Southbound

130613.1506

On the move again. Heading down south to Chiayi, mum and dad's hometown. For a few days only, not more. I need to be back here in two days, or less. Staying in Taipei, i need to pay for accommodation. And the streets of the city is littered with memories that can easily make me tear and sad...

Been a quiet two days since returning to Taiwan. My cousin met me at the airport, a welcome surprise. I hugged her so tightly when I saw her. She's accompanying me whenever she wasn't working. The next morning she took me plane spotting. we saw the very plane I took a year ago to return here to be with mum till the end. It was extremely touching... Also we saw a new ANA 787 land and take off from Sungsan Airport. That made me smile. 

I met up with a classmate too, someone who lost both her parents and could really understand. Last night I bonded with a cousin I never really  got to know, which was really pleasant . The only other gay relative in the family, as far as I know...

Now heading south for a very short stay, because Sunday I need to be back in the north to prepare for mum's ceremony. I'm not sure what to do yet, and feel unprepared. The letter I've been meaning to write has not yet been written. I'm just tired, so tired. And there are things and people I need to coordinate to get to mum's resting place. Very stressful. My stomach is acting up again...

On the move

130613.1506

On the move again. Heading down south to Chiayi, mum and dad's hometown. For a few days only, not more. I need to be back here in two days, or less. Staying in Taipei, i need to pay for accommodation. And the streets of the city is littered with memories that can easily make me tear and sad...

Been a quiet two days since returning to Taiwan. My cousin met me at the airport, a welcome surprise. I hugged her so tightly when I saw her. She's accompanying me whenever she wasn't working. The next morning she took me plane spotting. we saw the very plane I took a year ago to return here to be with mum till the end. It was extremely touching... Also we saw a new ANA 787 land and take off from Sungsan Airport. That made me smile. 

I met up with a classmate too, someone who lost both her parents and could really understand. Last night I bonded with a cousin I never really  got to know, which was really pleasant . The only other gay relative in the family, as far as I know...

Now heading south for a very short stay, because Sunday I need to be back in the north to prepare for mum's ceremony. I'm not sure what to do yet, and feel unprepared. The letter I've been meaning to write has not yet been written. I'm just tired, so tired. And there are things and people I need to coordinate to get to mum's resting place. Very stressful. My stomach is acting up again...

Landing at TPE

11 June 2013

20.11

Just landed at TPE. I used to look forward to coming home, look forward to seeing mum again, hugging her. But this time I am just tired. Tired and sad...

Welcome home to Formosa...

Pre departure...

Packing, packing, packing... I spent hours packing and tidying up my place. As the minutes counted down till my departure tomorrow morning, my mind grew restless and agitated with thoughts. My eyes watered on several occasions, and I feel I am due for a long outpouring of tears again.

Am I making too much of a deal out of this trip? Am I being irrational, as someone suggested, and making the one year anniversary of mum's passing more difficult than it has to be? Brother doesn't seem to show much interest in the ceremony next week, except that I should buy offerings to offer on behalf of him and his family. 

But loss is so personal, as is the way we choose to commemorate our lost loved one. Nobody knows better than I do who I lost and what that loss means to me. Who are they to tell me how to feel? When is grief ever rational? 

The significance of this trip is compounded by the fact it falls one day short of the same trip I made last year straight after my graduation. The same trip, similar anxieties and sense of dread. And the same feeling of loneliness and abandonment. I cannot help it but my mind rewinds back to words exchanged that were between my ex and the promises that were made then. Empty, empty words that have no meaning now, that only sting and compound my grief when my mind rewinds back to the day exactly a year ago...

I cannot but be reminded of calling mum the eve I left last year... How weak and frail she sounded, and yet in her weakness I could still hear her excitement and anticipation of my return... How I flew home and visited the Tokyo tower and cried (there's a movie called: "Tokyo Tower: my mum and me, and sometimes my dad". A movie I've not dared to watch, even one year on.) 

