Today, I talked to Viv on Whatsapp, and the following is what happened.


I removed the name because I don't know if either of them would be comfortable with it. In any case, I read Viv's blogpost from last night, and it was so funny that I felt it spoke to me, because she'd said the same thing about my blogpost from yesterday, on Twitter.

Last night on Twitter, I had the support of Huda and Viv. Viv kept doing the areyoume.gif Tweet, and I think Viv, Huda and I are essentially the same person.

The three of us love books (in particular recently have a thing for Hunger Games), and we each have the Game of Thrones Direwolf tee. And we support Manchester United, and we are dirty-minded, and we watch the same kind of TV, and everything, but MOSTLY (above all those superficial reasons), we just have too many feelings. We do.

The thing that separates Viv from Huda and myself is only that she's Chinese and she would never be a #Minahbawahblok like H and I (not that she should want to HAHAHA). OH WAIT, and the fact that Huda and I both believe in God and Viv doesn't know if God exists, etc.

But anyway, I was speaking of feelings and so here goes. I read this today, but this is how I felt yesterday, before I got over it, so I should include this first. This is all from Viv's blog. The feelings are almost the same though. Not that I ever actually talked to Khalis about it. It's just what I figure would have transpired if I had.

my rational side:
this is all for the better. all the points she made are valid. we are very different people. we don't have many common interests. it will be a lopsided relationship and it will be unfair to me. we shouldn't start something that most likely won't end well, and might ruin the friendship we have now. better that she reject me now than let me try to make it work, and then have to reject me all over again. this is all for the better.

my other side:
fuck all rationalisation. there is nothing rational about my feelings. I know it's been confusing for her, and that she really did try to figure it out on her own. I know you can't force someone to feel something they don't. I know she tried.. but she didn't let me try. I'm a fixer, a goddamn fixer who keeps wanting to fix people even though it's not in my place to do so, even when they don't need fixing. I'm the one who needs fixing. I think I could make her happy. we're very different people, but I see how we're the same as well. I think I could make the differences work. I'm terrified of taking risks, but I am willing to take this one. I'm tired of being so passive and not having things work in my favour. so I did this, laid my heart bare and told her how I felt, and left the decision up to her. in the hands of another girl, my heart would've been crushed. she let me down in the gentlest way possible, and I guess I was lucky in that sense. or maybe not, because she was so goddamn rational about it all. because fuck all rationalisation. there is nothing rational about my feelings.

(I would just like to say I love how she started and ended her "other side" paragraph with the same things, for effect. I might have done the same thing sometime hahaha. :P)

Yesterday before going on a Tweet-spam, if I'd read this, I'd have said this succinctly summarised everything I wanted to say.

Once upon a time, I'd have done the same as Viv, would have fought for something, would have said the same things to someone I had romantic feelings for. Once upon a time, I actually did. I told Blob that I liked him, and even though the response wasn't positive, I fought for it like there was nothing to be lost.

I recognised that he was scared and very apprehensive, because he'd never thought of me as anything but a squad-mate, the vice president to his debates club, nothing more than a platonic friend, because I was not his type, because I was not even the "good girl" he could make his girlfriend and bring home to his parents.

I was exactly the opposite. I was bold, brash, loud, confident, and I'd just told him I liked him, even though there had been no sign of that in the 1.5 years we'd known each other. No sign at all. In fact, I don't even know how long I'd fallen for him before telling him. A week? That's just how I always am. "Strike while the iron is hot!" No?

Even though I wasn't what Blob was looking for, I knew I could make him happy, I knew I could be suitable for him, I knew we could be happy with each other. Even if only for a while. Even if one day it had to end, I really liked him and I wanted to be with him. For as long as I could.

He had no feelings for me initially, but I took the risk, and I was sweet and warm and flirty enough for him to decide "ah what the fuck! I shall take the path of least resistance and fall for her already" because in case you didn't know, if you put in enough effort, you can tempt anyone to like you, you just have to push their buttons. Everybody has buttons.

(It's called courtship, and traditionally males do it to approach girls, but I've never been one for tradition. And a tip: be shameless enough to ignore the fact that your first advances might not be reciprocated.)

I am telling you this because once upon a time, I was the one who believed enough and was filled with so much optimism and positivity that I could make someone fall in love with me as much as I was in love with them. I used to be willing to take the risk, in spite of the fact that Blob would never have chosen me otherwise.

But then we failed. Blob and I failed. What happened to the one month of December during which I sent him good night texts and took care to remember what he was doing, tend to his every need? It resulted in a failure. What happened to being each other's best friends and being rock-solid despite everything else in our lives fucking up? It resulted in a failure.

Everything, all my efforts, all his efforts, everything resulted in a failure. That's not to say that I didn't love him or I didn't love our relationship, because I did. But it was a failure because it ended.

So then came Khalis.

Here I quote from Viv's paragraph again, the underlined part, "I'm a fixer, a goddamn fixer who keeps wanting to fix people even though it's not in my place to do so, even when they don't need fixing. I'm the one who needs fixing." This struck me more than the other sentences did.

