Protected: Letting Go

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Goodbye, Love

Tulip carnation bouquet

On our last day together she brought me a bou­quet of tulips and car­na­tions, and a Joe Hisaishi CD — a child­hood mem­ory of mine she ordered from Japan. I had men­tioned it in pass­ing on one of our walks as the only album I’ve been unable to find for down­load or pur­chase, and there it was, in my hands.

We watched Before Sunrise, and after­ward, we laid next to each other on the couch, silent, unsure of what to say, because there was no com­fort to be had. Soon, I was kiss­ing the tears from her face, over and over again.

She asked what she was going to do with­out me. How long it was going to be before we saw each other again. Whether a sim­ple phone call was allowed. I could say noth­ing, because I under­stood the neces­sity of it all.

So she said she was being reduced to an observer, and I grew cold and dis­tant. It was the first time I had con­sid­ered my own feel­ings, when I had felt reduced to much more than that, and she wasn’t mak­ing it any eas­ier. With her lips on my neck and her hand through my hair, she com­forted me in turn, and our pas­sion took hold of us one last time.

Before she left, I hugged her, felt her tears grow cold on my shoul­der, and kissed her once more on the cheek. Thank you, she said.

My heart has been filled with a calm sad­ness ever since. A strug­gle between the pain of being away from her, and know­ing that it’s for the best. That we would be stronger, and more sta­ble when it was all over.

In the days since, I’ve remem­bered the things I wanted to say to her before she left my back porch, run­ning to car with­out look­ing back before the emo­tion could over­whelm her. Things that didn’t come to my head because I was too focused on keep­ing myself together.

Don’t stop cre­at­ing. Take care of your­self. I love you.

Finding Love For Two Bachelors

The fact that my dad and I are the eli­gi­ble bach­e­lors in the fam­ily means we get a lot of advice around the din­ner table. They bring up avail­able women. Friends of friends, daugh­ters of dance part­ners, or this-person-I-know.

It’s strange to come upon the sud­den real­iza­tion that my dad and I are at the same point in life. Does that make me old, or him young?

They ask us our tastes: Looks? Personality? Older or younger? I say, “Money”, but they know me well enough to know I’m jok­ing. A joke to hide my answer, for to reveal myself in this way is to expose a cer­tain vul­ner­a­bil­ity. So they side­step the ques­tion and ask me if I’m after any­one, think­ing that if I describe a per­son I’m inter­ested in, they’ll be able to fig­ure out what I’m look­ing for. It’s com­pli­cated, I think to myself, so only reply with a “No”. They ask me if there’s any­one after me. “No”. That’s even more complicated.

Last week, my grand­mother asked me how old I was. “28”, I told her. “Already! You’re almost 30. It’s time for you to get mar­ried.” She says if I stay in Hong Kong all the girls will be after me because I have some kind of gen­tle­man scholar look. My dad too; he’s the man’s man, who’s always been fun and pop­u­lar. And we have Canadian pass­ports. Apparently, we’re in demand.

But they also want to make sure we’re not get­ting involved with the wrong type of women. Someone who will take our money once we’re mar­ried, or force alimony once they trap us with chil­dren. They tell us to keep an eye on each other. I say that my dad doesn’t need my approval if he wants to get mar­ried, but I don’t need his approval either. So they tell us to bring our girls to meet them, to be sure they’re okay.

I won­der; is love this easy for other peo­ple? Something oth­ers can con­trol, when I can’t con­trol it myself?

Relationship Advice From Chinese People

My fam­ily always ask me if I’m dat­ing any­one right now. They assume I pre­fer Caucasian girls. I tell them I don’t mind either way (the other side of “either” being Chinese girls). That’s when they warn me about main­land girls. Chinese main­lan­ders are com­monly viewed by Hong Kong peo­ple as being low-class, crude, and provin­cial. It’s said that even if a girl from there is pretty, they lose all attrac­tive­ness as soon as she opens her mouth. On top of that, they’re gold-diggers, just look­ing for a way to get money or a green card.

They tell me I’ll be fine as long as I don’t marry a main­land girl.

