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Tuesday, August 28, 2012
You've won. I hope you're fucking happy now. After all everyone forgets about moral decency once in a while, don't they? It's no big deal, no big deal slowly poisoning someone you no longer give a fuck about; it's probably enjoyable anyway, and you've been waiting for this to happen for a long time just that you never had the courage it takes to speak up about it.
It only concerns you if the person is dead. Dead, and then you can get him out of your life.
You've gotten what you want. You've taken all I have. There is nothing I have left to give.
Have a fucking good life.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Please...please...
Please don't hurt me anymore.
I love you.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
After a while, having been so mindlessly engaged in the comings and goings of life and people and events and things for the past few months...I've forgotten how simple everything could be if only I could find it in myself to just let go. After all it's not something I'd have to go out of my way to strive for; I've always had the ability to do so, only I've thrown myself so willingly into the elaborate beauty of a rare illusion that was able to fully capture my heart and soul and sate these two famished beasts, that I cannot even conceive of any prospect of leaving it now...leaving this cage, this intricate home that offers at once the tender nourishment I need and the concentrated bouts of pain and misery that would make me throw myself against the bars in a desperate frenzy - until a cursory glance across the bleak and wintry landscape that spans for miles and miles beyond, with its howling wind, its battered trees, its excruciating whiteness and biting cold and blank scrutiny of the greying skies...makes me realise with a crushing sense of dejection that there's simply nowhere else to go.
And now, like most other illusions in which I've dived and nearly drowned, this one has begun to seem almost on the brink of dissipating right before my eyes into the cold, hard realisation of nothingness. A small part of me deep in myself is curling up on the ground and breaking into sobs underneath the blanket - of me, of all the layers and layers and layers of me that impose unforgivingly upon that part of myself in a ruthless attempt to quash it completely from existence. But I can't. I can't disappear, and I can't make myself disappear. Deep inside I'm still a child who has never grown up over the past few years, and probably never will.
I want to run away, but I don't know where I can look to. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I want. I don't know how I'm going to survive. I don't know what life is like, should be like, and will be like. What should I do? What can I possibly do?
I've decided that if an appointment can be made in time, I'll go for a counseling session next wednesday, because I think I...really, really need it now. I'm desperate. I'm lost. I've reached the stage where my cynicism has failed to delude myself into believing that my reserve of strength can last me through the battle with myself, and now I want nothing more than to talk to someone who would want nothing from me but my honest words, who would accept my flaws, not with loving eyes but with understanding ones all the same.
...It's times like this that I wish...
I wish...
...I wish I knew what I wish for.
***
~~~*Left with the Winds at 10.44pm*~~~
Friday, August 24, 2012
I made sure to choose flat, sharp ones, and I found two. But that was not enough.
I wish I could have found something thinner, even sharper, smaller and more elegant...like a skewer, with which the carving of the most hurtful words could be endowed with as much force as their meaning.
It didn't reach me. I wasn't listening.
I wasn't feeling it.
It's not enough. And because of that, I'm unable to scream, and there is nothing I can do but let the stones drop
back to the ground, where I sit in the middle of life and cry myself empty of tears,
over and over and over again.
***
~~~*Left with the Winds at 12.43am*~~~
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Who do you think you are, walking back and forth down the corridor and tarnishing the ground with your worthless two feet, with that thrice-accursed air of uncertainty and desperation and that filthy little book full of twisted sketches and disgusting words? Look at you, you pathetic sniveling damnable freak of a creature, take a nice, long look at yourself. How absolutely repugnant you are! There is nothing you can ever amount to other than a perfect embodiment of complete failure in all aspects the mind can think of - and even then you'd just be a simulacrum, because even the mildest form of attribution to perfection is out of your league. Stay where you are. You aren't going anywhere. There is nowhere for you to go anyway, other than the marred semblance of a floor that lies in the wake of your unworthy steps, you fucking bastard.