How I entered her hospice room and wore my graduation cap and put on this brave smile and mask that I'm completely alright right till the end when in fact I was so afraid and hurt to see mum slip silently away... The way she gasped for breath, the way she held my hand, the warm I wiped her body clean as warmth slowly faded from it...

It was all a year ago... A year ago yet able still to make me break down, choke and cry. Loss, loss, loss... What else do I have left? Teddy Bears, notes to myself to remind myself to be strong, and memories that haunt my sleep and keep me awake... 

Sitting on the bank of the St. Laurent, the water is so tranquil... But beneath it all, is not a wave mounting? Behind the clouds, there's a summer storm brewing. I can feel it in the wind...

Leaving

I said goodbye to a friend and watched as she walked down my flight of stairs and disappear into the distance. I've known her for four years, almost as soon as I got to Canada. 

Through I've been distant (generally towards everyone...) she's been a dear, dear friend. She used to come by so often, take care of my cat whenever I was away, comfort me when I was feeling heartbroken and down, advise me when I needed ell and advice. And her mum would often give me delicious food and fresh noodles. 

The hours we shared conversations, the bike rides we took together, the Costco trips she took me on. All in the past as as walked away from my apartment. In a few hours she would board a plane and fly to Vancouver, where she would begin her new life and new job...

I'm on my way now to see a friend I've known also since I arrived in Canada. My first real friend really. And though we've grown distant from one another too, she will always be special. She was the one I adopted my cat with. She was the one who helped me look for and move into my second apartment. She was the one who got me interested in learning French and helped me through hours of conversations to improve my French. She's moving away to Toronto. 

Two friends leaving at the same time. I'm leaving too, on a flight home, on a trip I honestly do not wish to embark on. 

Leaving and going, going and leaving. It's trying to face these goodbyes and I feel the emptiness compound even more. At the end of it all, I am left all alone. 

And I dread, dread the emptiness, the void of  feeling abandoned and being all alone. 

It's not easy...

A friend called me and told me about this event he attended the night before. He said it deeply affected him.

He was invited to volunteer at a charity event. Only when he got there did he realise it was a cancer charity which organised a fundraiser event and vigil for patients, survivors and the recently deceased. The event lasted the whole night, and there was a walk. Some walked a few hours, others walked the whole night till morning. "Cancer does not sleep when you do..." the motto went.

He called me to say how deeply moved he was, and how he woke up feeling depressed from the night before. "Cancer is not easy to face..." he told me.

I know. Cancer is not easy to face, and very difficult to process. Even when a year after you lose someone dear.

Shouting party

I woke up to the sound of my brother calling me. Minutes later, still dazed I was the target of a long rant.

It is perhaps his way of showing how He cares, and he does not know any better way to express himself than get frustrated. But when I mentioned I wanted to go visit him and his family in Europe and visit a friend in southern Africa, he went on about how irresponsible I am and how I'm wasting money traveling around. I just wanted to see family, to feel "at home" again... I just want to go somewhere to free my mind. But I have to justify it.

What about your job? What about your plans to buy a house? What about what you want to do next?
"You're just escaping reality!" It's true. I'm just trying to escape. "Why are you still like this? It's been so long!"

He too is our mother's child.For him it's been so long. For me, I'm still dealing with the after effects of the loss... aftereffects that are compounded by the loss of dear friendships and breakdown of my own mental wellbeing.

I reminded him he has a family, a home, a stable job. I'm still searching for what I want, still trying hard as as much as I can to find meaning and working toward the bar. I'm trying, trying and giving my all in the circumstances. I reminded him he was like this for two years after he graduated, just sitting at home and trying to find something... Am I not doing enough? Where can I find the energy to do more? Where do I find the support to keep me going and hoping for something? Not from my own brother, that's certain now.

I went quiet and wanted to cry.
"Do whatever you want..." He said and hung up the phone.

