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Mariane Calazan photographed by Mar + Vin for Emannuelle Junqueira

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Photo by vika_pusto

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“I know someday I’ll feel better but it will never change the fact that I’ll always miss you.”

— 3 am thoughts (via suspend)

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Dreams

It’s always been the same dream for the past three months. I dream that I am in a room with him. I dream that I am longing for him and looking at him with hope and desperation. His face is filled with hurt and regret but disdain at the same time. Like he didn’t want to be there but was forced to. Out of obligation. His gaze would often wander away from me. In fact, I don’t remember when he’s ever looked at me. He’s always looked at the distance and yearning for something else. Someone else. Just not me.

I tell myself everyday that I want to go to bed and not dream of him. Sometimes I get lucky and wake up in the middle of the night thankful that I hadn’t dreamt of him yet. But it’s that moment when I go back to sleep that the dream creeps in again in some way or form. Either way, it leaves me constantly unsatisfied, looking for answers and yearning for the possibility of what if.

In these dreams I always ask him why he did this to me and how he could do this to me. As if I want some sort of closure. As if him giving me an answer will fix everything. It’s always the same reply from him. Nothing. It’s just a look of sorry quickly followed by irritability. As if he just didn’t want to be there anymore and was stuck in this dream with me.

In these dreams after I have yelled at him and demanded answers for how he treated me towards the end of our relationship, I find myself crying as if I feel guilty for doing this to him. For pressuriing him to give me an answer when his answer is simply that he doesn’t want to be with me anymore. So I cry my heart out yearning for his touch, for the warmth on his face to come back like it did during the first part of our relationship when his eyes would light up the minute I entered a room. I yearn for him to change his mind and want me back but I find myself pining for the attention of a man who wouldn’t give it to me.

He would be staring out into the distance. Either looking for something else but my mind would always tell me in this dream, he’s looking at someone. Another woman. Not you.

I just want these nightmares to end. I just want my life back.

It’s been three months. Why hasn’t anything changed?

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Day 26/27: Festivities

I haven’t felt like writing. It feels forced now because I’ve gotten used to this habit of doing it. I feel like I no longer have to project my feelings of hurt when I am healing and recovering. Perhaps that was the whole point of writing in the first place. It will be my 29th birthday in 5 days and I can’t help but wonder if he is going to text me to say “Happy birthday”. 

I don’t know why those small sentiments go a long way for me but they do. My family knows how much I love a celebration and have always indulged and made me feel special. Every single year without fail. I’ve never had a quiet birthday. I love the attention too. I love being spoiled with love and joy and the excitement of presents. I don’t know if that’s because I usually love the spotlight but on my bday it gives me more purpose to enjoy it or because I’m just a generally happy person that enjoys the idea of a good gathering and the love that radiates from my family and friends.

I don’t feel like writing anymore. I think the pleasure that I get from it is slowly fading and the release that I felt when I first did it isn’t pertinent with my current mental state anymore. Maybe it’s a part of the process of grieving after a break up but my mind is set on setting out to become the best version of myself and find my individuality. It’s almost as if I’m looking forward to the promise of a bright happening that is yet to come and when it does, it’s going to be nothing short of phenomenal. It’s an instinct I somehow can’t seem to shake off even though for the most part, I’m usually skeptical about good things.

Perhaps the science behind it makes sense. A sinusoidal curve of happy and sad. When he left, I was at the lowest low I probably ever felt in my life. I remember not being able to eat because it gave me no desire to. I had constant thoughts of nothing, mostly a feeling of death, as if everything in the world was wilting and I just wanted to die along with it. Rotten, fading and wilting in a slow process and I was surrounded by flames , embers drizzling above me. So I want to trust this wave to pick up as it is right now and then peak except, this time, it would probably be my highest peak. I anticipate that. I live for that. 

But for the moment, I’m enjoying the ride upwards.

