Tired

I am seriously beyond the end of my tether at the moment. There is no fuse - it's burnt.

This moving, the managing of the resort, the pulling of everything together, and on top of that, the drama of Tigger and her family is more than enough to drive a woman mad over two lifetimes.

Yet there has not been a moment when I've wondered why I decided to go down this path.

Although there have been lots of moments when I increasingly find myself unfretful about not having Tigger in my life. Because she is so distanced from it in a way. Not in a physical way, but in terms of her presence of mind.

Maybe I expect too much from people. Because I overthink things, and most people don't even think. Creature used to complain about me doing this. I can see how I wear people down. See how I drive them away.

And I do, I know.

But when I don't think things through, no one else does. And we end up exactly where we could not have, if we had thought about things a little bit.

All I know is, at the moment, my biggest priority is the resort and my new life. I don't have enough energy to expend in nurturing anything else. If Tigger doesn't understand that, then too bad. Really.

I am just tired.

Alone

On days like this, I almost wish I was alone. Alone to do whatever I need or want to do, without you in my life, for me to project expectations on and be disappointed.

Maybe I would fare better if I didn't have someone in my life. Then I don't have to bother. About anything.

House and Home

Continuing my series of contemplations in this home, Subang Jaya.

This will be my last Eid in this house. Family and friends within reach, the place where I sleep the night prior and tumble out of bed half asleep the morning of, rushing, usually rushing to get to wherever it is on time.

The place I return to when all the visiting is done, the idle chatter and the catching up with relatives I don't particularly care for.

There are some who, on certain years, have surprised me. Some who have amused me.

I realised talking to Mils and Mooshoo yesterday evening that family is an amazing and complex thing. I found out things I never knew, and we recounted stuff we all knew, exchanged stories to round out each other's pictures of this place and people we come from.

I suppose no one ever really knows the whole story of where they come from. Lots of it is swallowed by time, age differences, being too young to understand and fading memories or the desire to keep bygones as bygones.

This evening I am alone, Athena chasing spirits in the front yard, egged on by the neighbour's second litter of Husky puppies. They are so noisy those little things.

Athena is my guardian spirit. She always knows when I need her. And she sometimes needs me too, which I appreciate and treasure.

I am still amazed at how, at my lowest, she was instinctively there for me, emotionally, in her own quiet way that didn't need words. That dog can say more than most people, I tell you. And in the most clear, concise way too.

I don't know what I will do when she is gone. I will feel as if a hole has opened up within me. I don't know that any human being can fill that void. Seriously. Because hers is a devotion without question, that will be there for you no matter what. No. Matter. What.

Unlike humans. They don't make us like dogs.

Evening is still my favourite part of the day. Especially in this, my home. My first real, home that I have fashioned for myself.

I will miss it. It has been good to me. Yet to stay is not something I contemplate too long, simply because it would mean a whole host of other things that get left on a shelf or put in a cupboard for "What Ifs".

Thank you, house and home, for being so good to me. Thank you.

Giving Up

Last night we fought again.

I am so tired of wanting you and knowing you do not want me.

I don't know what else to say.

That you know it is important to me, but you don't seem to place priority on the issue is just to me, plain bullshit.

If you cared for me enough, you would listen, and I mean really listen, to what I have to say and take concrete steps to rectify the issue.

But instead you just say you're trying, in general terms, without any specificity, and ask me to have faith.

Well, it's been a year and a half.

And it's getting worse. Now the presence of someone else in too close proximity, on top of your lack of sleep, tiredness, stress, worries and God knows what else is also an issue. And you don't like me making love to you. You only like it one way.

I don't know if I can live like this. Or want to. Seriously.

I don't like the fact that each night I apparently make you suffer, fearing what will happen if you just turn around and fall asleep. I suppose you don't choose to count the many, many nights when I just bite my tongue and wish that one day you will do things my way.

Actually, I feel downright ridiculous to be even arguing about something like this.

It's almost insulting to me, to have to ask you all the time. Like some beggar. Like I'm desperate. Like I have no choice.

