Small Things

I still can remember how she made me guess her number.

Remember the first movie we watched. Remember all the movies we watched. Remember the last movie we watched.

Remember how we talked late into the night, over the phone, over Skype, over MSN, over email.

So many small things I still can remember. Yet the small things are what make each and every relationship unique. Girl meets boy, boy meets girl, girl gets boy, boy gets girl - isn't this the general story arc for any love story? Throw in the intricacies of notes, talks, dates, kisses, hugs and these are the things that will make the story special.

Did she think our story was special? Or was it a run-of-the-mill, cringe worthy, dime a dozen love story? Whatever she might think, I don't care. To me it was my first love and as they say, the first love is special. First loves, it is said, last forever. I will make it last forever because it is the small things that will make me remember her forever.

It is the small things that will never fade. On my desk lies a dartboard, one that has accompanied me from childhood. There is a plastic folio behind it and inside, there are bits and pieces that are hers. I do not dare look behind that dartboard for I know those things will only make me miss her more.

I don't think she misses me any longer. I am glad that she doesn’t. I am happy if she can move on without me, without missing me at all, to find someone she can consider her true love and to find someone she can be happy with. That someone will be a lucky person and he better take good care of her.

It's about time I let her go from my life. A new chapter is opening for me and I've resolved to never let such small things affect my ultimate goal in life. I will care for others in the occupation I am aspiring towards; I don't need a special someone to care for me.

Yes, I think I have given up on love. Let's wait for someone new to change my mind.

Admonishment

I sincerely hope you attended the morning service today. I think it was a sermon that applied both to you and me. I hope you understand why I did what I did in the past. I know that you might not want to believe that my actions might be justified. But they are and I do not feel so bad admonishing you now.

There are so many things I warned you about, so many things I wished you didn’t do, so many things you still went ahead and did anyway. You said that you cared for my feelings, but true to your heart: can you say that you did? I waited for a month, 3 months, 6 months, a year and did you try to change? Maybe the naysayers were right for once.

You weren't meant for me.

I wish, wish so badly that I could continue to be your friend, to help you grow in the years ahead, to be there to assist your maturing, to make you a better person. There are reasons why I cannot be your friend anymore and most of them are out of my control. This hurts me because it is a Hobson's choice.

I know you won't forgive me for all that I've done. But if you do see this, I will try to explain that I did it out of love for you. I wanted you to be better, not for me, not for others but for yourself and for Christ. All the times you have made me feel like the bad guy for doing so and you might still feel that way. I am content knowing that I know that I did it out of love and not the intention to shame or humiliate. You don't need to agree.

Because I still love you.

I used to know

Now and then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it's an ache I still remember

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end
Always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I'll admit that I was glad that it was over

But you didn't have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened
And that we were nothing
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger
And that feels so rough
You didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records
And then change your number
I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know

Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I'd done
And I don't wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you could let it go
And I wouldn't catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know...

But you didn't have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened
And that we were nothing
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger
And that feels so rough
You didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records
And then change your number
I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know

I used to know
That I used to know

Somebody...

Waiting

1 week since I've last spoken to her. It will soon be 1 month, then 1 year, then a lifetime. I am waiting for something, I just don't know what it is. Am I looking for closure? Am I seeking life to pass faster so that the end comes quicker? So that I will not have the suffer this pain for that long?

Maybe that something will never exist. Sometimes, I wish her happiness, for her to move on with her life contented without me. At others, I cruelly wish that she cries for me, to move on without loving another. Yet I know this will never happen. So quickly, she has moved on without me, it was something she already wanted for a long time. She is happy, she is alive. Without me. Did she cry for this loss as much as she did for her past experiences? Do I really want to know?

I didn't want it to come down to this. I wanted to celebrate her birthday with her for a second time. I had her present picked out, I had already planned to buy it.

I am waiting forever. For an endless pain to disappear.

You Aren't Here/There

How do two souls so in sync tear themselves apart in such a short time? How can they walk down the road of a year, of 365+ days of constant conversation, then take the split roads that take them apart? How do you expect me to live alone when you were always there?

All my life I've tried

To make everybody happy while I just hurt and hide

Waiting for someone to tell me it's my turn

To decide

Song lyrics speak truths. They speak the innermost feelings of my heart without needing me to form even a single word. Yet, I've learnt that there is no pleasing everybody. I gave up my own love for the comfort of my loved ones. I hurt you to heal the rifts in my relationships with others I loved.

Just hurt and hide. I am told to embrace my fears, bare my sadness, open up to others to let them know how I feel. I cannot do that because it would simply make everyone around me upset again. I know, I have tried. So yes, hurting and hiding, this has and always will be my modus operandi.

Because the only one I stopped hiding from no longer seeks.

You aren't here anymore. I promised you that my heart was only yours and would forever be yours, no matter if I could be with you or not. Do you remember this promise if promises even mean anything to you? It does to me, and I'll keep it till the end of my life. Maybe I am jaded and I will regret penning this down as a tangible record. But I do not want to go through this all again so I won't try again. My promise is not perfect and it would be selfish to write this, but I will anyway: I had hoped you made the same promise to me.

I don't think you ever did.

