En Passant

When death strikes prematurely it always comes as a shock.

Our first instinct is invariably disbelief, then perhaps, variably anger, denial, regret, remorse. Guilt.

Kubler Ross described the bereavement reaction at length. I personally think it's all rubbish, with a bit of truth mixed in. It all depends on our relationship with the person, and on how we interacted with them, if at all.

******************************
I remember my best friend from primary school, Junlong.

He had a large head and very short hair, and he wore spectacles. He had a kindly face. I think we were classmates from primary two to three. I changed class each year, so that must mean he promoted up with me.

The last words I spoke to him were, if memory serves me correctly, "don't worry, I'll never get in" (wrt some stupid IQ test thingie that resulted in me being snatched out of my school and unceremoniously implanted into another)

I met him again three years later, our mothers were both walking us, somewhere near farrer road. We waved at each other and smiled.

I read his obituary in the papers a few days later. And then I read the front page article about how he got mowed down by a bus, crossing out from behind a waiting taxi into traffic.

I was very young, and at the time not quite in touch with anything vaguely resembling emotions. And yet I knew I had to attend his funeral; it was only proper.

The mother refused to let me go; I was too young and had to be protected from these kinds of things.

And that was the end of that.

In her mind, anyway.

Guilt.
*******************************************

My neighbours daughter died when she was in her teens; she was a national gymnast, and really quite pretty.

I didn't know her very well, save what I read in the newspapers about her once in a blue moon, and from our brief interactions in her mums garden when the mothers would get together to enthuse about roses, and leave the two teenagers planted neglected in the flowerbeds.

We used to shyly roll our eyes in exasperation at each other, at our uncool mothers.

She was struck down by leukaemia - or rather, by overwhelming sepsis post bone marrow transplant. I have vague recollections of the organism in question being Epstein Barr.

The word amongst the doctors was that she was nearly at her window period, beyond which her immune system would have been expected to protect her against infection again.

These days, I'm a little older and know that the window period is arbitrary; it was just one of those things; bad luck, bad timing, and perhaps a stolen kiss.

Depression

**********************************************
From : The Electronic New Paper

'HEARTLAND HOTTIE' DIES IN SLEEP FROM BLEEDING IN BRAIN
No symptoms for 1 month after she hits head
By Elysa Chen

October 19, 2008

THAT self-assured smile, that slight tilt of the head captivated The New Paper's photographer Gavin Foo so much he snapped her picture.

And when it appeared in the 'Heartland Hottie' series in The New Paper on Sunday in March last year, it was, for Miss Sai Fengmin, one of the happiest moments in her 26 years of life.

Now, that smile, frozen in a photograph, is all that's left for her mother.

Holding up the picture, a teary Mrs Sai asked: 'Isn't my daughter pretty? She was so proud and happy that she was spotted for your Heartland Hotties section.'

Miss Sai died in her sleep on Thursday.

It was a shocking end to an inexplicable turn of events that began a month earlier, when she knocked her head against a glass door.

The marketing executive was visiting a friend at her new home when she knocked into a glass panel between the kitchen and the living room.

She didn't know then, but that seemingly innocuous bump may have resulted in an undetected brain injury that led to her death a month later.

There were few tell-tale signs that it was anything serious. No nausea or giddiness - common symptoms of a concussion - within the first two weeks.

But on Wednesday, four weeks after the accident, Miss Sai had a headache and fainted at work.

She was then admitted to Alexandra Hospital, where she died in her sleep early the next morning.

An autopsy showed she had died of an acute brain haemorrhage.

Describing her daughter as the 'most special' of her five children, Mrs Sai said: 'When my colleagues at work see the picture of my children at my desk, they would keep talking about how pretty and special my Min Min was.'

Mrs Sai declined to give her full name or her occupation.

The first sign that all was not well came at 10am on Wednesday morning when Miss Sai fainted at work.

Mrs Sai, who got a call from her daughter's colleagues, rushed to the office.

'My daughter kept saying she felt very giddy and wanted to sleep. She also kept vomiting something chocolate-coloured,' she said.

Mrs Sai called for an ambulance and rushed her daughter to Alexandra Hospital within 20 minutes.

Complained of pain

At the accident and emergency ward, Miss Sai kept thrashing around on the bed and complained of pain.

Mrs Sai said: 'She was still strong but she just didn't seem to be able to open her eyes.'

She had been told she had a thyroid problem by a GP a week earlier.

At the hospital, Miss Sai was kept under observation. But her symptoms had nothing to do with the thyroid problem, said Mrs Sai.

And no one told the doctors about the knock on the head.

She said: 'We were so focused on the thyroid problem that we forgot that it could have been because she had hit her head one month ago.'

Miss Sai had gone to a polyclinic the day after she hit her head. She was told to monitor her condition for two weeks and was given medical leave for one day.

Mrs Sai said the doctor told her that if she did not experience nausea or giddiness after two weeks, she should be fine.

She was due back at the polyclinic for her follow-up two weeks after the knock, but decided see a private doctor instead because she did not want to wait in the long queue.

It was then that the general practitioner found out that she had a thyroid problem.

Mrs Sai said: 'If they had not done an autopsy, I would still be telling everyone that she died of a thyroid problem.

'I can't believe that she was still joking about how the glass didn't break after she knocked into it.'

Mrs Sai had stayed with her daughter until 11pm on Wednesday.

At 3am on Thursday, the hospital called Miss Sai's family, informing them that she was experiencing breathing difficulties. Her family rushed to the hospital, but it was too late.

Her father, whose eyes were red from crying, said: 'We didn't even get to say goodbye to her.'

He was too distraught to continue.

According to a friend, she was his favourite daughter. He later said in Mandarin: 'She was a filial daughter, but she was often too shy to express it. She hid her love for us inside.'

Added Mrs Sai: 'She contributed to the household expenses and, as the oldest child, she voluntarily moved out of our four-room flat so that her brother and three sisters could have more space.

'She was so independent. She often travelled overseas on her own.'

Miss Sai, who rented an apartment with friends at Normanton Park in Alexandra, would visit her family at their Telok Blangah flat on weekends.

Mrs Sai said her daughter, an Arts graduate from the National University of Singapore, was a bright student who never needed tuition.

She had earlier attended Anglo-Chinese Junior College and Raffles Girls' School.

Describing her daughter as someone who treasured friendships, Mrs Sai said: 'I hope to hear from her friends. I want to hear about how she brought happiness to them and how she was always there for them.'

Holding up a souvenir showing the word 'bye' framed by a photocopy of Miss Sai's hand that she had made for colleagues as a farewell gesture when she left her former job, her paternal aunt, who wanted to be known only as Mrs Teo, said:

'She was such a creative girl, with such a bright future. We are going to miss her.'



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUDDEN DEATH

LATE SEPT

Miss Sai knocks head against glass panel at friend's house. The next day, she sees a doctor and gets medical leave for a day.

6 OCT

She is diagnosed with thyroid problem at GP clinic.

15 OCT

10am: She has headache and faints at work. Reaches hospital at noon.

15 OCT

4pm: She is admitted to a B2 ward, then moved to B1 ward at 11pm after her mother asks for upgrade.

16 OCT

3am: Hospital calls family. They arrive at 3.30am, but Miss Sai is already dead.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SYMPTOMS

1 A sudden, severe headache worse than anything you have ever had in your life. That's a sign that a knock on the head may be more serious than you think, said neurosurgeon Alvin Hong.

2 Loss of consciousness.

3 Weakness or persistent numbness afterwards, or drowsiness.

4 Neck stiffness, which may be due to an aneurysm - a fluid-filled bulge in the wall of an artery - rupturing.

5 Persistent giddiness and vomiting, especially if accompanied by a very severe headache

**************************************************

I never knew Miss Sai Fengmin, but she was a friend of a friend.

Sometimes I really hate the way the media sensationalizes everything with what little knowledge that they have - while revealing the truth, quite by accident.

Sudden, severe (? "thunderclap" ?? )headache - in extremis.
Loss of consciousness.
Giddiness, lethargy.
Nausea and vomiting.
Photophobia.

I really don't think that the family should have been made to feel guilty about omitting to mention the minor head trauma a month ago.

I don't have all the facts here.

But ask any medical student to put the signs together, as written in the newspaper.

Any student.

It's pass-fail viva stuff. And then ask them what must be done next.

And then all sorts of questions begin to spring up, which I shan't alude to. I know what happens to people like me, who even begin to write what I've written.

Troubled

More Troubled
*******

Why write

A few nights back J, the lawyer-babe who mixes a mean cocktail commented that she doesn't write because she prefers to keep everything in her head; words are simply insufficient to capture her thoughts.

And if certain memories hurt you, why write about them at all - why leave a trail behind that might remind you one day?

Does writing give you a catharsis, she asked.

*****
It is important to mourn; important to remember.
Important to write, to cry, to speak and to be heard.

These are the ways we do justice to our memories.

It is right to struggle to remember, againt each passing day as time and life wear us down - it is right, to write, to help us in the future as sensescence claims our memories a day at a time.

*****
Writing doesn't make me feel better. It offers no solace, no shelter. It gives me no catharsis. The things I write about, when they mean anything significant, are the passage of love, of goodness, of happiness, and even of friends.

It just feels right, to write.

*****
I took a photo of myself today. It's a rare day when it happens, I hate being taken, no idea why.

Only today I was in my new uniform (which I still have almost no idea how to put on properly) and it bore a passing resemblance to a policeman's outfit, and I remembered how much the ex likes policemen.

I won't write it; perhaps in the future I won't even remember the thought that just crossed my mind.

Anyway, I remembered another time when I was in uniform, and I thought nothing of snapping my photo and sending it to her.

Today I took the photo on a whim, and strangely looked fairly decent in the first (and only) shot.

And then it took me another few hours, before I sent it.

