sotto voce

So far the journey has proved to be eye-opening and I’m glad to report that the view is breath-taking. I’ve never felt so safe and motivated at the same time. With him around, worries slowly dissipate away and there’s this constant motivation to be a better person. I want to be more hardworking with my work, more dilligent with my job search, more caring about my artwork, more compassionate to other people, more constant with my friendship, more charming and pretty with how I look/dress, and more serious about my squash.

Is that good influence or what?

He’s honest and sincere and he encourages me to be honest and sincere. I’m learning the way of confronting other people when I feel uncomfortable, instead of simmering in my own sour juices. I learn how to communicate instead of keeping everything inside because I worry that what I say will hurt the other people.

I’m discovering more and more about him every single day and he’s not the man he portrayed himself to be – but in a pleasant way. With other guys, they seem awesome and splendid on the outside, but the niceties turned out to be expensive giftwraps and botox injections to cover up the rubbish inside. Andrew, however, is the other way round. Six pack abs and bulging biceps aside, he’s not much of a charmer (in my opinion) hence my initial hesitation to go out with him. But slowly I’m discovering his many charms, one pleasant surprise after another. I’m looking forward to many more of his surprises.

Watching The Office (american version) last night, it struck me how Andrew is pretty much like Jim. Or maybe more of how the two of us resemble Pam and Jim. Not the most attractive couple in town. None of the glitz and confetti, but we’re cute in a different way. Similar sense of humor, like to make fun of other people, clicks on many other counts…

Ahhh… sel = bliss right now. I’ve been listening to Al green’s "Let’s stay together" on shuffle for the past hour. Go figure. 

Yep. You’ve guessed it.

Introducing…. Andrewsaurus-Rex (previously known as Mr.Shawty)

We don’t know where we’re heading yet, but as he said, "we damn well will make something beautiful out of it". 

Someone up there must find it really amusing to see what’s happening between mr.shawty and i these days.

It’s ironic enough that a fuckbuddy invitation with clear rules and boundaries still turns into an emotional relationship with my sitting oh-so-awkwardly as his mom commented "what a pretty couple" we are. Even more ironic is having us played the part of b and I exactly one year ago; although this time I’m the cold, emotionally unavailable one, while mr.shawty played my part last year.

I bet someone is laughing out loud up there right now.

And all I can gather from all these is that… I’m just a superficial bitch. Mr.Shawty makes me laugh, he makes me think, he makes me warm and fuzzy, and he lets me into his most private space even though it’s hard for him to do so, yet I can’t bring myself to date him.
For what reason?

1. I kinda don’t want to be involved in a committed relationship right now.
2. He’s not exactly my "type" of guy. Secretly I’m actually just a sucker for prince handsome & charming & smart on his white horse. Superficial bitch I am.

WHAT THE HELL, RIGHT?

No. 1 just reeks so much of B-ness: Oh, I’m a fucking coward without balls therefore I will not even attempt to open myself to another person because I’m afraid what will happen when it fails.

But everytime I try to make concession about Mr.Shawty, i’m reminded of my relationship with wenyuan. Two and a half years of pretending that we work well, when I had so many grouses and complaints about the relationship. So I promised myself to never settle for less, ever again. I’d rather be single for the rest of my life, than settling for an unhappy relationship.

How can I tell myself that Mr.Shawty is not wy or b. He’s in his own person, with his own amazing qualities and flaws. My ideal boy probably does not exist in real life, anyway. Or if he does exist, he probably will not make me happy. Even B, the one closest to the image, isn’t perfect. Fortunately for him, his defects are more inwards than outwards, so being the superficial me, I let them slide. But how unfair is it for me to axe mr.shawty just because his deficiencies are more outwards, but ego-wise, personality-wise,  life-philosophy-wise, he’s probably the most perfect guy I’ve ever met?

