Last

Every time we fight like this I want to almost kick myself. Instead I cry, and when you leave I feel a sense of relief.

I wonder what this means. Whether it is an indication that it is time I got rid of you from my life.

Why is it so hard for us? This is like the inverse of what things used to be with her. You and I are a fabulous public couple. But more and more I feel our intimacy eroding because I feel its absence and you, from feeling the pressure are retreating. It seems like this is a losing battle, one that we can only win if I learn how to shut out that part of me which yearns for more intimate moments with you.

If I didn't want you or miss you or feel like I needed alone time with you, we wouldn't fight.

But what you don't or refuse to understand is that for me, all this socialising, all this being with people that in your mind counts as us being together, is a huge effort for me. It is not what I particularly treasure as memories of you and I. That I participate should alone indicate to you that I am doing it most of the time for you. That you continue to let me down every time I turn to you for intimacy, and you are never able to put your needs before mine, breaks my heart.

I am through with this.

I am through with being upset with you. I think the only way I can see this going is separation at some point, sadly enough. Because you refuse to see that what I want is not what you are giving. Not because you can't but you won't.

Leave now.

At least until you realise what a hole my absence creates in your life. And you are willing to meet me half way and consider MY needs and desires before yours.

To let me make love to you even when you are tired or don't feel like it, which is virtually all the time.

The same way I drag myself to all your social outings despite my lack of sleep, disinterest in the company and my wanting to just wrap myself around you.

I make time for the things and people in your life.

All I am asking is that you make time for me.

Yet, it seems so hard.

That is why, I know I will always be second best. Or third, or last.

The other lesson I have learned from the past is that whatever hurts me in the beginning is what I will always be glad to be rid of in the end. It doesn't go away. Not unless the other person is willing to change.

But perhaps I shouldn't ask that of you, of anyone.

How do I get rid of this awful feeling in me though?

Sex

I don't know what it is.

I guess when I am in love I just yearn to be intimate with the one I love.

So much that when it is something the other person doesn't share, it aches. A physical pain that wrenches my insides and keeps me awake in frustration.

I was like this years ago and I am still, I find, like this now.

With you, it's become such an issue that even when I am too tired or don't really actually feel like making love, I get annoyed just because we were supposed to four days in a row and have not.

I know that me bringing it up all the time kills things for you.

But I don't know what else I should do besides keep my mouth shut.

Not that I want to do it with anyone else. At times I almost wish I did, so that it would be easier for me to walk away from you or even keep you at arm's length and seek solace in the arms of someone else more willing.

I need to learn how to keep this to myself. Or better still not even let it bother me. Only problem is then I run the risk of not wanting to be intimate with you at all.

I know myself. I think I have a problem.

I don't know where this stems from.

Maybe I have a deep-seated insecurity.

Sex with you used to be an emotionally intense thing. Like what I had with him. But now it almost seems well, not quite mechanical but almost base at times, without the emotional intensity I crave.

I love making love to someone who is all there, in the moment, raw and adventurous, trusting and gentle but firm and wild at times. Someone who craves my touch and lets me know as much as I would.

Someone who would seek me out under a table, next to her in the car, where even if our skin touches a minute fraction of the other's it is enough to keep up wanting one another until we are alone.

Someone who kisses me hard the minute we close the door and takes my clothes off with abandon.

Someone who calls me up and just wants me in the middle of the day for no reason other than that it is raining and she is thinking of me.

Someone who wants me.

I am unhappy on just this front alone. It's funny how finally I think I've found someone who fits all the outside bits of me and yet, at the most intimate level, we don't seem to fit. Not that we are a complete mismatch, but just that our grooves don't align a mere millimeter, which causes the teeth to grate against one another's, grinding each other's down. We are like jagged saws whose bits don't quite fit.

I am so frustrated I have become unreasonable even by my own standards.

My Old Acquaintance

It was so nice seeing you this evening. You and your new boyfriend. And my he is handsome, and so sweet. All the things a girl would want in this city of so limited options. But that notwithstanding, this one seems at first meeting a catch by any standards.

And how I could even see myself dating him, only I would never be that fortunate. Not that I count myself unfortunate in the love department. So far, I've done good.

But I was glad to see you happy. After the past several years of our re-acquaintance, it was nice to see you happy. Well and truly happy and in love and talking about marriage.

I wanted to tell you but somehow stopped myself. I wanted to say to you, after my heartbreak of earlier this year and recovery that no matter what happens with your new man, as long as there is real love while it lasts, it is worth it. Because I look back now on my period of absolute and desolute heartbreak as a blip on the screen. Sure, it left its scars, some that I still deal with and carry with me like a favourite blanket or pillow that despite its ragged appearance still sees exotic new destinations.

But I don't regret those nine years. They were not wasted. I grew within them, found new parts of my self or re-discovered other parts forgotten. I loved, I laughed, I curled myself to sleep each night in love and woke up many mornings grateful for the person next to me.

I am still grateful for the past nine years.

And grateful for the baby I had with another man from decades back.

And thankful I have had the opportunity to love some decent people who have seen it fit to love me back.

I only hope that throughout loving and losing, I have learned a thing or two. And that those lessons have not hardened my heart to the possibility of love when it is before me.

For the worst thing that can happen D, IMHO, is that we close ourselves to love because of our past.

That, I think, would be the worst tragedy of one's life.

Rockette

Sometimes I still think of you. Especially when pieces of she and I don't fit.

More and more I realise you and I had run our course and I don't have any regrets anymore about us ending.

But sometimes I do miss you, and even catch myself saying things you would say.

Sometimes I still want to talk to you. But I hold myself back because of the water that has run under the bridge. The things that have passed between us that make me hesitate and actually doubt I can trust you.

There are parts of me you understand well. Parts that she will not be able to grasp yet.

You know. today she and I had an argument. Actually it started last night. About the dogs again. And today she announced her grandmother was ill. It seems like every time she and I have a blowout something big happens in one of our lives. As if the universe doesn't want to give us a chance to fight and argue and sort things out.

I wonder how things will turn out this time. I know thought that with her it is different. I am quite happy to let her go off into her own world and not bother. Just make my own merry way. I am learning to detach myself from my other halves.

Did you teach me that?

HATE

I am trying to analyse this whole blow-up and figure a way out of it, albeit half-heartedly.

You know how I feel about the way you react to my dogs. I realise we have different values and opinions about them. But respect mine, please.

Already I have barred them from most of the house. Without complaint and full understanding.

You on the other hand, treat them with disdain. Sometimes yes, you play with them. But when they are lurking around the living room, you are constantly yelling at them.

I hate that part of you. I do.

And more and more, I see that perhaps it may be the straw that breaks this fragile relationship.

So much of us is comfortable and fits and is right. The way we entertain and like to be entertained. The way you and I fill in the gaps in each others' lives. My home has become a convenient venue for you to live out your fantasies of entertaining friends and showing off your culinary skills. You love playing host and my home is lovely. I know that. You like having people over because it is good enough.

I know your friends are probably thinking oh how you lucked out with me, this girl with a home where you can play house without strings.

And my friends just think you're plain lovely because you're such a wonderful host.

But truth is, the one thing I cannot change in my life and will not change, you hate.

Despite what you say about my dogs, I know you hate them. Hate the way they have freedom over the household.

Well, my friends like dogs too and will not agree with you. So don't expect any sympathy from them either.

If you cannot put up with them and learn how to live with them and enjoy them, you might as well not live with me.

Go find someone else who has no pets and no responsibilities. Like you. Because unlike what you think in your head, you have none. You assume responsibilities, but from what I've seen, it's all in your head. Your family doesn't make you take them on. You do it on your own volition. You limit your own life.

And the truth is, you assume them because you like them. They make you feel important and needed. Indispensable. Dependable.

All the things you are actually not at this point in your life given the turns you have taken.

You are the go-to person in the lives of your friends and family. They cherish you for that. Not for who you are.

Yes I am being my utmost wicked self.

I hate the you that hates my dogs. HATE.

Unhappy

Seems like I only write in here when I am unhappy about the one I love.

Yesterday you were beastly. Yelling at the dogs and being an ass in front of my friends. It reminded me of how I used to walk on eggshells with the Creature.

I don't like this side of you.

But what you need to learn is that my dogs are non-negotiable. They are as much a part of me as my body, mind and heart. They were there when even my most loved deserted me. They provided living energy in my home when even mine was too weak to fill it.

They will remain, even if you leave. Because in my course of life, perhaps my greatest and longest love to date left. And the dogs stayed.

I will not let you pressure me into parting from them.

Nor will I tolerate you treating then with ill will.

They may not be human, but to me they are at times and in many cases, far better and more honourable than many humans I know.

Sloth

I have seriously got to get down to work. I've been putting it all off for over a week now. It's terrible!

My Baby's Coming Home

It's been interesting, these last few days without you. With the Internet and Fring, I don't feel like I've missed out on your being away. Of course I miss the hugs and kisses, the curling up to sleep and waking next to you. But in the day and night time, being able to see your sweet face and hear your voice has been enough to sustain me and keep me from feeling the pain of your absence.