It's come to the point where I almost wish I didn't want you. And to tell you the truth, the sex isn't even that good anymore, both of us tense, wondering if the other is upset or even wants to be there in the first place.

I know there are a lot of things going on that don't help the situation. I know that. I am not stupid.

But especially when I am stressed, I yearn for affection, or someone to soothe me, and tell me everything is OK, and beyond that, make me feel that I am powerful and desirable and someone worth loving.

Maybe I should just learn not to depend on you for even that. Like I do not for everything else.

I recognise this feeling. This holding back that prevents me from asking you whether you can help me or assist me or accompany me. I knew it with Todd, and I know it so well with you.

You say you help. But I don't know how to explain how I feel. That till today I still don't feel we function as a unit. That you and I have separate lives.

Maybe that's what you want. Maybe I am wrong to want something different.

Maybe my lesson in life is to learn how to go it alone.

It's not so bad, really. I know I can do it. I just wish I had an other half who was supportive in the true sense, picking me up when I am tired, instead of just saying there, there, rest a while. Someone who will hold my hand when I think I am too tired to trudge up that hill. Like that guide on the mountain.

I want to just let go. Be cared for. For a little while.

And not have to worry about someone else, or look after them.

I give up.

The House

So i stand now on the threshold of a new life.

In mere weeks, I will leave this home, where memories have been built and nurtured, where joy and heartbreak has been contained.

It has been eight years without me realising it. In my mind somehow, the time here has been shorter, five or six, perhaps. I've lost track of how much time has gone by since I moved in.

I recall the evening after the last home was sold, and how I cried in bed, realising I would miss it.

Funnily enough, it hasn't happened yet in this house.

I can still recall so clearly moving into this home. How it all seemed to shiny and new. And how, after everyone of my moving in elves were safely tucked away in sleep, I would oil the cooker hood like it was some precious thing, and marvel at its shine.

I loved it then and I love it all still.

This evening it is raining. That wonderful, grey rain that excites the dogs with its thunderous coming, but then falls steady yet gentle. My favourite old standards play on the stereo. The delicate scent of lemon wafts in from the kitchen, where pears are gently poaching on the stove.

I wish I could capture this feeling. Bottle it and keep it for days in the future when I need to pause and think of something beautiful. Because this place is beautiful to me. A spot where I can sit and believe there is real beauty in my life.

I sit now in my favourite position, at the dining table, facing the lawn. How many evenings have I spent doing this and feeling absolute calm, and that all is right in the world despite everything? Contented, serene and at peace.

I am often flattered and amazed how other people coming to this home love it too. It is modest, but built with care. I think people must feel the soul of this house. That must be why they seem to like it so much as well. Strange, yet I have grown to believe it.

I can't explain it. Somehow, the fact that so many find themselves welcomed here fills me with pride.

I think over the next weeks and few months, I should try and capture this house. The way it feels, the memories, the beauty of it.

Many have asked whether I feel sad that we are parting. While a part of me loves it here, a part of me also feels ready to move on. And I know that once I leave, once this space is devoid of my beloved things, it will no longer feel the same.

Instead, my things will go with me to my new home. And I will build happiness there anew.

Happy?

Sometimes I wonder if I am really in love with you yet. Or whether this relationship is just a mere convenience for two people who are tired of living alone, or with someone who is uncommitted.

I wonder too if your passionate other half is waiting around the corner.

I wonder if you are in fact more in love with me than I am with you.

Someone asked me the other day if things were better with you than with her. I couldn't answer. Strange.

That I am happy is true. But you lack the warmth, immediacy and intimacy that I seek in someone I love.

Maybe I am just unhappy no matter who I am with.

Octopus

At times like this I wish you were around to help me.

I know you have to care for your niece. But when come crunch time, I wish you could just lend me a helping hand.

I need to find boxes, pack books, run meetings and goodness knows what else.

I feel frayed and stretched to the point where if I were silly putty I would be almost translucent.

I wish I were an Octopus with eight brains.

Me

There are many moments in many days when I feel the urge to talk to you.

It's weird.