Maybe this is the kick I need to get myself going. The brutal, hurtful painful kick.
I'm struggling already, struggling to live, struggling to deal with depression and get by. I need some affection, so semblance of care and understanding, encouragement and empathy. He too lost a mother. He has the resources to help him cope and move on so quickly. I do not.

Terrible sadness again. Feel like being kicked when I'm already down....

Dream: family

Two dreams rolled into one night. The first was at a seminar of sorts, where two ladies came to give a presentation on the new plane that I'm about to fly on... Lots of question and answers, and I asked a question that stunned and silenced the room. A question whether  the lithium batteries that caught fire and grounded the new plane for months will be safe... 

Second dream. My whole  family sitting around the dining table in the Netherlands. Mum, dad, both smiling and happy... There was suddenly gunshots. I ran to the window and saw a pool of blood across the street, in the apartment building opposite ours. Dad was curious and went to see the scene. The perpetrator, a fat man saw dad. He started shooting again. He ran to our front door and starting banging. He knocked down the door. I grabbed something to knock him while I dialed 112 (the local equivalent of 911...) The man entered the living room. He was about to shoot his gun... 

Army

I dreamt another terrible dream yesterday, one full of dread and misery (well, isn't that just a reoccurring theme in my life and dreams...?) 

I was deserted into the army. My greatest fear, something ill and to face next week when I'm back in Taiwan. In the dream it was just a training camp, an intro to the army something organized to give people a feel of how wonderful the army is. But I felt so trapped, lost my freedom, and so unhappy... I cannot bear to be in the army and lose my freedom (though, it might give me and my life more discipline....?) What of my plans (do I have any?)? What of my job? My cat? 

I woke up with such a headache... Terrible headache.

Why?

for the longest time, I've loved the song Annie Lennox song "Why". Last night, I listened to it again and read the words to the song as I did so. And how beautiful it describes my feelings...

The lament of a brokenhearted lover, deeply hurt, perhaps even feeling betrayed. Broken dreams, promises, longings of the past that once was. The person is left wondering why at the end of it all... Why it all ended, why so abruptly, why so cruelly? 

I too ask why, and it's what bothers me a lot at this very moment. Am I making my sorrow and grief out to be larger than it really is? Am I stuck in the past and unable to move from pain and hurt? Why do I feel soft for someone else who has his own support and family and lover to lean on? 

 I don't want to be a perpetual victim any more! I hate being weak and being taken for a fool! I want to stand up strong and feel good about myself and stop being treated like I'm some kind of pariah and lazy good for nothing. 

Am I so self absorbed and selfish that I cannot think of any reason why someone who I thought was my best friend and potential partner for life would have a change of heart and act as if all that existed between us meant nothing? I know that was a year, over a year ago, but this year, this horrible year since I lost my mother, is the very moment, the very year I need someone strong and trustworthy to lean on. But why can I not do that? Why can I no longer trust, why can I  no longer feel at liberty to call or have contact with the one person who said he would be there? Why is it that the person you care about most is the person why hurts you most deeply? 

Grief is so hard alone... Unbearable! Torturous! Mum's dead, and can no longer offer me comfort or console me when I am down and sad... 

And coupled with the loss of one's  dearest friend and confidante... It's feels like the world collapsing around me. Like I am the only person in the world! 

Living and breathing and getting up for work and for life is so difficult when all the love and hope and dreams you once clung onto shatters and disappears. Again, I am a fool to attach so much meaning to people. A fool to trust and put all my hope and happiness in promises. 

But It just is the way it is. There's  no reason why, just the way it is. It's just the way it is. No one to blame, no way around it. 

At the end of the song, s-/he hauntingly repeats in a whisper that's full of frustration and hurt:

"And this is how I feel 

Do you know how I feel? 

'Cause I don't think you know how I feel 

I don't think you know what I feel 

I don't think you know what I feel 

You don't know what I feel"

No, nobody knows how I feel.

Does anyone even care to know or care to listen?

Failure?

What would mum (and dad...) think when they see me now?
Would they shake their heads and hang their heads in shame?