I love the way I love you. Being apart is less painful now, and I guess in a way it has to do with the sense of security you give me. The surety that you are completely mine and have no intention of ever walking away from me or my life.

I love you deeply. In such a short time, you have become the greatest love of my life. I hope and pray this lasts forever and remains this good or gets even better.

I see us together. Now and beyond.

Miles apart

Is it me or are you just not the right one?

With you, I feel alone, unprotected.

It's true, you and I are new. But what you fail to understand is that in my mind, you are not my life partner. You are still just a girlfriend.

There is a big difference.

The difference is in the places you can go within me, and the places I let you into.

We do not plan for the future together.

I do not depend on you for the running of my household. In the infrequent instances that I do, I know it is a favour that I ask of you.

It is not an assumption of shared responsibility.

In the same way I do not assume any responsibility for your responsibilities. Amelia, your family. I just go along for the ride and lend a helping hand.

We are not joined, our lives. And perhaps that is what I find so discordant about our relationship.

I think I am just impatient. Because for so long now I haven't been in a relationship that is not joined, that has two separate people in it with their very own lives.

I don't know how to do that.

And in fact, I am not sure I want to.

Neither do I want to push you or bring things up and discuss them with you. I am not interested anymore in working that hard.

If you do not understand what it means to build a life together, I do not have the energy to teach you.

I did it once and I will not do it again. That part of me is over and in the past.

I do not want you enough to do this one more time.

I do not love you so much that I cannot live without you. Because from the start, I have known that in order for me to survive you if I need to, I must build barriers of expectation within me.

And now, as time passes, I find the barriers are raising. After the rosy sheen of first romance has wilted, I have willed myself to want you less. And not depend on you more.

Distance, in love, has nothing to do with miles.

Now and then

I am grappling with why i get so upset with you sometimes.

I have separation anxiety. There are days when I am unsettled, or I spend too much time on my own and I yearn for you to soothe and calm me. That you have no idea how frustrates me. That you perhaps lack the patience to do so angers me.

I am so tired of fighting for your attention. Not that you don't give me any. But it's just the wrong kind.

Maybe we are not naturally suited to one another.

There are so many aspects of us that work. All the business aspects of being together - common interests and values, intellect, etc. But at the emotional level we are so wrongly matched at times. You want to be cossetted but do not allow me that luxury. You expect me to be rational at all times.

And when you're too tired to deal with me, you just shut me off so easily.

What is it you do for me that I should be so grateful for? All these grown-up things that other people do or can do? Waking me up because I have a doctor's appointment? Cooking for me?

What I want is someone who will hold me and protect me and tell me everything will be okay. Someone with whom I can curl up and Lick my wounds or make me forget that my life is in limbo. Someone who in my bones I know will share my life with me willingly, without me having to ask or teach or tell.

You, in many ways are not that person. At least, not yet.

You have a cursory idea of my dreams, yet you seem always so flippant about them. It's as if you view them from a very detached, business-like point of view. You are never effusive, even in your praise.

I feel so secondary in your life on some days. The one whom you deal with when everything else is dealt with. When everything is quiet and you are left with a choice between your own company or mine. But even then, you expect me to fit into your shape. If you are tired, you want me to be quiet. If you are frisky, you want me to be a whore.

Otherwise, I am not permitted to seek your compromise.

I am not sure, at times like this, whether it's me or whether you are just wrong for me.

Maybe I need to learn patience. Maybe I need to learn how to overcome my own needs and be self-sufficient.

I tell you now, you may not like the me that emerges. She is distant and cold and secretive.

You don't realise it but we don't have the luxury of the rest of our lives to right this wrong. Soon, I may be gone. And with my absence, patience will fly out the window. I will be more difficult and more emotionally dependent on you. If you cannot cope now, then you cannot cope then.

Distance

Tigger

There are things I tell you and others that even I don't realise about us until I force myself to confront the hidden crevices of my own heart.

Who knows how far the road stretches before us? Right now, it disappears into the horizon, but as I've found, the horizon isn't as far away as death most times, and before you know it, you've reached the end of the road. The place where sky meets tar and the set ends.

And you have to grope around looking for the hidden door painted the colour of sky to exit the stage and find a new one.

It is not easy, falling out of love. Or abandoning it.

You know that as much as I do.

I hope there is no end to you and me, truly.

Yet a part of me wants to remain alone, in case you abandon me someday like the rest.

I think the part of surrendering completely to love has run its course in my life.

I need to find a way to feel comfortable with only myself so I will not yearn so much for you.

Only then will I have the distance to find patience and love and gentleness to meld myself to you with the least amount of pain.

Competition

It is a blamy Monday evening and I am stuck, unable to pick up the dangling threads of my stories and unfurl them.

So many, yet none appeal.

I wonder if my mind has just clamped down on itself once more, with an inability to let go and wander.

I need to wander. Once more.

Into the wilderness of my own head, alone.

No beguiling lover enticing me away from myself.

For I am a weak competitor for the other loves in my life. Friends, her, family, the dogs, even the regular tribulations of trivial daily life.

I cannot compete with those.

Breathe

It seems like life's small calamities are attracted to me, like a magnet that pulls all of life's possible little wrenches into its system and swallows them whole.

I need to learn to calm down and breathe. To not let these things frazzle my silly brain and muddle it with stress about things that are out of my control.

Tigger, you are such a blessing to me, and yet, I feel I fail you most days by not remaining calm enough to face life like a real grown-up and handle all the idiotic trivialities that get in the way of living. It is ME who fails, not you, I wish I could convince you that is my true belief.

I know every time I get stressed out I stress you out and I need to learn to stop doing that. I did it to her and I am doing it to you. I know.

And I must not do it again.

I must learn how to let go. A little madness is sometimes OK.

But on days like this, when I know all depends on me to get something done or fix it, I am at a loss. I just want to scream or summon a genie that will fix everything with a wave of his or her wand. Get the maid. Care for the dogs. Do the laundry. Clean the house. Tell off the idiot Melayu maid agent who talks talks talks and then doesn't deliver. I need someone to fix this all.

I am fraying at the edges.

I am missing out on details.

I have always known I am a calamity. I think you are only now finally beginning to realise the depth of my madness. I hope it doesn't stop you from loving me.

Search

Last night I cried again. Not because I do not love you or you do not love me well enough.

But because I see the possibility of us, beyond what we have now, far beyond.

It's funny. With you so many things seem to fit. Our pasts have slid by each other quietly, almost touching, on the fringes of each other's lives. Yet we never met.

Doesn't that tell you something, Tigger? That there is an inevitability in our meeting and coming together.

I have never fallen in love like this, with someone whom I have so much of a past in common but never met. As if Time played an active hand in ensuring everything was in place before it allowed us to kiss.

Here is what I sense and do not tell you. That you love me more than you know. But until you are ready to realise it for yourself, that I am the life you deserve for yourself, beyond all the people in your life you have decided to be responsible for, until it comes to the surface of your being, I will not give you everything.

I cannot.

I cannot do it one more time with the risk of losing what I know to be my life once more.

I love you but not with every fibre of my being. There are parts of me I will still hold apart from you because you do not deserve them yet.

Someday, I hope you will give me reason to love you completely. The day you decide to build a life with me.

Perhaps that day will never come. While I wish I never see the day when we must part, the probability of it is real for me now.

It will make me sad, but I will survive you.

Because I deserve a life with someone. And so do you. But if you do not see me fit to be that person, then I must go in search of mine.

The Only Thing Left Of Us

It was strange, meeting you again after months. The person I shared a life, a home, a bed with for years. The one I thought would be the one till the day I died. Or you did.

Love, I have realised now more than ever, after this experience with you, is a changeable thing, a fragile creature that morphs and mutates and is fickle. It is not constant.

Today there is a corner of my heart still reserved for you. It holds you close and wishes you well, but does not want to be a part of your joy or pain. It will pity you or rejoice for you, but not be involved. It will gaze at the photograph of your lake but not come close to its edge.

That is the only thing left of us in me.

I have been thinking of you of late.

As perfect as my life is at the moment, and as much as I love my Tigger, I cannot help sometimes but be profoundly sad at the absence of you in my life.

I was in love with you. And I think a part of me still is. The part that still cries spontaneously at the thought of seeing you and having to speak to you again. The part that reminisces about our life together, how stable and predictable it was and how I was so in love with you. I remember you gently stroking my face at night saying you love me and how pretty I am. The love light in your eyes. You asking me whether I can fall asleep at night. You mumbling back that you love me even in deep sleep.

I remember these things and wonder how it could all flee from your heart so suddenly. All this love that took years to build. All of a sudden gone.

I wonder how much you miss us, our life, this life you had with me and the dogs.

And today, on Athena's birthday, you must miss us more. I feel it in my bones. I almost want to cry.

I now know how it is possible to love someone in the present so much but yet feel some degree of love still for someone from my past. Not in a way that makes me want to be with you, but in a way that is sad at how things ended.

A small part of me worries still about you. No matter how much I try not to, I do.

