Dear Friends,
I can imagine some of you wagging your fingers at me, as soon as I told you what I did this weekend. I’m just hoping that by the end of this entry, you’ll understand why I did what I did, and just to put the spoiler right at the beginning: I’m glad I did it. I felt a million times better now and I’m officially ready, if not already starting, to move on.
Friday night my friend K called me to hang out and we started catching up on the past few weeks – the main drama of my life being my "break-up" with mr.N.
I told her that I found it really hard for me to move on because I felt I haven’t communicated the things that went wrong in our relationship properly. Instead, I was more focused on making him feel guilty for being so hung up over his ex and the fact that I was stressed out didn’t help me and the clarity of my argument. This explained why I kept having this "would’ve, could’ve, should’ve" and "what if"s, which drew me further away from my new beginning.
So I told her half-jokingly, "yeah… i really feel like i should see him face-to-face and talk to him about stuff before I can affirmatively let go of the whole situation".
you should see the light bulb that was suddenly lit over my head.
it sparkled crazily and if you know me, this kind of lightbulb is a tiny tad hard to extinguish.
after mulling over for about half-an-hour, i decided to follow K to new york and "ambush" mr.N
it was scary thinking about what kind of reaction mr.N would have when i suddenly appeared in front of him, and what would happen afterwards, etc. etc.
and i would’ve not gone ahead with the crazy plan if not for wy’s wise advice that has guided my decision for the past one year: "if you keep on thinking whether you should do it or not. fuck it, man. JUST FUCKING DO IT. stop thinking and just do it." he said it’ll change my paradigm forever.
It does; but whether the paradigm shift is for the better or for worse, I think I have to get back to you on that because I don’t know the answer right now.
The next morning all I could feel is a queasy, bloated feeling you normally have before major exams. Fear of failure mixed with eager anticipation.
Just to add to the excitement, K told me that I couldn’t stay at her place that night because her parents had a couple of people coming over and it’d be weird if I suddenly turned up in her house. Holy shit… that meant I have to convince mr.N to let me stay in his apartment, or knocked on some alumni’s door for mercy.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, I realized that morning that mr.N was going to have a birthday party at his house that day. Which means that my presence would add pressure to his day, and I could only cross my fingers that he wouldn’t blow up.
So, following K’s and N’s sage advice, I called him up at the train station and told him I was already in the city and asked if he’s available to meet today. I thought, if he sounded cold and unwelcoming, I could follow N back to campus and cancel the whole plan. Unfortunately he just woke up and only managed to say groggily, "yeah sure". That put me in an ambiguous situation, in that I had no firm assurance that my impromptu ambush strategy would work. But what the heck right… JUST FUCKING DO IT.
Thank god there was B and K during the train ride to assuage my fear. Plus, we were seated next to three good-looking, yummilicious college boys; one of whom kept glancing toward my direction. I tell you: ogling is indeed the cure to everything. Hahaha…
I decided to go straight to his apartment – just to make it more dramatic. You know how I love drama right… Lucky me, there was a guy who lived in his apartment who let me into the building. So when I called him to make sure he’s in the apartment, I was trying to climb the stairs of his apartment building silently with my killer boots.
When I was right outside his door, he asked me, "Where are you?"
"Urm… somewhere midtown..," I lied, while pushing the doorbell.
"Could you hang on for a second.. someone rang the doorbell," he said.
"OK."
And then I heard him screaming from his apartment, "I knew it! I knew it was you
", even before he reached the door and had the chance to see who’s outside the door.
I asked him how he knew, and he said, "You’d never say you’re somewhere midtown, you’ll always give me a landmark nearby. Also, knowing your sneaky sneaky attitude…"
I handed him his present and soon after our small talk, I was being involuntarily drafted into his cleaning army. The two of us cleaned the apartment, did laundry and stuff, bought alcohols and food for the party, and… there went the chance for me to talk to him. Before I knew it, the friends arrived and ‘twas literally party mayhem till dawn. I didn’t get drunk enough to be able to ignore him completely, so there were moments when I’d be eyeing him and his female guests, and there were moments when I’d feel irrational jealousy taking over me, and I’d head to the toilet and sit in the bathtub until I became rational once again.
Everyone got pretty much wasted after that – what with thirteen rounds of shots, endless battles of beer pongs and ridiculous amount of weed being smoked. I thought, ... fine, maybe tomorrow we could talk.
Silly me. The next morning was equally fucked up as we both looked like we’re about to keel over and die from the hungover. And here’s when the drama began…
Mid-afternoon, he discovered that he’s supposed to host two "Wes babies" (juniors from wes). From the look of it, I knew I was being socially rude by overstaying and so I asked him if he wanted me to leave because I could just stay at K’s place. He didn’t say ‘yes’ or ‘no, please stay’. He just looked at me and said: "I didn’t know you’re going to stay until tomorrow. You know I have work tomorrow."
Geez… so heartless. but so predictable.
I was of course hurt, and at the same time, was unable to tell him anything I had meant to tell him. All the notes I’ve jotted down during the train-ride, all the things I wanted to communicate to him,.. they were turned into ashes by the fuming anger of disappointment.
As he watched me put on my boots he said: "You look like you’re upset about something and you’re very uncomfortable. But it doesn’t seem like you want to talk about it."
"Well… I did come over here on impulse because I thought we could talk," I said bitterly
"But we’re both fucked up and are in no condition to talk any sense." he continued.
