Talk

It was never a going to be an easy conversation, we both knew it. We have both been dragging our feet and not wanting to face it. Perhaps we feared the conversation may lead to the end of things... The end of all the comfortable and familiar relationship we have grown into over the last two years. Or perhaps we feared things were going to change fundamental between us, and perhaps neither is not willing to let go yet, just yet.

But talk we did today, after sleeping next to one another. It began over breakfast... He made a comment about how at one point in time I had said that I could imagine myself staying at home while my partner goes out to work to support the household. Yes, I did say that, but I think it was jesteringly, as a joke, for I never have really imagined myself doing nothing and just sitting at home like a house"wife" waiting for the "man" to return from work. Even so, that flippant remark and attempt at a joke triggered alarm bells on my friend's side back at the end of April, and together with compilations we have had since the start of our relationship, things just went downhill till our eventual breakup.

I was surprised to hear and know that what I blurted out had affected his opinion of me, and of our possible future together, so much. But deep down, I knew it was true. To the outside world, the last two, three years I have really slowed down. My life, my hopes and dreams seem to have ground to a halt. I live from day to day, without much purpose it seems, eating, sleeping, defecating, and occasionally reading and blogging, and traveling. But what can I really say I have accomplished? career-wise, I am lost. Academically, I am stuck in a grove trying to dig myself and find my way out. What have I really done that I can be proud of...?

I feel it myself, I feel the energy levels, the enthusiasm for life, for work, for happy, for exploring and discovering things has somehow just escaped me. Where was that hardworking boy I once knew who had such fascination for life and for the pains and struggles and injustices of this world? Where did that all go?

It is all to easy, I know, to point to what has been troubling me and weighed me down. Dad's death, loss of dear friends, the cancer of having to deal with mum's recurring illness and the uncertainties of mum's condition... The looming spectre of loss, and being alone in the world when mum takes her final farewell... It is all a lot to take... But is it all a "good enough excuse" to slow down, to grind to a halt and be an underachiever...?I ask myself, torment myself and kick myself when I look back and see how little I have accomplished. Little did I know it would be a reason why my friend broke off our relationship...

I want to pick myself up again... I want to live, with passion, work with determination and eager. To discover, to achieve, to strive and to live! I want that more than anything now...



My friend then said that after all the complications of the past couple of months, he is lost and confused as to what he wants (as am I). Why is he so attached to the boy he met, why is he not willing to let that go yet? I cannot understand, and perhaps he cannot either. I probably can not give my friend what he received from the other person in the short period of time they were together. And he cannot know now, because I broke apart that chance, I soured that opportunity, and it will take time to uncover, or perhaps bury, that couriosity or even fascination of being and getting to know someone new and exciting.

But at least now I understand more... about his hesitations towards "us", because of our complicated past, about the resentment he felt toward me for suddenly turning around and breaking apart a relationship that was budding back in December with the boy he met and dated... I understood more why we are broken apart ... I have been perhaps too clingy, too needy, and for my friend who had just come out of a long term relationship, that was too much to handle. However much he cares for me (or loves me?), he cannot at this moment enter another relationship and commit.
 
So we are in the situation where we are now... not quite lovers, but not just friends... not just friends with "special benefits", but not quite two people who are in a committed relationship with one another. I failed to declare my feelings for him at the time when he was chasing after me with such passion and vigour, and how insensitive it was to suddenly turn around and want to be with him at a time when he was just getting over me after my rejections over the course of two years. Nobody is at fault, but nobody is completely guiltless either...

We have had many conversations, many teary nights how we ended up where we are... Where are we headed? Neither of us is sure. Are we going to be together, in a loving, strong relationship where there is no doubt, no questions, just commitment and wanting one another? We do not know, I do not know. I can foresee it happening... He said he can foresee it happening too. But now is not the time... Despite the comfort of being in one another's arms, despite the special feeling of feeling the warmth of one another's hand, despite the woozy feeling of smelling each other's body and lying next to one another, despite the deep heart-to-heart conversations and flippant remarks and insider jokes we can play on one another, now is not the time to be together. If that time will come, or when that time will ever come, nobody knows... Nobody knows... Perhaps our fate is only so much, our connection is only so deep, only so lasting, but not ever lasting.

But it is the way it is, things are the way they are, feelings are the way they are. It is as I suspected and guessed, but it was good to have it confirmed after our deep heart-to-heart talk to uncover our feelings for one another. What more can you want? What more can I ask? 

For now, he is the only person in the world who has been able to touch me, move me, and sway me off my feet. We will always be special to one another... always have those beautiful, beautiful memories together that no one can ever take away... Love developed between us, slowly (and perhaps haltingly). That love was jeopardised, that love may have subsided and waned, but the friendship remains...

We are, and always have been, friends first and foremost.