How To Be A Romantic Realist

How to be a romantic when you're also a realist :

1. read a lot of fanfiction. 

2. be very very VERY spontaneous

3. lose your rationality

4. deprive yourself of sleep so your brain doesn't catch up with your heart

5. find romance in every single tiny little thing. 

6. wear sunglasses. A lot. 

7. don't keep a diary. 

8. or rather, keep a diary, but write about stupid romantic notions that excite you

9. read a lot of chick lit

10. watch chick flicks

11. practice giggling before you sleep

12. look in the mirror every night and tell yourself three girlish romantic things before going to sleep

13. try not to get your heart broken. 

14. try not to let it overcome you when your heart gets broken

15. don't wait 

16. just jump into it

17. pray a lot

18. cry a lot

19. keep emergency stashes of ice cream, preferably chocolate flavoured

20. don't drink your sorrows away; they just come back two fold

To be honest, you don't need 20 how-tos to be a romantic when you're also a realist. 

You only need one. 

One person. 

Romance can be reality, but how many of us are that lucky?

My First Kiss

 It was wet. 

It was heartbreaking. 

It's probably terribly cliched of me to say I can't think of my first kiss without feeling the shadow of that heartbreak, if not the excruciating pain of heartache. 

My first kiss was wet, because I couldn't stop crying. It was something that was doomed from the start, and me trying so hard, flailing to keep whatever I could. I was...not chosen, yet again, yet all I could feel was my heart rending into two when I still turned my head, when I still leaned in. 

People might call me crazy. Stupid. Naive. 

I am, all of the above. 

But I was also hurting, curious, and absolutely devastated. Fully aware of what I was walking into, but torn, nonetheless. 

So, yeah. When people talk about first kisses being sad and painful, it's usually becuase they didn't pan out to be anything. My first kiss was sad and painful, because I was already told nothing will pan out from it. 

But we deserve the love that we accept, and the non-love that we accept too. 

I still don’t regret any of it. If anything, it taught me everything that love can be and shouldn’t be. I never thought I would be strong enough nor mature enough to handle this with grace, not had I thought myself capable of love in such a setting. For if I could love someone in this way, despite being torn and hurt and battered by the waves of back and forth; surely, someday, someone would be capable of loving me the same. 

What I Miss(ed)

 Was watching a few rom coms these past days, aimed at various ages. 

But damn, different age groups have such different experience in dating. And, me, pushing thirties, still find some of the younger boys cuter than should be. Absolutely adore it when they rub the back of their necks when they're awkward or shy---damn thing makes something in me flutter like old ladies' plastic bags. 

And yet, these are the little things that you see only in younger age groups. Even the movies reflect real life. 

I suppose older men tend to lose these little quirks as they grow in confidence and experience. And at my age, most men are already more men than boys. 

But damn, wouldn't it be nice to experience the awkward straightforward passion-driven stupid courage boys have when they're feeling strongly about something, someone? Instead of the baggage-loaded, hesitant, jaded, heavily-debated guarded men of my age?

But then again, I've always been attracted to cute boyish specimens; and then lament the almost inevitable relative immaturity. 

Life's hard. 

I just wish I had the experience. The awkward flex. The shy glances. The super-cliched things in teen romcoms. All those things I missed. 

Instead of all these things I miss. 

I wonder if people feel emotions the same way as everybody does. If one feels certain emotions more intensely than another. 

I've been listening to James Bay a lot more than I should recently. Inadvisable move, I know. My head always tells me something my heart never wants to follow. James Bay's Bad always makes me cry these days. But then again, most things tend to coat me in this thin layer of melancholic not-sadness nowadays. 

I can't stop seeing these deep pools of sadness in me, their surface calm and still, like a mirror, or frozen ice so clear you imagine you can see the bottom of the pool. But the waters are deceptive--one simple mis-step and down I go, all thoughts of resurfacing gone. 

It makes me wonder how other people process their emotions. If they feel this much too. If they can't put words to their feelings, and yet feel like it's overwhelming but not really at the same time. It's this thin coating of grief and despair, not really that overwhelming in intensity, but so all-encompassing that it leaves a coating on everything you touch, or see, or feel. 

I'm okay. Most days, I am. I laugh, I smile, I joke. There's not an ounce of deceit in my joy. 

But when night descends and I'm alone with my thoughts, the sadness covers me like a worn blanket warm and comforting in its familiarity. 

That's usually when my masochistic side rears up and start playing songs that reopens the scabbing wounds that time is so frantically trying to heal. 