I've been emailing Huda about him (or I was, but I stop now), and in one email I said, "But I seem to be wanting to fix him and trying to resolve his issues which is so fucked up because I have so many of my own issues I can't deal with, so SARAH, don't distract yourself with problems of other people!"

And it's not that Khalis has a lot of issues or whatever, he just didn't trust me (which was a trust issue for me, because how do I get him to like me if he doesn't trust me??), and I desperately wanted him to. I wanted to be the one whom he could talk to about anything and everything. But I wasn't. Anyway, the reply I got from Huda to that sentence was:

"I think it's okay that you want to fix him. Sometimes fixing other people makes you feel like you can fix your own problems. I know that's how I feel sometimes. That's how I fix myself."

That struck home like nothing else. I think that was tier one of my realisation. That maybe I don't like him for who he is. Maybe he just represents a person, any guy, with issues, for me to fix. Maybe I just distract myself from my own issues with someone else's. And maybe now I know I can fix myself, without wanting to fix other people.

And then of course, there are the many things that separate and differentiate us. He is so musically and artistically inclined: he dances, drums, plays about 20 musical instruments, and he's generally very active whereas I am the opposite. I am inert, I like things like words and reading and watching TV and movies, and he doesn't even read. Whut.

One of the few things I'd say we have in common is drumming. But so what? A lot of people drum, or like the drums, or do it as a hobby, or professionally, or are taking lessons for it.

I don't know, one day, years ago, maybe I would have ignored all the differences, would have believed "opposites attract", would have fought so hard to make him like me, would have taken it as a challenge.

And then I wondered, what if that was it? What if I'm just one of those people rumoured to just love the chase? What if I wanted him precisely because I couldn't have him, because he was so fucking out of reach? Because I am one of those people in other areas, I love challenges, I cannot resist.

So many things slowly converged and showed me that I didn't see him for who he was. They are little things, but it's the little things that matter, no? I realised he remembers more than I do about whatever has happened. Last week he said the first time he'd met me, was when we watched Inception. I'd forgotten. I don't know how, I usually don't forget such things, but I had.

And then I recalled, even though I said in a recent blogpost that I'd never seen him with short hair, I HAVE. Last year in the January/February period, he had short hair. I just remembered because he had short hair during his dance performance which I went to watch with Han. But that didn't stick in my memory, either.

I can't even remember his current haircut. In the blogpost in which I said I'd never seen him with short hair, I described his haircut as something of an undercut with longer hair on one side than the other, then I saw him on Thursday and it was nothing like what I remembered (even though he swears he didn't cut it in the time since passed, but I don't know).

I DON'T KNOW who I was apparently in love with. I think I just loved being in love, and I didn't even see him for who he was. I don't know him very well, I don't know how or why I said I was so in love with him.

There are a thousand and one things that could be the reason behind why I got over him so easily last night. It was really that easy. It was like, 5 Tweets were angsty/whiny and suddenly I said, "I think I am over Khalis" and it was true. HAHAHA.

I don't know, it could be because it was the second time I was telling him and I'd learnt to block a lot of my feelings for him this time round, so it didn't sting as much (though, second-time rejection is as much or more of a humiliation than a first, but I'm thick-skinned enough).

It could be because I'd slowly been realising I wasn't considering nor treating him as a person in his own right. That I didn't pay attention to him, that I was always thinking about my own feelings about him, than who he actually was.

It could be because of the forbidden fruit theory: maybe I only liked that he was hard-to-get. Maybe I just wanted him because he didn't like or want me, and I wanted to stop. Could be the opposite, maybe I got over it so easily because I was bitter and hated wanting something that didn't want me. Could be because we are just too different with too few conciliatory aspects to connect us.

Could be because I might have grown a shell, a layer, a little more defensive than I used to be, a little more in need of protection. Maybe I've become scared. Maybe if you gave me the options between fight and flight, I'd choose flight because I'm not willing to risk getting hurt fighting for what I want. Maybe I recognise that it'd all culminate in a failure, so what is the point?

Given the choice, I think I just want friendship more than anything. Rarely do friendships end, but relationships end all the time. I want a true friendship, I want something that is much more resistant to failure than a relationship. I'd like Khalis to be there, to stick around for a long, long time, and maybe that is why I gave up on him as a romantic interest, because I don't want to have to miss him if anything goes wrong. Maybe I've learnt from my mistakes.

I don't know what the point of this post was. I really don't. I just have to set things straight at the end of everything. I need to see what I've done, see if it's justifiable, and have it laid out for other parties to judge too, whether everything is justified.

I just want to say, for one, good luck to Vivienne, whatever happens. I'm rooting for you, for both of you, and  I sincerely hope it provides you with happy feelings and things that make you feel happy instead of all that nonsense ridiculity both of us shared yesterday. I'm very proud of all the steps you've taken, and thank you for sharing your excessive feelings with me and letting me share mine. :)

For two, thank you to Huda for always being my online voice of reason, for virtual-hugging me in a thunderstorm even at 4am in the morning. I am going to email you right now, and I hope you stay here with me for a long time, because if anything, having you around provides me some sanity and safety (and needless to say, happiness). :)

And now, even though Viv doesn't like hugs, *GROUPHUG!*

Labels: musing and reminiscence