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source

shesmidas

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Day 25: Europe/ USA

“How are you meeting these boys?”, my doctor asked. “Online”, I said. “Ah, you serious? Don’t go online. Only people who are desperate go online. The right person always presents themselves to you at a very unexpected situation. It’s a bit more natural that way”. I didn’t entirely agree with him. We live in a very online era where almost everything takes place online, including, unfortunately, finding a good relationship. I think he was just trying to tell me to wait before getting back into the dating scene again. In all honesty, I wasn’t and I don’t know how I gave him that impression. I was just there to get a letter which would allow me to stay temporarily at my parents through the second round of lockdown. My GP is a funny man. He’s hilarious, very intelligent and religious. He would somehow always bring up religion to explain why we should feel certainly about life but not in an overtly manner. It would be more centred around the purpose of life, happiness and a human’s constant search for it. He had a guest student sitting in the clinic with him but it didn’t stop him from openly expressing his religious sentiments. He told his student that I was a young successful female setting off on a great career and constantly worried about a future I can’t control. “Look at her. She’s attractive (pull your mask down), young and bright and still suffers from low self-esteem. You have to fix that”, he said to this student before giving me a stern nod.

I don’t know why I’ve heard this so often lately from so many strangers around me. I’m unsure about whether it’s making me feel better or just causing more anxiety for me because I’ve given them this impression of myself that I now have to live up to. I felt pretty down yesterday and even though I had a mountain of work to get through, I kept at my own pace and mostly just looked up records I wanted to buy. 

I used to feel so happy and blithe and the smallest, most insignificant things would excite me. I recall my trip in Europe last year. I had a great time but it wasn’t good enough. I was in constant search for that bang that made my trip and never found it. Perhaps I was anxious about this relationship I had just started a month ago with him and was anxious about how it would come together after our long period of time apart. This time last year, he threw me a “surprise birthday”. When D told me, in all jealousy, that he was doing something nice for me, I remember that feeling of warmth I then felt. He was so infatuated by me then. Many people are when they first meet me. Force of nature as I’ve been described. I didn’t want to sit in that nostalgia though. I had to remind myself that he picked up a girl in a bar in NYC while we were still talking to each other everyday on the phone or texting. While he kept saying he couldn’t wait to see me and I was building up on the anticipation of seeing him too. I was so excited, yet nervous about whether we would have lost the spark. Perhaps that’s why I was not entirely happy with my trip to Europe. The last international trip I would now make in a while. He had picked up a girl in a bar and I do not know what eventuated, All I know is that half a year later, I found out he was liking her pictures and stories on Instagram. “Nothing happened”, he told me, “we had a mutual friend”. They didn’t. He started off saying they were in China together and then corrected himself when I said no you weren’t, even though I had no idea at all. I still believed him because I wanted to. How could I not? I loved him so much. I don’t even care for the truth anymore. I was a fool. He took me for one too.

I find it harder each day to look back fondly on our good times together. It could well be associated with me feeling down and unsure. It’s not because I’m entirely consumed in sadness but also because I am constantly searching for what is wrong with me and that always leaves me searching. Searching for how to fix myself to become a version of me I can fall in love with.

“Pick up your head Queen, your crown is falling”. 

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Hello gorgeous (photo by gnd7)

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Day 24: Record players

Isolation has been tough on a lot of people. Not me. I’ve enjoyed reconnecting with my family and friends in bursts while finally being forced to make time for myself and do something just for me. I started playing the uke and have gotten progressively better with each day. It’s almost an obsession with perfecting it. 

I would always claim that as a scientist, I cannot just accept an explanation without an answer that justifies why the explanation was made in the first place. “Close the loop”, as the engineer in me would try and justify. Unfortunately for me, life is not a science. Life is a mixture of very abstract things that I have understood to just get used to. Understanding and exploring what the right side of my brain can do. To explain things without logic, a pattern, numbers and calculations. 

Maybe that’s why isolation hasn’t been so tough for me. When we had our first wave, I thought about how lucky I was to spend it with the man I loved. It would be crazy to not be able to spend it with your partner. Right? And in all honesty, it was great. That’s probably why that should have been a problem in hindsight. I would have known better than to be led on with someone who had no intention of carrying on a journey without me. But with this second round of isolation without him, I’ve been more occupied than ever. Not bound by what he wants to do but what I can do instead. It’s mostly involved working late hours, working out, playing my instrument, chatting with friends on the phone and reading. A lot of reading. I’m so caught up in my “non-routine, routine” that sometimes, I even forget to eat. But this doesn’t bother me too much. It makes me too tired to care and think about anything else.