I don't even know what it is I'm grieving, or why this tendency to sink deep into melancholy. 

am I grieving the loss of a person?

is it the lack of companionship?

is it losing that magical feeling of being understood?

was it love?

or was it simply lust and jealousy 

Sometimes I wish I'm not self-sufficient enough to not need anybody in my life. I want so badly to have it become a need. But my pride stops myself from lying convincingly to myself.  

Interludes

It's been more than half a year. You've moved on without me, and I-

I sort of moved on.

Well, if moving on means once in a while I sit in the quiet darkness of my car, in the passenger seat, trying to both remember and forget how it felt to taste your breath, to taste anyone's breath. If it meant feeling completely fine and developing new crushes and then going home and wonder if he's ever gonna make me feel the way you made me feel. If moving on means once in a while I wake up with phantom fingers on my waist with the ghost of warm breaths on my neck.

If moving on means occasionally, in the middle of a conversation, I get hit by the realisation that I'd probably wouldn't ever get that magical feeling of having someone understand and still accept how depraved and terrible I can be, that incomparable feeling of complete unapologeticness and freedom.

So, yes, I guess I sort of moved on.

I've moved forward, away from you. But that doesn't mean I've stopped loving, even though I"m not exactly sure what it is I still love. I suppose I love the feeling of being in love, and being cherished. I moved away from you, but I suspect I moved closer to love. How else do you explain this constant yawning emptiness that yearns to be filled that didn't use to be so prominent?

For someone who doesn't even know what is love, I'm using the word a tad too much.

Perhaps I should just stop wondering so much, and just let things be.

Untitled

I haven't written in a while.

Not in my diary. Not in a blog. 

You see, I'm afraid of what will come out when I don't have a 280 character limit. I'm afraid of the torrential outpouring of words and tears and unprocessed hurt. The ache never really left; would it ever? Despite my swinging between overanalyzing and completely ignoring this, I don't think this is something that'd go away.

I don't work that way. 

I guess we all have a tendency to keep what's familiar near to ourselves. The ache is familiar, the pain even more so. The unbearable longing. The terrible sensation of your heart falling all the way down to your feet. The growing ball of something hard and unyielding rising from chest to throat and staying there like a reluctant mother leaving her firstborn at the hands of witches. 

I want to forget. I want to move on. I want nothing of this ache and pain and want and please say you want me back. I want to forget you and us and all the places you touched and kissed and whispered against. I want to be able to go to movies and not remember how you watched me instead and the closed-lipped kisses you pressed into my hair. I want to go to the sea and watch the waves instead of feeling the weight of your hand on the dip of my waist. To lie in bed and not feel your breath ghosting across my cheek, your stubble against my neck, your teeth against my lips. To watch the morning sun rise behind the curtains and not feel your warmth lining my back. 

I want to forget. 

But do I really?

You brought me into this world I've only heard of. I chose to love, and I chose the risk of hurt, and now I've got to live with the aches and pains that came with overexerting unused muscles. 

I guess I don't really want to forget. I want to look back at this chapter of my life and smile at the sadness and the happiness and the joy of discovering that all the rumours and myths of love was true. I want to know with certainty that I was capable of love despite knowing that you don't love me the way I wanted you to; that I was able to love unconditionally. I want to remember the impossible swell of feelings when you kissed me, that wordless contentment of being at your side, the simple wholesome happiness of watching the rise and fall of your chest in the dark early hours of dawn. I want to remember the novelty of feeling happy just because you are. I want to remember all that, even as they begin to fade now. I want to remember how good it felt to be accepted so completely. I want to remember how it felt to be cherished, and how it felt to give in to lust. 

Because if it never happened again, at least I had this. With all the aching dullness that shadows every breath and heartbeat, it was worth it. 

Is it, though?

There are days when everything was worth it, and I am okay with how things turned out, and accepts that people leave when they want to, and you can't hold on to someone who wants to leave or doesn't want to stay. When I'm okay with closing the chapter. Days when I look at us and understand that you were there to teach me something, and that you left because there was nothing more you could give me or teach me. Days when I can accept, with an undercurrent of sadness, that we were simply not meant to last. That you were here with me to show me that the kind of love I want is possible and not just me being unrealistic. That you came when you did and left when you did, that maybe you didn't love me that much but that's okay.  

But then there are days when I question. If this pain that came hand in hand was worth it. If I'd ever get over this. What if the love I want is truly unrealistic in the long run? That I was being foolish for believing something like this could last. There are dark days when I wonder if  I was simply a convenient warm body, willing and easy, when I wonder if the affection I received was a trick to get me where he wanted me. When I feel used and dirty, and lied to and tricked. When I feel like I'll never get out of this deep dark bottomless pit where I keep falling and falling and never hitting the ground. At least if I hit the ground there'd be an end; a painful one, but still an end. Instead, all I get is the lump in the throat waiting forever for something, something, to stop this ache. 

