Posts filed under 'Unsent Letters'
i think, most of all, i miss the security and warmth borne of the knowledge that together, we are a team. i’ve been distraught lately because it seems that all of my teams seem to be either falling apart or growing apart as we become more integrated into this aggressive adult world of incentives, competition and price wars. we’ve begun to sell each other out and stratify our networks. friends have become contacts, and everyone mistrusts each other. that, or we’re simply getting bored of each other. and so we slip away to form easier bonds, free of drama and obligations — no need for the periodic lunchtime catch-up or pretending that you care about the latest heartbreak or promotion. that’s why i am here in the umpteenth lost and found pile, waiting to be found again. perhaps i eject because i expect too much perfection, which as we all know, doesn’t exist — and when i am disappointed, i want to just go. sometimes it occurs to me that the better solution is to stay and fight, but i’m always too frightened to make that decision on my own. i hide and cower in fear because people can scratch so hard, whether consciously or not. people can talk so much, or neglect to defend the team, whether they’re supposed to be your friends or partners or neither. a circle of immunity is useless if the immunity can be revoked in the first place. the truth is, i just want my best friends back. i want to be back in that very comfortable space in this world where it is just me, and them, and our love. there, we are in a time and place where there is no need to fear each other. it is where we are free to make one buck bets.
February 17th, 2010
was tumultuous but a time of freedom. because i am inherently sadistic and like using pain as a fuel, i went back and looked at my blog archives for december. i remember this post, and the cupcakes, and what i thought was a calling. i remember this post as well — how it came about after a review session on the chain rule for our calculus final. that first quote about the onion is from the teacher assistant who conducted the session. funnily enough, this semester a lot of my math work focuses heavily on the chain rule as well. what a cruel joke. even after a year, i do still plunge through the chain rule recklessly and keep forgetting to differentiate the last variable.
re-reading that post and remembering all the little stories i hid among the veiled sentences makes it even more cruel. “haha”; apostrophes; another makes me hope as well as grieve. i think this time last year i was already there, amongst light hearted hellos. i felt like a giant in a mechanical toyland. everything seemed so small and my heart felt like it was this huge, inflated thing so filled with excitement. it was a promising time. but in hindsight, perhaps there were many signs that should have told me i was rushing through the chain rule. perhaps most of all, the dangling displays even when no one was watching, tears over soupy noodles, and the same boring topic being brought up over and over again. i wish i could go back in time and erase everything. i wish i could go back in time and have gotten on the correct flight. i wish i did leave, the way i did over summer. i wish i had made better use of my summer, and held the right hands and leaned in for kisses that would not have been turned away.
i remember the cold nights most of all, out in the streets, just talking. there was a strangely disproportionate amount of giggles throughout. i remember crying in selfridges, and having timtam there to save me. i remember the neat smell of the hallway, choosing christmas tree ornaments, stressful supermarket times, finally watching a movie that i know now is hardly reflective of anything that has happened. that movie was so breathtaking in all the wrong ways. what a drawn out romanticized picture for the lost and the loveless. its sequel and all the anguish in between made so much more sense. actually, come to think of it, maybe the lengthy romanticized picture makes a lot of sense too. only i wish i had left it at one day, instead of all this elapsed time that we are never getting back. i shake my head now at all the things that have been said and done and naively believed. at the same time, i think i have found a quiet closure. i’ve been storing so much anger within me, but it seems to have evolved into something else. i don’t know for sure what that is right now, but it’s making me feel like i want to take back everything i said about wishing this had all never happened.
this time, this time. hopefully i won’t mess up again.
December 19th, 2009
i often stumble into those things that i’ve tried hard to parcel away into just ’some month’ in the many months of many life. but it’s almost that time of year again, and the renewed festivities in the air bring me back to that epoch, that carefully partitioned meadow that i often look at longingly from behind a glass wall. it smells like fresh sheets and the melting evening sun. it sounds like the soft giggles of secret sex. it’s so very, very tempting and it lies there, beckoning me to come in, and it promises to be so warm — but like everything else in history, it is inaccessible to me because i am older now. i have grown and i have moved on. for every day that i wake up and think, shit, i’m late for class, i am really moving one day away from it, further and further until it is displaced from me and mine and i will no longer remember the sounds and the smells and how he looked as he watched me put on makeup. i was putting on eyeliner. i saw him watching from the mirror, so i turned around and asked, what? nothing, he said, it’s just cool that i’m dating a girly girl. we’re not dating, i wanted to say. are we? then we slipped out of the house together, my hand safe and snug in his pocket, my heart comfortably resting on his, and he held me close in the blustering winds. one foot rule, okay? that’s what we decided on. we had to keep a distance of one foot from each other for the night. this is my friend! i introduced him. i basked in the awkwardness with which he handled my friends, and me, as i playfully ruffled all the seams of his composure within a one foot radius. he sat beside me during dinner, and i complained loudly, emily make him stop! he’s flirting with me! and emily shouted over, yeah stop flirting with her! he blushed hard and i laughed cruelly with emily. later that night, when the one foot rule had dissipated and we were entwined and warm under the sheets, i giggled and apologized for being mean. he smiled, kissed me, and we fell asleep holding hands. it’s always like that. it’s always about me being mean for the sake of fun and glittery excitement, while he just kisses me and waits patiently until i’m bored of the game du jour, and i return to him, pouting. but i like the fun and the excitement. i can’t give it up, no matter what month of the year it is. there is a pace, and i wanted him to run with me too. but everything happened so long ago, and i’m so in danger of forgetting him. today i did not think about him at all. i appreciated the realization that i had simply forgot to keep him at the fringes of my mind, if not at the very center. it made me feel like i was finally in control. but then it occurred to me that i’ve only been awake for three hours today, and three hours of not thinking about him is not very substantial. nevertheless it’s a start. i’m thinking less and less about him, and every day that i wake up is another day further from ’some month’ in the many months of my life.
November 25th, 2009
this cant be what it’s like to chase happiness.
October 13th, 2009
as i was crumbling, he came to my rescue; swiftly, without signal or shadow, swooping down to envelop me in warm, familiar sounds and heart-filling explosions. you are here, i exhaled with the last breath that clawed its way out of my throat, please dont leave me again i could not bear it if you did. but as i grasped in cold panic, he became old teak wood splinters and fell to the ground in a faceless and soulless heap of dust, so quickly and painfully, at my fingertips. why would you do this to me. why would you show me glimpses and then — be back again, shooting out of the soil with tremendous speed and great strength, just as i’ve always known, providing canopy, scowling, gentle. i have no blood left for this fever; you have to either stay or go.
September 26th, 2009
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