How it all began...

How did it all begin...?

If I think back, perhaps it was that night at a restaurant with him and two other friends, early December 2008. The fact that there were friends there did not at the time make me realise it was a date. But today he told me he thought it was our first real date. If I think back hard enough, I can somehow picture myself getting very excited, perhaps getting nervous. I did do my hair, something I rarely do, spray on some perfume, and put on the nicest looking red shirt that fits my figure well. All the actions and signs of someone excited and expectant of something to occur, but just unsure what...

That night, we spend the first of many nights talking. Just talking, just sitting face to face, sharing our life stories so far, sharing our experiences, expectations, dreams and aspirations. I got to know him, know new friend, and grew fond of him, and he got to know me-- know me in a way that I later found out was the beginning of his infatuation toward me.

We talked into the wee hours of the morning, yet I was not tired. I remember going to bed smiling, and telling my friend what a wonderful night I had just had. I don't think I ever spent such a long night with anyone like that, just talking, just sharing. Even the most intimate and closely guarded secrets of my life and my family came pouring out bit by bit, something I never did before, something I still keep closely guarded deep inside. But somehow it felt right, somehow it felt like I could trust this person, somehow I felt I could connect with this person on many ways, even though at the time he was someone I only met and got to know a month or so before. I felt there was maybe something developing, and the feeling was mutual perhaps, but I was unsure.

I had just been in Canada for barely three months. I had seen him once or twice, and noticed him. Something inside attracted me to him, and I found myself stealing glances at him, in the classroom, at social gatherings. Something about him, his smile and jolliness made me feel warm inside. But I dismissed those feeling as just feelings I would get seeing some good-looking person on the street. Nothing would ever come out of it, I thought to myself, because nothing ever did.

Fast forward, and it's been two years since that special night together. There have been many, many more special nights together, nights not just spent talking and sharing, but night involving very intimate and sexual encounters that after so many times never seem to tire. Somehow, after all this time, though unspoken, though never formalised, we have developed something, something I'm not sure what exactly... It was all the more complicated by the fact he was still in a relationship at the time I met him.

Two years later, today, I felt again how closely connected I feel towards him, and I realise again how attached I have grown toward him. We have spent so many nights together in the last two, three weeks, as if we cannot let go of one another. Work for both of us has been stalled, and we seem to spend a lot of waking moments reflecting, dwelling in our memories, and being with one another.

Today, after spending the night (again) at his place, began with him breaking down, howling and crying so intensely because he was so torn and tormented by his feelings toward me and toward someone he had recently met and quickly developed strong feelings for. I left his apartment, but quickly I went back to when I realised how much he was suffering pain and guilt in order to comfort him, to hand him tissues to wipe the incessant flow of tears down his face. I went back because I wanted and tried to be there him, and to show that I care about him and his well-being and happiness.

Somehow the conversation turned to my childhood. It was then that I poured out accounts of excruciatingly vivid and painful experiences images of being abused as a child-- poured it out in descriptions and details I have never ever shared with anyone other person in this big wide world...  It was my turn to break down, sobbing and grinding my teeth while reliving the painful, painful memories in my head, while my mind turned so, so dark and was plastered once again with the shame, guilt, anger, powerlessness, abrupt loss of innocence, and the ways it has affected, and continues to affect, my life. I stood up and wanted to walk away, wanted to just turn around and leave, turn around, rush home and cry in a corner, because it was all too much, all too raw, and all too unexpected...  But somehow, his own tears, shed perhaps because he saw me hurt and crying, and his outstretched arms beckoned me to go back to him.

Perhaps it is true what they say: nothing brings people together better and closer than tears and hurt... perhaps not even compared to the carefree laughters and joys that seem to last so few precious moments, for the "life of man [is so] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short". And what comfort and warmth it is to have someone to be there to listen, to hold, and just to be there so that you do not feel all alone in times of trouble and hurt?

Again, like so often in the past, like so many nights or days we have spent lounging around in bed and next to one another's warm bodies, the bond, the very intimate and personal connection we shared that very night two years ago is still there, is if not stronger, then at least has been thoroughly tested over the last few months by turbulent events.

There has been so much drama, tears and hurt... yet all of this counterbalanced and overwhelmed by laughter, inside jokes, and climaxes from intensely passionate love-making that have taken us both by surprise, and taken us both to whole new levels of getting to know one another in a very short period of time. I'm not sure where we are now, or where we are heading. And I don't want to give him pressure, and I don't want to push him away. But I think we both realise how much we mean to one another, and what a difference being in one another's lives has made to our lives, whether together or apart.

 Like we said and agreed on, life would be all so easy and simpler had we met under different circumstances, had we just chance encountered one another on the streets and got to know one another without the baggage of having to hide and bury our feelings for one another...

But this is the situation, however frustrating yet at the same time lovely and intense, that we find ourselves in now. And perhaps one day, we can look back when the turbulence has settled, and realise what did not break us, made us stronger. Whether together, or apart...