Losing Myself

To control a nation, you have perhaps two options. One is to provide for your citizens' needs, to give them what they need and they will maybe love you for what you have done. Two, which could possibly be the preferred option, would be to work them to hell and not give them the time or energy to think about what may be or what they can do to make things better.

That is the power of work. Facing a goal, moving towards it, sometimes you hardly remember what happens around you anymore. You lose yourself in the process, forgetting things that might be important to you in the past, present or future. Sometimes this is for the better: who hasn't heard of stories where people who are jilted in love push themselves to the limits in their occupation, trying to forget the unwanted truth that brutally confronts them.

I try. I used to think that the lax hours of my current posting would benefit me, give me some rest instead of being for example an infantryman/rifleman cleaning their rifles after "chionging sua". I thought that it would be good, but when I am trying to shake loose my past, time on hand is not something I want. I truly want to lose myself in my work, to seek goals related to my current work and my future occupation.

I used to hate running, how the pounding of feet on a track doesn’t do anything but bring about pain. I used to think it was pointless. There was no enjoyment I could glean from the activity. I've started running: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays (although only on a treadmill) and I think it boils down to me not feeling the pain anymore. It is possible that mental anguish can drown out physical suffering. I think I have experienced that for myself.

I do not cry anymore. Sometimes I try to but I am too far gone to feel sadness anymore. I am resigned to the world being a cruel place, surrounded by faux laughter and pseudo happiness. I don't feel sad anymore, because there is nothing that deserves this emotion. Nothing. I cannot feel sad for a world that decided one day that what I considered to be happiness and bliss should disappear forever. Vanish indeed, into thin air, leaving me grasping for something that never existed, does not exist and will not exist. I leaned over a cliff to touch something that I could never have and fell into a valley that I will never leave.

Yes, I have changed. Have I lost myself yet? I don't know. But I do know that I will in the end and because of you, I will never be the same person. The old Matthew is lost to the wind, torn to shreds by the vortex of betrayals and lies.

Maybe I'll grow old and become a cynical old bastard. But that's what you get when you're a cynical young man.

I'm tired.

I wish, I wish upon a star

To take me away from this place. To bring me somewhere where I can start anew.

There is another reason for me to want to go. It is a reason bigger than the compulsory service I am doing currently. It is a reason, perhaps the only reason right now that would make me want to leave.

It breaks my heart to say this, but I want to go away because you are here. Yes, you know who you are if you ever do chance across this blog.

In one stroke I lost much I held dear and hoped for. In one month actually, and it was the worst month I was going through in national service. Distraught, stressed, angst - these words would not have been able to describe the mental state I was in that week. I silently cried, every single night, with tears that would not fall. I had to suck it up, take it all as it came: the pain from the break up, the disappointment and sadness from the rejection, the berating and scolding from my superiors. I had to put on a face, to appear like nothing was wrong. On the inside though, I was writhing and wincing from the pain that came from within.

1 month that made a whole difference to what I believed in. I believed that there was such a thing called care. Now I realise I can care for others but there will never be any reciprocity. I believed that there was such a thing called trust. With so much betrayal, how can I expect to trust anyone from now on? I believed that there was such a thing called concern. I guess that exists only in an adulterated form.

I believed that there was such a thing called love. Now I don't.

I wish, I wish upon a star that I can believe again in love. I'll do that better if nothing around me is familiar, I don't know anyone and I can start again. A new chapter, in academics, in social life, in love, in life. Will I find that overseas? Or is it the memory that counts, that determines this ability to forget the past and to forge a new future?

I wish I had missed the first time we kissed cause you broke all your promises.

I cannot be your friend, never again. I think that is what hurts me the most because I never trusted anyone with more than a portion of my heart till I met you. I gave you my all. It was a mistake and as they say, a mistake is a lesson. I have learnt, I have grown wiser but a little more disillusioned with the world around me. I don't think I'll ever try to find friends any more and I'll keep those I have right now at arms length because of you.

I keep trying to escape from the pain. But with something that stems from within, that comes from my entire heart, my entire being, will there ever be true relief? Can metaphorical glue or tape hold the pieces of my heart together? How long will I need to heal? Is there a place where I can go to recover faster? Scars can still hurt you know.

I have learnt that it is possible to hate love, no matter how oxymoronic it might seem. I guess the real question I keep asking myself is this: will I ever love again?

The answer? No.

Till the day I can't remember

I will be writing here.

I had the misfortune of roaming around Square 2 yesterday. I had time on my hands so I figured, why not walk around and see what I can find? Bad idea. To see a table in a ramen shop and remember how I once had a good time there, having a meal with someone I once loved. To remember how I walked from a hospital across the road, meeting someone up just to grab an ice cream. There are too many memories in that place.

There are too many memories everywhere I look.

I wept as I played the 2nd movement of Pathetique today. Yes, I feel pathetic, crying over something that is already lost to me. It used to be a favourite, now it just hurts to even hear the soothing melodic strands that stream out from beneath my fingers. My fingers can play the piano, but my heart no longer can bear it. What used to be a blessing now is just a cursed memory. I never want to hear that song again.

Till the day I can't remember. That's a hope.