Technically speaking it did not even qualify as a breakup. But the effects felt all the same to me. I never did quite find out how he felt after it. Angry maybe. Although now, fastforward three months later, how he feels holds little significance as compared to how he thinks.
I dealt with it not quite as if it were a breakup. I have never subscribed to retail therapy to remedy a broken heart. Although after a week, I came to recognize that I did not suffer from a broken heart but rather from something else I do not quite have the brains to label or understand. A complex cauldron of emotions brewed with uneven flames. Some parts stayed relatively stagnant while others bubbled to the brim. In the end, the prominent emotion that emerged victorious was anger. It was not all too difficult to nurture anger, with all that replays of the Taxi Scene in my head.
Unjust perhaps.
During the first few days when despair played an important role, I shopped irrationally, ate splurgingly, reinvented my style disapprovedly and finally marked the event permanently onto myself. Ironically, instead of getting an inking to tell me that it was high time to move on with my life, I chose a symbol that represents eternal recurrence; all this has happened before and all this will happen again. The end is the beginning is the end is the beginni.. well so on and so forth. Perhaps it will serve to remind myself that time indeed is circular and not linear. I move towards the end but in the same circle. I repeat that that I have shackled myself to. It may be in a different place, time or even people but these are unimportant factors. The most important aspect of my life is me myself and if that in essence remained the same so will my life. Well, in essence. This whole circular notion may sound eeriely too karmic and nirvanic but I have not the faith to stomach all that organized religious teachings. To me, this is about the physical realm of four dimensions, nothing to do with spirituality.
I digress. But I suppose the inking hurt way too much and I decided that I will snap out of this out of the norm behaviour. Perhaps the needle jolted some dormant synapses that in turn whipped my thoughts into cohesion and rationality.
Of course I was despaired. This was the closest thing to love that I have been holding on to all these years. Though, I knew with conviction that this feeling I harbored was not allowed to go anywhere, and so there was no pursuit. I made sure I did not do anything that could harm the friendship and I was certain that he has not a clue about it. I was fine with this arrangement; him not knowing and me silently holding a torch. I can not say for sure though if the love I felt was a friendship sort of love or otherwise. But what does it matter anyway? Love is love is love. Although I did nothing to pursue, the feeling must have manifested itself in other ways. I admit I was a little kinder to him compared to my other friends; maybe because of that flame I lit for him in my heart or maybe I could empathize with his shortcomings due to my own psychological experiences. Even so, this is not something I obsess about every waking moment of my life. In a way, it has been there so long that it has become part of the landscape; nothing I have to confront or deal with and I was alright with it just being there.
And one fine day I found out that he was not as clueless as I had thought or hoped.
We got into the Taxi; I sat on the left and him on the right. We talked for a while about trip that we have just returned from. Somehow, as the conversation progress, I began to develop a sick feeling in the gut. He was steering the conversation in a direction that I have no love for. With each passing moment his tone grew angrier and the situation grew tense. But I knew what he was getting at. Can you be a little more cruel to me? Like how you are to your best friends? was what he finally said. But what he meant was Can you stop having these feelings for me? And with that the dynamics we had came crashing down; the sudden implosion in the chest, the involuntary swelling of the tear glands, the conscious effort to repress the flow, the realisation that tomorrow I will wake up a different person.
What made it even more despairing was the way the scene played out; him lashing out at me with harsh tones. Then tension and silence hung thickly in the Taxi. We lost the words to say to each other. The Taxi did not moving fast enough and we were forced to deal with the situation. I could not bear to look at him and so I stared out of the Taxi. The gears and clockworks in my head went on overdrive. This dynamics worked perfectly with the assumption that he remains in the dark about the matters of my heart. I had been found out now. The delicate balance of the scales had been disrupted. So deep in my thoughts, coupled with the gushes of emotions devoiding and engorging in my chest, I had not realised that he was preparing the final blow. I turned to look at him and his next words stopped my racing thoughts on their tracks. With eyes empty of all human compassion but a glint of rage, he asked me coldly Hurts doesn't it?
For the next week, I had trouble sitting on the left side of a Taxi; just reminded me too much of the Taxi scene. I was determined to blog about it but I had trouble sorting my thoughts and putting them into sentences. And talking about it to friends was tricky because I did not want it to get back to him. I could not even dismiss him because, well, we are friends. I was thankful that I had to leave to country for a while and I made sure I did not come back for as long as I could. But that did not stop him from calling. He called often, because it did seem that I was the only one who could or would entertain his troubles. I had to force myself to deal with him. Not that anything has changed in terms of the dynamics, but now with certain facts out in the open, it is at best precarious.
What I was left wondering though is why he chose to confront me about it after all these years. Since he claimed that he had come to know about it almost half a decade ago and I had made sure I have not crossed any boundaries. Hell, he even admitted that I have never made him feel uncomfortable or made any advances. I did ask him, but he did not want to deal with it. I guess his mind was somewhere else... or everywhere else for that matter.
