Dear M,

We had a hectic day today. I have learnt much, and I believe you have, too. Sometimes situations are best observed by a third person, because as far as I could tell, we were too people like ants on a hot fry-pan, arguing over the tiny little truths we manage to derive from each other.

Boys are silly and I still believe that; sometimes it takes the girl ages to realize because in the beginning she always assumes she was the wrong one. First humble, then we find ourselves blocking the very doorway.

Another break-up? Yes, and I still managed to get you talking for 4 hours. The reasons you assumed for the break-up were not really the reasons at all. They were hindering what were hidden underneath by our blind sights and fears. Now when you were once so certain about your decision, I believe you are standing again in the grey area.

These are silly things; and sometimes we are silly kids. In our twenties we can still sulk and be ecstatic just like five-year-olds. But I realized those important things about a relationship today. I can’t say it’s universal, but I believe they are basic. Do not break up with me; everyone will believe it is unfair.

But whatever happens I hope you are happier. Last time we broke up it was for the worse, and you said you were more sad. Since the overall atmosphere did not change I believe the reasons this time round are more or less the same.

We all try not to make the same mistake twice, don’t we?

I have faith in you, in this relationship, in human beings. We all have flaws, we make mistakes, learn from them, keep going for the wonderful things. But for once, (excuse the language), stop poking your d*** in a new hole everytime something happens - if a relationship is what you want.

xx R.

I despise my own youngness and the mistakes I make - because sometimes the costs are too great. Yet when it’s at the expense of another human being - who can never be without flaws or faults - I find intolerance in others intolerable.

For me it is logical to be tolerant of others. It shouldn’t be something that is “at their discretion” - because who isn’t without flaws? And thus who shouldn’t be tolerable of others?
That applies to close relationships - familial or romantic - because that is what closeness are for. Without patience, communication and understanding, the relationship isn’t worth having.

It is the sweetness that makes the bitter fruit worth of taking.

Saying that, I know to distinguish the difference between one’s mistakes & one’s characteristic. If gambling is continuous, it is a characteristic; if it was one-off and even if they lose all their money, the partner we have chosen should deserve a chance to be forgiven & learn from it.

* * * *

I see things too much in black & white because I dislike compromises. In teamwork it is effective, but not when it comes to things related to morality and values.

On Mother’s Day, I returned to my parent’s home only to find my mother crying. My dad has been fed up with me not contacting them while living away, and said that if I do not become more like my family members, I will pretty much be disowned as a daughter.
Coming to choose to change my life or keep the parent-child linkage, I didn’t immediately jump to the latter. For me, my past which was filled with dad and mum’s advices had been worse than the life I have chosen for myself. Moving out of home teaches me countless street-smart lessons that are more priceless than academic information.

But who would ask a child to give up seeing their mother forever? And what child would choose that voluntarily?
I did not want to compromise with their way of doing things, no matter what. For that, I would rather lose in grief instead of making my life second-best to what I could possibly make it.

That is where I am stubborn. That is where I see things in black & white.
I don’t deem compromise in that situation as “best.”

In the end, my parents did leave me alone. They realized that differences, even amongst you and your child, including culture and gender, need to be respected. I cannot be all that they want, and the world is not perfect.

* * * *

Despite that little triumph over people 30 years older than me, I think I still take the issue with M to heart too closely.
It made me think that perhaps I am not normal enough, and he isn’t a happy boy to begin with either.
I am falling into my own trap that I have warned others: two halves cannot be in a happy relationship.

But thinking of the intolerance issue, if two people are slightly broken but both have the determination to continuously be better selves & strive for a united perfection, perhaps those relationships will work after all.

I haven’t really had the courage or strength to write today until now.
Some say I am too harsh on myself, including M and my friends - but it is exactly that I cannot let go or cease to ponder.

Over the last few days I have learnt what I needed to about me - that I see the world in black & white (except for M who said I see grey), that I am merciless to my family, and most astoundingly I’ve learnt that I am not normal.

Forget the notion that there is no “normality scale.” Because, sure there is. We treat others the same way we wish to be treated. We don’t wear bikinis to our workplace unless permitted. And we don’t leave a visitor suddenly without warning.

I know I have my speciality - and people do or don’t like me because of them. But for the first time since I left home, I have suddenly wanted to be toned down, to be a Plain Jane.
I have been feeling really horrible about myself. I know I am not a hundred percent responsible for al the misfortune, but I still feel afraid.

My dream to repel norms for the better has begun to get to me. My absolutism has given me privileges but also proves that M is unlike to choose me.
He is not perfect either, but I have tolerated. And I expected him to tolerate back, which isn’t the case. I’ve left him alone.