He wrote:

Ok, someone please please tell me I need to talk to him pronto…
He’s getting too close for comfort…

Addendum: who also stopped by my house in the middle of the night (while I was probably fast asleep) to drop off a can of chicken soup and a tub of my favorite yogurt outside my door with a note that says "the penis delivery man also performs other functions. feel better." 

Apparently as a responsible adult, on top of already being utterly miserable from the sickness myself, I also have the obligation to apologize to my community for being sick. Maybe for failing to be a clean, sanitized, disease-free citizen.

But no, I have to apologize for being sick to my boss, supervisor, professors, coach, friends, and so on.

Before that, let me share with you my misery.

First, imagine your tonsils (the balls-shaped thingy at the back of your throat which you generally don’t pay attention to) decided one day to stage a strike, become infected and swell until they reach the roof of your throat, and not minding white pus growing all over it. At this point, the size of opening in your throat is so small, it’s only enough for you to breathe and not for any other matter.

That’s right. This little miss piggy’s first and foremost objection with tonsillitis (besides the double L in the word) is FOOD. I can’t eat anything that is not of liquid-consistency. Soup, porridge, soup, soup, soup… yuck.
It would’ve been fine if only I were at home and I got to eat my mom’s amazing chicken soup, corn asparagus soup, tomato soup. Ah… all these incredible soup that taste so good you suddenly understand why life is worth living.
It would’ve been fine too if there’s a nearby Hale & Hearty Soup. Not as top-notched as my mom’s, but significantly better than the Campbell’s soup I have to deal with. Just opening the can and plopping the creamy glob of yuck into the bowl before microwaving it, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much gross stuff go into that mess. After a couple cans, I gave up. I couldn’t eat that shit. The sodium content itself is enough to kill me.

So I returned to my infant stage and started eating baby oatmeal. It’s no different from adult oatmeal except that the oatmeal is finely shredded (NOT GROUND) and fortified with 42 different vitamins and minerals (read: full of goodness for those fat little babies). I’m guessing that American babies are healthier than Indonesian babies because Gerber doesn’t put sugar in their baby oatmeal.
What a disappointment.

What’s wrong with you guys? Don’t you want your chubby babies to get sugar high?? Don’t you know that they’re so much cuter that way??! GEEEzzzz

I remember the Nestle baby oatmeal I used to get in Indonesia tasted sweeter. Maybe it’s the flavor (glutinuous red rice).
Anyway, because it tasted so bland, I added apple sauce to the oatmeal. Oh… mixing those gooey things together make me feel like a mommy with a newborn who likes to splatter food on the wall. So gross…
But it tastes good and it reacts well with my insanely sore uncooperative throat, so Gerber’s baby oatmeal + apple sauce have officially become my staple food for this week.

As my doctor recommended, I get a treat every meal: a choice between jell-o or fruity popsicle. They cool down the soreness and I just love sucking on dem popsicles. hahahaha…

I’m very surprised, however, that no one…. I repeat… nobody, not even those geniuses at mayoclinic.com, told me how FREAKIN PAINFUL it is to drink orange juice.
Gawd. I thought they would’ve had enough sense to remind me NOT to drink OJ because let me tell you, it feels just like pouring acid on your wound.
And stupid me, to assume that OJ will be fine since orange-flavored jello and orange-flavored popsicles are fine.
I’m still traumatized from that OJ experience, seriously…

Second pack of misery comes in the form of …. FEVER!
I’m proud to report to you, ladies and gentlemen, that I’ve survived 105° fever multiple times these couple of days.
And yes, they all felt like hell. Your body is burning, your head is burning, everything is burning, you’re sweating profusely that your bed is like the river of Amazon, your ears are ringing and your eyes can’t stand the brightness of light, your body felt like it’s on a bed of burning coal. Gawd. It’s just pure pure absolute misery.
It would continue for a couple hours until the drug finally kicks in and I’m knocked out for a couple of hours before everything starts again.
Well, actually in-between the fever attacks I’m also lucky enough to experience the chills, which is the equally-evil twin sister of fever. Everything feels cold, your bones feel so brittle with every step you think you’re going to crumble, you just start shivering and your teeth chatter, and even with seven layers of blanket you’re still just as cold.

