Dream: mum and dad

The clock went back an hour early this morning, and it's officially winter time. And the sudden drop in temperature really revealed winter's approach.
I took the opportunity to sleep in, sleep properly till I wake up naturally.

I was woken up around 8or so by the need to go to the washroom. I went back to bed, and I dreamed...

Mum and dad appeared before me. They looked lovely, caring and warm. I reached out to touch them, at least I tried... I reached out to feel their warmth and feel love, for its been so long since I felt the warmth of another, felt true love from another...

But they disappeared. I ended up crying...

Tears

Hearing news of mum made me cry again...
It's been almost a week since I last did so.
But I could not help it.

Perhaps mum is peering over my shoulders and crying silently too... Crying, because she's seeing me cry...

 Crying because she's watching me sit here in my empty home on my own with tears rolling down my cheeks and typing frantically like a sad, sad madman... Perhaps she is trying to hand me a tissue, trying to hug me, hold me and rest her head against mine, but she cannot.

I suddenly had the urge tonight to call one of mum's best friend, someone who called her every single day for the last four years. Her husband is a spirit medium, and he said mum visited. She looked distraught and upset. "Was it because she  is thinking of you? Was it because she saw you were crying before? I don't know..."

The image of mum seeing me cry is so painful...
 I promised my mum I would be strong, but I am so weak, so tired, so full of pain and longing....

Please give me the strength to be strong again...
Please lift me up, and let me rise above the sadness and tears...

Tears

I started to cry in the middle of the night after some misunderstanding with a friend which made me feel terribly guilty and terribly lonely. It was perhaps the second most intense crying session I experienced since I returned. There was just this loneliness, this terrible emptiness inside. I kept seeing images of mum and me holding her hand, seeing her lying at the hospital and being so weak and me sitting at her side trying to comfort her...

And I dreamed... of mum, of me howling in great pain. There was such a missing, such an intense longing for her I could not describe. The morning was again one of those I spent drifting in and out of sleep and consciousness, and after really getting up I felt completely drained and exhausted... The intensity of the dream was numbing, and now I feel like I'm in a daze, like I've been through terrible torture and just feel numb now...

Put down

I've been wanting to go to the shelter for cats with my flatmate, and today I finally had my chance.

There were so many cats, all so beautiful, elegant and innocent looking. My heart melted and went out to them, and I found myself asking why or how people can leave these beautiful creatures just wandering around the streets.

There was one particular cat, a grey one with a signature tuft of white on her (I checked, it's her...) chest. She was particularly friendly and affectionate.

Later at night I told my friend about her and showed him a picture of her, ad he too fell in love with her. He suggested we adopt her, and talked incidentally about cats getting old and the hard choice we may have to face to put a beloved pet who has been in our lives for so long down when it's ill or too old and suffering...

My heart wrenched when I heard those words. My erratic brain made the connection between a pet being put down and a human being being "put down" at that end stage of life. You don't want to prolong the suffering, you don't want the person to suffer unnecessary pain, and in a way you yourself don't want to have unnecessary pain. He described how it's difficult to see a loved one writhing and suffering pain...

I saw mum lie there in the hospital bed, writhing and struggling and fighting for breath... Oh, god, the tears threatened to erupt again... Mum, how you suffered so and I was unable to help.

And the question came back to haunt me, and made the smile I had earlier quickly vanish. Did I "put my mum down"? Did I kill her by pushing her to enter hospice all that time...? Did I kill her?

Did I kill mum...? Did I by increasing the dosage of her morphine, knowing fully well it might hasten her death...? Was it out of compassion and love and concern of her wellbeing and quality of life, or was it selfish and just not wanting me to suffer any more seeing her suffer and in pain...?

Mum, please you forgive me if I put you down before you were ready...
I held your hand and leaned on you, and I imagined it was what you wanted...

But did I put you down?

Perhaps for as long as I live there will be this guilty conscience I will have to live with...

Breaking point

Ex's wedding

"I'm not happy!" my ex said with a stern face. And I suddenly woke up, two hours or so after I struggled to fall asleep last night...

It was a tough struggle falling asleep. I arrived at my ex's apartment few hours earlier. It was all fine before bed, just talking and catching up on each others' day and events. But topics were avoided, deliberately. I mentioned few details when he asked about my mum, even though one of the reason why I lay there unable to sleep, and at one point even tearing, was because of the conversation I had with her last night. I was covered using the blanket my mum had given my ex on his birthday, the same one my mum was using when I left her a few weeks back... Having the blanket around me felt especially sentimental and sad...