That's what time does. It makes things... difficult.

Each passing day another cinder falls from the bridges that we have burnt, and one day nothing will remain of our memory, in our memories.

That's just the way it goes.

*****
....et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris

Time wasting

http://wavywavything.blogspot.com/

Playing with matches

I was driving her home.

"What kind of girl do you go for?"

"Well..."

Silence for a while. All the people who have come and gone, faces past and present flashed by in my head.

"...I just know it when I see it."

Sometime later.

"If MM wasn't attached I'd've have thought you two would make a pretty good match..."

I raised an eyebrow.

A good match? What's a match but a piece of wood with some sulphur on the end?

What's compatibility, what's suitability - what's anybility got to do with it?

All There is - just a feeling when you meet someone : right or wrong. Something present, versus something absent. Something elusive, something that feels precious - but really isn't.

And in the aftermath, a realization that that feeling has, to put it clinically, no bearing on the long term prognosis of how things will work out.

That feeling is purely subjective. That feeling that this is... something good.Is purely subjective.

And so often wrong.

*****
And so I'm here, trapped in hospital with nothing to drink but yakult.

I want to walk. To run.

To escape.

No means No

The department secretary called up the other day :

Sec : Are you going for the hospital dinner and dance?

Me (irritated, because running busy clinic) : What? No. Thanks.

Sec : Please lah, we need someone to go

Me : No thank you

Sec : So you're going ah

Me : When is it?

Sec : At the end of the month, I'll put you and your partner down

Me : What? I have no partner. And I don't want to pay.

Sec : Its okay its paid for by the department, so you're going ya?

Me : No!

Sec : Too bad (hangs up)

Some time later I get an email from the uber secretary warning people of the consequences of backing out of the "deal", namely that the department will force defaulters to pay for their own tickets.

It gets worse, shortly after I receive an invitation card to the dinner and dance, labelled (Re-mi) and wife.

So now I'm married. I must have been pretty fucking wasted at the time because I sure as hell don't remember the ceremony.

*****
So once upon a time I would have asked the ex to go, and she would have declined because she couldn't have been seen in hospital-public with me, and I would probably have stayed at home moping and studying while my hundred bucks goes to waste while she went out clubbing with her friends. Shrug.

Anybody feel like going to a stupid hospital dinner and dance? I have two spare tickets.

Fishbowl

It was rather surreal when she called, and just a little unnerving.

It wasn't that it was a surprise call out of the blue, but rather because she sounded exactly like Her.

It would have been less unsettling had it just been that common accent, but it was - the pitch, the turns of phrase, the mannerisms she chose, and that laugh.

The difference though lay in her thoughts, and the way she looked out upon the world.
She said I like that you see the humour in everything...
...and then I couldn't help but remember.

*****
I wrote to Her to stay well clear from this place; the jump from the first world to the third is precipitous and potentially damaging. She writes back that the grass is always greener...

I remember thinking that once - why not give it a shot, how bad can it get, besides the grass is always greener on the other side.

How much younger and more naive I was then, living in the big city of the world.

On mice and men

There's a reason for this.

The same way there's a reason I found myself alone at Klee on Friday just needing a drink, and a laugh. Just to laugh.

There're so many reasons for the world; but none of them are for me.

There's a reason why mice think they rule the country - because by and large they do -- and a reason why I was never truly a mouse - because I don't belong here.

And a reason why I don't play their games : because I never belonged here.

I never saw a world of mice and men. I lived for eight years in a society of people. Just people.

And even before I left, even growing up in the country apart from the system : I just saw people. Just people.

There's a reason why C cheesed off the bartenders at Klee, and the Family of women who had taken me under my wing, and a reason why I didn't. I never walked the walk of a mouse, never wanted to appear overbearing, overconfident or arrogant.

I simply don't think in terms of mice, and men.

I just see people.

******
And maybe a reason why it feels like there's nobody to talk to right now when I really need to, and even if there were I wouldn't want to, and a reason why it's just so damn hard to read and maybe a reason why I don't eat much from time to time, and why tonight I'm hungry but I don't feel like eating.

I'm sure there's a reason for everything.

I'm sure there's a reason for everything.

Malcontent

LL, after reading MM's blog went "Well, what can I say... she's... a malcontent."

Sitting here in my torn jeans and T, somewhere out there in a very generic call room, feeling - something - at the back of my mind, I can't help but feel that LL is dead wrong - that people like MM need to find people who are grounded, like yours truly, to talk to.

Because I remember what I was like before the running started - the same existential fears, the same worries about the world around me, the same frustrations, the same wry throw everything over your shoulder conclusions - i'm no angel, no politician, no - body. Worries for another person and time and universe.
I remember when I was still a kid always badgering my dad with Whys and How Comes till he'd tell me to shut up and eat my vegetables. And even beyond that, till the Mother told me to quit harrassing my dad - but my dad had all the answers, my dad was the Wisest, you see. Good old Dad. If he'd paid me any heed he'd have noticed I pre-empted the flu vax long before it happened - one of the questions was why can't we take viruses and make them inject our own DNA back into our own cells?

So I learnt over time that there were no answers for a lot of the questions I asked - there were plenty of answers for other questions, but they didn't seem worth asking. I don't know what it was that drove me back then, but I just had to keep wondering, and thinking too much. (Was it You that told me once upon a lifetime ago that I think too much? Hmm perhaps it was.)
Why do we hurt each other? Why war? Why genocide? Why hatred? Why military expenditure? Why dictatorship...

Too many questions with no answers.

Gradually you learn to tune out the questions; there's just no point repeating yourself ad infinitum. You get battered by the reality of life; somewhere along the way you mess up and are left with a lifetime of regrets. You become self-centered and with each passing heartache you feel a little less like thinking, and a lot more like running.

And suddenly you're here, trapped.

In a call room with a leash attached to your mobile phone.

In a country with an iron grip around your whole life.

And there's so many places to run, but all the roads lead back here.

You wear black a lot for some undiscernable reason, and the other doctors let slip what they think one day by stating that they guess you went to goth parties a lot overseas. Your mother watches you leave the house and does a double take that you're going to work in... those ripped jeans?

Pause, and rewind. My god. This is me.
Closet rebel. (pun intended)
Bein worn down by the system.
Cookie cutter cutout citizen.
Dreaming of a better future, somewhere else.

I remember You asking a few years back - what happened to us, the best and the brightest?

People tell me that it's no better elsewhere, all systems are flawed. People are racist out there. You'll never belong.

I remember Su. and B. And all the other people of significance I once knew. How many of you are left here?

How many of you were willing to choose building a protective little bubble around your life to block out the world around you to living somewhere where you didn't need the bubble at all in the first place - and could just get on with the living.

It's true. I'll never belong out there.
But I don't belong here, either. Not in the land of the blue pill. Not somewhere safe where everything's fine because there's no crime, no deviancy, no poverty, no "badness".

I've said it countless times.

A society needs all these things to function properly. People need these things to remember to fear, and remember when not to; to remember when to laugh, and to remember when to look twice. To stop feeling superior over things that don't matter and patting themselves on the back over things that are so, so very trivial (a hub! a hub! my kingdom for a hub!) and to start feeling worried about the things that really do.

A country needs helmsmen who know right from wrong and good from bad.

I need somewhere where I can remember who I am, and where moral ambiguity isn't a daily routine, but something I can keep at bay; something tangible and dangerous that I can choose to shy away from.

I'm not. Grounded.
I don't know if I'm malcontent, age has changed a lot in me.

But I know that I am not content.
I want to be - of course I do. Who doesn't?

Not so very long ago I had my own little bubble, and a year and a bit just flew by so very quickly. I had a vague dream that I could cling to, a small shelter from the reality of the world around me. And then the walls came down, and I was clingy. Who wouldn't be? I didn't choose the red pill, it was forced upon me.

And then there were questions again, questions that I had escaped since the last time around - a year before. Questions I had escaped since my teenage years.

Why do people hurt each other?

What's the point in trusting people - everyone's in it for their own self gain. Everybody has an agenda.

You can offer your trust to someone, and make him or her aware that you know that you're exposing yourself to his or her mercy - armed with the knowledge of your insight -- they still abuse that trust, perhaps with a cleaner conscience.

Then wherefore trust?

I'm old enough to know the answers - there are no answers, and its not my pasa. I'm also old enough to know that sometimes you just have to.

And sometimes you don't.

*****
It happened again; I've been around for so long I've seen two cycles now.

The hospital, let's call it Old Chang Kee to humour the ex, I promised her I'd write like this someday... was embroiled in a mass casualty.

"Simulated" patients came boiling into the hospital, and doctors were activated by the hundreds to show the world how capable we are of handling a disaster.
And in the aftershock... I mean aftermath, I'm sure some minister will receive a glowing report about how well we did, and how much we learnt.

And I, caught in the thick of it, couldn't help but remember another time and place, and think as I watched the system start to buckle - fucking amateurs.

It shouldn't be this way; not after so many trial runs in the past. The system has no forethought, no redundancy. The loopholes have not been closed, the lessons from the past are still unlearnt. Next cycle will see a new brainchild fall on its face, and bring a new batch of glowing reports.

If you want to plug the gaps, then fucking run the scenario countless times over till you've spotted them all.

You don't need a huge one day drag-on-forever affair to prove a point. You don't need your simulated patients being run around the hospital by exhausted anaesthetists to prove that the system works, when it really doesn't.

Back in the day, somewhere in the UK we just sat down to a lot of sheets of paper. We had an objective in mind - to find the loopholes. All of us, from the lowly SHOs to the senior consultants. We had a disaster scenario clearly painted out to us (not wondering halfway in what kind of disaster just happened anyway? What's going on??) and not just to some invisible senior staff far removed from the real world in their command posts.

