Friday, March 31, 2017
It is 2017.

Hello blog, how have you been?

I came here looking for a familiar respite, knowing that I write best when I write sad, knowing that that I need to come back home. Since the last time I came here, I've healed, fallen in love, and gotten my heart broken, again - all in a year's work. Thank you for waiting for me relentlessly (shout out to Google for not removing this guy, you a gem).

I came here looking for answers, like I always do, and I expected it to take about an hour. Of typing and deleting, more typing and then finally, putting this up like I did with the rest of my sadness. People who still read this space probably find me VERY depressing, but surprisingly, being here always makes me calm. Calm enough to come undone, come clean. I love you blog.

I am like that kid who only attends classes when he feels like it, on a day he wants to learn. I thought I would write new thoughts now that I am a year older; having experienced so much since I last visited. But alas, this is a fine example of a leopard never changing its spots - I read my last two blog posts and I find myself still that same person - big believer of love and its magic. I haven't changed, but I am not at all disappointed with this status quo. How amazing it is to realise that at the core of who I am, is a girl who believes cosmically in something so cosmic? How amazing it is to know that I haven't become jaded by the events of the past year. There are times in my life where I ask myself if I were flaky - did I have core values or was I as fleeting and flighty as the clouds.. But now I know, I am still that silly, wonderful girl who, loves.

And hello to that confidence I did not have in 2016!!!! I am still far from who I want to be, but just knowing that I can call myself "wonderful" is such a huge step in my road to healthy self-esteem.

But do you really need to wonder why I'm here today (not that you do) - other than to lament about my broken heart and ask God why. I was getting ready to write in circles, until I found that all the answers I need are in my last two entries. At this point, a) 'the man who will love me next' could be the one I'm with now, and b) I found solace reading about how after words, this is us started.

Both charted my road to recovering from my last broken heart, and if it's any assurance to myself, what I had hoped I learnt in my relationship after that one - I have. And it is everything I am doing now. Here's a recap:

"Could it have saved us from our break up?

I always thought I understood the phrase "Love is hard work." But now I realise how much I did not understand it at all. Maybe in my head it was always, "Relationships are hard work." Why? Because for the longest time, I thought love should be easy.

"If it's true, it shouldn't be this hard."
"If you're the one, it shouldn't be this hard."
"If we're meant to be, it shouldn't be this hard."

But you know what. Nothing worth having is ever easy. Relationships are hard work, but maybe love is too. It's supposed to be. Because love is a choice, and although I've always believed that, tonight that belief has solidified. You can love someone, but you can dislike them on some days. You can love someone, and not feel happy on some days. You can love someone, and feel disconnected from them. Love conquers all, but it should not consume all the other equally important things that make up a relationship. Love is hard work because it needs these other things - constant reevaluating, constant communication, constant effort, the constant decision to choose it, to keep it alive."

This is exactly what is keeping me together right now, keeping me from giving up what I have with this one. Oh but wait I just realised I haven't even introduced him to you.

I'll skip the name for privacy reasons, and go straight to my belief that I have possibly found the one I want to rough it out with. Life is certainly not a bed of roses in the past year we have been together, but everything that I wrote about "the man who will love me next"? Call me crazy, but dude, it's what I have with this man. We have even gone on a holiday together (recall how I said by the time I meet him I would be old enough to travel with him), and believe it or not, I got old enough to tell my parents I will do it anyway. So needless to say, if you just refer to that post, you will understand why I feel it it in my gut that this guy, I really want to keep.

But as usual, I fucked it up.

Not sure if this is new, but I might have loved too hard in this one. But don't get me wrong, at 23 I am old enough to realise what is love and what is plain obsession, and while I am not obsessed about him, I have always been, since the very beginning, obsessed about us. It just fits. It just works. And I'm not saying it's perfect, because God knows we are very much faaaar from it especially at this point. But I've found the person that I look at and see all these differences and gaps and, still want to grit my teeth and say, I choose you (recall how I learnt in 2016 that constant choice keeps love alive).

But as I write this, he has little faith that we will be a good thing of the future, maybe even little faith in me as his hooman. And as life would have it, there are plenty of things that we have no control over, and this is one of them. At my darkest, I have asked myself, if only one of us believes we are right for each other, are we really right for each other? But I haven't given up, I haven't stopped believing. Maybe that's what love does to you - it saves you. Saves you from doubt, fear, and gives you hope. SO much hope, and strength to keep trying, over, and over. Because my goodness if that weren't true, this would feel like pushing twins out of my vagina. One baby is enough.