At bedtime I curled up the sofa. My ex came and asked if I wanted to sleep next to him. I did, I had fantasised about doing that, because it's so wonderful, so safe and comforting sleeping next to him ( or is it just next to someone? Anyone?), but I stood firm. I stood (actually lay...) firm even though he dropped a comment: "There'd be no funny business, I promise..." I thought to myself: "you make a lot of promises. I can't really trust you. Who can?"

I lay there awake for a while. I know he was awake, but I kept on hearing him move around in his bed. It felt so strange for me to sleep on the sofa, and I'm pretty sure he felt the same, and probably was also lying in bed wondering why I'm here and he's there.
I lay there, looked around me in the darkness of the night, and could still see the objects his boyfriend gave him here and there around the room. My resolve stay where I was, despite my lust telling me otherwise, grew more determined.

I dreamed. We were at a busy place, a restaurant of some sort with lots of our friends around. I was rushing around, trying to keep up with my ex who stomped around angrily for some reason. At one point he turned to me and shouted at me: "I'm so tired of you! And for your information, he has a journal too, and I've read it. It's so much of better read than your depressing blog!" This very blog was what he was referring to.

My ex stormed off. I found myself in he middle of the crowd, stunned and hurt speechless. How could say such a thing? How can he hurt me again so terribly and so meanly?

There was a commotion, and a whole bunch of people, a while family, arrived and were preparing to sit down for dinner. I had somehow the knowledge it was him, my ex's boyfriend. I grew more apprehensive as I waited to see him, to talk to him for the first time...

So many people passed us by, and eventually my ex's boyfriend appeared. He was much shorter than I expected, and looked so young, but sweet looking. Out of nowhere my ex appeared and they kissed in public. My heart ached so terribly. Somehow at this point I had realised it was a wedding... Their wedding.

My ex disappeared again. I walked up to his boyfriend/fiancé, and introduced myself. He was nice talking to me, even though there was some awkwardness. The fiancé meeting the former great love of his husband-to-be.

We spoke civilly, no harsh words were exchanged, and he did seem like a good guy. At one point I said: "I just want to tell you that he [my ex] can be a complicated person," at which point his fiancé smiled and nodded, "but you deserve one another, and I wish you both all the best. Please take good care of him..." I started to breakdown and cry, and I ran.

I encountered my dad. He was stumbling around the crowded place like zombie. I tries talking to him, but he did not respond. He had a dazed look on his face, and he looked in such a sorry sight, so unkempt and lost psychologically.

I saw my ex approaching fast, and I walked up next to him. He looked happy, was smiling beautifully until I walked up to him. His smile suddenly turned to a sour and angry face as I approached.

Angrily and impatiently he asked what I wanted. He said: "I'm not happy! I'm so tired of you! And for your information, he has a journal too, and I've read it. It's so much of better read than your depressing blog!"

I was in tears, but managed to utter something.

I woke up

Tears of sadness

I cried, really cried for the first time since I left home. My friends had to hold me and comfort me, but the tears could not stop flowing.

"It's ok, let it out. You'll feel better..." I felt somewhat better after crying and after drinking myself silly. I've never done anything like it, but my friends insisted I go out and drink, let the hurt and pain, sorrow and sense of betrayal be drowned by glasses of sangria. I did not go home. I was scared to go home. I slept at a friend's place, but only for an hour or two before suddenly being 'shocked' awake. And I lay in bed for hours, with thoughts rushing through my mind...

I found out the truth of why my ex was not in NYC this weekend. Whether he did or did not go to much lengths to try and find a way to get there and see me is another matter. But what is telling is that he spent the weekend here with friends and with his boyfriend.

Yes, contrary to what I have believed or wanted to believe, my ex is still together with the guy. Amazing, three months after my ex wrote to me pouring out his feelings for me, and telling me he'd "deal" his his situation, he's still not dealt with it. He wanted to wait for an opportune time, explaining that he did not want to give his boyfriend pressure while he's doing his finals. Valid excuse. But was there no opportune moment over the course o three months? Or was the will to break up simply not there, and my ex was saying to me all these things just to "get to me"? Deep down, only he knows the truth, only he must sleep at night with a conscience. I don't know what to believe anymore when he tells me things.

Most painful of all, as I heard from my friends, all the time I have been away, my ex has been walking around with his boyfriend as if it were the most normal thing. I was replaced, and his boyfriend brought into our circle of friends. Everyone found it bizarre, dishonest, and questioned my ex how he could put on this charade of a relationship, make the other person believe there is something meaningful there, whereas all the time my ex tried and tried to reach me and to declare his true feelings for me. Oh, people know. They it's such a joke what my ex has been up to, such immaturity of trying to hide things and pretend things are alright, when deep down there are so many uncomfortable things unsaid. And they pity the other person, who is much younger and seems to have no idea my ex is playing two people's hearts at the same time and seemingly enjoying it in the mean time.