When fears become true you see their causes. My non-normality is what I want & not want at the same time. That was why I feared and gripped onto M. He will force me to face this fact myself. And on the weekend, after behaving erratically, it was the breaking point.
I am paying the price.
Because I knew I’d fail and face this problem, sooner or later.

I am one person who needs so much work.

When I look at myself, what do I see? Am I suppose to see anything? Or am I just a being of neural circuits of responses & reflections?
Everything is relational, nothing is temporary, everything is eternal.
I am here for as long as my heart pounds & as long as I’m breathing. Ever want to put a stop to that to see what it’s like? Of course.

We are sending, rendering, receiving signals.
That’s all we do.

I keep wanting to escape successfully from a fire. I’ve always wanted that. It’s even harder to understand than me wanting a big brother. Or love.

So basically… when we cannot figure out what we truly are, we need a close other who loves us to reflect our identity & self-worth… do we come to love that person because they make us feel good about ourselves, or even just to see ourselves clearly? Do all lovers have the same reason? Will love go wrong if they do not know?

Life is an intricate slow-motion dance between love and light.
I want to tell M all that I am. So he won’t have to fear or worry anymore. He keeps figuring me out, or try to.
How can you get to where you want if you don’t know what a relationship is, what the other person is, or even what you dream of?
Things will vaporize if they’re not effective.

The journey is always the hardest.
After that, when we’ve come to our endings, we would smile for real. Again.
I want to be with myself more than anyone else.

When you don’t want to take care of yourself, what can you expect to find in others & from others?

Of course, she was young, and still had matters on her heart. Those boyfriends, those unsentimental and insensitive cute creatures, broke and mend her heart many times without knowing. But over the years she had learnt about them.
And oh, forget the notion of love: it could not be chased, but only uncertainly met by fate in the park, on a bench where the guy was feeding pigeons. Or under the roof of a bakery where she was purchasing French bread and found him looking at her as if he had not seen females before. They smile, they looked into each other eyes, and saw a beautiful life laying out in front of them that they would have never dreamed of.
Whatever bad shit life could bring, cancer, deaths, accidents, a poor city drowning in diseases - these lover with their capabilities of dreams would never perish. Their existence, perhaps unknown to the world, was the very crystal that represented a melancholic life itself.

She was so young and only 20. He was only a few years older than her. The world was full of impossibilities and always, possibilities, of the unborn child and the un-tasted rain.

[6 hours later ]

Like many times, I found myself drowning in a tide of anguish only to resurface and see a silly girl giving too much of herself to the ocean.

It is astounding how close loved ones could make us feel about ourselves in mirroring. It is ridiculous and sometimes worthy of a laugh. Like what happened yesterday - at the party, where drunkenness is not an uncommon sight - I submitted to the illogical commentary of M with raised voices and rage. I did not restore to my concentric point. That was essential, for a woman or a man. Without a spine, a backbone of ourselves, we are forever lost and drowning in the mercy and praise of others.

Life could be so simple and complicated.

Anyway. I’ve had enough of the silly boy’s childlike whines. M is the love of my heart, but he is, after all, human. And there are many inanimate things in this world that are worth lavishing for their beauty.

I invited him to a Hans’ party last night. He knew some people at the party, but kept telling me that he only came to see me and wanted to spend time with me.

I am allergic to alcohol so I was sober when everyone became drunk, including M. I was trying to enjoy everything at the same time wanted to spend time with him alone. I went and hid in my friend’s room. He came and found me and thought that was weird and said we should go back to my place.

I didn’t. I stayed for whatever reason and finally, when I was too stressed out about my bf being unhappy, I started play-fighting with Hans to let my stress out. Hans did something ridiculous like held me upside down in public. I fought him back and the fight looked really serious. M clearly thought it was weird, but I didn’t want it to happen that way.

When we finally let the party, he was raging. He said something was really wrong with me and I have been dramatic all night, but when I told him that I was merely too worried about him being uncomfortable he said I was bullshitting. Bullshit, that’s all he said. And he left as soon as he walked me back to my place. And didn’t want to talk with me.

I don’t know what to do. I’m so lost and afraid that he really thinks I’m a psycho. I thought I was just a bit dramatic but it wasn’t about him. But he wouldn’t believe me.

