I wonder what it feels like to be sure that you are loved.

I wonder what it feels like when your love is not given a deadline. What do people do when they think they have all the time in the world, and just live in the present? What does it feel like waking up every morning next to the person that you love and believing that there are many more mornings to come? I guess I would never find out.

This affair has always lived inside a timed paradigm. Each time, time stretched outward to accommodate my greed. So far, I have managed to build my happily ever-after bit by bit inside my head. Sadly, it has grown too big for this timed relationship. I have dreamt of details so real this little made belief can no longer support.

I envy these people. I envy the fact that they are only doing normal people thing. They wake up, they go to work, they are hungry, they get food. Some well-balanced ones will eventually have a house and some kids to keep them even more occupied.

I wonder what it feels like to be sure that you are loved. What a secure feeling it must be! People can only be freed when they are loved or fearless. I am neither.

You are the problem

I never want to be anyone’s problem
I tired very hard to not be anyone’s problem

I now sometimes forget that the person who says he likes me and sleeps next to me at night doesn’t want this weight on his shoulders too
I showed you the real me
You turned around and pointed a finger at me
And yelled, “You are the problem!”

I blinded myself for so long with all these feelings for you
I think about you before making any decisions
And what do I get in return?
You are the fucking problem

I am not the problem that you are incapable of caring for me
I am not the problem that you only think about yourself when making all your decisions
I am not the problem that …
I am not the problem

You hate that I blame you for all my sufferings
I think it is time to bring an end to these sufferings – both yours and mine

It is the time to walk away now
These are the signs that you have been looking for
Remember when 3 years ago you let yourself fall and you promised yourself –
No one is ever going to do this to you again

You deserve someone who is willing to make your problem their problem
You deserve someone who actually walk the talk and not just say they care
You deserve someone who will stay up with you when you can’t sleep
You deserve someone who would never point a finger at you or yell at you
You deserve someone who would run after you even when you are the one who’s wrong
You deserve someone who would go all the way to make sure everything is OK for you
You deserve someone who cares

It is time to walk away now
Book that ticket that you are always afraid to book
You will be alone for a while and you will be afraid of the silence and the dark
But that is OK
You are stronger than that
It wouldn’t be long until you enjoy the silence and conquer the dark
It wouldn’t be long until you notice a nice smile on a stranger
It wouldn’t be long until you put him behind

Yes it will be difficult
It will be as painful as your heart split into pieces
You will sometimes stay up all night crying and cry yourself to sleep
But you will be OK little fighter
You have always been brave
I need you to be brave now
I need you to look loneliness in the eye and tell it you are not afraid
I need you to book that flight home and face life with your best friend by your side

Cry my little fighter
You can cry all night tonight and remember when you wake up tomorrow
You need to put all these behind
You’ve come this far and that is impressive
But it is OK to be tired and it is OK to give this up

I know you still feel things for him
You still wish he would run after you and tell you everything will be fine
But no, things are not fine
You are braver than this
You can take these feelings with you on the flight and not cry on your way home
This memory will stay with you no matter where you go
You will forever remember how he lost his temper and said you are the problem
Because you are not the problem
And you deserve someone who don’t think you are the problem

You know I never really thought about it this way
That some people are too flawed or too messed up to be saved
I try
I try very hard on my good days to take care of everyone I love
But why am I so alone on my bad days?

I didn’t know better

I chased after a colourful kite against the bright blue sky.
I chased after the colours. I didn’t know better.

I held on to the stretching string to stop it from breaking free.
I held on to the string. I didn’t know better.

I broke the stretched out string and the kite broke free.
I broke the string. I didn’t know better.

On the road, I started to question why I left behind someone whom loved me and went after the ones that I could never please. I didn’t have the answer.
Perhaps it was my dream for a better future.
Perhaps it was my hopes for a home one day.
I chased after the colourful kite with stretched out string.
The string broke, and I was left there holding on a handful of empty hopes.

It’s time to get the fuck out of here.
It is the time when you brave the whole wild world.
I know I have people who love me to stand by my side.
I shouldn’t be afraid of all the possibilities.

looking for a constant

In life, we are mostly just looking for a constant.