Don't come running to me wailing about the injustice of life and the pain and hurt and complaining about the fatigue and the stress and the loneliness, because that's the way things are, and it's your own fucking problem if everyone's dealing with it just fine and you just don't have enough of a backbone to remain standing on your own. Sure, it hurts, to whom does it not? You cry and you scream and you slam your knuckles into the wall as you wallow in the perceived depths of your bottomless self-pity. You cut and pinch and bite and claw at your skin and let your repulsive tears mingle with that sickening blood of yours. You sweep all the frames off the wall, fling the books to the other end of the room, smash the tub of glue against the door and shatter the paint bottle in random but spectacular displays of brutish violence - but open your eyes you bitch, do I look like I give a flying fuck? Just who are you trying to impress here, hmm? I've been with you for sixteen torturous years, stuck in your ugly body and cursed with your rotting abscess of a mind, and do you know how long I've been sitting in the saccharine melodrama of your own delusions, watching your plaintive antics to please a world whose obvious apathy is rock-hard and ice-cold? All the while I've scolded you, warned you and punished you, only to see you fail and try over and over again as if you're fucking determined to shake off all the remaining pieces of my crumbling dignity. I'm ashamed. I'm frustrated. I'm sick, sick of you.
Do you have any idea...any idea at all...just how much I hate you?
You're nothing, nothing at all, and it really is about time you accepted that fact. It would have saved everyone a lot of trouble. That's the way it is.
I hate you. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.
Any last words? I'm going to smash the mirror soon.
***
~~~*Left with the Winds at 12.21am*~~~
Saturday, August 18, 2012
I don't know how to explain myself anymore, really. The depressive episode yesterday was one of the few cases that had seemingly no identifiable trigger at all, but it affected my mood so badly that for a good hour or so I could concentrate on nothing but my feeble attempts at distracting myself from the rest of the world. It started when I was reading "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" behind the piano while waiting for the others to finish their meals, and then somehow in the middle of it all, my mood went on a rapid downward spiral and crashed when I heard that we'd missed Astro Night altogether. I drowned in a fug for the rest of the night after that.
It's all so baffling. I wasn't even particularly looking forward to Astro Night, but I suppose my mind subconsciously detected the signs of an upcoming episode and I was banking on some stargazing to keep me above the surface...which, of course, didn't happen in the end, and so I sat at the table and ignored everyone and occupied myself with drawing some senseless pieces of shit in my sketchbook. At first I went to Jonat's secluded corner to bother Yuxuan (threw a piece of crumpled up receipt through a gap between the boards), pretending to ask about what happened to our plans for Astro, but he was engaged in an animated conversation with Jonat - lying on the table and all - and I felt a little selfish for intruding so I left them to their devices. When he came out, though, I think he might have seen my expression before I could react fast enough to school it into something more convincingly normal, or at least an unreadable poker face. Berated myself quite some bit for that. The last thing I wanted was for him to worry about something inexplicable and bothersome like this, and yet I couldn't control myself well enough...as usual.
The only things I remembered of the next hour were just the barriers I'd erected between myself and the world, the white noise around me, the scraping of my pen against paper, Yuxuan's reassuring presence beside me, and the brief period of time where he tapped my arm continuously with his pencil until I wrote on my paper (and lied) that "it's alright".
Things got worse in the car; for a good while it felt as if time had somehow reversed, and I was back to being the helpless kid who would wake up frequently in the middle of the night, crying for my parents out of an irrational fear of the dark and suffocating desperation at being left alone. I thought of all the spectres that would plague my mind through lonely late nights: my nightmares, my wild imagination, my haunting paranoia that would urge me to make late-night toilet trips through the darkened walkways as quick and mindless as possible. I thought of my kindergarten episodes: my tantrums, my frustration, my loneliness, my bewilderment, my cluelessness, my classmates whom I could never love or be accepted by, my childhood.
God. Spirits. Dream companions. Astral projection experiences. Dimensions and forgotten planes. All my escapades with Endro regarding shared dreams, spirit guides, auric sensing, telepathy, telekinesis, intuition and all that psychic shit we were obsessed about.
