the sensation of little critters from the past crawling up my leg is a shivery, anxious one. but sometimes i can’t stop myself from freezing time and separating my emotions — to simply watch the spectacle as it unfurls across my skin, mid-crawl. i tried the other day to think about the person that i was when i knew him but i don’t remember what kind of decisions i would have made at the time. i don’t remember how i talked, or how i would have chosen to spend my free fridays. i don’t remember anything at all. in a way it’s disconcerting but in many ways it’s also very liberating. am i finally free from you? then time melts again and the critters evaporate.

i am falling into you

as i catch that lightning fast flash glimpse of you in the photograph from the reflection in the car, i am falling into you… and it seems that is always what i’m thinking of, as you look at me and i look up and there is all this sound of the air of the whooshing of us as our lives brush past each other, in friction and in silky smooth destiny, where there are seagulls, and there is life as it stays held lovingly by our comfort, and all of the ease that we have makes our hair float

i want to hold your hand

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.

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.

this cant be what it’s like to chase happiness.