"exactly" and with that I marched out of the apartment.
It felt terrible to leave like that. I denied him his goodbye and I didn’t even turn around to look at him. I just went out of the apartment and made sure I stomped my way down the hallway.
But the minute I saw the street through the building’s door, I just slumped down and felt so paralyzed by anger and sadness. "this is not how it’s supposed to end," I kept telling myself. I don’t come all the way here for this to end worse than before.
I sat there on the stairs for a good five minutes before I swallowed my pride and dialled his number. I told him I wasn’t feeling well enough to go out and he told me to come back and recuperate. He left me in the room, and I just grabbed the nearest paper and pen I found before I started writing frantically about all the crushing feeling inside me. Somehow, in that moment of chaos I found clarity.
I handed him a piece of paper to him with two simple paragraphs:
"This will sound pathetic and as a matter of fact, I hate myself for being so stupid and vulnerable. But I can’t leave like this. If I do, I know I’ll spend the next two weeks feeling fucked up.
Just give me a sweet parting and I promise I’ll be out of your hair. Forever.
I just hate to leave it messy and all I’ll remember is the bad things at the end.
I want to leave, knowing for sure that I was just meeting the wrong person, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, instead of going through another round of pathetic self-deprecating cycle.
I really meant it when I said I didn’t want anything from you and I did want it to be as casual as possible. But involving yourself in a non-committal relationship requires a great degree of self-confidence, which I do not have all the time.
Just like you, there are times when I feel great and it doesn’t matter what you do / don’t do to me. But I also have my weak moments when I feel very insecure about myself. Unfortunately, of late the second condition prevails more often, which is why I often turn into a needy monster that I so fucking hate. And I do want to defeat this ugly side of me – I don’t want to feed my insecurities by admitting its presence.
All I want right now is for us to go back to the point when I have no expectation whatsoever."
He nodded and we shook hands, sealing the deal. And then he said, "Honestly, you shouldn’t blame yourself at all… It’s not you. It’s really just the wrong time. And if you want more from me, I…"
"It’s not about wanting more or wanting nothing. I don’t want anything, but it doesn’t solve anything, because I have to be secure first before I can deal with these things. Or else, it’ll just fuck me up over and over again."
Wow. A whole week of drama suddenly turned into an enlightenment for me.
The rest of the night was uneventful. He tried teaching me DOTA unsuccessfully, because he was just too concerned about the right tactic, the right move, the right character, etc. And I got "yelled" at a couple of times because I was just so slow.
Then I had to entertain the two babies who were probably wondering why on earth I was at MrN’s place, and if we’re actually going out.
After the babies went to bed, I went to do my readings while mr.N did his daily ritual of chatting online etc.
He went to work early in the morning and I left the apartment at noon, after I emailed him a ‘thank you’ note. I expected the day to be kinda gloomy. After all, I’ve developed an attachment to him, and even though I do realize wholeheartedly that he’s just not the right person for me, it’s hard to say goodbye no matter what.
Also, my transportation back to school was messed up because the friend I was supposed to be sharing cab with, never picked up my call and my cellphone ran out of battery at 2pm. My other friend couldn’t picked me up either because she was panicking over her undone thesis.
But guess what, ... I met RK randomly on the train (I happened to be looking out of the train window when he walked past and I just called out his name) and I got a free ride home with his companies, not to mention the interesting conversations we had during the train ride. We stopped by this Chinese restaurant to have a delicious and fun-filled meal, and for once, I really believed that the world is conspiring to present me with unexpected surprises and coincidences that make me happy.
And when I got home, I found this sitting in my inbox:
"Obviously this whole weekend was very confusing and unexpected. Yes, it was weird for me. Yeah, I’m still trying to wrap my head around it all. I hope you don’t think that this is goodbye forever and ever. I really enjoy you in my life and I want you around when everything feels good. I won’t assume I understand any sort of weirdness and discomfort that you may be going through, but I hope it’s not much. Yes, it was strange to have you show up and stay so long, and as a person it breaks society’s conventions, but as Mr.N I enjoyed your company and was glad to have that time with you. You are always so sweet and caring, no one could get sick of that. The wine, omelett, help, everything was very special. You are a great person and I wish you all the strength in the world that you already have, but just don’t see. Please be good."
And dear friends, as much as this sounds implausible, that email officially ended all the miseries I had for the past three months. And I can’t tell you how relieved and how free I feel after reading that.
I know this is a loooong entry, but please bear with me. There are a couple of points I need to make:
- There was no hanky-panky this weekend, which I thought made the whole thing simpler. Although I must admit it took a HUGE AMOUNT OF PERSEVERANCE to exercise self-control, what with sleeping on the same bed for two nights in a row.
- Sure I know everything is just his smooth-talking and I won’t be surprised if all along he just sees me as a "toy" or whatever. I know that I’m not the girl he’s willing to sacrifice for. I can only hope that he’ll meet that girl and he’ll finally see the reason to turn his life around.
- Talking to people I haven’t been talking to for long (eg. RK and his friends) just makes me realize that I’ve just been way too hard on myself. And I’m glad I see the reflection of myself in RK, which makes me feel less alone.
- Impulsive behavior does bring you to risky places. But I firmly believe that there’s always a fire escape in any kind of situation, if only you’re clear-headed enough to get the best out of the situation.
- I hope you guys will stop wagging your fingers at me, and give me a pat on my back instead, for a job well done.
is a true testament that in the end, we’ll all float on okay…
)