A tattered sofa.
A soft jumper.
A warm hug.

A reflection in the mirror.

Heart breaks the same way

Different longitude
Heart breaks the same way

Did we leave the ghost of the past behind
On those cheap early morning flights
Did our hearts learn to beat in a different way
after seeing the breathtaking sights

 

I had a moment of weakness.

I had a moment of weakness.

I wouldn’t exactly say I was living my life, but I was getting by without thinking about you every other minute. I no longer had to sit motionlessly in silence and wait for the sadness attack to pass so that I could carry on doing whatever I was doing. I no longer had to tilt my head back to stop the tears from falling down whenever you popped up in my mind. I no longer had to cry myself to sleep, dream of your warm embraces and kisses on my forehead, and wake up with tear stains across my face and on the pillow. I no longer sleep with my phone under my pillow, hoping you would call in the early mornings. I no longer had to check my phone every 5 seconds for your texts that never came.

Then I had a moment of weakness.

Memories crept up on me and swallowed me up whole mercilessly. I felt your presence in the room and I swear when I listened carefully, I could hear your voice ring in the silence.

Writer’s block

A block sits at the centre of my brain
My heart is poetry, your face a refrain
The pen freezes mid air
Rhymes dissolve in pairs
Into the block, ink dribbles in vain

The stanza is hardly there
Punctuations scream despair
Scribbles on the paper keep me sane
Centuries of writers felt the pain

When memories morph into one

As I travelled to more and more countries, the difference between them ebbs away. Most of the travel memories slowly morph into one big piece of of being. On some good days, they come back to me as a colourful unicorn, gliding through the bright blue sky, and I am reminded of the joyful moments along the road.

There are moments that stand out. Frames cleanly laid out, ready to be taken out and relived. I still remember very clearly how I got off the bus in Melbourne and roamed the midnight street with my heavy travel bag. The cool breezes, the partygoers going to the opposite direction…That freedom! I would like to taste it again.

I remember sitting by the window watching people come and go. I longed to be part of the crowd. My heart was alive with anticipation of the adventures that lie ahead. I wasn’t lonely then. My heart was wide open, waiting to drink the world in.

What is it then that when we find someone we are more likely to be lonely? Is it because we find this place where we are too desperate to belong and once we find that we can’t possibly forever stay in that place and we are upset by the difference between our expectation and reality?

I remember so very desperately trying to call him my home. It certainly felt that way. The roaring thoughts in my head were quiet when I was in his embrace, and sleeping on his chest is still one of the best things that ever happened to me. But the sense of loss in the morning was unbearable. The unspoken words finally broke my heart.

It is still utterly beautiful when a certain piece of memory floats to the surface of the sea of memories. I look at it with distant interest as a passerby watches a curious scene unravel in front of his very eyes, and yet I was emotionally invested.

This is how I will love you

This is how I will love you – I want to know all the boring details about your day because they are more interesting than a well-written novel.
I want to know what you have for breakfast, what you read in the papers and what you learnt from your new book. I want to know the new TV shows that you are watching with your family. I want to know about the friends that you enjoy hanging out with. I want to know if your bath was good and what time you go to rest.

This is how I will love you – I will always worry about you.
I worry that you don’t have enough to eat, and you’re not eating healthy enough. I worry that you don’t drink enough water. I worry that you don’t have enough sleep and get cranky and unproductive the next day. I worry that you drink too much and that will eventually harm the beautiful mind that you treasure. I worry something bad might happen to you.

This is how I will love you – I promise to be there during good times and bad.
I promise I will be here when you crack stupid jokes and make silly faces. I promise I will be there when you want to dance till the sun is up. I promise I will be there when we scream on top of our lungs on the rollercoaster. I also promise to be here when your heart beats unreasonably fast, when you are nervous about your future, because you have been there for me when my world dimmed and sadness engulfed me. You were there for me through good times and bad, and I promise I will do the same for you.

This is how I will love you – I will always be open and honest with you. I will trust you with my darkest secrets. It is never easy for me to pour out my secrets but I learn to share them with you anyway. I worried that if you see me the way I see myself, you will pack your bags and walk out of my life for good. But you have shown me more love and patience than anyone who’s been here before, and you made me believe time after time that you will still be here when our hair is grey.