The times were made up. The delays were calculated based on real-life analysis.
The chokepoints became obvious. Brainstorming was done and comments welcome from the ground up.

Not this sham we pulled which culminated in us milling around bemused, waiting to ferry our triple-stacked patients up to the wards from the filled beyond capacity emergency department.

Technology speeds up simulations. Why can't we fucking learn from the rest of the world? Just have an electronic exercise. Plug in the variables. Create plans. Create contingency plans. Test them on the simulation. Perfect your game.

And then when you think you have it sorted, hold your grand full-fledged exercise. And audit audit audit. The times, the chokepoints... and the clinical care. Shouldn't a disaster scenario be about checking standards of care provision as well? Isn't that the crux of healthcare - not just number crunching?

On number crunching - how the fuck can you run a mass casualty exercise without going into army triage mode? What kind of moron imagines they can save the world when the twin towers come crumbling down?

*****

That's what troubles me, all too often, about living out here.

We're a first world country with a third world mindset. We don't look forwards. We don't think.

We do what we're told. We run. We hide.

We leave it to someone else, who has the brains, the power, the authority.

We are nothing, and our views are for naught.

And one day when the men in white find this, we are someone to squash, and to silence, with another nice presidential tea or lunch.

*****
I read her entry about CERN and remembered a time when I would have wondered the same.

I recall telling a friend wryly once the nature of reality and Schrodinger's cat in the box. And how reality doesn't have to tie up the way we know it, as mere... specks on the face of this universe, coming to grips with our own reality through the magic of science.

Just because this looks like a light switch doesnt mean that when I flip it a rack of nuclear missiles won't rain down on Iran, triggering the end of the world...

We know it's not true within a certain confidence interval, but we'll never know for sure.

Who's to say what happens when you break reality up into its smallest fragments? The think tanks postulate Higgs Bosun; I'm sure trekkies and sci fi addicts would love for a rip in the space time continuum to materialize.

I'm sure life will just go on, and tomorrow we'll land on mars and we won't even bat an eyelid.
A century from now we'll probably still be screwing each other over in life, love and international relations, just the way we always have.

But it's an interesting thought nonetheless. Maybe it'd actually be a good thing if something unthinkable happens. Maybe if Stephen King comes real, instead of Arthur C Clarke, we'll actually learn something from the madness we call our humanity, for once.

Why

Why do you need to take your exam from here, she asked.

Why, because...

because...

And then I realised. I don't. I really don't have to.

Crazy Eyes

I spent last night playing with Xena's two Jack Russels.

The boy dog, Elmo has absolutely insane eyes. Slightly googly like a pug's, but not in the least bit benign.

I first made the acquaintence of Elmo when I was repairing Xena's then-computer.
Xena fell asleep hugging her two babies, and once she was out, Elmo squirmed out from under her arm and slunk to the edge of the bed, where I could sense him staring at me out the corner of my eye, and feel his doggy breath on my ear.

It was because I refused to make eye contact and ignored him that he didn't bite me, and also the reason why he has never attempted to take a chunk out of me yet, to date anyway.

I kinda like him. He has crazy eyes.

*****
Spent this evening playing the piano for a bit with my mum. It's been a while - the ex wrote about how beautiful it was to watch.

Hope-less

Today saw us running for Hope today, untrained muscles protesting against a shock decision to enter us in a ten kilometer run (at least it wasn't an army half) as we struggled not-so-valiantly on. There was talk half way of abandoning our run and pigging out at mcdonald's, but the ever present fear of the apparition of the boss solidifying before our eyes kept us plodding steadily onwards.

After the run we finally had that promised mcdonald's brekky. I was disturbed to watch full grown men fretting about their caloric intakes, but such is the way of the world these days, when women are women, and men are women too.

*****
I remember those last moments when we parted.

You were curled up in bed gasping for breath. Your eyes were filled with pain and anguish, as were mine.

The boy who talked too much for you stood mutely over you, all out of words.

I want you to know that all I felt was overwhelming pain and sadness.
There was no anger, no hatred.

Perhaps in some alternate universe out there we found the courage to speak to each other and make nice again.

In this one I turned, and left, before my world broke any further apart.

I never wanted us to end this way. Not like this.

*****
I listened to J telling me about her breakup.

I can't believe he's dating again! I can't fucking believe he's dating again! It's only been a week!

And then I remembered what you wrote :

Ten days.

*****
I remember how whenever I heard distressing things like the other doctors boasting about shagging the nurses - and you put your cock in her mouth on the sofa... and you did her on the table doggy style... and in the club you... etc

I remember when they were slagging off... your colleagues

I remember feeling the world becoming darker, and being thankful that I had you, that I had a place to take refuge from the darkness and insanity of the world around me; I remember how I used to tell you all about it, and how you would console me and things seemed better again.

I remember how everything felt the instant the darkness of the world suddenly seemed to have seeped into my last place of shelter.

*****
Did it ever strike you how ironic things are?

How E used to try to persuade you that I would be like all the other doctors - a cheat, a liar. How you wrote that you defended me to her, but secretly worried it might be true - because you could understand how it happens all too easily, someone more beautiful, someone fresher faced.

And how at the end of the day it was E herself that was the liar and the cheat.

That E and C are still working through their differences, manipulative and malignant as they are, and that we have lost everything between us, although we were... not like them?

How you wrote how much you had to lose us for your peace of mind - so that you wouldn't be tormented.

And how you were tormented when we lost each other? As was I?

I know how these things work. Each passing day our bridges remain burnt makes the crossing more difficult; each passing day brings new people into our lives, and makes our memory dwindle.

It struck me how odd everything was the other day, as I was talking to G online.

G! Who out and out betrayed me - friends again (although obviously no longer as close as before, and perhaps friends only in name)

We - two people who were - I like to think - good kids. Good to each other. All you have to say to me is fuck off, and all I can do is not think about things.

Stargazer

D's telling me how bad she feels about her recent breakup.

D is one of the few air stewardesses who rebelled and left the service when she found herself growing into the routine and her brain atrophying from lack of use - and didn't like it.

So, she says, looking at me with those huge, hyponotic liquid lemur eyes of hers - he's the kind of guy who stays home a lot moping by his lonesome.

He's all torn up about the breakup while she's doing okay, going out every night and generally having a great time, and it makes her feel guilty, you see.

I watch her and nod sympathetically, and think : is it really any better? Going out loads with new people I barely know? Is it any better if neither of us is acting terminally-wounded bleeding-heart soldier, but if there's a common spring of sadness oozing steadily away somewhere beneath the mutually happyish veneers?

D goes on to say that she's still friends with most of her exs. I shake my head as I walk, saying I just can't understand how she does it, I've tried just the once and it wasn't good.

*****
We were at your place, which oddly looked exactly like my room.

We were rather stilted and awkward at first, but you started telling me something scandelous about your friends, and as I prompted you for more details you became more and more excited,and were in full swing when there was a knock - just once - on the open door, and then someone strode in stage left. Through that door which opens inwards, which looks exactly like my bedroom door.

He was tall with very short cropped hair, and his body language and puzzlement at finding me here in your room which looked exactly like my room made it very obvious who he was. I remember feeling startled as well, since you hadn't told me you were already going out with someone new.

And then I woke up.

*****
That's Aldebaron, he said, his voice passionate with interest, with just a hint of a smirk on it (I actually glanced sideways as he said it to check, but no, his face was blank)

And then MM said exactly what I was thinking - the way she always seems to - "Whoa! That was kind of sexy!" and glanced at me.

And then we laughed, and I confessed to thinking most un-manly thoughts.

He said well yeah, I tried it on MM but it just didn't work... and MM said quietly, it did at the time, for a moment.

K the bar owner doesn't quite understand; introducing his slew of sexy-bevy beauties to me - that I don't gun for cool impassive obvious ephemeral beauty, but rather for quirky, slightly unstable funny types who're easy to speak to.

I used to imagine it was because said types were good communicators, but watching MM I realise it's because I'm like that myself - MM put her finger on it, remarking that I get on so well with her nutty friends who have taken so quickly to me, which by extrapolation of logic makes me a nutty type myself.

That's precisely it : I understand her; there's just no effort required to follow her train of thought.

Birds of a feather, nuts of a shell.

Stay awake

Driving home after a particularly long and sleepless public-holiday call, I had a bad "moment". Don't know what the precipitant was, all I was trying to do was stay awake.

There wasn't any associated visual or audio flashback, just a sudden moment of... crushing sadness.

Catharsis :
Who moves on first, who forgets who first and finds happiness first... it's all moot; that's what happens when two lives diverge, right?

S, J's friend is wrong, as is J. It's not about "winning" at all... it's not really a game is it?

There were no winners between us; just two losers left to pick up the pieces on their own, left with their memories of a love that had once felt real.

I went for a haircut and remembered the last time I'd been there, remembered messaging her from time to time while my hair was being washed, then cut, then dried. Remembered meeting her afterwards when I was done.

And then I closed my aching eyes, while the lady was asking me if the water temperature was all right, and just thought : I so need a laugh.

I so need to laugh.

And then my phone rang - and it was MM.

"hello...?"

And then we laughed.

Stars in their eyes

So tonight K took me out on a dinner date with the celebrity chick. (attempt #2)

Apparently K thinks I have style about me, which is why I'm suddenly reaping the benefits of a series of strangely timed nights out peri-call (ha, i won't write "on"...) at the bidding of the evil witch J who leads men down paths of decadence to sure destruction.

Shrug.

So the Celebrity Babe, ML was actually prettier in person than on her magazine cover, but there was something disconcertingly familiar about her laugh... can't place it, but she really, really reminds me of some sometime-friend from my past. Shrug. Perhaps MY? Mmm.

And yes, she was beautiful to look at, yes, but just... not... interesting. Not to re-minisce anyway, who probably has a thing for psycho, independent-type girls who tend to wander off into the sunset with other men, or by themselves. Shrug.