How down I have become, how lacking motivation, lacking energy, lacking meaning...
All I want to do is sleep. Eat. Sleep. Go biking perhaps. Plan trips to fantastic places. Anything to prevent myself from thinking, from living in this moment and making something of myself.

Oh, and I cry. I break down and cry. I dream of terrible things and images and I cry.

Why have I become like this?
How have I allowed myself to be like this?

Really, when all the people that once mattered in life disappear, do you fall flat and limp and struggle through every day and every moment of every day? When the love and care disappears, what is there left...?

A breathing skeleton and lost soul in search of a home, in search of belonging, in search of the prospect of love and affection.

Break down

Last night, I spoke to my cousin, telling her I'm headed home in a few days. She offered me her apartment to stay when I am there, at least when I'm in Taipei. She asked how I am. From the reply she could hear I'm not well. 

I'm really not well. I'm struggling horribly. I'm having difficult coping, sleeping, eating. It's the void, the loneliness, the inability to connect with anyone, inability to feel love and loved, to love and to appreciate life and all I have. What is the meaning of life without real friends, without someone you can trust fully, confide in completely? 

My cousin said it pains her deeply to hear me sound like this.

Later at night, I had multiple dreams this morning, but all centred on the same theme. Visiting mum again...

One was me on the flight home. On EVA for some reason. The seats were so luxurious, and meals a real feast. I saw a old high school friend on board. She was going to Taipei for some reason, to shoot a documentary. 

The next two (?) dreams I saw myself at the commemoration ceremony. I was running around trying to buy food to offer mum. All these relatives were around. I was distraught. 

I broke down. Right there on the street and just sobbed and sobbed... I have never seen myself cry like that ever. It was so painful, so difficult to see myself like that...

So painful! 

So painful! So very painful....

Lies, lies, lies...

I saw this angry face shouting "Lies, lies, lies!"

It was my face, the face of a mad man driven mad and wild by deceit and hurt. I was shouting at someone I used to know, someone who hurt me so. He looked at me with such disdain and bemusement, with such pity. A former lover.

How did I get into this? How did I invest my love and devotion in someone who has already found happiness and moved on? The most bizarre thing in the dream... I had somehow agreed to go biking with the ex and his partner. How did I even agree to it? 

I shouted and was so full of rage and so filled with fear and hurt. "LIES, LIES, LIES!" 

Once hurt, always hurt... Once betrayed, never to be trusted. 

I woke up with my head hurting, my mind  so dizzy with the images of dream yet to fade away...

Planespotting

OI woke up close to noon, exhausted for some reason, and felt too heavy to drag myself to work. I called in "sick".

My head was spinning and my mind racing around in misery and pain. Where did it all come from? How I wish I could empty it all...! How I long for someone who can be with me to hear me vent and hold me as u do so...

I grabbed my bike and biked westward, toward the airport. I had an urge to watch planes take off. 

I passed by an ice cream parlour where the ex and I loved to stop at on a hot summer's day for a chill soft drink and cold gelato or chocolate ice cream (or both!) It was a fun place, full of memories. "Wild  Willy" was all we had to say to conjure the idea of a long day of biking and laughing in the sun and ice cream as a reward. "Wild Willy" was also a long running inside gag he and I shared. 

 I was looking forward to reliving old memories, but to my great disappointment, the place closed down. The shop sign changed. "Wild Willy" no more... I realised again: dreams and hopes and expectations are never reliable. Nothing ever stays te same. And how poignant that the place where my ex and I shared so many fond memories of is now gone, gone forever..

I biked further, to the lake side and sat on a bench. For a long time, as the same set I watched planes fly by. It was close to eight, the time for Europe-bound flights. 

One by one I bid them farewell and wished them a smooth and pleasant flight...

And then I remembered... It was almost two years ago that I came here and cried as I watched mum's plane take off overheard. I saw it leave, inch further and further away from me, and what void I felt at the sight. I imagined her siting in the front of the plane (I upgraded her to business class...) and I cried and cried uncontrollably. I somehow knew that would be the last time she would set foot in Canada. And it really was... After seeing her then and bidding her farewell at the airport, it was all downhill. The next time I saw her was four months later, at the hospital, a few hours after they wheeled her out of the surgery room. 