My first crush in P6, our friendship, our misunderstandings, our embarrassment, our exasperation and my broken heart. Recesses spent at the pond drawing withering lilies and untouchable carps and thinking if I could step through the water into the tempting reflections of the sky. Breaks spent wandering through the chicken coops, talking to colourful parrots and cooing at drowsy pigeons. My first peacock feather from the kindly gardener. Sitting at the edges of the parade square watching the boys play table tennis and soccer and stealing quick but longing glances at him. Admiring the way he darts lithely through the crowd like an otherworldly being elevated by my adoration. The flutter of my heart as he leans over once and asks if I'm staying back for math supplementary. The tentative handshake he gave me in the stairwell wishing me good luck for our math exam. The paper notes we crushed in little balls (I still have some of them) and threw to each other whenever the teacher wasn't looking during class.
My confession, his blush, my evasion of his gaze. The boy who screwed up everything and made a big hullabaloo out of our secret exchange of notes. Running down the stairs, choking on the beating of my own heart, his footsteps behind me, his voice calling for me to wait.
"I can explain." "Half of what I said was true."
"It's okay."
Running away from him. Xu Ke giving me a piece of tissue as I cried against the trunk of a tree and hoping that passers-by would just take my behavior for momentary madness. My apology letter to him the next day. The time we never got to spend together. The words I never got to say to him.
His departure from my life. Entrance into an entirely new school and new environment. Ecstasy at the knowledge of being in the same class as Azalea, mild uncontrollable jealousy at Cher's first entrance into our trio and depriving me of Azalea's full attention. Crying over failed math tests before my form teacher in the balcony outside my class. Taking care of the 207 class plant. Sketchbooks full of mindless doodles and half-written fanfiction chapters. Hoping that school would end as soon as possible such that I may rush home to the comforting virtual world of Maplestory. Skipping Jap to play Audition with Jia Hui. Getting a girlfriend in Audition, being ditched, feeling mildly sad, and ignoring her when she came back a few weeks later. "You've gotten better with your moves." Words falling on deaf ears.
Separation from Azalea and Cher into new classes with the start of upper secondary. Polite glances, non-commital smiles, friendly and empty words. "What is your favourite subject?" "What do you like to do in your free time?" Desperation at my inability to find anyone to tag along with in class after a substantial number of weeks. Stretches of silence. Awkwardness and disappointment. Pretending that nothing happened. Learning after a while to just shut up and move away from people when they are busy. Delving into my art and the comforting prospect of spending time with Az and Cher after school everyday. The dread of waking up to school everyday. The lethargy in my arms as I pull my blouse over my shoulders, followed by the pinafore and the belt and the jacket. Slipping away from class during recesses. Saving money and buying new sketchbooks. More breaks spent at the pond, humming Naruto soundtracks and "All My Love" while observing the terrapin I named Terry. Poking rotten fruit with twigs, swinging fallen branches and dried bean pods, playing the flute behind the empty green men's quarters, accidentally stepping into a pile of dried leaves full of ants. Scooping a fallen damselfly from the water and setting it on the dry ledge of the gardener's shed.
Running away from art class to the pond and crying my eyes out in the light drizzle. Looking up at the cold blank skies and the reflection of a bleak future. Staring hard into the murky pond water hoping to find answers to the meaningless monstrosity of my life. Glancing up once and seeing three of my classmates on the fourth floor. Climbing up the stairs to meet them outside the classroom.
"What were you doing?" "I was just looking at the terrapins. Do you know that there are two of them now? A tiny one that likes to trail after the old one, but it's really shy and would duck underwater the moment I step near it. They look so cute together. I called it Pinny."
"Oh, okay."
Buying a stack of yellow post-its from the bookshop one day in a whim. Writing lousy poems on them and pasting a couple on a tree near the pond. Wondering if it would be the wind or a person who would take them away if I left them there for a few weeks. Going back once to find it on the floor after a heavy downpour, with the words written in bluish ink smudged beyond recognition.
Picking it up. Putting it back down.
My disappointment.
Giving up.
Turning and walking back up the stairs into the painful and familiar noise of the main campus.
