Back pains

I read 'The Time Traveler's Wife' today. It's one of the few times post-Nambi that I have not cried while reading a love story. How strange it is, because this book has made more of an impact on the core of my being than the trashy romance novels that seem to multiply like rabbits.

I've begun to realise the power that art has over me. Does it happen to every person who creates art (artists, musicians, writers, dancers, etc)? It is as if art has a greater impact on me than it does for others. I don't seem to realise this before and it was like the realisation that I had of Nambi: that every male that I had romantic feelings for after him was because they reminded me so much of him. Which is quite awful. Like exploring a house of mirrors thinking you're going somewhere and then you arrive just where you started from. That I thought I was over him.

I know now. My feelings are traitorous, eager to betray me at the slightest chance. Was it not enough that I should miss him every day? That I should encounter someone, even if imaginary, with the same experience that I have, of repeated loss and no hope of ever being truly together?

Do I even Want to be 'together'?

Surely, my body cries out 'yes, yes!' for deep in sleep I cuddle up to my bolster, knowing it is and yet knowing it is not the arms of my past beloved and quite possibly present beloved: after we broke up in Jan 2009 I have never told him I love him, but then again he probably knows... he's quite a perceptive person, actually.

His cynical reluctance to speak.

And then I think of the remote likelihood we might marry, the probability of which is about the same as randomly choosing a star in the Milky Way and finding out that it's our sun. Which gets depressing. Which is why I block the thoughts. Random thoughts about dopamine and receptors go floating by my head but I lack the energy to want to bind them together into something substantial.

I recall that breakup in Jan 09. Broken and desperate, I begged Esther, a girl from Nambi's church whom he calls his 'godsister' to help me, or at least speak to him on my behalf. Her response was that we shouldn't care about anything other than God. Secretly I've always had this personal conviction that this was one of the reasons I became Catholic instead of Protestant, but jokes aside, I've always been a little upset at her for that. I have forgiven her, of course, but old wounds do prickle still sometimes. Her response is actually not unusual of someone who has been 'Christian' all her life, so can't really blame her either.

When you lose someone who means so much to you... Maybe, after years of separation, you can say, "You know, I'm great, I don't need that person." and yet the longing creeps up upon you and sooner or later you're going to capitulate and do something crazy, or wither away. Or both, one after the other.

I can't believe I'm sitting in the student lounge writing this. And crying. Siu Yan is sitting behind me, blissfully unaware, because she is studying German. This is already the 2nd time tears have flowed down my face: after the first time, Siu Yan came to talk to me and apparently she didn't realise I was previously crying because she told me a funny story about a crazy man who used to be her neighbour. We giggled a little over it and I went back to my writing and here I am at it again. Honestly, no one else in the world can make me cry as many times or as much as Nambi does. I have the tear marks in my bolster to show for it, because every time I do cry it's always 'hug-the-bolster-and-cry'. Yet, the tears were what drove him away.

I wish I could tell him everything.

P.S. A note to myself: After the time Irene and I met for the Kinokuniya thing, she later broke up with her boyfriend of 4 years on National Day.