Luckily I have really really nice, non-puritanical doctor and nurses. I say non-puritanical, because they have kindly given me a morphine shot, and dozens of codeines, on top of aleve and tylenol for my painful misery. Have I told you how much I love codeine??
Hehe… I used to have tonsillitis once every two months as a kid and my mom would slip in a little bit of codeine into my antibiotics (ground and mixed with honey) to help with my fever and knock me out so I would stop crying from the pain.
The thing about codeine sleep is that you get all sorts of random dreams that are just plain interesting. I dreamt about sailors and wine-trading and moms and roadkill and everything else under the sun. Although most of the dreams never reach conclusion coz my sleep is so restless I tend to get  up every half an hour or so. Still, I heart codeine (and please don’t tell my mom)

So far I’ve had the list of
1) aversion to food
2) fever and chills
3) sleeplessness
4) all sorts of pain associated with fever and chills

As if those things mentioned above are not enough to torture my mortal soul, apparently I also have to apologize to other people for my misery. WTH, right?

I have to apologize to boss for not turning up for work, to professors for missing class and being late on assignments and not grading labs on time, to coach for not being able to attend team dinner, to friend for cancelling dinner appointment, etc. etc.

Of course in general people have been awfully nice about it. J brought me porridge, S treated me with her acupuncture skill, Mr.Shawty shyly asked yesterday if I needed his company, most of my professors are wishing me well and allowing me extensions for my assignments. But then, there are some professors who’re absolutely mean and have no idea that when I said "I’m down with tonsillitis" it means Sel is literally splattered on the floor with tonsillitis. Dead, kaputt, not working, can’t function. So for them to still expect me to finish my assignment by this Thursday (ie. in two days) when it’s still painful for me to look at the screen for longer than 20 minutes (I typed this with my eyes shut), is just mean imho.

Oh well, that’s life right. For every ten nice person you meet, there’s always the eleventh mean one (which you should rightfully ignore). 

I guess I haven’t talked much about mr.fuckbud (the old one that I tried to hook up with couple of times and never worked), and that’s because the last time we succesfully met, he was being his asshole self times a hundred. The thing he did was mean, insensitive, degrading, and this is coming from me, who’s generally very very tolerant of other’s behavior.

After that night, I told my friend that if he still has the nerve to call/text me, I’ll tell him to go and fuck himself. 

Well, he never called/texted me and I deliberately avoided my major’s weekly luncheon so I don’t have to see his face. But yesterday was the banquet and I felt obliged to go since I’ve been skiving the past four and this is my last one as a senior. Inevitably, I saw him there (ironically sitting next to my other fuckbuddy) drinking glasses after glasses of wine. I ignored him and went home straight after the banquet was over for some delicious booty session with mr.shawty.

Around 2am, while we’re watching Lost, my phone vibrated and there it was, a message from mr.fuckbud with his infamous: "trying to chill"

What the hell does that even mean? I don’t appreciate vague message like that…
Why not just say, "do you wanna fuck?" or "are you up for some snogging?" or "i need a soulmate to talk to, are u available?".

Anyway, my reply to him: "Seriously go and fuck yourself."

Glancing at my reply, Mr.Shawty let out an enormous laughter and a headshake. "Wow, that’s an angry message." To which I just smiled demurely and continued watching.

Five minutes later, another message.
"Why?"

WHY?? WHY??? WHY??????
Holy fuck. Has he had retrograde amnesia in the past week or something? His oh-so-innocent question was so inane that I couldn’t help laughing my ass out at how naive he sounded. I didn’t mind his flaking off, or unashamedly asking me to steal a bottle a liquour from my friend’s birthday party (which I didn’t do), but asking if I know someone who’ll hook up with his sleazy friend or kicking me out of his place at six in the morning didn’t settle quite right in my stomach, to put it mildly.