But I do love my life now and the possibilities that lie in store for Tigger and I. It will be a wonderful life if we can get past the current madness and adjustments. She is a blessing that I am thankful for.

The way you love me

Tigger, I know how much you love me.

From our fights in recent days, our heated discussions, I realise there is a possibility that you may love me in a more noble way than I ever could love you.

Because the way I love is like a child. Unthinking, all feeling, complete. Yours is more considered, thoughtful. You take each part of me and lay it out before you, examining each fragment before deciding if you can love the whole. I, just jump in with both feet, embrace you and hope our wings are strong and big enough to keep us both from hitting the ground.

This is what I love about you. That you are thoughtful. That I am in your thoughts.

Disturbing

Last night I realised you were on my mind. Again. As if the invisible string that still binds us was tugged my your despair.

I thought of you all the way in Cameron Highlands, miserable in the cold that you hate so much. I always wondered whether it chilled you to the bone.

I thought of whether you were now mired in regret, finally coming closer to terms with the magnitude of destruction you caused all on your own. You must be in a deep, dark well now. Deeper and darker than the one you thought you were in when by my side. Then, at least you had me to blame. Me to aim your arrows of anger and frustration at.

Now, you have nothing. I can imagine that she does not come close to being able to understand you, nor relate to you, nor read you. Perhaps I may sell her short, but quite honestly, I don't think she can even dream of beginning to understand where you are from.

Nine years of loving and living with each other, breathing the same air every night, and on most days. Nine years of eating off the same plates, sleeping on the same bed, riding in the same cars, dreaming the same dreams. Nine years of me reaching out to you even in your sleep.

I am starting now to understand how strong that bond is.

I do not want you in my life anymore. Yet I cannot help but feel your emotions. It is disturbing.

Despite it all

At times it would seem we are two souls that understand one another.

At times like this, however, my own demons overtake me and you fail to understand.

When we have spent time, especially like we have over the last two days, in the company of others, I feel the need to connect with you. Be intimate with you. Feel you yearn for me the same way I do you.

I want you to reach out for me, want me, miss me, the missing on your lips and at the end of your finger tips.

For you, missing is not possible as long as I am physically present next to you.

For me, missing is possible even when I am in your arms and cannot feel you.

Perhaps it is my own warped perspective. I know these days I often make you feel inadequate, or that you are doing the wrong thing.

You told me that you feel you are walking on egg shells.

Maybe that is why all of you leave eventually. Unable to withstand my yearning or understand how my desire can be so great.

I don't know how to explain it. Don't you get it? When we are busy with our every day lives and errands and people and things that tug and tug at our sleeves and hems, there is a separation that occurs between our souls? One that is felt by me like a chasm. Maybe to you it is indiscernible. But to me it is all I see.

I see you. I see you and your needs and I try to bend and fulfill and accommodate them. But many times, I feel you don't see me.

You do not see the truth behind my words and pliant ways. You choose instead to see the times when I rebel and do not heed your words. To do what I feel instead.

Don't you understand that I mean what I say? That I do not need you to tell me what is wrong or right for me? That when I ask for something from you, the last thing I want is for you to turn me down but instead offer a directive that is what you deem for my own good?

I know your concern comes from a deep love. I wish you could see that my willingness to sacrifice my own comfort comes from the same place. And it is something I don't even see as a trade-off.

You and I are profoundly different.

I wish you would truly, truly realise that, and understand that the loving I want from you is not what you sometimes give me.

Maybe I should take heed. Maybe I should take stock of whether or not this is for me. Maybe your kind of loving, your brand of care and concern is not what I seek.

I do love you. I love you in ways I have not loved others. Ask me what I could give you as a gift and I could think of a million things. I bet you could not think of one for me that would mean something to me and be cherished the way you would cherish mine.

Despite what you think, you do not know me. And yet I love you, despite all that. You make my heart do little flips from mere words or a glance. I am grateful for any little bits of attention you give me that is unsolicited. Why can't you understand that?

A While

I don't know why it always comes to this. After the initial yearning, you, just like the others, wane. And the small things I cherish and treasure disappear. The opening of doors, the stroking of my arm and holding me close when I am crying or feel small or vulnerable. The constant desire I can see in the shadow of your glance or feel at the edge of your fingertips.

Even lovemaking doesn't feel like that anymore. In fact, ever since you said 'I love you' it has gradually slid into being termed as sex.

How do I tell you that while on the one hand our ability to navigate day to day living seems to increase, our intimacy seems to have taken a backseat? That I miss that part of you is clear and undeniable. I guess I cannot understand how you don't miss that about us.

If our love started from something to passionate and so full of yearning, how can you not miss it like I do?

I love you and I know you love me too.

But I feel disconnected. Like we have become an old couple who no longer consider desire as part of the most important elements of their relationship.

I thought you were different I thought you were someone with whom I could spend my days, arms entwined, even if we were just sitting on a swing. Someone who would surprise me with a kiss on the nape of my neck when I least expect it, who would hold my face in her two hands and gaze into my eyes as if they contained the secrets of the universe.

It was like that for a while. But oh, how long it has been since I felt as if you adored me.

Now, every time we argue you have little patience. Your reaction to my unhappiness is anger first and foremost. Never anything else. Even the other day when I talked to you about logistics for post-boat training, you were curt. And all today when I asked you to kiss me, or invited you to make love, you laughed.

Can't you see I don't know anymore how to bring back what we had only a few weeks ago? Every trick in the book, every dress, every feminine wile, nothing seems to have an effect on you anymore.

I feel so unattractive with you. As if I am the one in love with someone who only tolerates me.

Oh this is not good. This feeling of one-sidedness, this lack of adoration.

What happened to how you used to adore me?

This is all I am. There is nothing more. Just like I know this is all you are. And I don't expect anything more. Just more of what I first saw. Is that a crime?

I love you and I love the ways you love me. Except lately I don't feel so loved because you seem to have lost tenderness, the ability to deal with me when I am in pain with some degree of protection and care. You used to hold me when I cried. Two days ago, you just said "dah lah tu". As if I was a child who had been going on too long.

Perhaps that is what it is. You are fed up with me and my crying. You no longer feel the desire to be the shoulder for me to cry on.

Perhaps that is what it is.

You are tired finally, of being in love with me.

I love you

Do you know how much fear I still carry in my heart?

I know you love me. I don't doubt it, yet on some days when I am frayed and the old demons rise from their shallow graves, I cannot help but feel terrified at the thought of you leaving me.

It's funny, you're always the one who thinks I will leave you, because they always do.

I won't Tigger. Because I know what you are to me, and how someone like you is hard to come by in a lifetime.

I know you and see you and wish I could make you feel how much I love you.

Please don't let me scare you away. I know I am intense, and sometimes I may seem.... actually many times I don't know what I may seem like to you.

I so love you.

I love you.

I don't know how to show you how much I love you. How I cherish and adore you. How I treasure having you in my life.

Vulnerable

Did my loving make you feel bad in the end? I remember how you cried the last few nights we were together. Said that you do love me but there was a part of you that wanted to be with someone else.

I think you must believe I was out to destroy you in the end. But then again, there is a part of me that doesn't want to think of you because it does believe you were not truthful to me.

To this day and forever perhaps, I will have to live with the fact that I will never know what was true.

I cannot understand how you can lie to someone you love so much. Not just white lies, but lie in ways that would hurt them deeply and betray their trust, disrespect the love that is shared.

Why am I still thinking about you even now?

Why is it you still hurt me on days when I am feeling vulnerable?

Perhaps because Tigger doesn't know yet how to soothe me. She is always trying to fix things and uncomfortable with feeling helpless. She doesn't yet understand that sometimes I cry, in fact often, when I cry, it has little to do with her and everything to do with the scars that I still bear in my heart from the devastating past.

I am so mixed up these days.

Listening To Sarah Maclachlan

I realise her songs today were making me sad and nostalgic. They made me remember days with Creature that now seem so far away.

I wonder still how things turned. I was so in love. I thought she was too.

And sometimes, when I am with Tigger, I fear that she too may someday turn suddenly, away from me, and leave me once again uncomprehending.

Maybe this is my lesson. To learn how love can fade and then one day completely leave you.

I keep remembering how Creature in the last days would come over and she was torn, or so I thought. Torn between loving me, with what remnants of that there was, and being with this new, shiny, exciting woman who made her feel like a hero. I wonder then what I made her feel like.

I must have made her feel bad.

Frayed

Strange day.

I completely forgot someone's birthday dinner last Saturday.

Hellboy was a charmer all that afternoon, and thank God Tigger was by my side.

Lately I have been feeling rather frayed at the edges and I can't explain why. My life is so good right now. Someone who loves me, someone to love, a job that pays me relatively well, a beautiful house, a dream resort that is in the making.

What else could a girl ask for?

And this sadness is not for wanting of something I cannot have.

I feel so overwhelmed some days at the thought of having to do everything on my own. Tigger I think is unsure why I feel that way, and my reluctance at turning to her for help I think makes her feel inadequate or useless or as if her presence doesn't make a difference in my life.