It is very hard. When you stand face to face with the man you love, unable to fully explain how or why you feel the feel that kind of positivity while we are going through tons of SHIT. I have never felt this way. I have been in love, perhaps many times, but not like this. This is not a fairytale; it is fucking REAL LIFE. I stand looking at this man, thinking about very (strangely) practical things. How can we move past this? How can we open up? How can we get better? Before, it was all emotions, emotions, emotions. You know me, I'm a bucket full of that. I still am. Still give my all when it comes to love, I don't love in greys. But now it feels like I've grown a layer of maturity, that stops me in my emotional tracks just to say, "Shut up now how do we fix this like a grown up". Is that how you know that's how much you want to make this work with someone? When you grow balls to stop acting like a child, and start growing?

I'm not sure why I'm writing this but I guess. I just want to cut myself some slack on a tough night and give myself some credit for sticking to what 2016 me set out to do. To fight for it before it's really too late, to realise that hard work is truly, mfucking hard work, and most of all, to love like there is no tomorrow. Because that's what it feels like right now, for me. I love a man today, praying he will still love me the day after. I have so much to lose and I am terrified, but I have never been braver in the past week, fighting for what I feel in my heart, is right.

And all this, even after he has said that this might not be right for him, like I feel it is for me. Typically, I would have broken down. But here I am still (cue waterworks tomorrow) unwaivered by his words, only slightly overwhelmed with doubt. How can I not? I was not imagining a perfect love. I was not waiting for a man who would not falter when I wrote "the man who will love me next". I'm not even saying that he is the best person for me right now. But this is where my lesson on choice comes in. Look at all the marriages that last for years. I don't think they've ever gone through life with each other not ONCE having thought that they might have married wrong. But they made a commitment. But they choose anyway. They keep choosing, for the experiences they have with each other make them wiser with love.

I could end this post by silently praying for a miracle of sorts. But not tonight. God, either give me strength to move forward and show me that this is truly what love is about - that this time I got it right because I believe and act on it. But if this were wrong, give me strength to move on from this once-in-a-lifetime love.
Friday, January 08, 2016
The And
One of the best things that happened in 2015 was this:


It almost sounds pretentious if I were to say that I've spent my entire life trying to understand love, because I haven't even turned 23 and two-thirds of my life was basically me trying to get through puberty. So how is that even possible? But truth be told I do feel like I've spent my entire life trying to pinpoint what it is exactly.. From looking at my parents and learning from them every other day, to being in it myself, to today. I'm still trying to understand it.

And I don't care if it's merely a commercial project, but The And was one of the best initiatives that happened in the year 2015, because it spurned part of what my FYP is right now, and it's teaching me about more than I ever thought I could learn about not just love, but relationships. When it first started, it was amazing because it was so real. Now it's amazing because of the new things I learnt about it today: 1) The questions are from the couples themselves and 2) More couples are in on this with time.

Tonight I had an epiphany because I had to view the clips of the couples we filmed ourselves, for after words, there's us (AWTU). Watching each couple conversing on set already gave me goosebumps, and I was always sure about the end product. Tonight I'm once again reminded that what we're doing is meaningful, and I'm glad we were inspired to create our own web series. In order to feel inspired about the edit, I returned to The And, only to find out that it's still as amazing as when I first watched it months ago. So as I write this, I'm reeling in the emotions I got from watching both these projects. People communicate their love. People fighting for each other.

When we started AWTU, a part of me knew that I needed it. I needed to start a lesson so I can learn from it myself. Does that make sense? Every couple that I've seen sat on that couch and talked to each other, I saw us. I'd like to believe that these people who walked in and joined us took away something from it. I hope they felt what we saw, right there in front of us - that no matter what your relationship is or isn't, it is good. Choosing to love each other makes it good.

I felt depressed if a couple talked about the disappointments they shared. I was happy when they felt surprised at the things they did not expect their partner to say. I was moved when I realised that these couples were just like us, with their own set of problems and disagreements. What's different, is that they fought, and are still fighting for each other in spite of them.

I wish you saw what I saw. I wish you knew what I know now. About love, about relationships, about us. Or maybe you already knew all of this and I, on the other hand, am only beginning to see it. The entire time I was on shoot, I heard myself asking these questions: Had we been together still when AWTU materialised, could we have been that couple sitting right there on that couch, being honest with each other? Could we have felt what these couples felt? Could I have learnt what I'm learning right now?

Could it have saved us from our break up?