I dealt with it not quite as if it were a breakup. I have never subscribed to retail therapy to remedy a broken heart. Although after a week, I came to recognize that I did not suffer from a broken heart but rather from something else I do not quite have the brains to label or understand. A complex cauldron of emotions brewed with uneven flames. Some parts stayed relatively stagnant while others bubbled to the brim. In the end, the prominent emotion that emerged victorious was anger. It was not all too difficult to nurture anger, with all that replays of the Taxi Scene in my head.
Unjust perhaps.
During the first few days when despair played an important role, I shopped irrationally, ate splurgingly, reinvented my style disapprovedly and finally marked the event permanently onto myself. Ironically, instead of getting an inking to tell me that it was high time to move on with my life, I chose a symbol that represents eternal recurrence; all this has happened before and all this will happen again. The end is the beginning is the end is the beginni.. well so on and so forth. Perhaps it will serve to remind myself that time indeed is circular and not linear. I move towards the end but in the same circle. I repeat that that I have shackled myself to. It may be in a different place, time or even people but these are unimportant factors. The most important aspect of my life is me myself and if that in essence remained the same so will my life. Well, in essence. This whole circular notion may sound eeriely too karmic and nirvanic but I have not the faith to stomach all that organized religious teachings. To me, this is about the physical realm of four dimensions, nothing to do with spirituality.
I digress. But I suppose the inking hurt way too much and I decided that I will snap out of this out of the norm behaviour. Perhaps the needle jolted some dormant synapses that in turn whipped my thoughts into cohesion and rationality.
Of course I was despaired. This was the closest thing to love that I have been holding on to all these years. Though, I knew with conviction that this feeling I harbored was not allowed to go anywhere, and so there was no pursuit. I made sure I did not do anything that could harm the friendship and I was certain that he has not a clue about it. I was fine with this arrangement; him not knowing and me silently holding a torch. I can not say for sure though if the love I felt was a friendship sort of love or otherwise. But what does it matter anyway? Love is love is love. Although I did nothing to pursue, the feeling must have manifested itself in other ways. I admit I was a little kinder to him compared to my other friends; maybe because of that flame I lit for him in my heart or maybe I could empathize with his shortcomings due to my own psychological experiences. Even so, this is not something I obsess about every waking moment of my life. In a way, it has been there so long that it has become part of the landscape; nothing I have to confront or deal with and I was alright with it just being there.
And one fine day I found out that he was not as clueless as I had thought or hoped.
We got into the Taxi; I sat on the left and him on the right. We talked for a while about trip that we have just returned from. Somehow, as the conversation progress, I began to develop a sick feeling in the gut. He was steering the conversation in a direction that I have no love for. With each passing moment his tone grew angrier and the situation grew tense. But I knew what he was getting at. Can you be a little more cruel to me? Like how you are to your best friends? was what he finally said. But what he meant was Can you stop having these feelings for me? And with that the dynamics we had came crashing down; the sudden implosion in the chest, the involuntary swelling of the tear glands, the conscious effort to repress the flow, the realisation that tomorrow I will wake up a different person.
What made it even more despairing was the way the scene played out; him lashing out at me with harsh tones. Then tension and silence hung thickly in the Taxi. We lost the words to say to each other. The Taxi did not moving fast enough and we were forced to deal with the situation. I could not bear to look at him and so I stared out of the Taxi. The gears and clockworks in my head went on overdrive. This dynamics worked perfectly with the assumption that he remains in the dark about the matters of my heart. I had been found out now. The delicate balance of the scales had been disrupted. So deep in my thoughts, coupled with the gushes of emotions devoiding and engorging in my chest, I had not realised that he was preparing the final blow. I turned to look at him and his next words stopped my racing thoughts on their tracks. With eyes empty of all human compassion but a glint of rage, he asked me coldly Hurts doesn't it?
For the next week, I had trouble sitting on the left side of a Taxi; just reminded me too much of the Taxi scene. I was determined to blog about it but I had trouble sorting my thoughts and putting them into sentences. And talking about it to friends was tricky because I did not want it to get back to him. I could not even dismiss him because, well, we are friends. I was thankful that I had to leave to country for a while and I made sure I did not come back for as long as I could. But that did not stop him from calling. He called often, because it did seem that I was the only one who could or would entertain his troubles. I had to force myself to deal with him. Not that anything has changed in terms of the dynamics, but now with certain facts out in the open, it is at best precarious.
What I was left wondering though is why he chose to confront me about it after all these years. Since he claimed that he had come to know about it almost half a decade ago and I had made sure I have not crossed any boundaries. Hell, he even admitted that I have never made him feel uncomfortable or made any advances. I did ask him, but he did not want to deal with it. I guess his mind was somewhere else... or everywhere else for that matter.