Maybe not. Given that we spent so many years of our lives together, coocooned from the world for the most part, like Royalty ensconced in their castle, picking and choosing who came and went into our lives.

With her, all manner of beings walk through. Trampling the proverbial carpet, seeking refuge, shelter from the damp, incessant rain that seems to plague our days so often now.

I used to yearn for you when you were not there. Because a part of me, a huge part of me, actually enjoyed your company. The quiet assurance of your presence, the not speaking but feeling connected.

I keep comparing my relationship with her to the one you and I had. And I shouldn't really, because she is so different.

But lately, the burden of carrying her has become to feel all too familiar. Like it used to in the last days with you.

I fear that I may make the same mistake again. Help when I should not, or be there, hands extended at the cost of my own sanity.

I wish she would get her life together. Two of you back to back is a little too much for me on most days.

Maybe this won't last and if it doesn't, I doubt I will be as cut up as I was about you.

I am so angry with her sometimes. Because I don't want her to end up like you.

Every time I speak to her or tell her how I feel, she ends up feeling guilty all by her self. When that is not my intention. I tell her because I do not want to keep it all inside or tolerate it or let it be. I did that with you and it all ended up muddled, messed up, like a wild animal had torn through our field of wheat, trampling the good grains into the mud.

She annoys me sometimes. I realise now that her presence is not always something I want. Maybe because I am now keen to spend some time on my own, actually on my own, to explore the writing and craft and imagination. I have something that keeps me going beyong the humdrum of life and constant pursuit of money and financial stability.

My life at the moment is full with the things I am passionate about. And a lot of times, I find caring for her gets in the way.

There are even times when I tell her I love her that it all feels hollow and empty.

She doesn't understand me any more than I understand her.

I tell you what. I cannot tolerate this for another year.

By the end of this one, I will move away, physically, and her grand illusions of getting rich or doing whatever it is that she insistently smashes her head against the wall for, will be farther away from my day-to-day reality than she realises at this point. I will be on an island, running my own little business, writing, and doing my thing. Without her.

If she thinks she can run this relationship by remote control, then she is sorely mistaken. It will self-destruct and the passion will dissipate.

I find so many faults with her these days. The love-making is far from satisfactory, the affection fought for most of the time. She lopes around the house like a wounded animal with a sore head, and I am the only one privileged enough to see it. Whoop deedo. Gotta love it.

Fuck.

I think I need to cede control. Stop pushing her. Let her wallow on her own and not help. Let her hang.

Heaven only knows, I have more than enough on my own hands to have to worry about her as well.

Selfish

I am trying to figure this out.

Whether or not I really love you. Or I just think I do.

Maybe other people go through this too. But in the past, usually, by and large, when I am in love I am immersed in it. This time, I find myself standing at a distance, at times, as if I am an observer of it and its unfolding.

That you love me, in the ways that you do, is undoubtable. You love by caring for someone's daily needs, like you would care for a baby. Which is probably why you are drawn to them. In a very different way from Creature, who saw like-minded company. You like them because they don't have emotional demands perhaps.

But you love me wholeheartedly, because I know you do. Perhaps even more than I love you. Because for us to part now would cause devastation to you but it would not cause the same to me.

I have changed. Maybe the way I love has changed. I almost wish you knew the person I used to be, the one who loved like a young puppy - devoting, unquestioning.

Now I fear I have grown selfish. Content only to have parts of you and not all. I do not want to inherit your problems. Even though I won't, what you fail to realise is that it still takes an emotional toll on me.

Loving You

Loving you is different. Sometimes I wonder if I am more in love with the idea of you than you yourself. That is the bare, naked, raw truth.

You're not like her in the nicest of ways. Yet there was something about her that endeared her to me. She was not as great a person, not in the ways that the world may judge superficially.

You, on the other hand, are. You are sociable, a great hostess, and you have a wonderful family who are very hospitable to me. Unlike her and hers.

Yet, somehow with you, I don't feel as much. Perhaps because I don't allow myself to. Many times I have missed you when you are not around. But there is also a part of me that welcomes the absence. Because it gives me the space to do what I want, how I want to. I don't feel the need to be around you all the time.