My grandma used to tell me to find a Chinese girl, because Chinese girls treat their men bet­ter, or to find some­one who loves me more than I love them. She’s filled with all sorts of funny apho­risms, like “Women are to be loved, not hit.”

Accepting My Baggage

Sometimes, I won­der what my life would be like if I didn’t have so much bag­gage. How my rela­tion­ships would be dif­fer­ent. Which ones would have worked, and which ones wouldn’t have changed at all.

Love, in all it’s multi-faceted won­der, lev­els, and types, is never a sure thing for me. I may feel it, but feel that it’s fleet­ing and con­di­tional at the same time. Other peo­ple have the lux­ury of tak­ing love for granted. They assume they’re loved. How com­fort­ing it must be. For me, it’s always been a strug­gle for sta­bil­ity. “We won’t love you if you don’t do well on this test. We won’t love you if you don’t prac­tice piano. We won’t love you if you don’t fin­ish your din­ner. No one’s going to love you if you always stay this skinny.”

It feels like I haven’t sur­vived my child­hood yet. And I arrive at this fact so many times when try­ing to fig­ure out the source of my issues that it’s start­ing to sound like an excuse. Therapy has helped iden­tify my issues, but it’s still tak­ing work on my part to resolve them, along with patience on the parts of oth­ers. I’m begin­ning to ques­tion why peo­ple would accept and love me. I guess it’s worth it to some, but things would be so much eas­ier if they didn’t have to deal with my insecurities.

Protected: I Want To Believe

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Love Bias

Sometimes, she reaches down and grabs a hand­ful of my der­rière. I laugh a ner­vous laugh, and she chides me.

It’s a reflex. None of my girl­friends have been so zeal­ous in their pinch­ing, or rev­eled in such an act. My laugh is one of sur­prise, and a good one at that.

This is what upsets her. But how should I react oth­er­wise? I hardly con­sider this thin-framed body, a frail com­par­i­son to the phys­i­cal con­ven­tions of a man, as being sex­ual or attractive.

This is why I think she loves me.

Otherwise, she’d see me as the rest of the world sees me.

There Is No Such Thing As Love

Let me give it to you straight, straight like an arrow.

I’ve had these words stuck in my head for some time now. Lyrics from the tit­u­lar Dears track I first heard in uni­ver­sity, back when I would go home in the sum­mer and watch The Wedge on Friday nights.

I know that’s awfully cyn­i­cal to say, but I need proof that it is pos­si­ble today.

I just wish I could accept that fact. I’m start­ing to won­der if that’s why I keep hear­ing the words in my head. It’s my sub­con­scious remind­ing me, keep­ing me grounded.

Maybe that’s why we watch these movies. Hollywood would have us believe that love exists.

It’s the same story, where guy sees girl, falls in love, and hap­pily ever after. In between, there’s always the overused plot ele­ment of the guy win­ning over the girl by reveal­ing him­self and his feel­ings. After all, this alone is enough to win any girl over, regard­less of whether she found him attrac­tive or not, she was mar­ried or sin­gle, or he was the nerd and she was the cheerleader.

But love doesn’t exist in real life, as much as I want to believe that it does.

Not for me, anyway.

Missing Her Moments

I’m writ­ing this in my head
some­where between Belleville and Oshawa
as Leonard Cohen croons to me
on the stereo about miss­ing something.

I’m try­ing to put this
together in verse;
it’s the only way that makes sense.
Maybe because the songs he sings are too good,
or I’m still affected by the last time I had
strep throat and we read
Susan Musgrave poems in bed.

So much for swear­ing
that I’ll never write like this again.

I won­der why she ends her phrases
the way she does,
about whether her titles come from
those clever lit­tle moments,
or vice-versa.

Maybe I can fig­ure out how they do it
and I can express what it felt like to hug
her before leav­ing,
about how I didn’t real­ize how hard I was
doing it until I let go and felt her
breathe again.

She wouldn’t admit that she’d miss me
until I did it first. She had
said it more than me, last time, you see.

She had paid it for­ward,
now it was time for me to pay it back.