I sit here now and watch the planes fly off Into the distance. The void has grown so much, the tears keep on falling.

I miss the past, the ice creams, the running gags, the hugs... I miss mym's voice, seeing mum smile and hearing her laugh...

The void is truly deep now.

Dream: friends mum

A friend's mum came for his graduation and I met her and spoke to her a bit. 

Tonight, in that dreamlike state of consciousness I dreamt of mum... Dreamt of mum being here with me, dreamt of two years ago when she really was here with me, when I did everything to make he comfortable, when I sent her to get massages so she wouldn't be sore any more...

How heavy my mind! How painful the memories...

Do not forget

I feel like crying... Crying, even though I have cried so much already. Crying, because somehow almost everything, I see, hear or touch touches my already fragile insides.

I know it has almost been a year. And what a year it has been! So tough the days, so gruesome, lonely and terribly frightening the nights! How did I get through this year almost all  on my own? How did I get through this year when friends I thought could support and hold me in times of desperation with time grew to be wary of my sorrows and too tired and too annoyed to see a boy grieving and struggling to be "normal" again?

I cry, but the tears only make me feel so much emptier and so much heavier than before. I cry, but the tiredness and heaviness only weighs heavier on my mind.

"Do not forget," a friend in grieving who lost her mother seven years ago reminded me, "That they do not know what it feels like to lose a parent..." She tried to joke about the fact that when someone gives her the same old platitude she feels like punching them in the face. Because they do not know, they cannot possibly know, and they have no right to tell you it's been too long or that you are behaving irrationally. Nothing takes too long with grief. It takes as long as it will take...

 

Connection

We chatted briefly, and as one would do, I asked her what she's been doing since graduating. She said nothing much. Then she revealed she lost her dad a month ago. 

Two utter strangers somehow became bonded in experience and life. She spoke of how her dad succumbed to cancer, I told her I lost my mum a year ago. We exchanged words and looks that only one who lost someone dear would ever understand. I felt my eyes moisten as she recounted her story. 

"It's amazing how little people understand..." She agreed with me. They mean well, but they just don't know what to say. What do you say to one who lost a loved one? What does one even say to convey condolences and to share and let the other person know you share your grief? 

We bonded over our experiences, told one another how we have been coping and trying to move on. Exchanged tales of how the end, when the cancer is thriving and the person dying, the sight and suffering is the most painful and difficult to bear. 

In our brief exchange, we exchanged a degree of connection that is rare to be found, and so comforting for us

"Cancer no more"

The last several days have been hectic and terribly exhausting. My bereavement therapy group ended after eight weeks of meetings. It was an emotional affair that left me "shell shocked" and very prone to tears. At work, two conferences made it extremely busy, especially as the person who was supposed to be organizing them did a half-arsed job doing so. In some ways, I felt really useful and "good" about myself, as I was called in at the last minute to take care of several important details, which made my boss pretty pleased (and upset at the person who was supposed to be in charge of it all...) 

But the exhaustion and long working days have taken a toll, as I feel dizzy and so emotional. Dizzy to the extent I feel I could faint easily, emotional to the extent I feel like I could burst out in tears. Strangely though, being busy and distracted also made the time pass quickly. 

Sleep has become a novelty especially needing to get up early every single morning. I dreamt of mum today again, and it has been a while since I last did.

Brother was there at the hospital, I think mum was there too, but in the background. It was a grueling and intense experience, the details of which I can't remember. Brother told me about mum's  condition solemnly. Turns out, though she was in a stable condition, she still needed to undergo treatment. And if the latest treatment did not go well, mum would need to undergo an extremely expensive and difficult treatment. 

I "shocked" awake, and found myself on the verge of tears. I lay in bed for a few moments to gather my thoughts, to let the traumatising images and thoughts sink in and fade away.