***
~~~*Left with the Winds at 3.18pm*~~~
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Maybe I should consider seeking some form of treatment after all. I've been having this problem for eons, and I don't think learning to live with it (or barely coping in this case) is a permanent solution...or at least one that will make life marginally easier.
I just woke up from another two-hour nap because I'd already set half an hour worth of snoozes by the time I was conscious enough to drag myself out of bed. The morning was, as was usual for the past three days, amazingly unproductive. I did about three simple math questions from the differentiation tutorial and spent the rest of my time staring at some other questions I've done before, trying to get my sluggish brain to work faster and comprehend the teacher's alternative methods. When I finally did and moved on, I happened to return to it after lunch and had to struggle mildly to recall what I had gone through and understood just a mere hour ago. Perhaps it's because of what happened three days ago and for some reason I'm taking a hell lot of time to recuperate, but even if that's the case...it's still getting really out of hand, it really is. I can't get myself to work at all. It's like my mind is rebelling, even though I have enough willpower to force myself to sit in one place and try to do work; it'll just shut itself down and I'll be left staring blankly at all the work that needs to be done, waiting dumbly while the desperation builds up slowly but steadily and threatens to consume my entire being.
My lack of productivity over the past three days horrifies me. I've never had such a problem before...not really, because no matter how tired or distressed I was, I'd usually be able to tick off at least one or two significant items from my list of assignments at the end of the day, on top of school. Even if I somehow didn't end up doing proper academic work, I'd have done something relatively worthwhile with my time, like producing a piece of digital painting or sketching for hours on end and getting the practice for something I'm passionate about. But the past few days...the past few days were really just an indistinguishable blur. I didn't know what I was doing at all; I'd wake up at nine or ten and then sit before my com reading some articles (very slowly, might I mention), and shortly afterwards I would enter a kind of 'stoning' phase, during which my world would seem to stop still in relation to the minutes and hours flowing outside my bubble. A soup of messed-up time, placed before me in a tiny little bowl.
And after I'd contemplated that bowl enough and was sufficiently frustrated, I would crawl into bed in a plaintive attempt to shut out the urgent berating whispers of unforgiving clocks, and sail away from my own slave-driver of a conscience in a sinking boat.
***
~~~*Left with the Winds at 4.14pm*~~~
Friday, August 10, 2012
I'm exhausted. The past two days have been a complete self-effacing blur, a pool of buzzing thoughts and churning emotions from which I would emerge from time to time, only to lose the strength to breathe and slip right underneath again. I went back to school today morning in an almost desperate attempt to distract myself by placing myself around people - or rather I hoped there would be people who could distract me, but turns out only a handful of Year Sixes were there in the morning. Wasted a few hours reading news articles and watching a couple of vids on Usain Bolt and the 2012 Olympics...tried to immerse myself in the mindless roll of statistic and hard fact and the occasional laugh at witty journalist remarks or hilarious pictures that turned up in the columns, which worked for a while, but then Facebook reminded me that I had to write my art education reflections for Yunteng and the effects wore off as quickly as they came. So I set some of Bruno Mars' songs on loop while typing to clear my head; "It Will Rain" and "Grenade" were pretty nice - old and rather mainstream songs, but I couldn't give a shit anymore.
Afterwards I tried to do some math, failed spectacularly, went to play the piano for a total of five tentative minutes, and then decided that I'd spare the Year Sixes the overlapping running notes - must be hard on the ears especially when the pianist doesn't give a fuck - and went back to the table to do some math again, at which point Siew came out from the Mac Lab and played some really calm and soothing songs on the piano. Chatted a little with him, mainly about music instruments and each other's music backgrounds, which was mildly uplifting, but the conversation didn't last more than a minute since we don't know much about each other. So I went back to my math again. I remember listening to Charisse and some other senior comparing Mrs Toh and Mr Chia while they ate their cup noodles at the table, Yong Xin asking me for the glue gun, and Yanyong knocking on the upper floor windows and displaying some colourful but exasperatingly unreadable body language - until I called him and we had a pretty ridiculous conversation staring at each other while speaking into our phones. He asked who was in the art room and where Yuxuan was, and I gave him the required answers. Originally thought he would be coming down, and I'm not sure why I actually felt a little hopeful, but he left for PW after that so I returned to my math.