I always thought I understood the phrase "Love is hard work." But now I realise how much I did not understand it at all. Maybe in my head it was always, "Relationships are hard work." Why? Because for the longest time, I thought love should be easy.

"If it's true, it shouldn't be this hard."
"If you're the one, it shouldn't be this hard."
"If we're meant to be, it shouldn't be this hard."

But you know what. Nothing worth having is ever easy. Relationships are hard work, but maybe love is too. It's supposed to be. Because love is a choice, and although I've always believed that, tonight that belief has solidified. You can love someone, but you can dislike them on some days. You can love someone, and not feel happy on some days. You can love someone, and feel disconnected from them. Love conquers all, but it should not consume all the other equally important things that make up a relationship. Love is hard work because it needs these other things - constant reevaluating, constant communication, constant effort, the constant decision to choose it, to keep it alive.

My only regret is that I didn't learn this then. I didn't see it then. My regret is not that I broke up with you, but that I wish I knew then what I know now, so that maybe we could change the way we loved each other. And if we had to break up even after reevaluating the way we loved, then that's just it. Maybe then, we would have broken up knowing that we did, truly because of the lack of love, and not because we didn't know how to love. This is a regret I will live with because my gut tells me that it was the latter. Maybe the years did not do it for us. And had we known then, maybe. Maybe the last 6 months would have turned out differently.
Sunday, October 18, 2015
To the man who will love me next
This is an open letter to you, the man who will love me in the future.

I cannot wait to meet you. I cannot wait to love you. And no, I don't think it's silly to already be so hung up on someone I haven't even met yet. If you're gonna love me, and we're gonna love each other, soon is never too soon.

You don't know me yet, but here's an update on my life right now. Life for me right now is pretty rough. At this point, I am still in love with a man of my past. For a long time, this man was my present and at some point, I thought maybe he'd be you. But alas, as you probably know, sometimes life takes a different turn, and very often, we get what we least expect. FYI, I broke his heart first, and now my own heart is in pieces. But this is a story for another time.

What am I doing right now? I'd like to believe that I'm making myself better for you. The reason why we have to wait to meet is because I'm not quite there yet; I'm a little short of a person who will be good for you. I am heartbroken and unsure of myself. I am a mess and I hardly have a lot together at this point. But when you meet me, I don't want to be any of these things. When you meet me, I pray that the stars are aligned so that we will have none of that "It's not the right time." crap to deal with. I pray for the right time to meet the right you, too. What are you doing right now? Are you also stumbling, learning? Are you perhaps in love with someone else now? If the latter is true, sorry I can't give you my blessings for that, well, because I'm waiting for you to love me. That said, take your time with this one.

I cannot wait to meet you. I cannot wait to tell people things like, "You were worth the wait" or, "I cannot believe I found you" because you love me. I cannot wait to love you, and have you in my life. To know that every day when I wake up, I have a constant. That every day the fight isn't about whether you will reply my texts, or when you'll ask me out, but that I can use the energy worrying about these incessant things on bigger things like, real life. That we are bigger and better than childish games, that our love exists almost as if it were a form itself, so great it's bigger than us alone. By then, it would mean that the problems we will have will probably be equally great. Our fights will probably be really bad. But because we love each other, we'll also end every fight on good notes, knowing that our love just got stronger. I'm sorry, in advance, for all the mean things I might say or do to you, if our fights ever get out of hand.

When you love me, I'll tell you about my days, and spend my nights with you. I'll let you hold my hand and caress it as we walk from one place to another. I'll let you kiss me, because I'm sure I'll want to kiss you too. We could go on so many adventures, even the boring ones, like getting takeaway. I'm assuming by the time you come into my life, I'd be old enough to travel with you (Mum says I can't travel with a boy as long as I'm still in school) and if you like, we could do that. When we meet, we could talk details, but these are just some ideas of how our life could be like intertwined. I cannot wait to meet you.

You should also know that I have a bad temper. I can get ugly (both temperamentally and physically). You should know that the man of my past did a really good job of loving me inside out, accepting me wholly and looking beyond my ugliness. This is why I love him now. I hope that when you love me, you'd love me in spite of all my flaws. I hope I can do the same. I hope when I love you, I love you better than I did the man of my past. That I'd be better at this then, than I am now. Because when you love me, and I love you, I don't think I'd want you to go.

To the man who will love me next, I cannot wait to meet you. Please don't take too long. Until then, I will work hard to recover, so that when we meet, I wouldn't need you to heal me, but love me. When you see me, tell me it's you. I hope I know it's you.

I will wait for you, so please, wait for me.


Love,
The girl who will love you next