Posts tagged with "relationships"

::Sniff::

I swear I’m miss­ing some under­wear.

For the longest time, I had enough box­ers to get me through the week at least, but now I find myself hav­ing to do laun­dry before Saturday comes around. I can’t imag­ine any­one actu­al­ly tak­ing them, although every time I lose an arti­cle of cloth­ing, I always sus­pect the most recent ex-girl­friend first. This isn’t for any spe­cif­ic rea­son (in fact, I’m pret­ty sure none of them have ever actu­al­ly tak­en any­thing), and is prob­a­bly just a para­noia cul­ti­vat­ed through group hug con­fes­sions.

That, and know­ing how impor­tant smell can be to some­one. Ashley, in par­tic­u­lar, used to take my under­shirts on a reg­u­lar basis. She’d tell me to wear them for days (good thing Asian peo­ple don’t sweat), and we’d have a rota­tion thing going on where I’d give her a new (used) shirt when I could­n’t see her for a while. She told me that she’d fall asleep clutch­ing them, although the smell would nev­er last longer than a week.

Michele was dif­fer­ent. She did­n’t have any nat­ur­al scent, and told me that my shirts would nev­er stop smelling like me. I sus­pect that she had a much sharp­er olfac­to­ry sense.

Sam I could smell through the pages of a book she once gave me: a copy of Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes. She picked it up at a book sale, and read it in one day. By the end she was cry­ing, and thought I would enjoy it. Every time I turned the page, it was like she was sit­ting in front of me again, cof­fee smell on her breath.

Louise was dif­fer­ent still. She had a great scent that was a lit­tle sweet, under the Cool Water by Davidoff she would fre­quent­ly wear. She did­n’t seem to care for my nat­ur­al body smell as much as the arti­fi­cial “male” scents, such as the Gillette series of prod­ucts. Jacky once told me that she was using a stick of the same sport antiper­spi­rant that her ex used because it remind­ed her of him. When I actu­al­ly saw the stick, even already know­ing that it was a stick of “guy antiper­spi­rant”, I was still sur­prised at how male ori­ent­ed the mar­ket­ing was, with high con­trast flu­o­res­cent stripes and bold fonts. It looked a lit­tle odd when she put it on, hold­ing the stick with her dain­ty hands.

I find that most girls are like this; they pre­fer the man­u­fac­tured smells of an after­shave, body wash, or even deodor­ant. Instead, Ashley taught me to appre­ci­ate an eau de nat­ur­al. I remem­ber walk­ing up to her house, after not see­ing her for a month, and being able to smell her from out­side the door. I would miss her even more just stand­ing there, almost as if this made her ethe­re­al pres­ence tan­gi­ble. Ever since, I’ve believed that the scents we pro­duce are more impor­tant than the ones we put on. They’re unique to one per­son, and nev­er go away.

Unlike my under­wear.

Miss You

I’m not usu­al­ly some­one who miss­es things. I miss my cat when I’m away for a few days, and occa­sion­al­ly I get a bit wist­ful because I miss being in Hong Kong, but that’s about it.

I’d miss hang­ing out with my friends on a day-to-day basis if I had­n’t already accept­ed the fact that they have lives of their own. I’d miss liv­ing in the social, relaxed, joc­u­lar envi­ron­ment of res­i­dence if I did­n’t already under­stand that uni­ver­si­ty is a part of my life that’s over, and that I most like­ly won’t being going back (it cer­tain­ly helps to know that liv­ing in res­i­dence is nowhere as nice as liv­ing in a com­fort­able apart­ment or house).

What I do miss though, is hav­ing a girl­friend who mois­tur­izes my back in the win­ter, when parts of my skin get uncom­fort­ably dry and irri­tat­ing. There are spots I just can’t reach, like between the shoul­der blades. It’s also nice to have some­one with warm hands who can stop the win­ter morn­ing shock of cold lotion.

The Inherent Investments Of Happiness

Life is a lot like busi­ness. There’s invest­ment in every­thing, and rela­tion­ships are no excep­tion. One has to spend mon­ey to make mon­ey, the way one has to give trust to get trust. There’s no guar­an­tee involved that says one willl get their invest­ment back. On top of this, one can choose how much or how lit­tle to invest. Just like every­thing else in life, the more one risks, the more one can lose, or the more one can gain.

And the world can be divid­ed in two accord­ing to this clas­si­fi­ca­tion: those who play con­ser­v­a­tive­ly, and those who play it all. Those who stay dis­tant, and those who throw them­selves into love.

If we’ve been hurt in the past, if we’ve lost all that we chose to give, it’s nat­ur­al for us to hold back in the future. But at some point we have to break out, and we can’t be scared to give as much as before. The key to liv­ing this way is under­stand­ing that our past invest­ments, rela­tion­ships, have no bear­ing on the ones we have now. It’s like the coin flip prob­lem taught in sec­ond-year sta­tis­tics, or, more appro­pri­ate­ly, the Gambler’s Fallacy: even after 10 suc­ces­sive occur­rances of a sin­gle out­come, the chance for the same out­come remains at fifty per­cent. We have to treat every tri­al, every case, every rela­tion­ship dif­fer­ent­ly.

Life, in rela­tion to peo­ple, is a series of invest­ments. We end up gain­ing from some, but not all. That’s what life is about. That’s what love is about. Nothing is worth it if you don’t put your­self out there. It’s impor­tant to fig­ure out which ones are worth­while, but not as impor­tant as fig­ur­ing out that the worth­while ones need to be giv­en a chance. We need to put at least a lit­tle bit of our trust into them, or noth­ing will hap­pen.

For what use is rec­og­niz­ing a good invest­ment, if we don’t treat it as such?

The Inherent Risks Of Happiness

There is a risk, there’s a risk when your deal­ing with love
You could snap my neck
Any speed you dri­ve can be dan­ger­ous
When this frame fails me
Will I trust you to car­ry me through?
I know there’s no such thing as safe­ty
But I know what a promise can do

—Trust, Thrice

I’ve alway been one to put a lit­tle too much faith into peo­ple. Although this often ends up hurt­ing the par­ties involved, myself includ­ed, I’ve always felt like it was worth it. I’d rather give some­one the ben­e­fit of the doubt, and per­haps this is why I end up being let down so much (____ would add that my intol­er­ance is par­tial­ly to blame). Some peo­ple don’t like to take that risk and need oth­ers to make the first step, need oth­ers to make that leap of faith. I know, because in some cas­es, I used to be one of them. One may hold back until they know that the oth­er per­son has as much at risk as they do. It’s the eas­i­est way to not get hurt.

There’s always one per­son who has to make that first step, to lay every­thing on the line. It’s one per­son who has to be the first to go for a kiss, the first to say, “I love you”, with­out know­ing what the oth­er per­son will say in return. It makes it eas­i­er, of course, if one can under­stand or accept the fact that there are risks involved in any sort of rela­tion­ship, that not every­thing will go the “right” way.

But that’s what life is about. That’s what love is about. Nothing is worth it if you don’t put your­self out there.

There’s a Simon and Garfunkle song that goes, “The roller coast­er ride we took is near­ly at an end / I bought my tick­et with my tears, that’s all I’m gonna spend”. When Paul Simon penned those lyrics, in the man­ner which he plays with words and rhymes to cre­ate his beau­ti­ful, renowned lyri­cal vers­es, he should have writ­ten, “That’s all I need to spend”. There’s absolute­ly noth­ing more that one can give.

Tears are a small price to pay for a chance at hap­pi­ness.