At around 2pm Ahmad came back from prayers, and after checking up on Grace and Yuanyue in the coursework gallery and putting some food in their bowl (useless Sean Cham), we spent the rest of the afternoon at Jurong East library doing my math tuition questions together. We had a long talk during the train ride, but it didn't really help. Not that I expected it to anyway. The best I can do is just to try not to think about it...I've already thought about it too much, and now I just want to sleep, like I did for the most part yesterday. Sleep. Run into my dreams. Forget about the world. Be completely alone with myself.
Perhaps die a little too, so that I can wake up and taste life anew.
I'm sorry. These two words have been repeating in my head so persistently that I don't even know what exactly it is I'm apologising for anymore. I'm tired. I don't feel like I can hold on anymore. It's probably futile anyway, and it's just a matter of time before the crumbling rocks would sweep my hand away from the ledge, and I would be falling, down, down, down...straight into the embrace of cold, hard darkness. Buried. Discarded. Gone. A fossil of a desperate grip that failed to sustain itself, that's all I'll be.
I hope you'll read my previous post all the same, but I've thought very hard over the past two days and I guess I was wrong to plead...to humiliate myself...to show my desperation two nights ago. It's your right, it's your freedom after all...I won't chain you to me if you really don't want to stay by me anymore. I love you, but I don't want you to hurt. Just say the word. Just say the word, dear, and I promise I won't put up a fight. I promise I'll let you go, if you truly want to.
And I'll be watching as you fly, fly, fly away...I'll be there to catch you if you fall.
---
Boats and Birds - Gregory And the Hawk
If you'll be my star
I'll be your sky
You can hide underneath me and come out at night
When I turn jet black and you show off your light
I live to let you shine
I live to let you shine
And you can sky-rocket away from me
And never come back if you find another galaxy
Far from here with more room to fly
Just leave me your stardust to remember you by
If you'll be my boat
I'll be your sea
The depth of pure blue just to probe curiosity
Ebbing and flowing and pushed by a breeze
I live to make you free
I live to make you free
But you can set sail to the west if you want to
And past the horizon till I can't even see you
Far from here where the beaches are wide
Just leave me your wake to remember you by
If you'll be my star
I'll be your sky
You can hide underneath me and come out at night
When I turn jet black and you show off your light
I live to let you shine
I live to let you shine
But you can sky-rocket away from me
And never come back if you find another galaxy
Far from here with more room to fly
Just leave me your stardust to remember you by
Stardust to remember you by.
---
Sharing is caring.
***
~~~*Left with the Winds at 7.21pm*~~~
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Clarence initiated an MSN conversation at the most opportune moment today morning, when I had just woken up and was sitting before my com in utter denial of all that had transpired yesterday night...and he sat down with me and helped me clear some things up, helped me blow away some of the fog that had been making it terribly difficult to see beyond my immediate vicinity. It still hurts, of course, horribly - a dull, throbbing ache in my heart and a constriction of the lungs that are making me lose all will to move beyond my bedroom (or myself, really) into the external realm of life. I'm trying to come to terms with everything, to take the state of things as they are. It's hard, but I'm trying.
My clearest memory of yesterday night was the downward spiral that quickly brought us straight into the darkest pits before either of us could take stock of all that was happening. We were both very distressed, and the conversation escalated into something akin to a chaotic shouting match in which both of us couldn't express ourselves clearly, or rather the message would be lost to the other party even while it was being sent, because we couldn't listen to each other over the stampede of individual thoughts in our heads. On my side, I was hurt because of what I found out and badly in need of assurance, which, understandably, he couldn't give at that point in time, and I was attempting the arduous task of reconciling the painful discovery with all the sweet moments we shared for the past couple of months, trying to hold myself together against my own overwhelming sense of guilt and desperation at the prospect of losing him - of perhaps having already lost him. On his part, the knowledge of Ahmad divulging everything to Yunteng and my confrontation probably came as a rude shock to him and he was feeling slighted by the entire world, that nobody gives a fuck, that things are crashing down and he has failed and he was completely confused with the situation himself. All this amounted to a disastrous two-way rant that barely resolved anything in the end.