And whoever she reminded me of was someone I used to just see as a friend; and it rubbed off, so strange as this may sound, though she rated a 9.5 to look at, factor everything else in and she fell to perhaps an 8.5, and by the rules of The Game (which re-minisce is currently devising, and thinks he may name "Wild Oats", and if it takes off in a big way may pave a path to re-minisce's retirement...)... a non-starter.

So when he dropped her home he bid her adieu, and that was that.
Nice girl, very pretty. Kinda hot.

Shrug.

K's efforts are so wasted on me.

The List

So here I am, stuck at the office working on tomorrows pre and post presentation; the list of patients is as always daunting, and I'm limping through it one name at a time.

I remember the last time around when I was rushing through them without heed or care; the secretary, bless her, had told me I was presenting first thing the very next morning. And all I could think about was that I had to get it out of the way quick so that I could go shopping with her, I don't know why I didn't give her a heads up, except that I was convinced she'd be dead to the world as usual. Just tried to work as quickly as I could and then faster still, and maybe there would still be time to go... please... because I really wanted to.

Isn't that bizarre, I was excited about taking the girlfriend shopping. Me. Shopophobe.

But there was something about shopping with her that I liked; I'm not sure I can put a finger on it; holding hands as we walked, with her bright eyed like a squirrel foraging for... clothes. Holding up things that were blah, and once in a while finding something really special that looked spectacular on her... and the little moments of happiness we shared then. Perhaps it was just the spending time with her, and getting to watch her actions and reactions and feeling happy to be around her.

But by the time I finished she disagreed with me that we could still make it to the shops in time, and we were both bitterly disappointed.

So now I have all the time in the world to plow through this neverending list, and I'm not going to be done by eight, and there's just... nothing. In my way.

Puff the magic dragon

It turns out these days that being called a geek is actually a compliment. It's a strange world we live in.

I had an odd moment of inspiration last night over dinner, and gravitated over to a bar someplace to tell my new friend (father of the Jedi Knight) about it, partly because said idea will require a venue.

I found myself unceremoniously being preyed on by a gang of women, one of whom was rather aggressive but entertaining in her own way; perhaps the funniest thing she had to say to me was that the best coping strategy in any breakup is for blokes to think of their ex girlfriend as a walking pudenda; I asked her if all her ex boyfriends become walking dicks, and she matter of factly said yes, in between promising to puff my pastries. Other observations were that I was clearly a geek, very quirky ideas, very funny, very charming, blahdeeblah. Shrug. I'll blame it on Jedi Dad, who keeps wandering around to whoever I'm talking to and declaring loudly what I do to them. It's starting to annoy me, in truth.

It was a good laugh for a while, but I dunno, I'm the kind of guy who'd rather chat with a familiar face than have my pastries threatened by a stranger I guess, so I abandoned the hormonally-deranged women after a while to head back inside where the music was.

*****
I remember a lifetime ago, back when I was in JC, when Kim looked at me in that way that she had, with those piercing grey-brown eyes of hers, and asked me if I enjoyed being unhappy.

I knew where she was coming from; I hated that even I reminded myself of the then-friend I had, who seemed to relish wallowing in self-pity and melodramatic love-from-afar. Essentially a variant of the high-school crush; the chap had all the symptoms and more including a stammer and tremor in his Goddess' presence, (tremor be damned, he shook like a leaf) and a propensity towards speaking to her in French. His poems about the beauty that glided in the night weren't actually too bad, but it touched a raw nerve in me somehow, belligerant closet-rebel that I was then. I found it ludicrous; he had everything going for him - the girl was right there in front of him, all he had to be was direct, and it would be over one way or the other; a shot to the heart or a shot to the head, cut dried done and dusted.

At some point I sold my friend out and told the girl; I just couldn't stand it anymore. In some strange way it made a mockery of my own situation, and I hated to think that I was in some way... like him.

The girl knew, but of course she knew -- everyone knew -- I knew that she knew already... but what the hey, at least someone said it to her face. She thanked me for my... strange kindness. Shrug.

So when Kim asked me if I enjoyed being unhappy, a hundred - or perhaps a thousand - thoughts and emotions flooded through my then-simpler mind but it was with dead eyes and an impassive visage that I tonelessly replied, "No."

No, Kim. I don't enjoy being unhappy.

I've always hated it with all my soul.

Thoughtless

I forgot to write this last Sunday; the alcohol hadn't quite worn off yet.

But... I'm the boy who's glad that you found love again, and was so very, very happy and honoured to be there last Saturday as you and your other half embarked on a lifetime of happiness and irrationality together; may you both be blessed by Pi and God, and love each other - just the way it's meant to be done.

:)

Heartbreakingly Beautiful

Nana

Saturday night, and re-minisce found himself at the mercy of Ken's boys who decided that the cure for his recent propensity towards moodiness would apparently be a visit to a Thai disco.

Expensive drinks and cheap women.

Hanging with Ken's "VIP" boys meant avoiding the seedy trawling escorts and being personally introduced to the "classy" singers, who variously tried to physically wipe the sadness off his lips, or grab his hand to put to their foreheads which were ostensibly burning up with fever. Cute.

I'd rather just look morosely at my drink before I kill it, thank you.

There's something about time that changes the way one thinks; once upon a time I would have been thrilled at the prospect of meeting hot-chicks, regardless of insurmountable language barriers and jarringly-loud conversation-obliterating music.

Watching ken's boy chatting shyly to the babe who'd just done an admirable evanescence, watching her watching my eyes, all I felt was... nothing.

****


I need to study.

Animal Porn's Greatest Hits

Do not stop at Go

So it should probably have been a bad thing when she said she knew how to pick locks, and had read the Anarchist's handbook.

And it ought to have rung all sorts of alarm bells in the head of an ostensibly sensible-ish, boring, square kind of bloke.

Sluts and Bastards

S. pointed out that perhaps I should learn to take relationships less seriously, and just go out with someone for fun on the understanding that it's only temporary.

She also opines that there's a term for men who do this, which is Bastard; women however are Sluts.

Apparently society frowns upon sluts, but smiles on bastards.

*****
The difference between falling in love with someone, and being in love with them - the first is that thrill most of us are familiar with, manifested variously by tachycardia, sweaty palms, or just a great big swell of happy-happyness. Shrug. The second is either being happy around them and the ease with which time passes with them, or perhaps trauma at separation. It's different for everyone, methinks.

Re : falling in love, it's not all one-way I don't think, one doesn't usually feel anything much if someone who isn't special to you does something extraordinary for you. (Well, perhaps deep gratitude if they give a kidney or a life...)

Well, I don't, anyway. Probably not even for a kidney.
So that pikpokpikpok (a term the ex and her friends employed) isn't really just about you, but about two people. In short, chemistry.

Remastered

En passant

I remember pointing out the sunset to you as I drove, the last hues of red and gold were burning out in the sky, and you saw it and said - this is why I love you, you see the things that nobody else does.

*****
And so the moment that I didn't want to arrive has somehow come and gone.
It doesn't matter anymore, truth or lie, in love or out. It's just something that happened.

*****
Broken Glass

He watched her as she played, with his head resting on the reading-board of the white grand piano, and his eyes on hers.
Perhaps it was the alcohol, or perhaps it was just one of those moments.
He reached out and gently took the glasses from her face.
"You don't need those", he said, and smiled.

She smiled, in return.

*****
Memento Mori?

- Sempre Fidelis.

Just another Sunday

So this is what Master Yoda does on lazy sunday afternoons... vanquish evil sith lords in a bar.



*****
Real-life Light Sabre

Intrigued

It happened in the flash of an eyelid; the words appeared and then vanished as her hair shifted.

Memento morte.

What does it mean, he asked her?

It's latin, she replied...

It's a mexican saying : always keep death at your left shoulder.

Pass it on

I wish for you my friend / This happiness that I've found / You can depend on God / It matters not where you're bound

*****
I found myself absent-mindedly rubbing my left thumb over my right thumbnail today in church. I won't deny it, it hurt and I missed you. And then we sang, it helped me. And then I prayed for you.

*****
Before I forget; I keep forgetting! Areya has asked me to be her child's godfather, and I haven't the faintest clue how to be a godfather, but it fills me with joy and anticipation. Imagine that, me a godfather. How bizarre is that?

*****
It struck me how odd everything was, as I asked You for a copy of that score I once penned, for You.

Foolish Games.

How inappropriate it was then, and how appropriate now.

Memory

She was getting dressed for work.

"Why...?"

"Because... I get bored."

A pause.

"Then can we try without the games? If we mean enough to you, can we just try, no more games?"

She agreed, and he felt hope, for the first time in a long while.

Twenty four hours later, the message arrived.
She couldn't do it.

So the games are more important to you than I am, than we were, he thought.
I'm so tired. So very, very tired.

*****
He was on his way down to review a patient, trying to make sense of his fragmented world, bitterness and anger creeping in the seams. An old friend on the other end of the phone was telling him how it's never a mistake to love someone, because it makes you a better person.

And then he realised that she was right. It wasn't a mistake, my loving you. It wasn't a waste of time. And when I remember us, I'll remember your face; your laugh, your eyes. I'll smile for the crazy things I remember us doing, and how nice it felt to be there by your side. How proud I was of you, once.