I have to stop making her feel not good enough.

Because she is good enough. And good to me.

I just spoke to her over the phone. I miss her when she is not with me. She sounds so sexy over the phone line. She is amused that I yearn for her so much.

I think she still doesn't understand how her presence in my life alone is enough from her. Like a buoy I cling to, to keep emotionally afloat. Obviously, she is a separate entity from me. She knows how to love without being immersed in another being.

I should learn how to do that.

Today as I cried and I clung to her, I thought of Creature and somehow it made me cry more. I was suddenly sad. Sad at the loss of it and us, how life has changed so completely for both of us. I wonder sometimes, a little more these days, whether she thinks of us and what we used to be. What we had and shared.

It's funny. I don't want it back. I am pretty sure about that. Yet, I am sad. Why would you feel sad for something you no longer want, especially when you now have something that is far better?

With Tigger I don't feel like I am settling. She loves me and I love her as she is. I don't wish she is someone different. Or her circumstances were different. Or her personality was different. I just love her the way she is, even the bits that sometimes annoy me.

I hope she loves me the same.

Conflicted

I think this is the first time we have physically met again after a separation and not kissed.

I am sitting at the dining table with you a couple feet away from me. There are no gestures of apology from you. Perhaps I shouldn't expect any.

Perhaps I should apologise.

I don't know.

I certainly don't feel like I want to. A part of me feels perhaps we should talk but I don't want to be the one to begin this time. I don't even know what to say anymore. It's as if I am content with the knowledge that you love me, but at the same time I do not want to explore this particular occasion more than I need to.

I want you here and I don't.

I am conflicted.

DIsappointments

I am in two minds.

I don't know, at moments like this, what I want. To be near you or not at all.

I keep thinking of her. How she sometimes out of the blue used to tell me how pretty I am. Or that she loved me, without me having to ask. And those moments, I can still recall so clearly, the look in her eyes, how they lit up with love.

I cannot think of when you've looked at me that way. Or perhaps I am not fair. You have, except it's always when we are out or you are drinking. Never when we are alone or together at home or falling asleep in bed, dreaming our dreams and laughing at our own silly jokes.

You and I have good times. I think there is room for us to grow together.

But at the same time, there doesn't seem to be any room for me or you to be dissatisfied. I don't think it's about changing the other person, but perhaps more about coming to the middle. The center of what you and I are.

I don't understand you sometimes. You say these things, make these assumptions and plans. Yet, at the same time, when it suits you, you pull away and play the convenient card - we don't live together, we've only been together for nine weeks, I told you what to expect from me, etc, etc etc.

I never know with you, how seriously you take us. How much latitude I have for expecting things from you. I know that the option of living together is something I at least am not comfortable with for now. I need you to sort your self out.

I need us to be clear we actually want to be together for the long haul, and I am not yet clear about that.

I woke up this morning and found myself still angry and upset with you. I can't put my finger on it although I am trying. But many times last night I felt I only ended up confusing you even more.

Should I just take a breather from you? At this very moment, I am liking you not being underfoot for me to contend with because I don't think I can be nice.

I think I need to go shopping.

I am sitting here virtually talking to myself because I cannot make sense of my own feelings. Here you are, loving, yet I feel sometimes, at times like this, that there are barriers. That my disappointment disappoints you.

I wish sometimes you would step out of your self and see that not everything is about how awful you are, and how fucked up you are, what a mess you are and whatever else negative you can think of to label your self.

PMS

I know I am getting my period which is why I am probably so fucking moody.

I am extra sensitive, extra insecure, extra everything. Grouchy, grumpy, touchy, impatient, terse.

Why can't you understand that I just need some babying and cuddling, in the same way that you have over the last few weeks?

I just wanted to be a girl for one night who could feel like she was the prettiest thing in the universe. And no, you don't make me feel that way. You barely tell me how pretty I am. I don't feel very pretty around you. I only feel pretty these days because I am skinnier and I think I like who I see in the mirror.

But you don't make me feel pretty. You make me feel loved, yes. But you are also the person who says that you don't love women for their looks alone. And that often the women you go out with are not conventionally pretty. So I assume you include me in that category.

But I know that on some days and last night I was pretty, even by conventional standards. I was hot, and I had hoped you would notice.

I guess you did notice, but it still wasn't enough to make you come home with me.

Sometimes I really wonder why I bother trying.

Maybe I shouldn't.

Maybe I should but do it for myself only. And not look forward to you saying anything or noticing anything about me.

That way I won't be disappointed.

Is it so wrong for a girl to want to hear from the one she loves every day how she is loved and adored and how beautiful she is? If the one I love doesn't tell me, who should?

Kissing you goodnight

Tonight will be the first in a while since I have gone to bed without kissing you, whether in spirit or in person.

I guess what irks me sometimes is that you don't tell me what your plans are. I have said many times before how important it is for me to know what is happening, so I can manage my heart. But you instead choose to ignore it time and again.

You leave things unsaid, so that I am left to surmise and then finally ask you for confirmation of things I already know with a sinking heart.

You avoid.

You don't discuss them with me, but instead just make up your own mind.

I am pissed off with you again.

I hate that you do this to me.

I think I should stop allowing you to do this to me.

Stop allowing you to assume I will follow you to the ends of the earth without question, without consideration for what I may want or need to do.

I try to accommodate you with the undecided, unspoken words.

I wish you would decide once and for all whether I am really a part of your life or whether you want to be a part of mine. Because this winging it just doesn't cut it for me anymore. I am fed up and I give up.

I will not do this for anyone anymore. And if you do not play ball, then out you go. On to the next one. Or not.

All I know is that I will not be part of anyone's life who doesn't hold me as important as their own needs.

I hold you above my own. I bend to your desires. I wish that sometimes you would bend to mine.

But all I see is you deciding for yourself where you want to be, what you want to do, where you want to go, and telling me as an afterthought, expecting me to understand and acquiesce. As if every time you spend with me is a favour I should be grateful for.

Well I am grateful, but I am also not unaware that I allow you in my life.

I think I should pull back now. Not allow you so much freedom. Unless you play ball with me, unless you actually consider me carefully in everything that you do, don't be part of my life.

I don't need someone to just fit me in when their schedule or life or desires suit them. I need someone who will be with me in my life too.

And obviously, you are an unwilling participant.

Sacrifices

I got dressed delectably, in an attempt to entice you to spend the night with me. Although I don't know why I should bother. Shouldn't being with me be important enough?

I understand you haven't been home in weeks, but that was your decision that had little to do with me. I was just a convenient space for you to seek shelter while K's mom was in town. You made that decision to vacate your bedroom all on your own. Not me. It had nothing to do with me. You can argue that I was part of the reason, but hey, I wasn't, when it all boils down.

Tonight, you opted to stay at home, because you haven't slept in your own bed for weeks. You couldn't wait one more night, even after I had bothered to look nice for you and we had an awesome evening together.

I don't know what bothers me more. That I have to negotiate to be a part of your life, or that I bother to do so.

I shouldn't.

You expect me to travel with you when you work, as if I don't have a life of my own, a life you do not support nor are a part of other than negotiating what we should eat for our next meal when we are together.

A relationship is about more than that, and if you do not realise it, then perhaps it is time you took stock.

I manouevre my life around you. My dogs, my house, my career. You who do not have a career, and whose biggest daily worry is how to spend time with your baby niece try to lay that on me at this late hour when I have work to do. I cannot stand for that and I will not.

I will not speak to you for a while. I cannot. Not until you realise the folly of your ways.

I think tomorrow night I will go out. Have some fun on my own, without you. The truth is I have noticed some things about you.

You have not been attentive towards me in a while now. Not in the ways you were when we first met. The only times I see that side of you emerge are when we are out and you are drinking. As if being in public necessitates you telling the world you own me.

Well you don't.

Even if I love you, I know what I love about you. And the changes, the erosion I have seen of late, are not the things that endear you to me.

You expect me to understand that the sacrifices you make in your own head are ones that include me. Well they do not in my eyes, so don't make me feel like they should.

I have been trying to put my finger on what has been bothering me about you of late. That you pay me more attention when we are out and about is one thing. That you are less than engaged when we are together alone is another.

I know your life is complicated at the moment, but whose isn't?

Adrift

I am trying now to figure out how to tell you what has been bugging me without sounding weird or childish or too nitpicky.

You have a temper, a short fuse that I recognise. And frankly, I am too tired to deal with it.

But now that's out of the way, I am going to give this a shot.

In the beginning, you were all about paying me attention. Opening doors, lighting my cigarettes, caring for my every need. Fetching me a drink before I could even ask for one, stroking my arm as we curled up on the couch, kissing me, reaching for me, wanting to turn everything off except you and I, so your full attention could be on me and us.

That was something I treasured most in you. That you desired to be with me and within us so fully, without distractions.

These days, of late, I feel our days are made up of filling holes. Meals, errands, meeting friends for appointments. Rarely do you and I frolick in bed just because, or sit and listen to music and talk.

When we are alone, you become a child, whining for attention. You kiss me with affection, but no desire. You don't reach me.