Nobody can know what my ex is feeling, why he does the things he does. And god knows he is torn and breaking up deep inside. But really a lot of it is his own doing. Letting things drag on and on and not wanting to deal with issues, and with time things get worse, feelings are intensified, and the hurt is much deeper.

My ex and I exchanged a number of text messages. I told him how much it hurts to find out he slept with me, kissed me so passionately (like never before...) and yet he's still with his boyfriend. How could he sleep at night, I asked him. How can he hurt me like this, knowing all difficult, difficult issues of death and illness I've had to face and am still facing surrounding my mum's condition? I said I'm already so vulnerable right now, and finding out how he's not been completely honest with me, and even slept with me the night after he was with another guy, made me feel so sick.

He hit back at me. He said it was tiring how I "rub in death and illness" to make me seem like the victim, to make it seem like I need sympathy. That just wounded me so terribly. Because he really has no idea how it is to be faced with death and illness. I wasn't dropping those words as a soundbite for dramatic effects. He has no idea, nobody has any idea until there're faced with losing someone they lose imminently how pervasive the sadness, depression and suicidal tendencies are. He has no idea how there have been various moments I just feel so tempted to injure myself, cut myself or jump in front of a moving bus. Anything, anything to numb the physical and psychological torment...

He lamented how I've treated him poorly ignoring his attempts to reach me for months. And how I seem to have no sense of self-criticism over my behaviour in the past few months.Where was it all coming from? Perhaps in my lack of self-criticism, I am overseeing what I have done so wrong...
True, I admit it, I avoided contact with all the rest of my friends and ignored my ex especially. I just was so tired I from everything I could not muster the energy to pick up the phone and just call me, just start telling people how I'm doing or what I'm facing. And why did I not want to talk to my ex? Because everytime he would just break down and cry. I was/am already hurting, struggling to cope with new and ever evolving circumstances, trying so hard not to cry, but he cries... And it was just so bizzare to hear him cry, when he has everything he wants: the boy he has been after for almost a year, a job (albeit with strange and somewhat elitist colleagues), and a nice apartment in downtown Toronto. He has his health, his parents seem to be alright... and yet for some reason he is not happy.
He told me in all the time I ignored him and refused to pick up the calls, he became so severely depressed and emotional, to the extent it affects his ability to work.

So it is/was all my fault? Admittedly, my fault to separate and distance myself from him, to isolate and insulate myself from his world so he can go and discover what it is he really wants in life. But is it my fault he harbours such strong emotions for me, is it my fault that he chose to be with someone but then realise, or perhaps has even known all the time, that it would not work out? Is it my fault that I shy away and try to focus on my mum, my priority at this critical juncture of her life, and that I simply do not wish to be distracted? Distracted by his attempts to woo me again, distracted by his declarations of feelings for me and seeing and being told by mutual friends that he is doing completely the opposite of what he says he feels for me. I do not need this, any of this...

And to lament me for ignoring other friends, to speak on their behalf and say how sick my behaviour has been over the past few months? how do you just pick up the phone and start ranting, lamenting, crying even about mum's condition? It's not me, I'm not some weak young kid, I can handle things, I can take it, and there really is no need for me to talk to people if I don't want to. How come everyone of my friends could understand but my ex? How come they could understand I need space and time to deal with mum's situation, but only my ex wanted to constantly be updated on news and developments? I told him in so many e-mails why I don't want to talk to him. How can I keep on bothering him when he's starting a relationship,when he told me frankly to move on?

He lamented me for not being there for when he had such "torturous" few months. And he said I never asked about how he was doing or cared about how depressed he became.

None of the exchanges led to anywhere constructive. one thing ks written, and it is responded with a rebuttal whatever was said or dragged out of the past. It was ugly, creating more tensions, and so destructive...

I was so tired. And I am sure he is so tired too of me, of the same old issues that remain unresolved five months on. Is the problem with me? Is it really with me? I don't know, I really don't know. He throws back things at me, accusing me  of this and that, which is really just very off putting. I thought I was  ready to move on, ready to perhaps talk things through and try to see where we can go from here, but he's still clinging, clinging onto the other boy, refusing to let go, and it seems lamenting me for the great misfortunes of his life over the past few months.

How did we come to this? I thought there was something special there. I thought he truly loved me, at least he said so. But why is it so complicated? It doesn't, shouldn't have to be this way...

Perhaps I should heed the warning others gave me: beware of how manipulative he is, and beware of how soft-hearted I can be...