*****
I realise now that perhaps there really were two of you.

There was the gentle, intelligent and insightful creature that I fell in love with, whose tart replies bowled me away and made me start taking notice of her, whose mind gave me pause enough to look harder at the pretty shell and walk into her world. And that creature was considerate and embarrassed at times at her world, and tried not to swear in my presence in case it offended me, and she made me happy. It wasn't that I couldn't stand swearing; in truth all I ever want in any relationship is truth and honesty, and love. It was that she seemed to care so much how I felt. She wanted to be good, for me - which is how I wanted to be, for her. (You make me want to be a better person - As Good as it Gets)
I remember her telling me, in the aftermath of C that she was a very secure person; and I remember a time at Mr Bean when she asked me if I was a confident person, looking at me with those teasing eyes of hers which were not yet filled with confusion and hooded against my own. I remember looking back at her and smiling.
And I choose to believe that that creature I fell in love with fell back in love with me too. There are things one cannot hide, a certain look in your eyes, a certain shyness; a certain way of holding hands, a certain genuineness when we kissed. There are memories of us spending a magical, chilly evening shivering with each other and looking into our other halve's eyes till daybreak. And she wrote about it in the same way, with the same near-reverence that I felt; although she slightly missed the point. Being Atas had nothing to do with it; that was the first and last time I ever, and will ever bring someone to that place to be still with them, and to fall in love with them. That place is special in our memory, and I would never seek to defile it; it would hurt me too much, and take away some meaning from myself.

And then there was the other creature who wrote on her blog, which was a self-centered and insecure creature who became crippled by her perception of how other people around saw her, whose face mattered more to her than love, who could convince herself that she was incapable of trusting someone who loved her for no real reason, and that was reason enough to leave - because his love was too great and hers too little - who was intent on dwelling on how empty she felt inside.

And if that creature had remained a figment of her persona confined to her blog it wouldn't have mattered; but that creature slipped into daily life. And that sense of emptiness bled into us... No amount of presents will ever replace a simple gift of, love from the heart. And that burning need to be happy drove her to... strangeness. At all cost.

And day by day that creature gradually overcame the other.

I write now with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. She wasn't a difficult creature to understand at all, once you realised there were two parts to the whole, which were very, very different from each other. But at the time I just couldn't understand; just couldn't reconcile her increasingly bizarre actions with who I had known her to be. If I had known I would have tried harder to reawaken the first creature, rather than wasting all my time feeling bewildered, and hurting in the dark. I would have sought not to touch your face while you slept and tearing silently at the thought that we must surely end... but to talk. To talk, to beat back the second creature until it died. Because we were important to me.

The second creature forced us apart; I'm not sure which wanted to stay friends. And I wanted to be there too, near to her, holding her, being held in return, hearing her tell me at odd momments that she still missed and loved me, telling her the same in return... because I could not understand the necessity for us to come apart. Because I did not know that the second creature had convinced her that she did not love me, enough, and that moving on was the only cure. I could see that was what she really wanted, and though it would have killed me, I chose to stay, and to try to be there for her.

I read her blog and was horrified to think that she was... who she wrote. That all that had been had been a lie that the second part of her crafted, a loveless long drawn out meaningless time spent wasted; an eternal emptiness. And it was devastating.

And so I chose to leave, for me.

In retrospect I now see that all that had been was not a lie. There were two of you.

*****
There are some things I hope you realise, someday.

The first is that I had an urge, when you forced us apart and hurt me, to return you everything you had ever given me, in anger, in disgust, in rage and sadness.
K helped me to seek God out, with the aid of various phrases from the bible. And I see now that these gifts you gave me remain precious to me, even after everything. They help me remember you, the first you, and smile.

The second is that I never wanted anything from you. (But I was still happy when you gave) I always wanted everything... for you.
That is how I am, when I love someone. That is how anybody is, when they love someone. That's even how the first you was, if you think back far enough. I didn't want us to end, because I remembered we were good, and also because I felt I had failed you.

The third is that I understand now why you cried with me in bed that night, after you had forced us to end as a couple; I understand why you cried when I wanted the first time to end the friendship, and I understand even now why you feel unhappiness after that evening I will never be able to forget, much as I want to.

You can deny it - and you will; the second you holds full sway now. You can tell yourself whatever you need to, to cope. It's okay.
But you know as well as I why you cried, and why it was so hard for you to let go.
You know what I meant when I asked, tormented (no, not callous at all. Callous means uncaring, and I was tormented because I cared too much) why you were even crying at all.

If the second you had been right all along, you would have felt only relief. And it would have been difficult to cry.
We both know it's true - we have both been there ourselves.

I know that you really still loved me, and us - and weren't just saying it, the way the second you probably persuaded you that you were.

The fourth is that the greater part of you, the more precious part is the first you.
It is the part of you that makes me say you could be so very, very much more. The part of you that makes me want you to achieve all your dreams. The part of you that gives you all your insights, of which you have remarkably many, which, if it could vanquish the second and persuade you to return to humility and measure, will enable you to step forwards and take hold of your life, for real. The part of you that will protect you from telling falsehoods, and let you lead your life in joy, and never fear repercussions of your actions.

It is, strangely, the part that God grants you the grace to be. And the part of you that I will pray for, forever.

The fifth is that I have no wish to use anything against you, and I bear you no ill will. I am only human, flawed with the same cheap china shop cracks as everyone else; I break from time to time, and my defence mechanisms come to play - the same as anybody else's. When faced with overwhelming evidence of a lack of truth, I become confused and uncertain what to believe; and if I tend towards cynicism in despair, it is how I cope.

My defence against that is God, and prayer.

The sixth is that I will remember you well. I will not forget the lies, but I will not forget the truths either, and it is your truths that I will choose to remember, smile, and feel sad at; perhaps shed the occasional tear while everything is still too raw in my mind.

The seventh is that I forgive you, for every harsh word, for every mistruth, for every moment that I died a little for you, alone. Not so that I can appear morally superior or uber-Christian, which is how you reacted the first time in anger -- I have no face to lose. And the first time I messaged you that I forgave you everything -- even though back then I knew next to nothing -- I meant it, as I do this time.
I forgive you because it is right. I forgive you because I still love you. But most of all I forgive you because God forgave us all for killing his Son, and asked us to forgive each other our sins to each other. I'm no saint, no martyr. I'm a grubby, flawed, sinful, self-centered christian who falters often and reacts poorly under duress. I am ashamed for all the times I hurt you with my graceless reactions.
I forgive you because I want to.

The eighth is that I see you now, a sum of two conflicting parts. Not all truths, not all lies, just you. Everybody is a sum of two parts, but usually they are not in such strife with each other, not so completely hidden from sight.
I see you and I still believe in you, to take control of your life and become all that you can be.

The ninth is that if you had told me all your truths, once upon a very long time ago; they would have made me love you more and fight harder to help you where I have failed.

The last is that, armed with truth I can finally put it all behind me; past is past. And perhaps one day we can return to loving each other as friends, when I stop being selfish and self-centered, and when you overcome yourself, as well. Perhaps one day I will have the honour to stand with you in church.
I look at E, and then at you - not because I want to judge you poorly, but because I just can't help it -- and I feel such immense sadness and a sense of injustice that E, who couldn't possibly hold a torch to you in any way, who is completely insightless and completely insignificant compared to you, in every way, should be granted a chance to change her life - whether she will take hold of it is anybody's guess. But you, who are still so wonderful in my memory, so very remarkable - even flawed as you are -- well, I hope you'll spread your wings and fly.

I remember you asking me in jest why I wouldn't be your Professor Higgins...
that is the difference between you and E. E is common, and base. Her handicap is that she is blind and thoughtless and needs someone to guide her, see for her, and think for her. You are uncommon and filled with potential, you are filled with insight and are special. Your handicap is only yourself, and only you can overcome it.

*****
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I water'd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with my smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil'd the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree

*****
I remember You telling me once upon a lifetime ago that I had ruined your weekend, that you'd spent it watching As Good As it Gets with your classmates and not really seeing it or hearing the words, and that you spent most of the rest of your time on the phone to your best friend.
I remember smiling, as you spoke.

*****
I don't know what it means, that I went to the store in search of Music and Lyrics, and came away with As Good As it Gets instead.

Freewheeling

So this is me after an afternoon nap, coming back from evening mass.

I haven't gone to weekday mass in quite a while now; I'd forgotten how the sun streams into the church halfway through the service, and somehow makes everything more poignant.

It's been quite hellish, this last month. An unforgettable montage of moments somehow moving in slow motion, sleep deprivation, miserably sleeping in the lab, eating horrible hospital food, and emotional devastation. Sara calls it my final transformation into becoming a woman.

But now the slew of calls is done and gone, the audit is completed. I've had an afternoon nap, and a quiet lunch knocking back Bacardi cokes at Harrys, Holland Village.

Now the engine is switched off and the train is freewheeling.
Free-falling.

It's funny how whenever I face my darkest moments, He chooses to have me face them alone; somehow when I am at my worst the world switches off their mobile phones... but I think perhaps it is His lesson, to remind me to turn to Him.

And so I did, and I'm glad for it.

There will be still be moments when I feel tormented, and moments when I feel overwhelmed at my doubts about... my last year. Horrible moments when I still miss her, and know she will never really miss me in return. I know all these things to be true.

That's all right.

Now is the time for Church, Studying, Running, and swinging my saber about like a wild man.

:)

*****
Strange how I have gone from wishing one person happy birthday in secret, to wishing someone else happy birthday in secret. Secret transferrence.

It makes me happy though, that I get to say happy birthday to Her next month, again.

*****
I can't help but feel I failed you.
I wish I could have overcome my own self-centeredness, and put aside my wounded pride and torment for your sake; I wish I could have been more like Him.

Office

This is me, eyes gumming up and failing on two hours sleep last night, still in the office working my butt off to save my ex-boss.

This is me not really understanding how or believing that this is where we wound up. Who would have imagined you would wind up on my "unfriends" list on msn one day, or that we wouldn't be able to speak anymore? I seem to remember things were good between us...