You are becoming one half of a married couple I am not prepared to be part of.

I want romance. I want passion, like in those first few weeks.

Perhaps I should just give you space. Because you are at a stage or place in your life when you are feeling vulnerable and stressed out at the impending decision you may have to make. I know it could change your life. I know it could mean the end of all your dreams you have clung to with such fervour for such a long time.

What I perhaps don't understand is how this has changed since I first met you. Unless of course then, the newness of us all served as a distraction from your daily concerns. Now I am perhaps just one other layer to your life that you cherish but at the same time feel a responsibility towards.

I know you do not resent my presence. In fact, in a lot of ways, I think I have become woven into the fabric of your daily existence in a way that you have yet to become in mine.

I think I have more doubts about us than do you.

I think that perhaps, given all that I have been through, I question the strength of our bond, and its ability to weather the every day erosion of time and closeness.

Closeness erodes. Distance does too, in its own but different way.

Please stop shouting at me. Please treat me like an adult, one you desire with your passion, your soul. One that you want to make love to and not just share time and space and things and meals with.

I want you to share some joy with me, even in your darkest hour. Or perhaps that is not possible.

Perhaps you really are in a dungeon of despair and I am failing to recognise it.

Perhaps that is what it is.

Love

It amazes me sometimes, when I realise how much capacity and skill we have for loving. Different ways for different objects. People. Our pets. Places. Things.

Even lovers. We love each of them differently. No two are the same. Some we love with rage and fury. Some with tenderness. Some quietly. Some with loud cymbals and drums. Some slowly, over years. Some quickly. But almost always, in the most unlikely ways.

Someone said that what counts with love is how it actually ends. Death aside as the inevitable eventuality of even the greatest of loves, I suppose it is actually true.

With Big T, it ended when it did. The universe and life just made it easier in some ways. The presence of Marli however ensured he and I will always be attached by an invisible string that will bind us in the most tenuous yet definitive way. But it was over at the right time, when he and I were both ready to move on to our adult lives, mine here and his over there. He was my buoy while afloat in a foreign sea. I wrapped myself around him because I didn't want to be alone.

With Babbitt, it never ended. It just changed into something more affectionate, although with the same ferocity, steadfastness and loyalty. And undoubting assumption that we would always love each other through space and time. But with her, there was never any doubt that things had run its natural course. There was nothing more that sort of love could have given either her or me. We had to both move on.

With Rockette, I thought for the longest time it was a quiet love. When in truth, it was our life that grew quiet and closed. Insular and defensive. Us against the world. We were like two people under siege. And when the dam broke, everything good and pure flowed out with it, leaving behind only the sediments of things that had long eroded beneath the love.

And now Tigger. I love her with a quiet gentleness that is I believe a lesson from Rockette, yet she brings out the child in me that Babbitt does, the dreamer, the red balloon, and I cling to her like a float, except with less desparation. She is like a buoy in an ocean that I am familiar with, instead of something alien. I don't need her by my side all the time.

But she seems to yearn for me. I wonder sometimes if this part of her will only last as long as her current situation. And whether when she gets back on her feet she will yearn for me the same.

Perhaps she will, but more subtly, with less outward display of need.

I wonder about that sometimes. I wonder if I will like it. Already I sometimes find myself missing parts of her that were so present on the surface in the early weeks and have now slowly dissipated or occur fewer and farther occasions between.

I imagine that when she is back on her feet, she will feel more in control. She may want to protect me more. Or perhaps appreciate the independence in me.

It may actually work. There is something in me that tells me she and I would actually make a strong team in more than one way. Emotionally, intellectually, and in our souls. She is the finger around which the string to my red balloon is tethered.

I like that. I like that a lot.

Turning Corners

Tonight I guess we have crossed that bridge. The bridge of my desires forcing themselves to fade into quiet and sleep while you nurse your wounded soul and its demons.

It hasn't taken long with you. Eight weeks and a little more, but then again, the loving has grown exponentially in that time.

I know I shouldn't be so selfish. That you are at a crossroad that has been staring you in the face for over a year now and you feel finally pushed to move. I wonder how deep the chasm is.

I cannot reach you these days at times, and I don't know if I should run now or stay and be still. I am not good at being still.

But instinctively I know that you are the soul that can guide me if I am willing.

Because for you, being beside me is enough. You long for my presence next to you, even in these, your darkest hours, even if I am someone you technically barely know. You entrust your soul to me and I should take greater care. For you need me now more than I perhaps need you.

Tonight I was haunted by her voice asking me whether I could fall asleep. She used to do that, perhaps it was her way of caring. You in your own way do it too, by reaching out to me, by not being able to fall asleep or stay asleep for long when I am not by your side.

You yearn for me in the subtlest ways and they are not lost on me. Perhaps I should make sure you know that.

I must be strong for you now in your hour of needing me.

Because you have been nothing but stalwart for me. Past my hurting, deep inside it, wrapped your love around me like it didn't matter that my hurt for someone else hurt you.

I love you in the quietest of ways. In ways I have never quite known before.

Perhaps what you should know is that in many ways, my loving her has paved the way for my loving you.

In that sense, it was not all a lost cause.

Every step, my darling, has brought me closer to you.

Evening

In the quiet of the afternoon, when I am alone with just the dogs in my little house, I exhale. Evenings are now my favourite part of day to be alone, in solitude with my own thoughts and fancies. While the world outside rushes home from work, or to dinners and their families.

When she is not with me, evenings like this stretch silent and long. Gentle and calm.

I now entertain thoughts of her and me, spending a life together, by each other's sides. I think somehow she is someone I can grow old with, after we have done what we need to, shored up enough money just to be with each other and worry little about anything else.

She is a blessing in my life. I hope hers sorts itself out soon, or she makes the decisions that she can live with and be happy with to some extent.

She deserves it, God. She is such an amazing person, so giving and generous, loyal and honest. She deserves something good.

I believe I am born under a lucky star. Fate has been kind to me. Even trouble has opened doors to more beautiful things.

I am now slowly becoming more comfortable with myself and my own company in this home. I love this space. I have reclaimed it from my past with Anim and made it mine. Erased her from it and the nuances of what it meant. It is no longer shared. It is mine.

Wondering

At times like this, I do catch myself wondering whether it would be simper to walk away from her. Because of the uncertainties in her life. Because of her not knowing what it is she wants to do or where she is headed.

But these are fleeting thoughts. They are not things that keep me up at night.

I know she has it within her to make something of her self, as she has already. Fate just has not seen it fit for her to do so yet.

But it will come. I know it.

And in the meantime, I will be here.

By Your Side

You asked me last night what my life would be like without you in it. I told you it would be like a red balloon untethered. Bobbing in the wind, directionless, at a whim. With you, I am grounded by a thread of love.

I know you worry about your future and having me in it. How it will affect me, being around you and your uncertain life. I know you worry that I will leave you. Or that perhaps you will ruin my life or make it more difficult or uncertain because of where you are now in yours.

I don't know how to tell you that I am in this with you with eyes wide open. I understand what you are going through. I have every confidence you will make the right decisions when the time comes.

You are now at a crossroad that could change your life. I know that. And the fact that I cannot reach you there, to even hold your hand and make you feel better is something that makes me a little sad. Yet I know this is something you must do alone.

If you want, I will stay away from you, so you have time and space to think about where you want to head next. Perhaps it may not include me.

I fully realise the risk of that happening. While it makes me sad, I will understand.

You often tell me that I could be with someone better. But what is that, Tigger? Someone who is more certain of their life path, more sure of their future, with more money in their bank accounts?

I understand why you would think that I can perhaps be better off with someone like that.

But I think you also need to finally recognise it is not what I look for in a person to love and make my life partner.

You give me the things money cannot buy. The tenderness, the care, the concern, the consideration, the thought, the loving, the kisses in the morning and the waking up at night because I am coughing too much in my sleep. No amount of riches in the world can make up for all that.

No amount.

Know that I am here by your side. I always will be for as long as you will have me.

That I love you is something I am fully certain of. That it may not be easy, because of the life path you have chosen, is something that I know too, but it doesn't keep me awake at night. Because money is only something you need to get by in life, not the be all and end all of it. If there's less of it you make do. Life doesn't stop.

I know you are tired. Tired of fighting the battle that seems uphill all the time. Tired of having to rely on others. Tired. I know.

I wish there was something I could do to make you feel better. I wish there was, Tigger. But all I can offer you is a shoulder to cry on, and the promise that I will always be here to love you, no matter what you decide and where your life takes you.

I Love All Of You

In the long future of days that I imagine stretch before us, the years if we are lucky, I imagine you and me side by side, living dreams that we both share. Passing time in both quiet and the noisy company of loved ones, you by my side, skin touching, hands reaching, lips always yearning for the feel of the other on hers.

I imagine us spending time wrapped around each other, talking and laughing, even arguing in love.

I imagine a time when there is no longer fear in our hearts that the other one will leave us. A time when we are both free of the fears that our pasts have created deep in both our hearts.