And so through isolation, I give myself some time to reflect on the choices I’d made in my life. I would reflect on our past relationship and his behaviour in small bursts. Perhaps we didn’t make out on the couch as much as I thought we did. We didn’t have long and meaningful conversations about life and the future. He didn’t always want to love me or hold me close. I wanted to. Did I really blind myself with the idea that I was finally in this perfect relationship that I had waited all my life for? That I’d met so many guys only to finally meet James? No. I finally knew for the first time what a relationship should feel like when two of you have crossed paths and landed on the same road and walked on it together for a long time. I lost him halfway through, but I dragged on, carrying his shadow of doubts and uncertainties and unfortunately for me, lies. I was walking with his shadow for a while before I realised I had lost him a long time ago and he was already on a different road. The problem is, I find myself constantly at the same intersection. What can I change about myself so I don’t end up on the same path? Where am I going wrong?

I’d just gotten off a video call with PJ where he intensely went through a full tutorial on how to perfect my strumming on the uke. Whilst I left that conversation bright and accomplished, this dark wave hit me so unprecedently.  Everyday it gets easier. To forget that I loved and lost. To forget that he left me when I thought things were better than they had ever been. But some days it’s really hard. Monday was really hard. I had a sob into my pillow for the first time in two weeks. Maybe because this overwhelming depth of sadness just came over me like a wave, swallowing and engulfing any positivity around me. 

“I want a record player for my birthday. Or just give me cash I’ll buy one”, I told my sister. “You’re joking? how come? so random”.

Probably. I don’t really know why.

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lyrics: Bon Iver//Skinny Love

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by Livia Fălcaru

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Day 23: High Fidelity

Sunday was good. I’ve made it a habit to wake up everyday, brush my hair and get into my workout clothes so I can be pumped and ready to do a workout when I have a spare hour. It gives me a sense of gratitude to look in the mirror and appreciate my body for what it is. It keeps me motivated to stay healthy and it gives me a bit of purpose for the day.

“What are you doing on Wednesday?” ,”I guess I’m seeing you”, he said as we said goodbye. My housemate said she was going to come back home today and stay on for the rest of the year. I was disappointed. I was just getting used to the house to myself. I didn’t let the idea take over my day and so I drove to my parents and spent the next few hours clearing out the garage. I came across a box that I had tucked away under my bed when I lived with them that I suddenly found again in the pile of other boxes. They were gifts from my wedding five years ago and lots of cards wishing us the best and congratulating us. After reading one, I had no hesitation to throw out the rest without even reminiscing. It gave me a bit of perspective at the time. How words were so temporary and so uncertain. What people wrote to others to share their happiness with them at that moment. Words that were not true anymore or didn't hold any value anymore. I wonder if James had thrown away the cards I wrote to him. For Christmas when I first realised I had intimate feelings for him or during his birthday when I was settling into the idea of loving him. It doesn’t matter. They were just words. They probably are just words to him now. 

I also found a love letter from my ex-husband when he had first sent me a gift, in the midst of all the cleaning. “Dearest, No one has loved you more than I have and no one will as much as I do and will want to. I have a lifetime to prove that and that’s all I will continue to do. I cannot wait so spend the rest of my life with you. Sincerely and with all my love, F”. I showed it to my mum. We both sighed. “He was a good guy”. “I know, he was always so sincere and honest”. We hadn’t even met each other yet by that point and were only 3 months into our “relationship” where we had only spent hours chatting and calling each other. But he was so sure then.

See? Words have no real meaning. Even though he ended things with me eventually, I know he did it with a broken heart and loved me for months following that. I’m glad he did. I realise now what I realised even then, it takes a lot for me to love someone sincerely. And for good reason. Look at what six months of loving James did to me?

And that’s when I watched high fidelity- the series. I literally cried through every episode. It was like someone had written a story about my life. It starts with a scene where Rob says to her partner who is now leaving her, asking him to stay one more night. Just like I did. She then asked him to remember that when things got bad, they would reflect on this one situation from when they first met and remind themselves to not ever be in that situation again. It’s what Mac said back to Rob that had me first bawling. “I remember, I just can't remember what that felt like”. 

I would watch this mini series all over again to feel what Rob felt as she lost who she thought was the love of her life. Her top 5 heartbreaks as she remembered it. I loved that they never revealed why they broke up. Almost as if there was no real reason to explain how you went from lovers to strangers. She tries to reconnect with him after a year and did the exact same thing I did. Get emotional and ask him why it went wrong. It didn’t end well just like it didn’t when I reached out to James.