And then there are days when all I do is long for you. And these days are the worst, because all I do is pick at the scabbing sore and making it hurt, because pain is better than numb, and because I'm forgetting to hurt. Digging at healing flesh because pain makes it real, reminds me that what I felt was real, and that my pain is warranted because I don't want to forget why I had to hurt. I don't want to forget us. I don't want to forget your silly shimmy and your stupid quips and your ridiculous comebacks and your way with words and the depth you try to hide sometimes but still bubbles out.  

each of these days is a shadow of us. 

They asked me if I loved you. I don't know. What does it mean to love? How does it feel to love? All I know is I wanted you with a ferocity that scared me, but at the same time worry about the same ferocity driving you away. (It did.) All I know is I held you with a tenderness that surprised me, but at the same time worry that my tender grip wouldn't hold you where I wanted you to be. (It didn't.) All I know is I feared losing you, so much. 

(I did.)

And then they asked me if you loved me. 

Did you?

Guess I Just Feel Like

I guess I just feel like.
Like climbing an unending hill for no reason that I can see.
What's waiting on top? Is there even a top?
You talk about the climb, but all I can is is deep penetrating darkness. I have no companion, because god knows I love my solitude; god knows how much I fear opening up myself again to non-solitude.

I wish I am not like this, but if wishes were horses, i'd be a billionaire from the horsey selling.

Sometimes I wish I can just shut off that aspect of my brain that asks inappropriate whys whats and ifs. Sometimes I wish I'm not me, and that I don't worry so much about who I am and what I'm doing here, or why I'm doing what I'm doing. Sometimes I wish I could just let things be, and quit thinking up scenarios that are ridiculous.

Sometimes I just wish I could stop feeling.

So This Is How It Feels Like

So this is how it feels like. To be an enemy of time and circumstances.

So this is how it feels like.

I can't say I like it. I can't even honestly say I hate it. Time has been a friend for so long, a balm for all things, if not a cure, that I know it's doing what it does, and this isn't personal. Time has been a friend for so long, that it's kinda hitting me hard that for almost the first time in my life, just when everything is finally looking up, time isn't on my side.

I want to rage. I want to be angry, and throw things, and be mad at the world, at the circumstances that led us here, but all I can muster up is a deep aching sadness. That, and an inability to stop the leaking pipes that used to be eyes.

Why did I accept this so quickly? Have I always?

After accidentally stumbling upon what I've been looking for so long, in the most unexpected place, why am I accepting this so quickly?

But maybe somewhere deep down I've never really actually believed anything would come out of this. Somewhere deep down I've never really believed that things like this happened to me. And we were doomed from the very start, with the sands of time slowly counting down the fall of reality's guillotine.

So this is how it feels like.

This unrelenting knot at the back of my throat. This precarious perch of moisture upon my lashes. Perpetually wet cheeks. Muffled anguish. Smiling masks.

Vaguely familiar, yet so very different.

I know I'll get through this. I've always gotten through things, usually because there was no other choice. But I've never been good at delayed gratification. I've never been good at the long game. I've never been good at fucking letting go.

So this is how it feels.

To have and to hold. To having to let go.

So this is how it feels.

Strong arms. Soft kisses. That overwhelming scent of safe safe safe.

So this is how it feels.

To want, and to be wanted.

So this is how it feels.

Warm breaths. Sturdy hands. Heartbeats shuddering against my cheek.

So this is how it feels.

The warring mind and heart.

This is how it feels.




I don't know if I'd have wanted to know if this is how it feels.

Those Moments

Those moments when you realise your heart simply refuses to listen, and your brain actually eggs it on.

Those moments when all your past debates vanish like a swirl of post-coital cigarette smoke, lost in the haze of a different sort.

Those moments when your past rears up to meet you in a tsunami wave swallowing you whole.

Those moments when you are still doggedly refusing to let it go, choosing to hurt instead.

Those moments when you are still daring to hope, daring to hold, daring to want.

Those moments when a skipped beat beats skipped stones across the calm lake spreading ripples.

Those moments when loneliness trumps everything.

Those moments when everything trumps loneliness.

Those moments when lust creeps and seeps through fabric, soaking each cell, trembling, shuddering, leaking. 

Those moments when apathy takes hold and pries open your desperate grip for anything that makes you feel alive.

And those moments when sleep finally greets you and welcomes you instead of keeping you an eyelid and a world away.

