So anyway, I broke up with my girlfriend of 2 years + recently. It was a horribly messy affair, really, with ditherings and wistful half-reversals of positions, and of course, me being a dumb-ass sentimental clingy fool.
Long time readers of this blog might remember an old piece I wrote complaining about how I couldn’t write anything interesting anymore since I got together with my girlfriend. I had attributed that to writing being a form of therapy of some sorts for me, some way to vent my frustrations of the world, but since I had gotten together with her, I had been so happy that I really couldn’t find anything to complain about. I’m happy to report that that theory seems to hold water since I’ve written far too many angsty pieces since then. T_T
One part of me thinks there doesn’t seem to be a need for me to post those pieces here, since surely the world doesn’t need another whiny-ass bitch begging for sympathy while screaming “WHY DOESN’T SHE LOVE ME ANYMORE T_T”. However, I’ve always regarded Waxin’ Lyrical as a record of everything I’ve ever felt worth recording for posterity since it was founded. This here site, fouded as a way for Xephyris and me to kill time/improve our Japanese, became also the place where I would not be afraid to say anything that came to my mind and I thought was important enough to take down. And while much of this will surely come across as angsty OMG GET OVER IT whining, there is little doubt for me that this *is* an important part of my life. This is who I am, now, and will surely affect who I become in the future, and years from now, I’d like to look back on this and say “Yes, that was exactly how I felt”.
To cut back on the angst overdose however, I’m going to post the pieces in installments.
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(Originally written on Oct 28 2006, a week after I had tried to fly back to America to save the relationship and ended up failing utterly)
It’s been a week.
The thing about life, cliche as it may be, is that it does indeed go on. The world marches to its own beat, carried forth by the momentum of ages past. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Precisely timed and unrelenting in its advance. The days move on, one after the next. Tick, tock, tick, tock. It has to do so, after all - no one person, nor all the people that ever were and ever will be, can stop the world from moving on. The world moves on, but I, I find myself dragged along despite myself.
It’s been a week, and it’s been a lifetime.
As I’m often fond of saying: Things change. People change. Time flows on, and the world changes in its wake. I, however, find myself unable to change along with it. Call it force of habit, persistent stubborness, or even just pure laziness, but I think I can say, deep down inside, I’ve been pretty much the same person since I was 14. The same hopelessly naive ideals, the same outdated sense of chivalrism, romanticism, chauvinism, elitism, racism, atheism, mixed into a unseemly goo and labelled as my personality. Things change, and people change, but I don’t change.
She has, however.
Exactly as I feared, back when I first dared let myself dream of forever. She’s changed, despite me trying my best and giving it all I had, she’s changed, and the promise of the tomorrow we had lies in pieces around us. Yet on she walks, to her own bright future, while I try feebly to pick up the pieces, all the while cursing my inability to do the same. Unable to let go of past attachments, unable to reconcile my head screaming at me to GET THE FUCK OVER IT YOU WHINY PIECE OF SHITE with my heart whispering “Maybe one day she’ll look back…”. Unable to give vent to all my sorrow and all my rage, I play sad love song after love song, trying to find that one song that gives voice to my unique and oh-so common brand of heartbreak, forcefully fitting meanings where there are none so as to better explain my grief in someone else’s song.
I don’t want to Fall to Pieces, says Avril Lavigne. Stay, begs Lisa Loeb. Happy Break Up, or so Fish Leong wishes me. I’ve fallen off Love’s Cliff, laments Jay Chou, while Stella Ng pleads for some time to Think. Sometimes, Love Just Ain’t Enough, or so Patti Smyth and Don Henley remind me. Def Leppard know how it is When Love and Hate Collide, and Sakamoto Maaya describes Another Grey Day In The Big Blue World. Yuna Ito spins a tale of heartbreak and loss in Endless Story. Mariah Carey and the boys of Westlife come together to tell me that her coming back to me is Against All Odds, and the lads of Mayday wrap it all up with a “And yeah, I know”. All so tantalisingly close to my own vein of hurt, yet all a million miles away.
I can’t look back once we’ve crossed the line, I told her. I can’t look back once she’s decided we’re better apart than together, I told myself.
I can’t look back. Once you know I’m not the one you want to spend the rest of your life with, that’s it. No second chances, no “Maybe this time it’ll work out differently”. I’ve loved you with all I had, given you all I could, and still I was found wanting. Still you’ve chosen to leave, certain that it’s better this way. I can’t look back, because no matter how much I still care for you, no matter how I still think of you when I close my eyes, no matter how the phantom of your smile flits away from me at the edge of my consciousness, no matter how much I scream to myself “STOP THINKING ABOUT HER!”, there’s no guarantee that a second try will turn out any different. No, what IS different, is that the love itself has become tainted, poisoned with the knowledge that what you once thought was forever only lasts so long. You can’t believe in her anymore, because when you did, she took your trust and shattered it with her own conviction that you weren’t the one for her.
I can’t look back, I say, but it’s her who turns away as I watch her leave.
I can’t look back, I say. But is it only to cover the hurt I feel when I realises she’s the one who won’t look back at me?
It’s been a week. And my life is now irrevocably changed.
It’s been a week.