This is how I will love you – All the love songs in the world don’t come close to describe my feelings for you. I listen to all the love songs, I read all the cheesy poems. There are lines here and there that describe pieces of my feeling, but when I put them together, they are never enough to convey the way I feel.

This is how I will love you – I want to see all the wonders of the world with you, knowing that I’ve got the best wonder by my side.

This is how I will love you – I will always put you first. I will always let you have the first sip of the beers and last bite of my food. If I only had 20 dollars in my pocket, I would spend 10 on you and save 10 for my family.

This is how I will love you – I am overprotective and I swear I will bring down all those who hurt you. I will hunt them down, I will corner them, I would eat them if I had to. But I pity them, for they fail to see the beauty in you and treasure it. But forgive me, sometimes I hurt you too. It often breaks me when I realise that you are hurt because that is the last thing I want to do.

This is how I will love you – I am not much, but I will love you with all I have.

 

 

Moving in

This might be the closest thing I get to a happily ever after

I want to remember it as the day when I dragged my heavy suitcases into the flat
I want to remember how exhausted we were after and just lay on the floor and laughed
I want to remember how we were completely happy and we had nowhere else we needed to be
I guess that’s how Snow Patrol came up with the song Chasing Cars

I want to remember how the sky slowly turned dark and the candles flickered at the corner
I want to remember how we dreamed about our future on the floor – even though it might all just stay in our imagination
Call me selfish I don’t want to share those moments with anyone else but you

But maybe imagining the way I will remember is enough
Because things get to live forever in our head

Alcohol

Here I am again, remembering how alcohol smoothed the edges of the pain before. I miss this warm fuzzy feeling, which is so different from the intense worry that I feel on a daily basis.

 

It is so hard to leave – until you leave.

“It is so hard to leave – until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.” – Paper Towns

In a month’s time, I will pack my bags, uproot my past 15 years, and move to a new country. It is terrifying. It is terrifyingly exciting.

I am not at all prepared for this change – I haven’t resigned from my current job;  I haven’t bought that one-way ticket that would unfurl my future adventures; I haven’t even properly informed my family that I am leaving; I haven’t started to look for a new place to stay; and I haven’t started looking for a job that would prevent me from going homeless.

I guess I have been putting these things off due to fear. I fear that I might not be mature enough to figure things out; I fear that I might get too lonely in this foreign country; I fear that reality might prove me wrong for following my heart.

But I am going to step forward with my trembling feet anyway.

The first 7 days of quitting you

I read somewhere that if someone really cares about you, they would show it within 7 days once you stop talking to them. And here is the first 7 days of quitting you:

Day 1 
I remembered clearly how I promised I would be fine while having tears streaming down my face, and how I begged you to stay in my life until I slowly stop missing you. If I could choose, I would always soak the bandaid in water for a few days and let it come off by itself so that I could avoid the pain of ripping it off, but you left me with no choice. I was glad that you stomped on my heart and utterly shattered it so that I could rebuild it in the new year the way I want it.

Day 2
You were still the first thing on my mind when I opened my eyes in the morning, but I was glad that I was no longer waiting for that texts that never came. I felt like a queen to be in control of my own destiny.
And then your postcard arrived from the post.

Day 3
Sunday. I never liked Sundays.

Day 4
It was a blur.

Day 5
A sad song. A distant memory. I might have cried myself to sleep at some point. Or maybe it was the night before.

Day 6 
I felt the constant presence of the hole in my chest right where you used to be. I was in autopilot mode. You could have cut me with a knife and I wouldn’t have felt a thing.

Day 7
Tonight would be the last night that I sleep with my phone under the pillows, hoping against hope that you would call in the early hours and confess how you have missed me in the past few days when we didn’t talk.

Maybe moving on is never about forgetting someone. It is about facing the truth that they are no longer here for you and you are OK with it.

And I wished you a happy new year

09:30, New Year’s Eve – The air was filled with anticipation, I spent the whole day contemplating the best response when you wish me a happy new year.

21: 46, New Year’s Eve – I waited with the crowd for the fireworks, when they finally lit up the sky, my phone screen remained dark.