Neither are you integral to my life, at least not yet. I don't stay up wondering what it would be like to survive you. I somehow know I can.

Maybe it's just me and where I am now in my life. After the Apocalypse of her departure, I have found myself once more. I almost believe on some days that I could actually be happy on my own. Of course life would be more complete with someone to share it with. But there are times when I could be completely happy being single, in the company of loved ones. There are moments when I feel I don't need a loved one.

I am beginning to wonder if I am fatally attracted to people who will not do well. Or are not doing well. Illness. I am attracted to illness. But Anne wasn't like that. Neither was Todd. So why you, right after her?

I feel on some days the possibility of the same old burden collapsing onto my shoulders. I refuse to let it. I will not make your problems mine. Which is why I suppose I try or at least am happy to have a certain level of disconnect from you. We don't share a life together. We share time.

There are days when I wonder whether I actually do love you.

Or whether I am just enamoured by the idea of being with someone like you.

Except the you I would like you to be is someone you are not. At least not now.

Desperate

It seems to me you are now mired in the same ditch Creature was when she left me.

In a hole too deep that the light above appears like a pinprick. Except I know with certainty that this time, with you, I was not the cause of it, nor had a hand in making you this way.

In the first place, I am rather confounded by how someone as intelligent as you has allowed herself to be in this situation. And I am also annoyed that you waste your time, filling it with things that help you escape your real life - the family, the child, me, and God knows what else. Helping other people is not going to help you.

If you were not so obligated to them, you wouldn't help.

But then again, I guess I don't know enough of your past, and perhaps never will. Just like how now I sometimes think I perhaps understand Creature better in retrospect, from a distance, through smudged lenses.

You need to focus on the problem and look at possible solutions, not barriers. If something cannot be done now, or in the timeframe that you desire or need, take a different turn. Try something else.

If you had got a job last year, you wouldn't be in this predicament.

So I don't know what is stopping you now that your situation is so darned desperate.

Strangled

I feel the specter of strangulation looming over me. The dark hands of loving you.

I keep trying to figure out what it is that upsets me so much. This thing I cannot put a finger on, this feeling that we are not the kind of couple I want us to be, or I want for me and an other half in my life.

I know that with you, we will always be the negotiable factor and secondary in your life. The one that can be put aside first until things settle down, which in my mind will be never, or at least until our parents leave this earth and our family members are settled in their own lives.

Maybe it is wrong for me to think that way. Maybe I shouldn't ever expect too much from a relationship with another woman, or a woman like you.

Maybe I am just impatient.

Maybe, I was not made to share my life with someone. Or that you and Creature are right, and that I can only be with someone who can remain committed to me wholeheartedly - and the truth is that no one can meet that standard.

I do not want you to be unhappy. I think I can actually be happy on my own, free from the encumbrances of someone else's family.

What is it that makes me so insecure about us? Maybe it is the way I feel, solely, that causes this rift.

I don't know anymore.

All I know is that without you, I feel freeer, unfettered, and calmer.

Your presence only serves to provoke all sorts of negative feelings and thoughts that I don't want to have, but can't help.

I am so tired. Tired of fighting and feeling this way and trying to battle my own feelings because they are not right. At least according to you.

I need to drown out the white noise. Last night I spread myself out on the large bed, and actually enjoyed sleeping alone. Without you. I slept well, you were in my dreams, on the fringes. Just like I feel you are in my life.

We are separate units. Not one. I don't know how to explain that to you, because your definition of togetherness is different. It is not something I agree with at all.

I don't know if I want that in my life. Really.

Detachment

In my fourth decade, there have been interesting lessons of and for the self.

I now know that being alone does not mean I need to be isolated. It is okay and well within the rules of aloneness to share company with someone - be they in the same room or virtually. It is also okay not to.

I am still a little amazed that I actually now enjoy my own company more than I can remember in recent memory. While I was, as a child, a loner, come teenagehood I craved company. Being alone became a terrifying prospect. I didn't know what to do with myself, beyond killing time until the next person came along to fill the void.