So I texted him this: "Err because you’re pretty much an a-hole"

which I thought would be enough to put him to rest. But no… he just had to persist. This time he requested that we "talk about it".
And obviously my first reaction to that was: what’s there to talk about?
I was chill about stuff, I don’t mind hooking up with him once in a while, but once he started treating me like shit, I sure am leaving the boat.
So I told him: "I don’t think there’s anything to talk about."

Still that didn’t shut him up, and instead he played the diplomacy card. He said: "I’d like to talk. I’m trying to be a better person."

I was this close to tell him that :"I’m neither your mom nor your rabbi, so I don’t think I’m obligated to make you a better person."

Thankfully I had enough sense to not do that and simply ignored his message (which I shd’ve done from the beginning actually). Of course luck had it that I saw him this morning as I was having breakfast with Mr.Shawty. I felt a pang of guilt in my stomach as our eyes met, but really… I have no more business with that fella.

While I’m still cooling down from the whole i-swear-i’m-not-an-asshole thing, another man decided to drop another stinkin’ bomb on my lap. Is today a "let’s throw rotten tomatoes at sel" day and somehow I just didn’t get the memo??

You-know-who decided to tell me about his recent hook-ups with his girl friends, which are akin to digging his own grave. One is already not talking to him (yet again) and god knows what’s happening with the other one. From his story, I’m guessing all is not well on the western front. Good luck, buddy.

You know what’s more ironic? Remember the time when I bootycalled him last month? He said, "No, I have enough girl trouble," and then he listed these female friends of his whom he considered ‘trouble’. I told him then, "I don’t care if you tell me that you just slept with A, or B, or C, or three simultaneously."
His response: "No, no, no… stoppp That won’t happen"

Yeah, right. I guess someone needs to eat his own words, and "don’t forget to lick the mess you left on the table, honey…"

I gave him a piece of my mind, an honest slice of Sel’s wholesome but bitter pie. He agreed with everything I said but I regretted some of the things I said. I am surprisingly not angry or jealous. My heart did skip a beat when he first mentioned that he hooked up with the first girl, but after talking to him, all I could feel was actually pity.

Pity because he is stepping into his own pile of shit and because, while I’ve grown up so much in this one year, he’s still the same confused little boy who will always be emotionally unavailable. Too bad I still care about him. Otherwise I won’t even bother giving him any advice. Maybe because I’m his ex, I’m the only person who is brave enough to point at him and say, "Dude, you’re a fucking douche for taking advantage of these situations and if you want to stop hurting people, you better tuck your shirt in and fucking grow up."

But honestly I don’t want to be that person. I already know that as much as he told me how much he appreciates my advice, he probably thinks half of my advice comes from my grudge against him for our failed relationship. Second, why do I need to care about him? He’s not my puppy, not my pet, not my boyfriend. He’s just an ex. I’m not obliged to make him a better person, just like what I told mr.fuckbud.

As usual, however, Sel just got to be a fuckin’ trooper who’s still talking to his exes who have the propensity to talk about their girl troubles and occasionally, sex adventures. And why do I do these? Because I don’t want to be a fuckin’ pussy. Because I want to show them that I’m still the cool one, the strong independent one, the one with balls, the one who can basejump off a cliff and cook like an iron chef, the one who won’t break a sweat running four miles, the one everyone wants to be stranded in a desert island with, and they will forever eat their shit with their future so uncool, whiny, dependent girlfriend.

Although I don’t understand why I’m so persistent about maintaining this image of myself when I confessed to Mr.Shawty myself,  after he complimented  me on my strength and independence, that all those qualities of mine merely intimidate and make me the cool girl guys think they can treat like shit. And how did I arrive to that conclusion?? Because I’ve been hearing this sentence way too many times in too many variations: "I know you will be fine because you’re strong."

Strong enough to fuckin’ bust your balls that is. Seriously… what is wrong with these guys? Or maybe there is something wrong with me.
 I just don’t get it.