"Cancer no more... Cancer no more..." I heard myself saying mentally. I closed my eyes and hugged the teddy bear mum gave me.  "Cancer no more..."

6.50am. Ten minutes before the alarm went off.

Dream: mum...

In that twilight between sleep and being awake, I saw mum vomiting... She was in agony and vomiting.

Horrible, horrible dream.

I woke up and broke out in sweat and panted. 

I'm all alone. Crying all alone now...

Cuckoo's nest

The session ended and we parted ways. There were ten of us in the beginning, all from different walks of life, all brought together by the most human experience of loss and grief. Before we parted, we embraced one another by the door and told one another to be strong before we braved the world outside.

I flew over the cuckoo's nest, and what a long, difficult process it has been. I flew over the cuckoo's nest, and I feel I have come a little further than before.

Cuckoos do not actually build nests. They lay their eggs in the nests of other birds for other birds to incubate. How out of place, a fraud perhaps. How the little cuckoos will grow up in a nest with other strange birds and feel so estranged and different from the rest.

I flew over the cuckoo's nest and now understand "you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy".

“That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me them; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted.”
— Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“I been away a long time.”

Emotional

When is it really over? When did it all end without me knowing? No amount of tears, no amount of pouring out my sorrows and feelings seems to have any effect or elicit any response from the ex. 

How pitiful I was, how foolish I was making myself vulnerable in front of someone again. What did I expect? That things will be like in my dreams and fantasies, that one day someone will turn around and tell me how much I mean to the person and how for as long as I live I will never have to suffer loneliness or feel this unbearable void inside again? 

Am I too sentimental? Too emotional and too attached to the past? I wonder how one could let go so easily. He says he has his way of dealing with things, says he lives every day thinking about me and how things could be. But can I believe that? Can anyone believe when someone chooses one person over another? 

I am tired. So tired from this all. I am so tired of broken dreams, broken promises and being hurt again and again...

I am so tired of sitting alone and crying... Tired of being abandoned

Self reliance

I will be strong. I will be independent. I will not allow myself to be fragile or weak or vulnerable. Be brave I must be, be defensive if I must, but I deserve to have the time and space to recover, I deserve  to have my feelings, ill or bad, turbulent or sad, recognised. 

One day I will stop crying. One day I will feel less empty. One day I'll stand up and be able to say: I survived. I survived and am so glad, so fortunate to be alive.

 

Deep void

Friday night, there's a deep, deep void inside. Finished crying now, my eyes are sore, my mind a daze. I'm an outright mess again...

Earlier today, my uncle called me to ask about my plans to commemorate my mother's passing. I have no real plans. I don't even know where I am going to stay. I don't know how I will get through it all. He wants to attend, as does mum's other siblings. There will be many people. I don't know how I will cope with it all.

One more month from now... One more month and mum will have been gone for a year. I have not heard her voice in almost a year. I have not touched her in almost a year. I have not seen her smile in almost a year.

My god... how have I been so troubled, so very burdened with sadness and heaviness for these past eleven months. Her birthday, Mother's Day, then the loss of my dear (soft animal) companion... Things have been dramatically declining. And I cannot seem to get out of it.

Who sees my sadness? Who sees and feels this deep void? With whom can I share these feelings and not feel like I'm burdening that person?

I need help. I cannot just sit and cry and cry...

Long weekend

Woke up today and feel very down. Nervous. Anxious in fact. The ex is coming to town. Why should him being here affect me so? 

It's because of expectations, of fear of rejection and disappointments. It's because he has the ability to make me feel like the worse and most unwanted person in the world, and the ability to make me believe and hold onto hope of something beautiful and sweet. I get so fragile and hurt because of him.

Before, whenever he used to visit he would stay with me, we'd do a lot together. Yesterday I asked him when he's arriving and where he's staying. He sounded  uncomfortable, said he was arriving late and going to another friend's place to stay. He said it would be late to get to my place. Where he said he purportedly is going stay is even further away. 