You are the one I have been waiting for, Tigger. I know it in my bones. With you there are no holes that need filling, no compromises that need to be made in the ways that I want to be loved. You are all of it. The tenderness, the rapture, the consideration, the intelligence, the honesty, the integrity, the respect, the humour, the strength, the love.

I am so in love with all of you, even the bits you think I am not.

I will be there for you, baby, for as long as you want me there by your side. Because to me, your love is all I need from you. Not your life, not your bank account or material possessions or status or anything else you may think someone requires to love you.

I love you for who you are inside and out now, this very day. For everything you are and you are not. For everything you want to be and have been.

Desire

Dearest Tigger

I have been struck by how deeply my thought of leaving you, as fleeting as it was, has affected you so much.

I cannot recall when last someone feared the loss of me. It was always me who feared the departure of someone I love.

I guess in that sense you and I are the same. We have always been the ones who loved and been left behind.

I hope this is a sign that we will last for a long, long time if not forever.

I love you in the quietest way, with a slow, simmering desire that peaks whenever I am with you. Even when we are apart I miss you in the most tender manner.

I love you. I miss your touch, your kisses, your hands on me and around me, your lips on my skin, your smile, your voice. Even listening to you speak turns me on and stokes desire.

I am so into you it is not funny.

You turn me on so intensely I just want to kiss you like a teenager.

I am so madly in love. Like I haven't been in so long.

I thought I loved her, and I think I did, but I always felt curbed. Like she didn't want me enough.

But you. You constantly reach out for me, yearn to be near me, need to touch me or kiss me every so often. I love that about you. I hope you will always desire me the way you do now. It is one of the things I love most about you.

I Love You

So many people have remarked how happy I am now. And indeed I feel almost delirious at times.

This morning and every morning that I have woken either by your gentle kisses or the sight of your beautiful sleeping face, I am overwhelmed. There is a peaceful calm that sits in my heart now, at the center of me.

I see how you try to weave me into your life. How your thoughts always include me, even when I don't think they do. Or do in a way that I do not prefer. But they do.

I know how effortless it has been to let you in. Despite my terror, there is something about you I want to believe in.

You always tell me you are here, by my side. And I know you are, in every way that is important.

That I love you is beyond doubt. And I know you realise it truly.

There is so little doubt with you. You tell me things I don't even ask for.

I love you, plain and simple. With a gentleness I knew before but with a lot less doubt. It's like stretching in bed on a Saturday morning with nothing to do except love you to my heart's content.

Thank you for today, thank you for this morning. It's my favourite way to wake up. Next to you, long and langourous, with little to do except think about what we have to eat.

I love the way you kiss me incessantly, can't keep your fingers off me, want me and reach for me all the time.

I love that you love me back, without fear now, with all your heart.

I love you.

Tiny Fear

There is still a very small, tiny part of me that holds the fear you will change like her and become someone I do not know after so much loving.

I know, with my head that it is not a possibility, or at least something I refuse to believe.

My faith tells me that once is enough, that I have learned my lesson.

Yet, sometimes, especially when she rears her ugly head back into my memory, I have a small fear you will leave me the same way.

I love you, with a calmness of heart and mind that is so peaceful.

I love you with my heart and mind and eyes and soul.

I see into you, as you do into me.

I love you even when we are angry or frustrated with one another.

There is no drama in our togetherness.

Just a natural, flowing energy that hums quietly most moments in the background.

You are the first person I have ever wanted to gaze at while sleeping.

You are beautiful, when quiet and when you are not looking or aware of my gaze.

I love you. Quietly, calmly, peacefully.

You listen and you try to accommodate me. You do. I see it in you.

And you make me want to try harder too. For you. For me. For us.

You

How quickly you and I have gravitated to the center of each other's beings.

You are a person who doesn't say much. At least about your feelings for me. Because you are on the surface a little conflicted still, about my place in your life.

For some reason, it is not disconcerting. Because it tells me that you consider me carefully. That you take me seriously. That you do not view you and me and us lightly, as if we are something that should not just be seen as a spot of fun.

You are the rational one between us, the one who doesn't cede control beyond a certain point.

You are beautiful in that right.

You have been thinking about us, I know. Despite your words that say you cannot commit and you do not feel ready to give of yourself you do. In your thought and action, already you are beginning to want me in your life, a part of your life. Yet you hesitate.

I know why you hesitate. But I think you don't know how I actually feel, and perhaps I don't either.

Today you said you felt me there with you. As if it was something that you finally felt at last, after these last few weeks.

I think my past scares you, or causes you to doubt me. And that's okay for now.

You said today that seeing me happy and making me happy is your focus and that is enough for you.

But I want to make you happy too. Beyond me and how I feel, I hope you understand how much it also means to me to be able to make you happy too.

I am this unexpected thing that has reared its presence in your life. At a time when you are not ready yet, or at least you feel you are not ready.

Embrace me, Tigger. I will not cause you harm.

I still, however, I know, need to let go. You know it too.

This afternoon of lovemaking was amazing. You and I unable to stay away from one another, as if we had not seen each other in years and needed to make up for lost time.

We are both amazed at how the universe has brought us together. I know that and you know that.

You're gorgeous, Tigger. And I welcome you as this bright, shining light in my life, even at this point when I am still wounded and broken.

Magic

There has been a lot of magic in my days here in Bali. Magic that calms my soul and soothes it, gives it peace.

I understand now, its real gift.

Riding pillion into the hills with David, the wind rushing past, people floating by, the sounds, the smells of the countryside have brought me back front and center with the things I have been missing from my life since we gave up Twin Creek and used to spend weekends at the river.

It's as if my soul yearns to be outdoors once more, getting wet and dirty, without a care in the world about staying clean and dry. Abandon is a good thing for the soul.

There is something about being outside. It frees me.

Also something about being away, outside of my own comfort zones, in unfamiliar places. I am liking this. Liking being here in Bali. Liking to some extent that Tigger is far away from me and can only be reached in small doses.

I didn't think I did but I needed this space. I needed it from her, to help us separate and think and contemplate. And miss and yearn and understand what it is to be apart.

Funny isn't it, how I created this space for someone else and it is her that has fallen into it.

The sudden appearance of Marli puzzled me at first, although in the seat of my soul I understood it and even embraced it as something natural that would happen here. She stayed with me for quite a while, now a beautiful black butterfly with yellow stripes on each wing. She played among the aisles of the shop, kissed my hand and flew around me, as if teasing me, goading me into child's play, down and up the narrow aisles. We were at play, she and I. We were at play and in love.

The last two days, in the hills, I have felt my soul free. No longer imprisoned by the love of her, even forgetting how it felt to love her.

I have realised from this whole devastation how fragile love is. It can dissipate at a turn of a phrase, a word, a revelation of an untruth. It is so simple to eradicate.

I cannot now, find any affection for her. No nostalgia, no small part of me still loving her.

I don't know sometimes if it is because I am just lying to myself and that there is a part of me which will love her still. But I have dug a little, beneath the surface. And found nothing.

Ke-Agungan Dia

This time, Bali has been different. Perhaps because I am now vibrating at a different frequency than before.

Magic seems to be everywhere. Riding pillion on a motorbike takes on romantic nuance. Wooden angels hanging in a shop bring the thought of Christmas back into my life and wanting. Marli, now a beautiful butterfly. And tonight, standing in the midst of the mayhem, watching the grotesque Ogoh-Ogoh go by, cymbals clanging, drums beating, the smell of fireworks..

Ke-Agungan Dia tidak dapat ku lupakan semenjak sampai di Bali kali ini. Pagi pertama ku sedar dari tidur dan keluar ke ruang jendela kamar, Agung menunjukkan diri, tetapi secara sembunyi-sembunyi, seolah malu. Tetapi, selang sehari, dia menjelma lagi, kali ini lebih jelas dan terang, terdampar tanpa tersipu-sipu.

Seolah sekarang kerana hati ku telah terbuka, aku dihadiahkan kesemuanya, memanggil-manggil jiwa ku ke sana.

Saya akan menemui mu satu hari nanti.

Tigger

What a surprise you have been.

From the start, you had me with your chivalry and attentiveness, your thoughtfulness and tender ways.

I love that you curl up on the couch with me for hours and run your fingers up and down my arm, reach out and kiss me just because, stroke my cheek, my hair and my body.

In so many ways, you are the lover I have always wanted. The one who cannot go seconds without touching me in tenderness and yearning. The one who tickles my thoughts with ideas and challenges me. Who listens to my blathering. Who is smart. Who is unafraid of me. So unafraid of the me everyone fears.

But yet you fear me for the yearning I give rise to in your self.

I think you and I both know that if we made this work, it could potentially be a relationship of a lifetime. One where two people, best matched in so many ways, come together in love, gentleness and thoughtfulness. In intellect. In laughter.

I wonder sometimes, if we met at the wrong time. But yet I think there is no such thing when something feels so right.

I deserve you. And you deserve me. It's as simple as that.

The Love Of My Old Life

How quickly things can change.

You are now no longer part of my universe. Not even within the hidden crevices of memories of happy things and love long gone.