Eagle vs Shark

Eagle vs Shark

Eagle vs Shark is the new Postal Service.

The movie I can’t stop watch­ing. The movie I can’t watch with any­one else.

Not because it’s painful in any way, but because it’s sacred. A movie where no one else would under­stand the way I see it. A reminder that I was adored once too, when some­one loved me beyond limit or con­di­tion. (A mem­ory that I need right now.)

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But I will leave you with this lit­tle song, if only for a short while. You need colours and can­dles in your room when you lis­ten though, and an imag­i­na­tion will serve you well. Having a make­out part­ner and wear­ing a cos­tume of your favourite ani­mal is optional.

That is all you need to know, for this is all I can say.

Thinking Of Her

Sometimes, as I’m falling asleep, I think of her.

She’s lying on my stom­ach again, lis­ten­ing to my heart beat, hands tucked neatly under my body. Or she’s spoon­ing me, her arm rest­ing on the crook of my waist, with a fin­ger draw­ing dis­tract­ing cir­cu­lar lines on my chest.

Muse in grass

Sometimes we’re in the tall grass, sur­rounded by colours of life with the warmth of the sun above us. A regres­sion to a time when all I had to think about was the colour of pop­si­cle I would have when I got home from camp. How unfair that our inno­cence is taken from us when we need it most.

And I lie there in bed, wait­ing for sleep to take me as the images lead me on.

My body telling me to let go, my mind strug­gling to keep her next to me a moment longer.

Your Interest In My Love

I’ve always enjoyed read­ing about peo­ple who are in love, but most of all when that love is unre­quited. Vivid pic­tures painted in details about a saucy diastema, the observed rit­ual of walk­ing by a cer­tain table every day to get a cup of water for paint, an unso­licited brush against a hip. Stories about awk­ward­ness, weak­ness, burn­ing desire.

Perhaps it’s because I can relate to these expe­ri­ences, or because they make me feel like I’m less alone in my own clumsy deal­ings with the oppo­site sex. Even though there are count­less sto­ries writ­ten about unre­quited love, there aren’t enough. For the few of us who are “oppressed by the fig­ures of beauty”, as Leonard Cohen calls it, noth­ing makes us feel bet­ter. All we can do is silently com­mis­er­ate with the words of those who share them­selves in this way.

When I look through my old entries, it seems like most of them are about love or a torch I carry in one way or another, and how this affects me.

And some­times I won­der if this is the rea­son why peo­ple come here to read my words.

Protected: Breaking the Attraction Defence Mechanism

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Be Still, My Heart

Muse side face

In the dark, our bod­ies fit like puz­zle pieces — face in neck, crest in val­ley, curve in curve. I’m com­pletely vul­ner­a­ble when she lets me love her like this. She brings my guard down.

It’s the way she makes me happy with­out try­ing. The way I’m filled with ten­der­ness every time I feel the warmth of her skin against mine. The way her exis­tence gives me hope for the rest of the world.

If I chose to fall back on old habits and kept my dis­tance to pro­tect myself, I wouldn’t know this inef­fa­ble feel­ing. I may get hurt, but it’s worth every moment I can be next to her.

Maybe she’s right, and I’ll feel dif­fer­ently by the time it’s nec­es­sary. Until then, there’s no use in fight­ing it.

Not that I let myself fall for her.

My heart never gave me a choice.

She Treads Softly

Had I the heav­ens’ embroi­dered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and sil­ver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, William Butler Yeats

She knows how much I’ve fallen for her.

And by giv­ing her my heart in such a way, she’s shar­ing the bur­den. The last thing she wants to do is hurt me, and she thinks her­self self­ish for want­ing to be held just so. But I know what I’m get­ting into. I know the risks.

So I told her not to hold any­thing back, because there’s noth­ing she can do, no bound­aries we can define, to make me love her any less.

There’s no point in deny­ing our­selves the joy of what we have now. To be lying next to each other when we talk into the early hours of the day, bod­ies pressed against one another while the morn­ing light washes over us, is worth any chance at being hurt. We can deal with the inevitable later.

So she treads softly, on me and my heart.

And rests her head on my chest when I hold her.