There were quite a few things he said that were extremely hurtful, and I know at some point in time I did the same too. But it doesn't change the fact that I could literally feel parts of me die upon hearing those words...part by part, reality over illusion, buckets after buckets of ice water poured over eyes that fail to close. There was a sort of cold, mocking laughter that he carried with him throughout the conversation, presumably his 'second defense mechanism', which chilled me right to the bone; it almost felt as if I was staring at a part of him I never knew about and all the endearing familiarity was whipped away in an instant, locked up in an inaccessible place like a frozen smile. Beckoning, but untouchable. I didn't know who I was talking to. I didn't know what we were talking about. I felt as if he was stepping out the door and pushing me away from him, and that all it took was just that one final, resounding slam to signal that everything was over.
Closure.
But no, it's not over, it can't be over...I'm in complete denial. And because I trust that our love and understanding for each other is deep enough to pull us through this tidal wave...I'm going to sit down and type out all that I've felt, the reasons for why I said all the things I said yesterday, what I'm feeling now, what I perceive about the current situation, and what I understand about your side of the story. I'm going to be perfectly honest. I'm going to make the effort to communicate.
And it's not just about me - it never has been.
So please, please sit down and read, even if some of them are old and hoary, some of them are silly and childish, some of them are selfish and unreasonable, some of them are pathetic and hopeless. I ask of you only one thing, and that is time. Time. Patience. Love. It's going to be a long post, but please bear with me, just for this while...I need you to understand.
During yesterday's conversation, you said that I was merely being naive and simplistic when I asked from you the truth, because things and people are complicated and it's only childish to think you could get a definite answer. In some ways you are right, in some ways you aren't - because I'm not looking for a definite answer. What I wanted to know was the state of things as they are. I told you in the mac lab yesterday morning that I cannot be appeased by semi-truths, 'harmless half-truths', because I cannot find solace in hollow illusions even if all it takes is really just to convince myself wholly that it is real, to subscribe to this collective illusion and its myriad of value systems, codes, rules and regulations...it's not hard, not for normal people. But I'm problematic. I just can't do it no matter how hard I try.
And that is why I asked you if you really loved me, whether all that we did together for the past two months was all "an act", but you flared up because you mistook it for a ruthlessly thoughtless questioning of your love and dedication itself. Yuxuan, I have eyes, I have hands...I see you every early morning and am well-acquainted with the tenderness of your expression and the faraway gaze in your eyes, and I feel the strength of your love and need in our interlocked fingers and the occasional tentative squeeze you would deliver to my hand. I'm not obtuse, I'm not unreasonable...or at least I try my best not to be. What I really meant when I asked that question was not if you loved Yunteng all this while and was being a complete arsewank by brandishing an elaborate charade, but whether you know what you did for me was truly out of sincere compulsion or a subconscious submission to obligatory notions. What I mean is, sometimes value systems may be so well-wrought and deeply ingrained that people are capable of convincing themselves that an ebbing feeling is still strong and burning, and would do anything that fits into that perception at least for a significant period of time.
I wanted you to be sure for yourself. I wanted to...exhort you to truly see for yourself if you are deluding yourself about your commitment to this relationship, even if, worst comes to worst, it eventually results in your decision that you don't love me after all. I'm not sure how comfortable you are with half-truths, but I know I don't want to live in an illusion, with my life centered around a hollow space perceiving something that isn't actually there...and that is why...that is why I wanted to give you the chance to choose, to pull yourself out if you were to suddenly realise that you really don't love me as much as you thought you did, or...anymore.