00:00, New Year – I watched the fireworks while listening to my best friend’s phone conversation with her boyfriend who happened to be 9,387 km away, 2,003 km farther away than you were.

00:31, New Year – I stayed hopeful that your text would come because you must have thought about me on this special occasion.

03:02, New Year – It was 06:02 in where you were. I guessed you must have passed out after a wild night, or was comfortably in bed with the girl you kissed when the fireworks started.

04:01, New Year – I was on my train home. A beautiful stranger asked me to wish his friend “happy new year”. I took over his phone, FaceTime showing someone under the Australian morning sun. I thought of you.

09:44, New Year – I woke up early despite the lack of sleep from last night. No text. No call. It was 12:44 your time, you must have thought about me by then. But you didn’t.

12:57, New Year – Your text finally came. A simple “Happy new year”. I racked my brains for a good reason why you only thought about me at 15:57 on the New Year Day. It wasn’t important anymore.

And I wished you a happy new year…but I couldn’t bring myself to send that text.

I am in love with you, and you are in love with the world

I am in love with your clear blue eyes that see the sunrise and sunset 3 hours ahead of me every day.

I am in love with your drunken laughters over the phone at 3 am in the morning, after you have stayed up all night drinking and only wanted to hear my voice when you stumbled home.

I am in love with your text messages that wait for me when I open my eyes each morning. They usually are the replies to my texts from the previous night, but they are a perfect way to start my day anyway.

I am in love with the joy you radiated over the phone when you received my post, and how you said no one had ever done anything like this for you.

I am in love with the pictures that you are tagged in on Facebook. They show me the story of yours that I don’t get to experience and I smile at the screen until the tears finally come.

I am in love with how you sometime forget to check in and after a few tormenting days, you waltz back with a silent “I miss you x” and all is forgiven.

I am in love with you, and you are in love with the world.

Just friends

I’m getting sick of all the rhymes
blasting out from the radio tonight
none of those beautiful love songs they wrote
is gonna bring your heart closer to mine

Making fun of the next-door girl who admires
your messy hair and your stupid eyes
You laughed with me and I might
have just fallen a bit further down that line

The world’s reaction

When we were kids, we relied on our mother’s reaction to determine whether an incident is good or bad. When we fell, we looked at our mother expectantly, so as to determine whether we should dust our knees and stand up or bawl our eyes out.

I half expected my heart to make an ear-splitting sound when it broke, and the world to grief for my loss. But the world keeps spinning, uninterrupted by my pain. So I should do what my younger self would do, get up, dust my knees and continue running.

Feelings, or the lack of.

I search yearningly in where feelings are supposed to be

This dense, dark mass of void staring hauntingly back at me

For the sake of story writing

You let people go because you know even if you continue, you wouldn’t be able to write the most extraordinary story. Maybe the most breathtaking stories only live in our minds.

Union Square, mental picture

I sat on the steps at Union Square Park, NY, staring at a group of digital numbers illuminating on the outside of a building across the street. I couldn’t figure out what the numbers meant, so I asked the two strangers sitting in front of me. They reckoned the numbers represent the time, but there were a few numbers that we couldn’t understand, so they told me to blog about it.

I found out just now that I didn’t take a picture of the numbers and I was very sure that I did. Maybe sometimes, mental pictures are far more unforgettable than actual pictures. I want to share this experience with someone who understands but I guess the only way for them to understand is to experience it with me.

I miss Union Square, so full of life.

And love is

Love is living our own dreams at different places with different people and we are perfectly okay about it and happy for each other.

And I wish you happiness

And I wish you happiness…

I wish you could find her, the one with whom that you will fall madly in love. She will kiss you every morning and every night before she closes her eyes. You will have beautiful children who are just as kindhearted and funny as you are.

But I also secretly hope one day, you will want to talk about how the the acoustic version of a song is better than the one in the album. And she will look at you blankly or maybe just smile, not quite know how to respond. And you will look up the sky and see a plane soaring by. And I, I will be travelling the world alone, meeting all the new people and thinking of you.

Because real love stories are best friends.

Selling my feelings to a secondhand shop

 

I am going to pack my unwanted feelings in a nice paper bag and sell them to the secondhand shop.