I remember many things from lovers past. A cold day in winter in someone's arms. Nursing a black eye and curled up on a couch in someone's lap reading Calvin and Hobbes. Stomping in puddles in the rain. Playing footsie on a dorm couch while not watching a movie.

But you. I have erased you from my hard drive. All the photographs of our memories. The only ones left are the ones in my head and those I hope will fade with time.

Goodbye, the one I thought was the love of my life.

Thank you for leaving

You are now definitively the past I wish to forget but know I will not.

I clap my hands in glee now at the openness of your evil. Padan muka! You already know life with the home wrecker is going to be miserable for you. You already hate it. You already know she doesn't do it for you. She never did. She is delusional and you were stupid. Stupid to a fault.

But I thank her for removing you from my life.

For without her I would still be stuck with you like a millstone round the neck of my fate.

My life ahead of me shines brighter than it ever would have with you in it.

And so much fuller of love, light and laughter.

Angels come to me so easily now, without your darkness around.

Leaving me was the biggest mistake of your life, but the best thing that has happened to me.

The You I Want In My Life

This is a post about the you I want in my life.

I do not want you to fill the empty spaces, for I hope that by the time I meet you, I have filled the gaps in my own soul.

Instead, I want you who will love me unconditionally, with passion, tenderness, gentility, generosity, courage, respect and adoration.

You are the one I can lean on.

The one who ignites my fire.

The one who makes my days full and round.

The one with whom I can curl up with anytime, anywhere and not feel like I am invading your space.

The one who will kiss me tenderly and with passion, hold my hand under a table, reach out for me all the time so there is no space for missing.

The one who will love me.

Who will care for me.

Who will be my strength when I am tired, defeated and drawn.

Who will slow down my fire when it is burning too bright.

Who will be the light I come home to and the star that shines my night.

You are intelligent, enlightened, beautiful, kind, honest, generous and loyal.

Evil

I cannot even cry anymore.

I cannot even fathom how you could be so mean and cruel.

I have difficulty even now reconciling who you were and who you are, and accepting that you are one and the same person.

You have lied to me in so many ways, and withheld information, led me on through the years and been downright deceitful.

You are manipulative and evil.

You are not a good person.

These are things I keep telling myself even though there are so many memories of years and years of loving stacked in my head and heart.

You are one of the cruellest human beings I have ever met.

I wish I never knew you, because now even the good is tainted.

Letter To The Homewrecker

I wanted to write to you and tell you how I feel.

I know you probably don't care, judging from your actions thus far, but this is important to me as part of my healing.

I am very disappointed in you although I do not know you. For someone who has been on the receiving end of a cheating spouse you have shown little regard for my marriage. Do not pretend you were not aware of the consequences of your actions early on in your acquaintance with my loved one. Do not pretend you didn't know what you were doing.

You can try to stretch the moral boundaries to justify your actions. But the truth will not change. You played a huge part in causing a great schism between me and her, and destroying the marriage and life we built together for nine years. I am not saying she is not equally to blame. I do not make excuses for her. But I also know the part you played.

It is not my place to forgive you. You will have to face the Creator in the end for the sins you have committed against me and the love she and I built.

You think you know her but you don't. This is the problem with women like you. You have no idea what you are getting into. You preyed on her weakness and think you can actually make things better for her. You have no idea what you are dealing with.

Let me tell you. She and I have a bond that is stronger than anything you have with her now. You know that. But what you don't know is that you have not even come close to seeing the real her. The side of her that is capable of inflicting deep hurt on the one she loves most. She is a broken bird who is in deep denial about the extent of her injuries. Her wounds run so deep even I cannot see their sources. Neither can she.

I know why she gravitates towards you. A lot of it has to do with the fact that you constantly keep reaching out to her. And you are new and with you she can still conceal the dark side of her. She may have told you how she treated me, but I know she didn't tell you everything. She didn't tell you that she has spoken loving words to me and expressed her deep love for me since we have separated. She didn't tell you that she and I have been intimate with one another as recently as three days ago.

There is a lot she didn't tell you and perhaps never will.

But you refuse to see. In your own greed and selfishness, you have chosen to wrench her from her life, this one, the one that suits her better and that she herself has spent time and effort building. You leave a trail of tasteless cookie crumbs, in the hopes she will follow and fall into your cauldron of wicked treachery.

If she goes to you, she will lose the greatest love she will ever know for the rest of her life. I know that. I know because of the sacrifices I have made for her willingly, and the things she and I have been through.

If she goes to you, you and her will implode. Because any relationship built on the lies and deception that yours and hers has been built on cannot last.

Then again, if she has decided to stoop to your level now, then perhaps you both belong together. At least this way, there will be two less people like yourselves, who have so little regard for other people, that are likely to go out there and hurt good people like me.

Someone like you will never find peace, because the only way you seek it is through evil intent toward someone else.

That is why I will never seek revenge for what you have done to me. Because I know that in the end, I will lead a happy and full life.

You, on the other hand, will not.

This is the path you have chosen for yourself. Deal with it.

Goodbye

Dear Anim

I am almost ready now I think to say goodbye to you. I am standing at the threshold, still with a backward glance, towards the nine years we shared together, the love we built and nurtured and I believe still sits in some corner of our hearts.

I thought you were the love of my life. I guess I was wrong.

A part of me still wonders if the future holds any space for you and me in togetherness. I cannot think of any other future for us other than that. At this point I do not think we can ever be just real friends. Real friends, the kind who are honest with each other and nurture each other with courage and love.

I never want to be just an acquaintance to you because I know I will see through your mask of deception.

I think you are in a dark place now, one where you cannot even accept the bastard you have become.

Right this moment, in my calm, I can forgive you still of the hurt you have caused me. Really forgive you, without need for justification of your actions. I can accept you have treated me with little respect and I attribute it to your current weakness of spirit and long-standing weakness of character.

I cannot, however, be strong enough to see you through this. I must now stay away to protect myself from anymore hurt before I begin to hate you.

I went through the house again today and there are less and less traces of you. Sometimes it amazes me how easy it has been to make the parts of you that are physical disappear from here without changing the basic outlook of our home.

It is solely my home now. You have chosen to leave it.

Just as you through your refusal to make a decision have left me and us.

I accept that you have done this to me and us. I am disappointed, but I accept that it has happened.

Now, the hard part for me begins. The moving on and learning to forget you and all the parts of you that I love so that I do not miss you so much.

I cannot think of the loving without pain and yearning so I will not. Perhaps not for a long, long while.

I cannot even at this point wish you well in all sincerity.

I want you to feel the pain, not because you put me through it but because I want you to know in the core of your being what you have left behind and abandoned. It was a beautiful thing. A thing so rare on this earth that many lead lonely lives without.

You did not treasure it enough to hold it close to you and protect it. You threw it away in your moments of weakness. Then retrieved it from the trash when you felt alone and abandoned, caressed it for a moment and then discarded it once more, hurling it against the wall.

But it did not break, did it? It cannot break because it something solid and true.

But you don't know that. Not yet.

Some day you will understand deep in your heart what you have given up. I wonder now whether it will be too late.

Devil

I am so torn when you are with me these days. Torn between wanting to sink into the familiarity of your presence and yet holding back because I don't want to get used to it too much. Because I know that I need to be able to survive when you are not here.

And the possibility of you exiting my life is real.

Last night, we slept in the same bed after more than a month. And I felt distanced from you, as if we were in separate rooms. The closeness did not reach my heart.

I think you were floating somewhere far away. You are away today. You may be away for a while.

I think you are confused. Still hiding.

I guess I have to decide. Decide what I will do with myself.

I want to be there for you, but I am so afraid I will harm myself in the process.

I guess I need to learn to be apart from you. To be my own person and not wrap my days and hours around your presence or absence. Learn how to take your presence when it is there as a bonus, a gift for a particular day. And enjoy it.

And not miss it too much when it is gone.

I guess I need to learn how to love you less intensely, but instead with a slow, constant burn that doesn't waver too much.

Maybe it is because now I am never sure whether you are coming or going.

Although, when I look at the sum of things, the chances, I know, of us working out once more are there and I dare say rather good. You and I feel tethered to one another somehow. Bound. But I guess now is the time when I need to exercise patience and give you and us and me some space so we can come together stronger in our loving.

God, I hope it is soon. I don't know how much longer I can last like this. I fear that Devil card I saw in my Tarot reading although I know it was upside down.

I fear June.

I fear you leaving me in the end. I fear our love leaving our hearts.

I fear you becoming just another Anne.

I fear I will lose what we have. Or have we lost that already?

Deep

Hi Baby

In the spaces of your absence, I guess if I am to look for solace, I should write.

Yesterday and today, I cannot help but hope. Hope that your heart will now have the courage slowly to stay true to you and me. I am so scared, baby, that you will leave me again.

Not that you have come back. We are in a weird state of limbo now, where we are together in our hearts and little else.

I believe you know now what you just walked away from. It hit you yesterday, square between the eyes.

I hope that after yesterday you will stay true. Stay here, in this space that belongs to just you and me and no one else.