Do you remember us bending each other's thumbs backwards unnaturally as we walked and laughing that we were both freaks; how we used to mock shove each other off the kerb into oncoming traffic as we came up on that row of shophouses with the aquarium shops and the GP practices. Do you remember the stench of the canal near your old place as we walked hand in hand out to zi cha dinner, as we often did, waiting to cross the road at that traffic light near the flower shop thingie and not-nice prata place, climbing the narrow, smelly stairwell up to your place while I pushed you up the staircase or you poked me from behind; kneeling on your bed looking out the window with me at the rain, and the neighbours drawing in their laundry, and the people getting caught in the downpour. Looking at the newly-cleaned landscaped fishtank with the weird fish eating the fresh white sand and spitting it out, now that all the armies of snails were gone?
Do you remember how we used to lie next to each other and look into each others eyes, and touch each others faces once in a while?

I remember you dying in my arms as we fell asleep, how your arms and legs used to twitch as I struggled to stay awake longer than you, so I wouldnt wake you when I snored. I remember killing a cockroach for you in, and then outside your bedroom while you were panicking. I remember taking you to your dentist, and gynae, several times. I remember feeling grateful that we had us, while the darkness of the crazy, faithless world unfolded around us.

This is me, confused by the lies and uncertain what to believe, whether to believe the words you spoke or the words you wrote, uncertain how I feel about anything, and uncertain what I even want to believe, just feeling numbed and kinda anhedonic, not knowing why I should be bothering, but wishing you a happy birthday anyway.

****
She : ...Maybe each time you feel rage or sadness, pray for her... please, do not let anger and bitterness get the better of you

And so I shall pray for you. And try to let all this anger, bitterness, and sadness go.

Filling His Boots

I just committed the faux pas of wearing my bosses own boots into his OT. How embarrassing.

*****
I remember her telling me with a wistful look in her eyes how much she missed playing weiqi, because it was the only thing she was good at.

Which was simply untrue, because she could ski from the word go, and she could write fairly well. She was good at many things, and could easily have improved if she wanted to.

For a while she was the girl I had fallen for, again, and I thought perhaps I could learn how to play and give her a little slice of her past to be happy about, again.

*****
So it seems I'm not so much a celebrity-date as a celebrity's date for an atas function tomorrow evening. This should be amusing. laugh.

*****
I've finally caught her cold. Her last present to me.

*****
I didn't notice her at first; I was too busy sparring with the blokes of the varsity team.

After I'd beaten the last one she made her presence known by looking me in the eye and raising her blade in a very pointed challenge.

She was pretty; about my height - tall for a chinese girl -, slim, with porcelein skin, short, boyish hair and a sharp chin. Her eyes were large and dark and smoldered with something that looked like either hate or resentment. She had good posture, with a ramrod straight back, and moved with the grace of a cat. There was something very arrogant about her, and she didn't bother to utter a word to me.

It's pretty much an unspoken rule that female sabreurs are few and far between and they usually look... nothing like her.

I accepted her challenge with an equal measure of trepidation and anticipation.

Female fencers are usually slightly slower and less aggressive than their male counterparts; there's no real reason why this should be, but its a generalization that usually holds true.

There was nothing usual about this girl. She didn't waste any time from our perfunctory salute advancing on me and when she lunged it was frightening, the blind speed with which she closed and the unerring accuracy of her blade. Brute instinct took over and I barely deflected her blade as I retreated, saved not so much by skill as by reflexes that still had the edge of youth on them.

The final scoreline didn't reflect the bitterness of our contest at all; fencing is like that sometimes. Her attack far surpassed my own, but my reflexes -just barely- overcame her attack each time. Four to one in my favour.

She ripped off her mask as she spun away and hurled it to the floor, storming off in obvious disgust.

I had to ask. I turned to one of the blokes I'd fenced earlier.

"...?"

"Mate, that's the #1 female sabreur in australia..."

Yes, I could have sidled up to her to make nice, and perhaps gotten to know her a little better. But I didn't.

A time of war, and a time of peace

And then, in this bewildering wilderness She helps me put things into perspective :

Titus 3:3-8
For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy, He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Habit

Sometimes I forget, and I suddenly have an urge to message you funny things like Rosie's irritating ringtone, which is a chorus of frogs croaking, or about the supposed kidney stone in a small child which was obviously a tablet on the X ray, and how her father laughed when I lined up the tablet with the film.

And then I remember.

Finding me

I'm that guy

Fishers of men

Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him.

Mark 1:14-18

*****
I see it now.
I was not one of the precious hallmates, one of the inner circle of friends.
I was not deserving of truth, or trust.

I was just some... fish.

Empty

After reading her, I have a million thoughts running through my mind.

S asked me why I looked so upset last night - I told her the truth. It isn't worth talking about. It really isn't.

******
I found her blog by accident; it was linked from some other lab rat's blog.
The mask was stripped away.

There were shades of the woman I thought I fell in love with - but there was someone else too. Just a few days ago it felt like only yesterday that we seemed to be falling for each other. Yesterday it felt like an eternity ago - if it even happened at all.

I thought she was different because she had insight into right and wrong.
I thought that made her a good person. I assumed that with insight comes a desire to change for the better.

I can only wish that it was because she had too much free time on her hands to think idle thoughts, and to be influenced by the trite mindsets of the people around her - I can only wish that without lives to save and responsibilities to fulfil to other people it wasn't her fault; it wasn't her fault. It wasn't her fault.

I can only wish. I see myself for what I am - in denial.

*****
I want to be able to hate you.
I want to be able to write down hateful thoughts streaming through my mind, the ways I feel lied to, the people you claimed meant nothing to you whom you "ensnare in your nets" now.

Because then I'll know I had really loved you; because that's how it works, love turns to hate when things fall apart. It's a coping mechanism.
I want to feel a sense of loss.

But all I feel now is emptiness.
All I feel is nothing. I've never been here before. It does make things easier to cope with. It could be a boon to someone else. But it's so damn pathetic. I don't know if I ever fell in love with you, or if I fell in love with someone else, who looked and sounded just like you, but wasn't.

I want to know that all my love... wasn't wasted on you. And that maybe you loved me too.

I want to know it wasn't all a lie.

Shattered

I don't need to write this. And I don't even want to.
I want to just forget everything. Just pick a random direction and keep on walking, and maybe wake up someplace else tomorrow, somewhere kinder and more sane.

But I'm writing it to remind myself. What a fool I've been. What an utter, utter fool.

*****
Perhaps the worst thing about reading her blog was seeing just how she looks out upon the world.
Or perhaps it was learning just how she sees herself - User. Manipulator. Callous fisherman. Mixing up the myriad men waiting in line for the final catch.

Or perhaps, and more likely - it was the stunning realisation that everything we shared; every memory, every laugh, every tear shed, every embrace, every moment of passion, every moment of sadness, every moment of pain, every crazy thing we did, hand in hand... every I love you...

... was it all just another lie? Like all the others?

*****
I pinned her down and tried to tell her two things which might change her life; she couldn't hear. Just wouldn't hear. Just refused to - in her sad pathetic little world, I was just trying to win, to get in the last say.

What last say can there be in response to a lack of truth? I wasn't talking for me. I was talking for you, you fool.

And then she cried, in fear, in rage. In silence. Gasping for breath.

And then I left.

*****
There are two things you should know.

The first is that you will never be alone. A girl with a pretty face and good body is a piece of meat that attracts male attention like flies to carrion.

You will never be alone. You need never fear being left on the shelf; you will always have your pick amongst men.

But you will never be able to keep the ones of any consequence, or significance, if you stay the way you are. Those that remain, that you manage to keep - will seek to take and not to give, will seek to hurt instead of help.

The second is that there are two paths you can walk down, from here.
The first is to stay as you are. Continue to prostitute yourself out to the God of money. Stagnate and let your dreams die one at a time, distracting yourself with your pathetic little games. And I pray your bubble will never burst and leave you unhappy, and that God will grant you good fortune and find you a good man to be your salvation and give you comfort.

The second is to chase down your dreams. Focus. Abandon things of no consequence. Cast aside pride. Humble yourself. Work. Endure suffering. And be all that you can - the building blocks are there. You have been granted gifts by God, who knows why. And one day when you are done, repay all the kindnesses that have been shown you, in grace and gratitude, when you have achieved all your dreams and earned your happiness.

*****
But after reading her I teared, as she cried her tears of rage, her face contorted into an ugly mask, hyperventilating and gasping for breath.

I teared in sadness and regret.
Regret at the realisation that perhaps I had been wrong about her all along.
In the realisation that my faith, my belief in her may have been misplaced all along, and that she will probably never choose the second path. Not because she is not able to, but because it is not in her nature to make that choice.

I see it now. It wasn't K that I put on a pedestal - it was you.

*****
I didn't see an irresistably sexy woman when I met you. I saw a girl. Just a girl. Decent looking, but just a girl.
I got to know you, and I thought I saw something special.

I didn't look on your house, and your family and see poverty and difference. I saw a home, and people. Just people.

I didn't look upon your friends and see common people with common moralities and common dreams. I saw people. Just people.

I don't begin to dare ask what you saw in return.
I don't want to know anymore.

BabeL

Somedays I can't help but recall fondly my days as an emergency doctor in the NHS, when communication was effortless 99% of the time, when the 0.5% of the time a Chinese speaking patient walked into the department I was special, and when the 0.5% of the time a patient came in with thirty relatives presenting with many many paining communication was a lost cause, but it was such a laugh.

It's been three years, and the visceral desperation everytime a non-speaking patient walks in the room and babbles at me has never left me.

Visceral desperation is an understatement. I don't think I possess the vocabulary to do justice to this burning, choking, tachycardia-inducing flood of undirected resentment, anger, and even fear that rises within my gut and threatens to explode out my eyeballs everytime some linguistically challenged poor old biddie comes in and babbles insistently at me in hokkien. It isn't even about swallowing bile. This is just raw, stark emotion threatening to overwhelm me and result in the world's first clinic Columbine.

This morning

Me : Hello
Old woman : bu ke yi, jiang hua yu (cannot, speak chinese.)