You know it’s time to move on when you miss the great moments you had instead of the person whom you shared them with. This person could be a lover or a friend but s/he is only a vague resemblance of whom you knew. Sometimes you stare at their name on your Chat list and wonder what they are doing. But your social circles have too little overlapping area that you worry that you might upset the balance of the universe just by saying “hi”.

“Love meant jumping off a cliff and trusting that a certain person would be there to catch you at the bottom.”  ― Jodi Picoult, Second Glance

I used to see my friend at the bottom too – of course there’s no way to find out if s/he would really be there if we jumped. It’s all in our head you see? We all have these cute little ideas of people around us and we build a lot of relationships based on them. And in the end, we only fall in love with the ideas of people because it is way too terrifying to strip people’s mask and have a heart-to-heart talk to find out all about them. We pitiful little human beings – we can’t even be honest with ourselves and we go all the way to expect people to be utterly honest with us.

I built these nice images of people in my head and thought they were real. I jumped off the cliff but didn’t find out if my friend was there… because my heart had gone into the unknowns.

Unpopped kernels

 

They say you can’t pop unpopped kernels – one chance is all you have.

It makes me sad that these little fellas are not given a second chance. The first time you did it wrong and they are far gone. No matter how you heat them, they just won’t pop anymore.

If you don’t even want to screw up your popcorns why would you screw people over?

Some infinities are bigger than other infinities

Some infinities are bigger than other infinities – John Green

My friend keeps telling me not to fall for him…

A lot of us have that one friend (secretly hoping I’m not the only one): who’s always around to mock our choices in love; who shares our music tastes; who sends us random internet memes; who always knows what to say; who always manages to make us laugh; who does lame things with us; who hangs out late doing nothing with us – yes he sounds perfect, except not really.

We can do all the romantic things together with the purest intensions because falling in love is not an option. And falling in love is only the smaller infinity.

Silence too loud

Stories left Untold

An old guitar on a narrow staircase,
we didn’t have that much to say
but you sat with me anyway.

I cried a little when he walked away
didn’t think I could live another day

And he said,

He said, I can’t be your man
you sang “I wanna hold your heart in both hands”
but the strings got broken, translation got lost
and loyal heart got tossed

Stolen love on a hot summer night
you were your own “Mr. Brightside”
watched her leave with eyes opened wide

She’s no longer here to kiss you goodnight
heartache kills like a raging tide

And she said,

She said, he isn’t in a band
you should sing “I wanna hold your heart in both hands”
but strings got broken, translation got lost
and precious love got tossed

We were so close the only distance was silence
it was too loud howling like sirens

Getting lost

I stumbled upon this book on Tumblr, and it got me dreaming.

I am living a Plan B, i.e., I have a Plan A that I would rather be living but I settled for Plan B anyway.
It is a little unfair to call myself a scared little shit but I am a scared little shit. To my defence, I live under a set of conditions that set my life perfectly in this paradigm – but who is not? Some of us choose to come quietly, accepting the predesigned fate that society wants us to follow; some of us put up quite a fight; some succeed, some reluctantly give up in the end.

What is so bad about getting lost anyway?
Walking along new street, reading new street signs and choosing a path at the intersections that can lead you anywhere.

Letting the best people go

When it comes to people, I always keep the worst and let go of the best.
Maybe it’s because of my far from adequate judging ability; or maybe it’s just because the bad people all have a “keep me” charm. No matter how many times they screw you over, you think of sound reasons for their inexcusable behaviours. And as for the good ones, they wouldn’t upset you at all. In fact, maybe you’re worrying way too little that you forget about them when you are busy watering the dead flowers given to you by the bad guys.
The good ones are too good that they will leave you alone to pursue your unattainable happiness with the bad ones – because at that moment, it was exactly the thing that you wanted to do.

And I think I might have just let another one go…

People losing…

If people losing was a sport, I would have won numerous medals.

Lost one,
Lost two,
Lost three,
…
And you lost count.

Somehow you wish the emptiness would go away like many of the people in your life did, but it tends to do the opposite. After a while, this shapeless emptiness will fill all the friend-shaped holes in your heart.

Filled with emptiness.

There, another medal for doing the impossible.