I am, however, proud of you. Proud that you have resisted the temptation of this woman thus far. I am amazed, in fact. Amazed you have not fallen. You are stronger than even I thought you could be. And that is what makes me hopeful you will come back to our life.

I almost want to say that I know you will come back. I want you to come back. I want you here with me, by my side, in our life together.

I love you baby, in the deepest way.

Fuck Off

So you sent SL an FB msg saying that it was a nightmare and the house was in a mess anyway.

How dare you. How dare you when you know you were part of the problem.

I hate you on some days and this is one of them.

You are inconsiderate, juvenile and immature.

I don't know why I love you.

I shouldn't because you're not worth it.

You do not deserve me.

I am letting you go. I am letting you go completely.

Goodbye.

From now on, it's just the dogs that tie us together.

If you want to be part of the company, pull your fucking weight. I am not your mother.

Alone

I hope someday soon you will see that the real problem, the root of all the hurtful, mean and cruel things we have done each other is her.

If she was your real friend, she would not have called you five, six times a day on the pretext of just chatting with you. Even when she knew she was causing a problem between us.

If she was a real friend she would not have asked you to go to JB and offer you her bed.

If she was a real friend she would not hate me, because she doesn't know me and I have done nothing to her.

If she was a real friend she would be helping you get back on your feet for the long-term, and not get in the way of your happiness. Instead, she offers you a part-time job, lures you to the temptation of starting a new life, away from resolving the issues of your old one.

If she was your real friend, Anim, she would not do these things.

Instead,

She would have stopped calling you.

She would not have asked you to come to JB, but instead offered to speak to me.

She would not have let you sleep in her bed because she would know how that would look, and know how that would have made me feel.

She would not have sent you that SMS.

She wants to destroy us, Anim. Why can't you see?

Or perhaps you do see and it is an easy and convenient way for you to end this. Even though a big part of you still loves me and wants me in your life. Maybe you are too overwhelmed by the problem. But can't you see that I am still here and still standing by you, willing to be the rock you lean on as you traverse the valley?

I think it's enough. Enough of me trying.

It's time I left you alone in darkness so you can perhaps adjust to the lack of light and begin to see what really lurks in the corners of her heart.

Missing

I feel a bad day coming on.

I have been feeling the loss of you since last night.

I can't quite put my finger on it, what it is that I miss.

I guess I miss the parts of you that were kind and gentle and loving.

I Love You Still

My love

I pray that you will see over this week what this woman has done to you. She has turned you into a monster. She has become the source of your undoing. She is not helping you. She is making your whole world turn off kilter. She is the bad one, not me.

So stop hurting me. Give in to the feelings I know you still have for me. They are what is stopping you from doing the wrong thing.

I know you love me still, although you don't want to admit it even to your self. I know you hurt me because you still love me and cannot forgive yourself for what you have done to me. Because people who love each other don't do that, right?

I know you need time and space to rediscover your joy in life and what we had and what we can still have.

I give you that space. I will set you free. I have freed myself from the tyranny of things that were wrong with our love and I wish you would do the same. Stop doing the things that hurt you and me. Just love. Love yourself, love me and love us for what we can become in the coming years of our lives.

Don't worry whether or not we will be together. The universe will take care of it all.

I still love you despite all your wrongdoings. Someday you will see that and realise, hopefully soon, before too much damage is done, before my heart is closed to you, that you and I are meant to be together, and that you are actually in love with me. That your demons are only yours alone and not created by our union.

I know you are in your cave now to heal, because that is the way you are.

I will give you that time and space to be alone. It is the least I can do for you.

I love you, still.

Prayer

Dear God

Please bring her back to me whole and happy.

Make her see what this woman is doing to her. Make her stop hurting me and us. Make her see with clarity who the real enemy is.

A part of me wants her back. But only if she is happy and whole and sure. In the meantime, all I want is some semblance of her in my life as we both go out and discover who we each truly are and what we want in life.

I promise I will leave myself open to possibilities of love with others.

Let You Go

I do miss you tremendously.

There are times like this when I just want to curl up in your arms and sleep.

I miss your tenderness and your care and concern.

I see that you reach out to me from beyond the fog of your life and try to be there for me. I do see it.

But I guess sometimes my impatience overwhelms you.

I need to pull back. Not let my feelings harm you anymore. Not let my own keenness to be with you and be one with you impede your own process of self-healing.

I need to let you go.

I let you go. I let you go. I let you go. I let you go.

I love you and therefore I have let you go. I pray that come back to me whole, or on the road to getting there.

I Need To Be

You have gone to Somalia again.

Just because you get to that wicked place that you think is some sort of ill-fitting sanctuary and you feel it's OK to leave your real life behind.

I know that you think it's OK to behave the way you do and not call me or reach out to me.

I know that you probably feel like you are too overwhelmed all of a sudden.

I hope you wonder why.

I think you still love me but are afraid of your own feelings. The depth and breadth of them and their enduring quality.

You thought it was easy for you to walk away but it isn't right?

Still, you are steeling your mind to block it all out.

I am sending you loving vibes and will do so all week. Until you come back here.

I know that you will come back because you don't have a choice. Because you know that your life is here and this is your home and the place where you can feel calmest if you will allow your self to get here.

Here is your sanctuary where you can really, truly be who you are. No walls, no barriers.

I need to be stronger. I need to not need you.

I need to really let you go.

I need to let you be.

I need to not even want you so actively.

I need to be patient.

I need you to find me once again all on your own.

I need to be that calm, quiet light in the background that keeps shining even under blankets and pillows, under stone, rock and tree. No ocean will dim me.

I still love you. I do. But I do not want the bits of you that make me mad and frustrate me.

I do not want the bits of you that are mean to me and treat me badly.

I only want the bits of you that are nice to me and treat me with the decency I deserve.

I just want you to know how much I love you. Really, truly realise how much I love you.

I will not tell you what I think of her.

I will not tell you how much I love you anymore.

I will just show you by being there and keeping my distance and giving you as much space as you require to find your way back to me.

I will be that one person, that one place where you can be truly honest and pure and good and kind and sincere.

I will keep taking you back into my arms.

I will keep loving you.

I will.

Because I do love you.

I do.

But when you overstep boundaries I will let you know.

Prayer

Dear God

Give me the strength to love her. To be patient and strong while she heals.

Help her find her way back to me.

I know in my heart this love is for a lifetime. Yet, I have so much doubt.

I still want her as my life partner, of that I am certain. But I want her only when she is happy again with herself, so she can see clearly how she loves me. And how I love her.

Give me the wisdom to know when I am placing expectations on her that I should not. Grant me the clarity of heart to know that she is doing all she knows and all she can to be a better person for both herself and me.

I love her, God. I do. I will be there for her if you let me.

Please, bring her back to me.

I Do Love You

I do love you but it wavers.

I want you, that is for sure. I am physically attracted to you and I know you are to me. And I feel that you actually love me, deep, down inside but you cannot face it because the thought of our love, its depth and breadth frightens you. You who has never believed she could love someone for a lifetime.

I know what I must exercise is patience. Patience to let you grow and spread your wings and be strong again on your own two feet so hopefully you will love me back with your whole being.

You are broken now, and I think I have had some hand in it. My intensity, my desire to get to the bottom of things and fix them has in some way cracked your strength and self-belief, what little of it you had.

I feel I need to be strong for us both still, even though you wish I wouldn't.

So perhaps, I need to lean on her a little, so she gives me the borrowed strength to see you and me through this long, dark tunnel that even you do not realise we are in.

I love you and I think always will in some way. If I stop loving you it will be because you choose to walk away from me and from us. I try but I cannot stop loving you.

I try. I do.

I exercise patience but resent it. I think if I am to last in this quest for our togetherness once more, I must let it go, this resentment, this expectation I have of you.

I must learn to accept you as you are. And either be happy with it or leave.

We are not done yet.

I Hate You

I almost hate you.

Even though I love you, you don't have the courtesy to even treat me the way I deserve. You think your way is good enough and you believe that all you do is enough. You refuse to listen and consider that your way is manipulative, that you only do things to the extent that it doesn't inconvenience your heart.

Basically, you love me but you couldn't be bothered to even work on us. Which leads me to think hey, you actually don't love me. Not really. You just love me because I am convenient.

And you can tell me that you know what heartbreak feels like. So I guess I am supposed to surmise that your heart right now is not broken.

That's a bitter, bitter pill for me to swallow, but from your callousness and your lack of care, I am only left with this belief.

And when I look back, although I see times of loving, those who love me also remind me of the gaps, the gaping holes where you left me wanting and wishing you could only love me back the way I wanted. And I realise that perhaps you are not capable. Because you only want to love and live on the surface of things, without delving too deep. Without it causing you any pain whatsoever.

I hope that someday soon, you will feel the absence of me, and what a gaping chasm it creates in your life. You will wake up and recognise how much I really loved you, and you will mourn the loss of me in your life.

I want you to feel the pain.

I want you to fall down that deep, black hole and crawl back to me with your remorse.

I want you to understand how much you have hurt me.

I hate you.