But I am human after all, and I admit I was extremely shocked when I read that second last entry in your journal yesterday...about your feelings for Yunteng, about how you wondered about what it would be like to be "in love with her too", to "touch her, kiss her"...the words slapped me in the face, they really did. I was angry. I was hurt. I was absolutely confused. In those moments, it really felt as if everything was crashing around me and warping in torturously unreadable patterns and all I could think of was..."how could you do this?", because the world didn't matter then when my own emotions were pulling me down under and making it hard to breathe.
I was scared, Yuxuan, so...so scared, for the reason why I stopped urging you to tell her a while ago was because I thought the pressure was too great on you, and since things seemed to be looking relatively good lately between you two, I thought I'd just leave you to pick things up at your own pace since I trusted that you would be able to handle things well. I never thought it was because you were...vacillating. And when you said that you wanted to "leave that door open", something in me died right then and there, and I felt as if I was instantly relegated to the equivalent of a worthless object to be used in need and discarded when all that it is able to give has been taken out of it. My childhood memories resurfaced; memories of the bathroom door closing on me and leaving me in complete darkness for three hours because I did something wrong, of the kindergarten doors closing as my grandparents return home and leave me in a social circle I can never be a part of, of my parents closing the door as they leave for work and I'm left alone in the house...alone, alone, alone. Abandoned. Forgotten. Useless. Unworthy. I did something wrong, didn't I? You were going to leave me. You were prepared to leave me, to turn to the other option when I'm done for.
Wasn't that what you were scared of as well? Being abandoned and thrown away when no longer needed?
I wasn't good enough, wasn't good enough to keep you by my side. Who was I to think that I could be justified in seeking your attention and time, to try to pull you along simply for a walk back to the art room, to think that you'd be willing to inconvenience yourself for something so trivial? Why didn't I notice earlier and just confront you about it? Why can't I break off even now? Why am I so desperate when I think of losing you? These questions...these pounding, haunting questions...were all that went through my head at that time.
And then there came the crushing existential guilt, because if I didn't exist in the first place, I wouldn't have been a 'viable option' up against Yunteng. I wouldn't have had taken you away from her and caused her all that unnecessary stress and pain, as it's evident now that if I hadn't jumped in you would have had more time to nurture your feelings for her, and...who knows? Perhaps it would have been the two of you together by the end of this year. It was worse yesterday, because apparently you have feelings for her too, and now that both of you are actually inclined towards each other I felt like a thorough bastard by standing right in your way. If I weren't here, you wouldn't have had to make a choice between the two of us, to close one door just to open the other. And all this went on to hating myself for having feelings, for needing love, for being desperate, for being human. A helpless human. That's all I am.
I was angry, Yuxuan, and I was angry with myself for being angry, just like what you did at so many points in time. Look at me, dear. I'm just like you. All the bad things, all the good things...I'm just like you.
But I've thought about it yesterday night and today morning, and after talking to Ahmad and Clarence, I realised that vacillating is not as uncommon among boys as I had thought so naively. Apparently it is normal for guys to waver and be attracted to new persons who come along, to be inclined to consider and try other alternatives, to what could have been and what may happen, and I know, I know that I'm not physically attractive, not so intelligent, not so capable, not particularly outstanding in anything, not to mention my personality probably causes you more distress than comfort at times. Perhaps that's what you meant when you said you wish you could love me "unconditionally". It's hard to look past my flaws, isn't it? I understand.
As much as this may sound very superficial, I know perfectly that I'm not pretty and cute like Yunteng and I can't make you laugh as much as she can...I can't give you anything beyond late nights and early mornings and a tentative hand through your hair and arms to hold you when you're down and let me know. Look at me, Yuxuan. I'm ugly. I'm revolting. I'm weak, cowardly, weird and all manners of screwed. When you tell me that I'm beautiful, it's only because you see me in soft light, dim light, or no light at all, because the ambiguity of vision mellows all the salient flaws that would otherwise turn you away from me in less than an instant. We like to convince ourselves that spiritual fulfillments are enough to cover the flaws in tangible flesh and the hollowness of physicality - we all do, and it's part of what makes up a heroic perception of ourselves...the desperate conviction that we can transcend the animalistic pursuits that govern our primary instincts, that we can conquer the superficiality of our desire for surface aesthetics and ostensible perfection, that we can love "unconditionally", disregard all prejudices that may taint our judgments, and suffuse humanity with the glow of purity.