He wouldn’t believe me…

I should begin with the blogging commentary from yesterday.
I was really glad to realize by the end of that rationalization process that I have not been writing for the sake of public recognition – but to simply improve my writing skills & quality. After all, it is the words that are delicious and imagery that are ambrosia to me. Yes, “0 comments” means nobody cares. Funnily enough, I don’t care if nobody cares. Because this blog isn’t one of opinion & arguments: it is one of self-enjoyment, perhaps light hedonism, and happiness in absolutely my nihilist attitude towards life.
Yes. Nihilism makes my life much happier.

By this morning, a Thursday morning, I had finished the psychology lecture at 10a.m. regardless of that fact that it wasn’t right for me. Then I spent the rest of the day writing essays, and even walked all the way to Starbucks just for a cup of coffee. I knew at least the quality wouldn’t disappoint me. And there was a line of ten or eleven students that queued all the way outside the door. Starbucks has commercialized well.

The Truth of the Truth: For all of us writers, we blog because we fear the disappearance of our existence. Through our words our spirits may live on, no matter how trivial our lives are. What other reasons could we possibly have for rambling on days after days about the moment we bought a Starbucks coffee after shopping at the supermarket?

I have no grudges against this whole bloggers stuck in a wall of mirrors of bloggers thing. It is only those bloggers who write, “look at me, look at me, look at me” that are of any annoyance to me.

From The Book Of Laughter & Forgetting by Milan Kundera -

Litost is an untranslatable Czech word. Its first syllable, which is long and stressed, sounds like the wail of an abandoned dog. As for the meaning of this word, I have looked in vain in other languages for an equivalent, though I find it difficult to imagine how anyone can understand the human soul without it.

Take an instance from the student’s childhood. His parents made him take violin lessons. He was not very gifted and his teacher would interrupt him to criticize his mistakes in an old, unbearable voice. He felt humiliated, and he wanted to cry. But instead of trying to play in tune and not make mistakes, he would deliberately play wrong notes, the teacher’s voice would become still more unbearable and harsh, and he himself would sink deeper and deeper into his litost.

What then is litost?

Litost is a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.

One of the customary remedies for misery is love. Because someone loved absolutely cannot be miserable. All his faults are redeemed by love’s magical gaze, under which even inept swimming, with the head held high above the surface, can become charming.

Love’s absolute is actually a desire for absolute identity: the woman we love ought to swim as slowly as we do, she ought to have no past of her own to look back on happily. But when the illusion of absolute identity vanishes (the girl looks back happily on her past or swims faster), love becomes a permanent source of the great torment we call litost.

Anyone with wide experience of the common imperfection of mankind is relatively sheltered from the shocks of litost. For him, the sight of his own misery is ordinary and uninteresting. Litost, therefore, is characteristic of the age of inexperience. It is one of the ornaments of youth.

Litost works like a two-stroke engine. Torment is followed by the desire for revenge. The goal of revenge is to make one’s partner look as miserable as oneself. The man cannot swim, but the slapped woman cries. It makes them feel equal and keeps their love going.

Since revenge can never equal its true motive, it must put forward false reasons. Litost is, therefore, always accompanied by a pathetic hypocrisy.

* * * *

In my third year of university I have finally realized that I picked the wrong major. It should not be Psychology. It should be English.
See how simple that was?

I don’t know why I haven’t been able to admit it to myself.

But also, on the same night, I am affirmed by myself that I love M.
I love him.
He can’t swim very well, but he can certainly keep his head above the water and fight for himself. There is so much fight inside him. And it is his innocence and trust in mankind he has lost.

But I see that in him.

Last night when M came over, I wanted to get food.

It was raining very lightly. We walked to the Starbucks right next to the Skytower and I ordered another Cinnamon Dolce Latté. The smooth jazz always played from the ceiling, and my spirit was calmed when that warm cup of coffee was announced. M and I went upstairs, through the wooden floors, to the space where modern chandeliers hovered above and grand couches sat welcomingly on the round rugs.

I opened up the cap of the coffee cup and scraped the cream with the stirring stick. I mixed it until the cinnamon was in the body of the latté. We were sitting by the windows which looked out to a rainy scene of night with the headlights of cars reflecting on the slippery streets. The traffic lights had seemed extra lucid as well.
There was a bar across the street. “I want to own that bar one day,” M said. I looked up. “I mean I just want to be the owner, not the manager. That would be too tiring. But I want it to be a place where I can be in front of the counter and behind it. It could be my resting stop. And see those rooms above the bar? One of those could be my own room.”
“That is really cool.” As a matter of fact, I have never thought about that myself. But it was a brilliant idea. As long as he doesn’t turn into a pimping sugar daddy type.

The coffee was great. It was near an orgasm. With M sitting across from me babbling as I liked, I thought about how my life is really quite enjoyable.