I'm guessing he doesn't want to see me, will only see me when it's convenient for him. He told me before his visits here are for "fun".

I guess I'm not fun. I'm guessing he's here because of someone else, and I'm no longer that someone. It's like that dream I had a few days ago. It's frightening. It makes me so sad, so broken, as if I need any more hurt, any more confusion. 

It just hurts a lot, and I don't think he realises why. It feels like for him it's all fine and dandy between us, when a year ago he was all over me and telling me how much he loves me and wants to be with me. And now? He calls me every day, gives me the impression as if everything were back to normal again. But no, nothing is ever the same. Not for me...

I wish I did not feel this way... I wish I had clarity, wish I could free myself from feeling and be like my ex and just move on, be merry and pretend nothing ever happened, pretend as if nothing ever was said of felt. 

It's going to be a long, long weekend...

Dream: the ex

A nightmare. It's irrational, I know. But it fills me with dread and fear, insecurity and trembles. 

I saw my ex in the dream. He was shouting at me, making fun, laughing at me. I felt like such a fool. A fool to be hanging on, to be clinging on to hope still, two years now after he suddenly broke up with me, one year now after he told me how much he wants to be with me, and where is he now? 

In the dream he was not laughing at me alone. The boy he is so infatuated with, the reason why he has been unable to let go, why our friendship has suffered and deteriorated so much over the past two years, was there next to him. Both were laughing at me, laughing at this fool who believes in true love, who is too foolish to see that other people can and do move on quickly. 

I woke up gasping for breath, almost on the verge of tears. My phone vibrated. It was him, the ex, telling me he got me even more sponsorship for a charity ride I am doing in early July. 

I think I know what the trigger of the dream may be. He is coming to visit this weekend. Every time he visits it feels "off", feels awkward when he wants to spend time with me. Time and time again, I have been left so hurt while he drops by for a visit and quickly must dash off elsewhere. Of course I don't, I shouldn't, expect him to spend all his time with me, but you know how it feels to be unwanted? To feel like someone is visiting you or hanging around with you just because they feel pity and feel like they should spend time with you? Perhaps to him visiting his old hometown is all fun and great, but for me it just conjures up unpleasant memories of abandonment, of being told one thing and see him do the complete opposite, of being warned time and time again about how I should move on and be wary of him, yet being unable (or perhaps unwilling?) to detach myself from him.

It feels like crap, it debases my value, it makes me feel me wanting, longing deep down inside. 

A foolish, one-sided, desperate desire for love and affection from someone who does not realise, does not see how deeply he affects me still.

PHX-PHL

PHX-PHL

130513.0013

There is a disturbing voice of discontent inside my head. Flying home now after almost a week away. First it began with a stressful exam, then several days on the road. The Grand Canyon was inspiring, majestic and so amazingly beautiful, and I had many hours of bicycling which always does wonders for my body and mind. 

But the chatter, the discontents and frustrations are returning. Back to my life in Montreal, back to the people I do not really wish to see, because seeing them I must make small talk and work so hard to avoid talking about my feelings-- something they rather would not want to hear, something they pretend to act as if is already long buried and over and done with. 

Is it Mother's Day that's causing me to feel so upset and discontented? Is it the message from someone wishing me happy Mother's Day when they fully know I don't have a mother any more? Or is it seeing a daughter take her mother by the hand and walking with her along a trail by the Grand Canyon that made me so emotional and fatigued?

I thought going away would help me clear my mind, I imagined some sun ( maybe a bit too much, as my arm got sunburnt...) would help me heal a little bit, but for some reason I'm feeling much worse... Much worse. To top it off, I seem to have lost a stuffed monkey who has been my traveling companion for the last four, almost five, years, who was there throughout the difficult and happy times with mum. 