Me : Ke yi jiang Ying yu mah. Wo de hua yi hen cha. (my mandarin sucks, could you please speak English)
Old woman : Bu Ke Yi. (No. Period.)

Great. Just great. My FIRST PATIENT of the day. Okay, keep your hands under the desk nice and far away from her throat...

Halfway through the consult, when I am clearly labouring to translate my anglicised brain into stilted pidgin mandarin the old bird switches to Singlish.

Keep it together. Keep it togetherrrrrrr

*****
I was somewhat disappointed to discover (through Google translator) that the mandarin for the adrenal is sheng shang xian.

Or, translated literally : that thing above the kidney.

Funny

Laugh

Lazy Sunday on call

My ex houseman left me atas chocolates in the ward fridge!

How sweet =)

*****
The episode was very strange.

(setting : a year ago, shortly after post G holocaust, just before post C disaster, when Re-minisce was very, very, very, very, very, very, VERY sad)

My super down-to-earth mother, whose idea of a pretty girl is someone with the figure of a tangerine, whose whole life centers about playing the piano and going to The Club, and who brushes shoulders with celebrities perhaps once every thirty years, creeps up from behind me while I'm messing about listlessly on the Brother's computer and asks, with unconcealed concern, "Would you like to see a vet?"

I reply with all the enthusiasm of a lemur on tranquilizers : "Nooo, thank you, I'm feeling quite all... what?"

Bravely, she soldiers on : "She's not too bad looking... Her mother wants her to meet you!"

My mother's been hacking on persistently with this whole arranged marriage (It's a control issue. I know it is. Choose the Wife. Control the Son.) thingie for ages now.

Years of conditioning have turned my reactions pretty Pavlovian.

"No."

"Her practice is at.... you can drive past a few times and look at her..."

"What?? That's just crazy. That's like stalking."

"It's not. And actually she has a boyfriend."

"WHAT? Then why would I want to meet her!"

"Because her mother doesn't like the boyfriend. He's Ang Moh."

Roll eyes.

"NO. PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE NOW."

*****
A few days back it was an SMS :

"Surgeon or Opthalmologist?"

It took me a while to figure out what she was going on about.

In a strange way... I almost feel... proud of my mother.

Perhaps I can capitalize on all this. hmm...

Farewells

Perhaps we're just shaped by our experiences and the choices we make in life down to the way we choose our words, perhaps everything is influenced by the paths we walk; or perhaps He guides our hands.

As we said goodbye, I began to write - Take Care, you.

And then mid sentence, I don't know why, I hit the backspace key, and wrote : Be well.

The stranger's words appeared on screen :
Take Care, you.

Exactly as I had written, capitals at all. An echo.

Significant. Other.

S and I were joint trainers to a group of junior fencers. She was one of the college babes (ah but the fencing team had almost all the babes. laugh) :
petite, tanned, vivacious, with a brilliant smile, gentle eyes and an irresistable Canadian drawl. When she fleched she would set loose a blood-curdling banshee-wail that would freeze the boys dead in their tracks, like bunnies caught in the headlights of a charging ferrarri; coupled with her left-handedness she left most of the blokes trailing in her dirt. Whenever I challenged her to bouts it was always with some trepidation that I might just wind up like J, the poor sod who went 10-0 down to her.

She probably doesn't know this, but a few of the juniors not-so-subtly asked me if we were together; it used to leave me completely bemused since in truth my mind was always so troubled and so very far away; I probably wouldn't have taken much notice of Claudia Schiffer had she fallen out of the sky right into my lap. (well, ok perhaps just Claudia.)

Interestingly, one of the other fencing babes did notice, and if I'm not wrong, she actually figured it all out; I'll never be able to understand how.

*****
London, on a cold winter's night, and he found himself holding her hands; his mind was a mess, filled with sympathy and anger at a story she'd just told him, filled with affection for a silly creature who almost knocked herself out on a blow-dryer in the 'loo (and raised quite a welt on her head in the process) and perhaps a little lonely, cast adrift in london amidst predatory and hormonal immature little girls. And so he found himself stammering to her that he might like her; perhaps that was all it took to fracture their friendship... or perhaps it was the apology somewhat later which must have seemed like a lame attempt at a retraction, that did it in.

In truth this is what happened : as the boy spoke, he heard his own words : "I think... I like you"

And in his head everything clicked into place. I... like you?

These are the strongest words I can say.
But somewhere out there is a girl that I (still) love, and I have been running, and running for the longest time... because... of so many, many reasons. And if I do not stop running, I will be here, tonight - a dozen different nights, a dozen different turns of spring, summer; autumn and winter... holding a myriad girls' hands in mine and mouthing words that aren't significant enough. I will turn liar, and user. I will lose my own truths.

And so that was what he tried and failed to explain to her on the phone the next evening, and that is why he was trying to apologise to her : he had meant the words as they were spoken, but they didn't quite mean what either of them had been expecting.

And that is why he flew headlong across the world, to tell someone that he loved Her, and could never see Her again, because she was seeing someone else.

Disillusionment

Just noticed a touching little piece that Brainjuice wrote here. The take home message :

Based on John 2:24-25 ("Jesus did not commit Himself to them . . . , for He knew what was in man"), the passage notes that "Disillusionment means having no more misconceptions, false impressions, and false judgments in life; it means being free from these deceptions."

I disagree with her; I don't think that disillusionment was her salvation. It was Grace that allowed her to turn around after her bout of self-pity, and be the wonderful mother I always knew she would be.

Brainjuice and I go back a ways; we were in halls together back in uni. She was a student of Literature, I, of the human condition.

I don't really remember how we became friends; back then I had a very large and diverse group of friends. I think I was a very much more approachable person then, until Armageddon struck and I gradually became a more withdrawn, bitter individual, allowing my innate cynicism to creep back into my heart and perhaps stepping a little further and further away from God.

I remember a particularly short friend of mine, G (he was cute, like a button. Short with big eyes. Looked a bit like stitch, from Lilo and Stitch. He was part of the contingent of Malaysians I preferred hanging out with to the "fake" Singaporeans; who used to cheerily greet me Doctor in Cantonese when I would slouch in wearily from another exhausting day of all day lectures and practical demonstrations, and who were always good for a cheap watered hall-drink after dinner) warning me once in cantonese - that one is taken. Be careful.

I remember thinking -- taken?

I knew she was considered "hot" - it was an unspoken thing amongst the blokes; tallish, large eyes, fair, outgoing, sang like an angel, gentle but with a roguish bent (laugh I remember some of the things you used to tell me you saw, looking out your wnidow, Brainjuice.) I wasn't blind. And yes, we were friends close enough for us to visit each other once in a while.

Yes, she was marked, by one of the other Malaysians who wanted her so badly his eyes were red all the time (for some reason).

Taken? Yes, Somewhat later she was in a steady but slightly... non ideal relationship with another Malaysian born BBC guy.

But... taken?
I was bemused. If only they knew the things that were really going on in my head.
I never moved in on her, never tried to... take.

I was good for friendship; for sharing laughter and tears with. I was good as a confidant; there were many people who came confiding to me in those days, not just brainjuice. And in return I had special little gifts - when she sang with me, as I played my heart out to a past irretrievably lost, a year later. As I babbled excitedly to her about a present unfolding which was unthinkable.

I was good for friends.
You don't need to be untaken to give, and receive friendship.

*****
I remember a particularly unpleasant Singaporean law student -- always sneering subtly at me, for reasons I couldn't fathom. So Christian on the surface. So slimy.

I remember him sneering at me when we had barely met - after I had batted off the attentions of some of the girls (the first weeks of life abroad are turbulent times when girls, bereft of their normal, familiar male attentions from home seek out partners to give them solace and companionship... and perhaps more) by telling them I had a complicated history with a girl from australia.

I remember him curling his lip and saying How Very Convenient.

And perhaps for the first time in my life, I remember feeling pure hatred.

If you only knew.

I could have unleashed the tides of sadness that I had endured upon him and ranted about the girl with that... indefinable something... in her eyes. He would have seen the truth in mine as I raved. I could have smashed his unpleasantness into the ground.

Instead I remained silent, and turned away.

*****
Brainjuice wasn't the only "hot" friend I hung out with. I didn't just hang out with hot girls, mind you. I hung out with lots of different people in those days, mostly to let them talk, and hear out their sadnesses and frustrations.

But there were a couple of girls I liked talking to; one was a law student from Hong Kong. I don't remember what we used to speak about in her room; I'll unashamedly say I liked hanging out with her simply because she was very, very pretty. Laugh.

The other was R, a girl from Malaysia, who was pretty in that Hong Kong Actress kind of way - tall, extremely slim figure, large eyes, lanky. We used to hang out in our rooms, or head out to Pret for a coffee... and talk about everything. Philosophy. Science. Art. The Universe. There was something between us that let conversation flow, when it needed to, and be comfortably silent when there was nothing to say.

I lost touch with her after halls. I wonder what happened to her?

*****
I got to know N online, she hung out with the crowd from an exclusive mIRC channel. In later years she visited occasionally on her jaunts down to London from Southampton.
She was tallish, long-limbed, endowed, tanned, toned - from the sailing she used to do - and slept over in a very, very short kimono.
I remember an odd Sunday evening at the fountain at Whiteleys... looking in as if from a window at myself, running my fingers over her face as she cried, hushing her, and telling her she was still beautiful, it was okay... I think we hugged after that; I'm not sure. Wait, yes we did.
It sounds like the kind of story guys love to tell; fucked her senseless and left her crying in the dirt.
But no; it wasn't like that at all. That was the first and last time I ever touched her, and it was in compassion and... a different kind of love, to give comfort to a poor, poor girl who had smashed through a car windshield with her face, and miraculously only suffered minor, tiny, pinpoint lacerations from microscopic shards of shattered glass - in retrospect, she must had her own Guardian Angel standing over her.
She was a pretty girl who knew the value of her looks, in her career in life, and thought she had lost it all...
She healed without a scar.