I'm used to disregarding physicality, however, perhaps not completely but at least suffice to look past many things if it means I could excavate the innermost entity residing within a person. I'm used to delving fully into the spiritual because of all my insane experiences and incessant pondering, and my desire to escape reality has been so strong for the past few years that death, like I told you, is just an open door for me, before which I deliberate for various inexplicable reasons. But what about you? Will you be able to do so? Do you still want to try?
Are you sure you'll be fine with walking beside a physical body full of flaws, with a spirit that cannot anchor itself to proper reality and has to constantly struggle to hold together its flimsy panels of flesh with enough decency to exhibit before others? Will you be embarrassed? Will you be ashamed, ashamed of me?
I understand if you decide that you can't do it or don't wish to try any further. After all, like what Clarence reminded me of today morning...It's hard to control one's feelings, and at the end of the day fundamental desires are still the undeniable basis of many pursuits. I don't blame you for having feelings for Yunteng. It would be unreasonable of me to do so, though I probably sounded too self-absorbed during the confrontation yesterday because I wasn't in my best state of mind, and I'm sorry for all the hurt that I caused you. It wasn't because I don't understand, and even if I didn't then, I tried, and I'm trying now, and I'll try all the same for whatever happens in future no matter how things turn out.
Because...because I love you. I love you only too much, and whatever happened yesterday only served to reinforce this realisation; I was really desperate yesterday night, so desperate that I surprised myself because I had never gotten down on my knees to plead with anyone or anything before, mentally at the very least. I also realised that thoughts take on a highly vivid visual quality when I enter that kind of state of self-consuming desperation, but I digress.
I can't afford to lose you. There is nothing I can lose anymore. You're the reason why I no longer wake up every morning and sit in bed for five agonising minutes hoping that the notion of school could magically disappear. You're the reason why I no longer cry in bed every night over the hollowness and utter lack of meaning I perceive in my world and my life. You're the reason why I stopped hurting myself, and cutting myself, and using the rubber bands just to give myself a semblance of the intensity of feeling it takes to live. You're the reason. You're the reason for almost everything now.
I don't know how much of what I said in the mac lab remains in your memory by now, but I believe I tried to express to you that you're the one and only person who has managed to save me from the persistent yet corrosive need to run away from reality. I have landed in this ambiguous state because of you; there are now things in reality I would do whatever I can to stay for, and if you take yourself away now, even if you somehow got yourself convinced that your absence from my life would do me boundless good, this fragile equilibrium is going to crash right into nothingness right before my eyes. I won't be able to live, I won't. I can no longer fulfill myself with the pleasurable notions of escapism into the indefinite realm of spirituality, nor would I be able to find another anchor in reality. Please don't leave me stranded here. I won't be able to find a way out.
You're everything to me, Yuxuan, everything. I don't know how much I mean to you now...but I say my words with complete conviction, because there is no other person in my heart right now, and there won't be another heart I will take.
I was too scared and exhausted to bring myself to say "I love you" yesterday. I'm sorry.
I love you. I love you, forever and ever and ever.
***
~~~*Left with the Winds at 1.12pm*~~~
Thursday, August 2, 2012
I don't have enough energy left to type a post of decent length, but I just wanted to express my gratitude for all that you've done today (and tried to do, even if I wasn't aware of your efforts or simply ignored them in my distress), having been there to support me when I needed you. Thank you for your concern. Thank you for putting up with all my shit. Thank you for being here for me.
I love you so, so much. Let's not doubt each other's love anymore.
***
~~~*Left with the Winds at 11.07pm*~~~
Thanks to all the blogs the designer referred to (countless) for html code help :) (esp. cyn' and sixseven)
Adobe Photoshop Elements for supernatural abilities