Now, with Tigger in my life, and the circumstances of our un-togetherness, I have discovered that there are many periods of time when I actually do not want her around. When she goes away, I meld to my home or my surroundings better, senses both calmer and heightened. I feel lighter and happier with myself.

I have often now questioned what this means. Do I not love her? Or do I simply just not love her enough?

Or, do I think I do not love her because loving, all this while to me, has meant constant togetherness, without which love becomes too painful to bear?

In the past, I would not have tolerated the absences that I now face. Even now, I wonder how this will all hold together. This lack of clear finish lines to the absence, the ever-changing goal posts of when we will finally share a real home together, where responsibilities are shouldered in halves and not wholes.

But speaking to a friend from across the world, and watching my sister periodically mourn her absent husband have made me wonder whether loving needs rules after all. Today, jobs and financial practicalities that beset the price of living mean loving sometimes needs to happen in two places. Over space and time. Without the ability to reach out and physically touch each other.

Funny how technology in a way, has played a role in reviving the old-fashioned romance of lovers enduring the trials of long separations. While Skype and mobile phones mean we can now be closer than ever to people far away, it has also meant couples now tolerate the notion of being apart more. It's okay, because we can Skype every day.

But is it really? What has happened to the notion of going through the drudgery of daily life side by side? The changing of diapers, cooking of meals, bathing of dogs and shopping of groceries in each other's company, bitching about each other's bosses at a communal kitchen table over a short-cooked dinner - when does the absence of these little things begin to erode the sense of a shared and unified life?

I am staying tuned for answers. All in good time, I presume. After all, there is nothing else or little choice left but to let everything run its course.

So Close

Now that I am so close to our old dream, I think of you from time to time and how things have changed.

I wonder how you feel now, knowing that all this was actually really, truly within our grasp.

It's weird. I don't know at times, whether I do wish we had stayed together or not.

I know it could have worked and I could have been happy, but I also realise there were a lot of pre-conditions, or maybe just one. That you could be happy too. And the truth is I think you were not happy with me in the end. I was perhaps the only one in love for some time.

Wow, that just sort of hit me square in the eyes right then as I wrote it.

There it is. I loved you, but you didn't love me, at least not in the end.

You loved the life you had with me. But you were not in love with me anymore. Or perhaps never was.

Unlike her. She is in love with me in the most ordinary way. The way that assumes a togetherness, a pairing of two souls that is unquestionable. Just like married folk. I didn't have to teach her, really. She just understood and assumed. Like it was the most natural thing. And perhaps it actually is, except I had become so used to the way you and I existed that I thought I was the only person who believed in togetherness despite the lack of a marriage certificate.

I Love You

Dearest Tigger

This is our first Chinese New Year.

I cannot help but think how far I have come since the last one. It was an interesting time for me, one where I was grappling with the possibility of being alone once more in my life after such a long, long time.

I know that for you, being alone is easy.

But for me, having been with someone for so long, alone is a frightening thing.

It is less so, now. Not just because I have you, but because I know I can do it. And at times I rather did like it. It allows for magic to occur and pointers to appear. Actually, alone, if I think about it, life is clearer, because the universe takes over and points you in the right direction. And perhaps I am also more willing to see the signs.

With you in my life, I am no longer searching, which is perhaps why I don't see the signs as often.

But this is about you.

I wanted to tell you how much I love you.

If I could embrace you with my heart, my love, I would. Having you in my life fills my heart and makes it beat with purpose.

It makes my life complete.

You make my life complete.

I wish there was a word stronger than love to express how I feel, but I do not know it.

You are my life, light and happiness.

I love you.

Blessing

I just finished watching Eat, Pray, Love.

It's funny how in some ways things in the movie resonated with me.

I told Tigger today that I fear I do not know how to be with myself. Because I guess, I now have her, to fill the gaps and spaces and round me out.

I couldn't explain it and there it was, in this movie.

Here is my life thus far - I have loved and lost more than once, and I fear that this time I will lose it again. Perhaps because it is inevitable.

But I should instead focus on the journey, on the moment and not on the eventuality of things.