Several hours later, I made that memorable headlong flight across the length of the world.

*****
Then there were my buddies Anna, a girl of french / English descent who was very disturbed once when I, lying on the floor of her room played with her nail polish buffer and exclaimed how remarkable it was that a strip of plastic could get my nails so shiny, and Dimitra, the cool, sex-exuding chain-smoking pool expert.

And of course there was Areya, who was my most constant source of comfort, as we walked in silence throughout the darkest parts of London, and looked out onto the world.

*****

Yes, most of my friends then were women. As they still are.

I'm not naive : neither too self-effacing nor too brash; I know who I am, my limits and my capabilities, and I know full well I could have led a very different life had I chosen to. I knew the moments of insecurity and loneliness which I could have taken advantage of. I knew the moments when they came - a hand on her face, a hand on her shoulder, her hand on yours, a glance too prolonged, a yearning to take that someone crying brokenly on your couch up in your arms, wipe away her tears and tell her everything will be okay... I let them go.

They were my friends.

Most of my friends were, and are women - not because I want to "take".

It's because women need to unleash their troubles on you, yes - but they also listen.

Men sneer.

*****

I don't know why I've proved so good at losing touch with old friends.

Right now I'm a little lost; perhaps a tad disillusioned.

Obi Wan wields a blue lightsaber

I took time off from the soul-destroying audit tonight; when J called I seized the chance to flee this lab which is fast turning into my prison to grab a quick drink. The bar owner is her friend and I had a chance to test the Clayderman grand piano which played surprisingly well; we then wandered over to his house to playtest his kid's new lightsabers (the expensive type) and watch a few batman anime clips.

Now I'm back here doing my hated audits again.
On the bright side I brought my sabre and bible back with me.

Nobody mess with me. I'm packing some serious heat.

*****
Legend tells of a legendary warrior whose kung fu skills were the stuff of legend...

hahahaha. I wish I had watched Kung Fu Panda in the cinema. Two thumbs up

Be still.

If I let myself go, but I won't -

Gut wrenching sadness. Grief. Loss. Missing.
Resignation.
Acceptance.

If I don't -

ok most moments.
sudden moments of recollection at odd times, in full clarity like I'm right there. happy moments, that bring sudden tears to my eyes if I'm not careful. Worst in the presence of others. Must be careful.

*****
So are you happy now?

*****
J's been bringing me out a lot these last few days to distract me from... things.

Meeting lots of famous people, my hair a mess because I've been running my hands through it, don't have a clue who they are. It helps a little.

Sometimes I think what a nice place, I've got to bring... then I just stop.

Frustration

So I'm standing here in the middle of the lab, hurling an eraser around the room off the ceiling and the walls because I don't have my sabre with me and I don't know what else to do.

I don't know what to do.

I don't know how to undo the damage that I have done.
I don't know whether I should; I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. I don't know if I manage to start where I'll wind up, or whether I'll just go crackers again.

I don't know whether I'm hurting alone.

I don't know why I'm bouncing this stupid eraser off the walls, it isn't really making me feel any better.

And now I don't know where the eraser's gone.

Serendipity

The thing about serendipity is that it happens.

It really does. Just not very often.

And if you're lucky enough to be right there in the thick of it, you feel... depersonalised because you never believed in stuff like this.

It looks the way it does in the movies to the people around you, but to you, while its happening to you, while fate has you bound and gagged as her helpless victim... it isn't all that wonderful, isn't simply that swell of excitement and joy everyone else perceives, from the outside in.

It's bittersweet.
Something rare.
Something painful.
Something good.
Something won.
Something lost.
Something filled with hope for tomorrow.
Something mourning hope lost yesterday.
Something that can bring life, to life.
Something that can die in an instant.

Something to dream about
or something to escape from dreaming about.

*****
I remember as I leafed through the magazines at the QVB, watching for You out of the corner of my eye, killing time.

And then You were there, walking towards me; our eyes met; there was that look in your eye, that I knew by heart.

You came to a stop before me, and we smiled at each other in silence for a while.

*****
She hadn't closed the room door as she changed; she probably thought he was dozing on the couch.

It happened quite by accident; he caught a glimpse of her naked back.

And then he turned away, and sat down at the piano. And played a dirge with a heavy heart.

Bu She De

There were so many things I was looking forwards to doing, or doing again with her.

These were just some of the things :

Dinner at Iggys again, for our anniversary
Dinner at Le Saint Julien, Fullerton waterhouse, for her birthday
The bird park
asti at a park
running every tuesday
singing along in the car
Duck tours
Hotel stay - pseudo tourist
Dinner at michaelangelos
Dinner and drinks at Oosh
Drink at cafe del mar
Let her criticize my servers
Wall-E
Sydney
sleep, just sleep

*****
In the aftermath, I can see that I was just being selfish.

The plan was to stay friends, the way she wanted me to.
It was a confusing friendship where we could tell each other we missed each other, or kissed or hugged at certain times, but not others. She held the reigns of the when and wheres.

The plan was for me to watch her moving on; because I knew that she would go first; my life is filled with the burdens of audits and studying, hers is a (comparatively) carefree, hedonistic life.

I thought I would be able to be strong and bear the pain and shrug it off, be selfless. For her, as always.

But this morning I was weak, and I faltered.

Again.

Unwelcome

I know I said too much for you, and I know there were many times I spoke off the top of my head and hurt you.

There were some things I couldn't tell you, face to face.

I didn't tell you that J, whom both E and you wanted to hate so much as the cause of your problems - stayed a true friend to me, yes. But she also told me she admired you, that you had managed to find a way to remain friends despite what happened between us, and not to let you out of my life - that one is so clever! -; perhaps in the future she could seek you out for advice.

You were so wrong about her.

I didn't tell you that when my mother found out we had split up - my mother, who despite my reassurances you were convinced didn't like you - was so distressed, and asked me why. And said you were such a nice girl, what had I done to you, and to go and patch it up, it's just a silly quarrel. And that she had been waiting for good tidings from us.

This, the same mother who said in the aftermath of G that that one could never be trusted, she had eyes that were not trustworthy, and who called K a whore and a god knows what else, for my committing the cardinal sin of calling her up long distance on the family line.

I kept telling her I didn't want to talk.

You were so wrong about her too.

I didn't tell you that I had come to the realisation some time back of the kind of person I need to fall for - a good Christian / Catholic girl, with morals more like my own who truly believes in truth, love, courage and faith; someone who I could bring to church on sundays and bow our heads together with before God, and repent for our unworthiness, someone who I could laugh with until I die. Someone, as S, Js flatmate said, like K.

I didn't tell you that I passed up that realisation for you, because I already loved you, cheap china cracks and all - and that was all that was important to me.

*****
She said she had a dream which she couldn't remember, and woke up with tears on her face, the other day.

I tried sleeping; I had a dream, so rare for me, but I don't remember much of it. I don't seem to recall any tears, but now I just can't sleep. I just can't. I can't.

Played the piano for a bit, and rediscovered my forgotten ability to play grand sounding random gibberish on the piano - it only seems to come out when disaster strikes, sadly. Or with enough whisky, which is probably much the same thing.

Amd now I have to go back to my audit.

*****
I saw a patient today bearing the name Mohinder Singh. I smiled a little at the thought that it would have made you laugh.

No such thing as an amicable breakup

The only way two people can part amicably and still stay friends is if both people have stopped feeling for each other.

I was looking forwards so very much to a nap, and watching Wall-E with her today. So, so, so very much. I'm so very tired. Just so very tired.

*****
Just in case you read my blog, and just in case you threw away my letter without reading it; just in case, if you did, you feel one day like knowing what was in it.

It was this :

Dearest T,

I'm sorry that I have to do this, I just don't know what else to do.

Whichever one of us moves on first will hurt the other, if we really still love each other. That's just the way it goes. I don't want to be hurt by you, and I don't want to hurt you.

I'm going to miss you, and your family so very, very much.

With all my love,
' Boy.

PS : I'm going to miss telling you all about the interesting and funny things that happen in my day; i miss it already.

*****
My last memory of us wasn't of us leaning against each other watching a movie that made us both laugh; it wasn't of us being warm and comfortable and happy one last time before I caught her by the shoulder with my hand, smiled, and shook it hard in that friendly way we use to kid with each other about, once, as we said to each other "see ya, thanks for all the memories". I wanted so very desperately for... something truly amicable, but I guess she was right : that would have been selfish of me, to dictate the terms of our passing.

So instead my last memory of us was of her sitting by my side in the car, looking beautiful and immaculate as always to my biased eye, glancing away and never meeting my eye, her face an impassive mask, her mind intentionally closed to mine while I struggled to say that I had nothing left to say; each last second passing inexorably by, counting down to our closure.

I, tired, fatigued, dishevelled after 48 hours on shift asked her what she wanted.

She : "I don't want to be friends anymore".

I said "Wait", and handed her the letter, my shortest ever to her, to date.

And then she stepped out of our... no, my car, bumped into a client and went to work, and I drove away.

So thank you, T, for setting us free.

*****
Thank you for being my friend, my lover and my confidant during the time we were together. I'm sorry I hurt you with too much truth, and I'm sorry you hurt me with too little.

Thank you for the times you made me laugh, and for the times I made you laugh. I still can't help but smile when I remember you singing uninhibitedly and slightly tonelessly in the car, waving your hands around like a lunatic.

I'll never forget us, and all the wonderful memories that we made together.

Thank you.

Goodbye, Bonviva girl. I really, really hope you find your way, and I wish you only bluebirds.

This won't mean much to you, I know, but God bless you, and your family. You will be in my prayers.