Mum walked into my room to ask me how I felt. Asked me to place my trust in Him and she said that she’s got this intuition. An intuition about something great happening to me soon and that she feels it so strongly. I smiled at her and slowly dozed off to the playlist from high fidelity. 

I think I want to buy a record player!

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Day 22/23: Weekends

It’s officially been four Fridays since I last saw him. Four Fridays since I left his house distraught, screaming, crying, wailing and incredibly hurt. It’s like my body had received a sudden shock to its system. As if I had a panic attack. I remember my hands shaking when I picked up his phone as If I knew I was going to find out something I didn’t want to. I remember sitting in my car unable to start it. Unable to move. For a minute, unable to breathe. I just replayed the image over and over in my head about what I had just seen. I replayed his reaction to what I had just seen. I heard his voice call out to me suddenly. “Hana. Please be safe. I’ll call you later”. I couldn’t even look at his face. He walked to the train station as he headed for work as though nothing had just happened. He was good at doing that. Good at segregating his work from his personal life he said. You should learn to compartmentalise he said. It was almost unnatural. Almost inhuman to not let your feelings affect your current state of mind, subsequently affecting the part of your brain that does the thinking and acting.

The days have definitely gotten better. “Go do something for yourself. Be with your family”, he said to me when we last corresponded. The nerve he had to even say that to me. As if I had spent all my hours moping about him and unable to function with life. The days have definitely gotten better. I don’t check his WhatsApp. I don’t care. As cold as that message was, which to me implied that he was doing exactly that, I couldn’t help but wonder why he had shut himself out of this relationship so fast and so forward.

I spend my weekends at Port where I have a whole house to myself. I sit on the couch where we used to once sit and cuddle. We would kiss for a bit before he’d get annoyed at me for not paying attention to the movie. And I would laugh and try to kiss him again just to annoy him but also more, out of love. The innocence of that comment. The innocence of my complete trust in him. Unaware that there was a storm brewing in his head. Completely blindsided by his care and the comfort in starting and ending my day with him. It would be a blatant lie on his part if he ever tried to tell himself that he didn’t think that too. As much as I could never read his mind, we rely on our senses to guide our responses. Every sense I felt from him only came from a good place. But I spend my evenings in that house on the weekends trying to erase every memory of him. I cooked a curry even though I didn’t want one and it reminded me of him, but not in a way that made my heart ache.

“People always try to be honest. But they also don’t want to hurt your feelings so they have to find a way to soften that blow. So they prolong something they shouldn't. Like when I call someone to make a sale, they don’t want to reject me straight away. So they ask me to give them a call later. Or they avoid my call when I try to ring them again. It’s almost as if they’re struggling with being honest and being nice. You can’t take that so personally”, he said to me as we talked about our past relationships and things that shaped our lives. I looked at him and nodded in sadness. “I guess you’re right. But you’re comparing the care a stranger has for another stranger to the love someone has for their significant other. You just don’t lie in a relationship. You try and be as honest as you always can”. I had a wonderful evening with him. We just talked. I wondered when James and I had ever spoken for a very long time with nothing to look forward to in the end but comfort in our own stories. He was on my mind alright. Not in the copious amounts of ways he thought he was but definitely in certain moments. This was one of those moments. 

My friends check up on me every so often. This time it was Z. She asked me what the situation was. I told her that I was only waiting for him to tell me he was completely out compared to when he was half in and half out. I couldn’t chase him anymore. I couldn’t fight for someone who didn’t want me. I was willing to fight only if he thought he wanted it too. “Do you think he thinks about me sometimes?”, “No, he probably doesn’t. He initiated the break up so I’m going to say probably not”. I knew she was wrong. She had to be. We did share something so special. Just not something that was forever.

Forever. I hate that word now. “I don’t see us as a forever thing”. Then why the fuck did we carry this relationship on pretense? And for one whole year?I thought we were forever because you made it seem like it was meant to be forever. I should have left when I first told you I would in January.

I haven’t taken my antidepressants in two days. I don’t feel the need to anymore. I’ve felt pretty down as a result of it but it’s something I’m fighting my brain against. I don’t listen to sad songs anymore. I don’t spend my days pondering about a future without him in the picture. Everything happens for a reason and you learn a lesson from your experiences. I guess. I’m just frustrated that it cost me a year of my time and I wonder what I learnt from this.

I still love you. But I think I love the idea of you more.

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These are the days that must happen to you.

Walt Whitman (via bnmxfld)