. I didn't expect him to have the nerve to call. Intrigued at his boldness, I agreed to meet this stranger. An act of impulse as opposed to my normal cautious self. And I'm glad I did.

I found a person I could relate to, with similar ideals, a person I could talk to for hours on end. He made me feel comfortable and he made me laugh. He amused me with stories of his backpacking days and his current working life. His enthusiasm for life, his relaxed nature, his optimism, his streak of confidence, all made him seem all the more interesting.

Our meetings were rare, due to his work schedule, but I looked forward to them. I could have never anticipated how at ease I felt with him. The twists of fate are unexpected. I would not have seen myself going out with someone like him, merely because of social differences. I learnt that sometimes one needs to step out of their comfort zone before they realise what they could be missing.

My closest friends, and my sisters, maintain that I cannot understand what they go through in their respective relationships. Why women do the things they do. I cannot deny my ignorance concerning matters of romance, save for pure logic, and this has not changed. All that has changed is that I have gained a different perspective. And perhaps, my heart.

I cannot say what might have happened had I stayed here. If we would have fought, or bored of each other. As it is, the only things I have are the memories, and the knowledge that I have made a new friend.

He was not my boyfriend, and there were no commitments. No words were said, no romantic goodbyes. And as I smile to myself on Valentines Day, surrounded by friends I love, my eye catches the chocolates he gave me as we passed each other in the airport, and I appreciate the lessons I have learnt. The gain of a greater appreciation of the people in my life, the ones who will pass in and out and teach me a little more about living and life.

Happy Valentines Day.

Moving In

So I've arrived in Melbourne. It feels like I barely left. The two and a half months I spent in Malaysia seem like a blur in my head, vague and dreamlike, the memories becoming less sharp in my head. Melbourne feels comforting, a reminder of my independence, the images of a young woman growing up and becoming and adult, even more so now I am to move into a new apartment.

Flying with Nat made the flight so much more fun, despite the snobby cabin staff. There is something about flying with a friend that helps the flight goes faster as opposed to having your enthusiasm dampened down by other harrassed and stressed passengers.

James has been invaluable in terms of helping me out with the apartment. We spent the better part of yesterday assembling chairs and other various pieces of furniture before I insisted on him teaching me how to cook. So we did. At one point I was struck by the situation; me cleaning up the house and putting last minute touches unto the chairs we had just assembled while he stirred the sauces in the kitchen. It was all so... homelike. We sat and had dinner in front of the television and talked about stuff.

His muscle came in handy when I had to move all my stuff in today as well. I hate moving with a passion. I suppose having another person actually handle all the heavy, awkward stuff for you makes a vast difference. There's something to be said about a guy who works out. Especially when he's helping me move heavy boxes, looks good while doing it and manages to be good company at the same time.

It's the first time I've ever had to be self sufficient. The apartment's my very first step into the grown-up world of paying bills and standing on my own two feet. Where my keys let me into my own place, not a room in a dorm or a hostel. Where I have a kitchen, my own dryer and washing machine, and balcony.

It's almost like playing house.

Fall from Grace

Perhaps the happiness and the cheerful exterior of my being were merely a mask to mask the dark void inside of me. The love of my friends and family were the only things that stopped me from hurtling down the abyss of despair, flailing and falling before I fell from salvation. And then I let go.

"I can't live with people who don't trust me. I have to get out of the house. If I stay here any longer, we're going to continue to fight. And I don't want that."

It was the first time I had ever directly defied my mother for a long time, and I could feel my heart breaking as I walked out of the house, barely able to see where I was going for the tears that blurred my vision and the emotional beating I had gone through.

It started with a conversation about my late night before, where I had returned home in the early hours of the morning. My mother was angry, understandably, about the hour I chose to return. I was confused at the sudden turn of events, my parents always having trusted me with my social life, allowing me the freedom to go where I wished and a lack of a curfew. My probing questions met with no answers, instead a growing hurt and realisation that my parents no longer seemed to trust me. I felt crushed, stifled, the heightened sensitivity causing me to feel more pain that I could ever imagine with the dawning that my parents did not trust me. And when my mother physically struck out at me in her mistaken belief that I was being rude to her, I could no longer take the pain.

I made my way up the hill and sat where the drains connected the households, where I had spent many happy times in my childhood; a place where I felt sheltered and safe. In my fragile emotional state, I sent texts to my father and my best friends, anger at my father for not talking his concerns over with me, and words of goodbye to my friends. Then only did I let the tears flow until they could flow no more and there was only emptiness left. A kind of numbness. I did not mean to get my friends involved. I told them no details, but Nat, Nik, Azreen and Sam, they found me anyway, tear-streaked and angry, sitting watching the sky. If I had my way, I would have stayed there, in my personal shelter sleeping under the stars with the grass under my back and the music of the crickets to keep my company. Yet they coaxed and cajoled and I found myself sleeping in Azreen's apartment that night.

I returned home the next day to pick up some things for my vacation to Langkawi and ran into my father.

"Can we talk?"

I cannot explain the overwhelming rush of sadness and anger that came over me, for I could barely look at his face without thinking of my mother's comments about his disappointment in me. Already I was crying. I seemed to have turned into a regular water fountain. I shook my head and told him I would return tomorrow.

All day it felt like there was something inside me that had died. The irony. The eternal optimist has fallen, and fallen hard she has. The fall from grace is a painful one, leaving my emotions ripped and bleeding, until I can feel no more for all the pain.

I returned the next day and talked to my father. I have never loved my father so much, for he tried to listen and understand my pain, my frustrations with the lack of openness in communication channels with me and my parents, my anger; and he in turn confided in me his concerns about me and my future. We talked and I felt listened and understood and hopeful that this too would come to pass, and it would make our family a much stronger unit. Then I returned and my mother was as cold to me as she could be, pretending not to care about my existence as I stood there and told her that I was leaving for my holiday.

"Go. I don't care."

I hated to leave on such a bad note, but it was done. I had no time to talk to her, and I could see from her expression that her mind was set. I could only implore my father to talk to her and help her see my point of view, and that was all I could do.

Langkawi island was a tropical paradise. Yet, the azure seas and the white sands were only temporary relief. I enjoyed my holiday, because it made me forget, and I was determined to do so as I swam in the sea, and basked in the sun, and played at the waterfalls. The company was good, and the place was akin to a little slice of heaven on earth. Yet I cannot force myself to feel what I don't. The smiles I smiled did not touch my eyes, they were only there to help me heal. I laughed rarely, and even more rarely joined in conversation, for any lull brought back the pain I felt.

I returned today and my mother still could not look at me. I am leaving Malaysia in four days and she still cannot look at me. Be still my broken heart.

I know I could have handled the previous situation in a much better way than I did, but I cannot turn back the past. It is done. For all I say and do, I love my parents too much, and the betrayal of their broken trust sent me over the edge. I have fallen from grace. And I do not know how I will return.