#midnightramblings

Only Us

I have been stuck on the positive vibes of this song for so long, and the hope and contentedness of the song has gone full circle and turned into doubt, loneliness and that sort-of-tentative-hope-but-not-really kind of melancholy. I have replayed this song until my car door knows the lyrics, and my earphones vibrate in anticipation at the start of the second verse, and my phone sighs and replays the song instead of me having to hit the replay button. The song has made me laugh, and smile, and then cry, and ugly sob, and shouting and yelling at the fates above and cursing everything that had brought me to this point in life where I still don't understand why I so desperately want what I want.

Ugh. Rambling.

Ah sorry. I realise I haven't mentioned which song. 

This is Only Us, from the musical Dear Evan Hansen. It was originally sung by the main male and female leads, as Zoe found out that Evan likes her, and the song is basically just two very sad people holding onto what seems like salvation. (okay I actually don't know I just assumed 'cause I haven't really watched the thing I just scanned through the backstory with my incredibly out of practice speed reading skills)

 But! 

For Valentine's Day, they released a special version of the song sung by the two men who have both played the role of Evan Hansen. Ben Levi Ross and TaylorTrensch. 

The catch?

They are a real life couple. 

I just... 

The song itself, with heartwrenchingly painful lyrics like 'I don't need you to sell me on reasons to want you' and 'I gave you ten thousand reasons to not let me go' is bad enough. Add into the mixture these two boys so in love they can't stop grinning even as they sing, and that catch for each other's hands...?

I'm giving up on love and life, but I also don't want to give up on love and life. UGH thanks a bunch Pasek and Paul. 

This is my cue to insert lyrics.

I don't need you to sell me on reasons to want you

I don't need you to search for the proof that I should

You don't have to convince me

You don't have to be scared you're not enough

'Cause what we've got going is good

I don't need more reminders of all that's been broken

I don't need you to fix what I'd rather forget

Clear the slate and start over

Try to quiet the noises in your head

We can't compete with all that

So what if it's us?

What if it's us

And only us

And what came before won't count anymore or matter?

Can we try that?

What if it's you

And what if it's me

And what if that's all that we need it to be

And the rest of the world falls away?

What do you say?

I never thought there'd be someone like you who would want me

So I give you ten thousand reasons to not let me go

But if you really see me

If you like me for me and nothing else

Well, that's all that I've wanted for longer that you could possibly know

So it can be us

It can be us

And only us

And what came before won't count anymore or matter

We can try that

It's not so impossible

Nobody else but the two of us here

'Cause you're saying it's possible

We can just watch the whole world disappear

'Til you're the only one

I still know how to see

It's just you and me

It'll be us, It'll be us

And only us

And what came before won't count anymore

We can try that

You and me

That's all that we need it to be

And the rest of the world falls away

The world falls away

And it's only us

I have no favourite parts, because the entire song -- the verses, the chorus, the bridge -- they are all my favourite. 

I guess it's the acceptance that got me. The idea that someone will look at you and think, this is what I want. The good and the bad. The scars and the baggage. That your past don't matter; or maybe it does, but it's made you you and that's the only thing that should matter. The idea that someone will want you as you are, and you don't need to put on masks or disguises or anything to convince them that you are worthy and that you're enough. The pure hope that you, as you are, is reason enough, and no other extra reasons are required. That nothing else matters, not the world, not anybody but you and your willingness to try to make this work. 

The idea of acceptance just... appeals to me. I don't know why, but perhaps 26 years of singledom have low-key made me feel that maybe I'm just not meant for this. Having bungled up most matters to do with the heart, and the fact that there weren't really that many matters to do with the heart, it makes one wonder if maybe I'm just... not good enough to be wanted. That somewhere there is a something that I can't see nor fathom that just tells people -- not this one. 

I'm a slob. I'm lazy and unmotivated. I'm  too lazy to do anything but fangirl over various fictional characters. I ooze jealousy over others. I resent other people for their motivation and their successes and their happiness. I make promises I don't keep. I binge eat, and bitch about it but do nothing about it. I never watch any shows I said I'd watch. I never show up in full attention, I never remember your birthdays (or sometimes i do but i just can't muster up enough celebration cells to do something for you). I'm attached to my phone. I'm mediocre at everything because excellence is too much effort. I brag, and I'm insecure and basically I'm terrified at what the future holds and so I stagnate and hide in my room even as the future draws nearer and more concrete. 

For a girl that had routinely feels that other people do it better, and routinely evaluates and reevaluates many points of her self, finding herself wanting but incapable of change (for various reasons but mostly just giving up on finding that ideal target to aim for) ; I suppose, for a girl like that, unconditional acceptance is invaluable. 

Or maybe I'm just a narcissist who just wants concrete validation.

It's just a song. A song to listen to, and watch other people celebrate their love and connection and acceptance. A song to listen to, and feel like these are things that happen to other people but never me. 

I guess I will always want, even when I know I love my solitude, and that I'm perfectly fine being alone.