That is what I know but sometimes forget.

I have been thinking on and off about the meeting with Faber and KC at Hutch's party. It's one of those moments when you just connect with someone and you understand plain as day why they are there in your life, right at that moment.

I had been feeling doubts about the resort. About things in general, although quite honestly, I have no reason to do so. I still have those passing doubts now about Tigger and I. And that is why meeting Faber has been important.

He has reminded me that what I need to do is to tell the universe what I want. And to truly believe that I want it. To turn things on their head and actually commit myself to the universe and believe that it will bring me what I want.

Forget logic.

Just believe.

The movie reminded me of the magic of Bali. Of the things that I felt while there and how it healed me. And how I now have Tigger in my life like a blessing.

Alone

It is almost Chinese New Year again.

This time last year, I was with two people who were equally in need of company, on a journey that was undetermined in shape and form except for its destination. I celebrated Valentine's Day hoping an old love would be rekindled.

It was actually a really nice Chinese New Year. One filled with adventure and new places, people and things. One where I took lots of moments out to be grateful for the people in my life.

Today, Tigger went home. And I am faced with the prospect of spending the next few days on my own, to fill as I please. One half of me is inclined to let them remain empty, except for my own company and the doing of little things to pass the time. Being a sloth is sometimes a good thing.

But more than that, I am wondering how I would weather this storm alone. Because a part of me does wonder whether I can actually be alone, push comes to shove.

As much as Tigger assures me, and I don't even doubt she means every word, I know now how the heart can change and desert you. And I want to know that I can live alone if I have to.

I am actually feeling too darned lazy to go out.

I don't particularly yearn for the company of anyone else except Tigger. But I know she is in a better place at the moment - among family, celebrating a tradition that is core to who and what she is. I am truly happy for her, that she may have this very special moment to cherish and space to create new memories that will layer themselves one upon the other.

I don't feel there is space for me in it, but it is not her doing, rather mine.

I voluntarily stay away.

Outside, traffic still sounds heavy. I am waiting for the quiet. I yearn for it in some ways. The emptiness it brings. The contemplation it forces.

Brats

I am pretty darned clear I do not want children.

Sorry Marli, it's not that I don't love you, but given a choice, I am quite glad I did not have to care for you. If you had survived I would have given you up and I still believe I would have felt it was for the best.

Not that I would not have made a good mother. In fact, I think I am great mother material. I would work on the child like I tackle a project where national well-being is at stake. 150%.

Which is why I don't want children.

Either that or I'd prefer a child of 10 or 12 thank you.

No infants with their manipulative wailing and pawing and cooing. Spoilt brats. And no, I do not think they are cute after about five minutes.

One Half Of Me

It is almost a year now since you and I have found each other, Tigger.

I look back and still stand amazed at how the universe brought us together, at a time when neither of us thought she was ready for a relationship.

I love you. I just worry sometimes that you are not taking your life into your own control. I don't think I have the energy to do that for someone else one more time.

But I have faith in you.

Unlike her, you will not fail yourself and the people you love. Because unlike her, you have so many behind you, supporting you and wishing you well.

You often times, show me what a sad person she is. How her life is a mere shell in so many ways.

You in contrast are beautiful and loving and sincere and truthful even to yourself. That counts. It makes the difference.

I wish you all the very best. And I hope you will always be my other half.

The Good Years

How come I still think of you once in a while?

I still mourn a little at the loss of us. Not because I want things to return to the way they were, but because I still believe what we had was real and true. And to throw it all away was a darned waste of love.

It's not easy being someone else without the other is it? Or being with someone else?

As I approach the one year mark with Tigger, and pass the one year mark of separation from you, I sometimes feel like I sit on a fence with both legs swung over the new side, but an eye over the shoulder towards the past. You are now the one I cast a backward glance towards.

I still sometimes remember how you used to mumble you loved me even in your sleep.

I don't know what it is. I have at times wondered whether it means I don't really love Tigger. But I do.

She is in more ways the person I sought for. More than you. Yet I cannot erase the years I have spent loving you because they were good years to me.