I can't describe it. Somehow, my mind just wandered back to a year ago. my mum lay there slowly dying. how painful that was to watch, how painful that was to bear. And in the midst of it all, my ex was there on the side giving me false hopes and expectations, playing with my feelings and my life even, as he wrestled with his own relationship woes and indecisiveness. My mum dying, an yet I had to keep myself together, I  kept myself together by allowing myself to believe someone is waiting for me, is going to help me get through this all. I kept myself from crying because I told mum not to worry, because someone would be there for me. But where is that person? Who is that person? 

A year later, mum is gone. A year later, the person I shared such a solid and trusting friendship and hopes of a lasting relationship with has somehow become a distant acquaintance (it feels like...). And he does not seem to see it, he does not seem to see how things have affected me so and continues to haunt and hurt me still. I have no relationship of significance now, no one I truly feel comfortable talking to, no one I truly feel I can trust and I can really tell everything to... Look at me, sad, sad me lamenting my life and still discontented after so many days out in nature. Ungrateful, unappreciative little sod I am...

Standing there on the edge of the canyon at various instances in the last few days, this urge came to me. To want to jump... To want to plummet to my death, to experience those few moments of flying through the air before everything ends... What has gotten into me? How did I become so wary of life, how did I lose the spark of life and joy I had and took for granted? How have I become or allowed myself to be so dark? 

I am hurting deep down inside... 

I miss mum deeply, sorely... And what a painful week this has been with mum's birthday and Mother's Day so close to one another. I truly am struggling... 

I miss having affection, being hugged and comforted, I miss so much having someone close and intimate whom I could confide in, who would listen, just listen to me and try to understand, and just recognise how deep I have sunk, and how. 

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Forty minutes or so till landing. In fact I just felt the plane adjust downward a little. The day is brightening, a day beginning. 

It has been a horrible flight, worse in recent memory. Since I left the arid environment of the Grand Canyon, I've been feeling so parched. It didn't help that on te one and a half hour shuttle bus ride from the canyon to Flagstaff airport, at the behest of an elderly couple, the air con was switched completely off. The air was stuffy and heat unbearable. And my throat feels so dry, so irritated. 

Flying doesn't cure dryness. And I'm so afraid of drinking too much because of the need to go to the washroom. In fact, I've had to go twice writhing four hours, which is bothersome since the cramped, terribly cramped seats means the two people next must get up in order for me to get out (as always I have the window seat). And I don't know what's wrong with me, but the past few days I've been extremely gassy and feeling very bloated for some reason...

Flying seems to have, at least on this flight, lost its novelty. I can't wait to get out of the plane, to get off and stretch. But there's another flight to go, and I'm so exhausted from being unable to sleep. I can't wait to collapse in my bed. And in the emotional state of mind I am in, I may even just cry when I get home and lie down in my own bed...

Yavapai Point

Sunrise, Yavapai Point, Mother's Day. 

Sitting on stone-cold boulders lining the edge of a cliff that drops several hundred meters down into the canyon. The birds are waking up and starting to play with the morning sun. The air is warming up, the whole world is stirring and warming up, the deep canyon is slowly, slowly unveiling its rugged beauty as a curtain of light is slowly lifted from the darkness below. 

An emptiness fills me, filling the corners of my eyes with tears. Before, at moments like this, surrounded by such beauty, such serenity, I would grab my phone and call home all excited and giddy like a child, mother's child, and tell mum all about it... 

Mum is somewhere now, I cannot see her, cannot speak to to, cannot touch her, yet her presence is all around me, inside of me. Mum is in the canyon, in the shadow of tree that shields me from the glaring ray of the sun, in the little bird that is hopping a meter or so in front of me, in the warmth and brightness of the sun that is slowly rising, rising over the hills, over the darkness and abyss. 

Happy Mother's Day...

Mother's Day eve

An ad came on the tv. Kids talking about their mothers. Who gives the biggest hugs? Who snuggles the best? Who loves me most of all? "Mom!" The kids shouted in unison. 

"Happy Mother's Day! Mom's are best!" Announced a voice over.

My heart sank, my throat gasped for breath. I cried there and then.