November, 2003

I

am

so

bloody

confused

I was in love, once.

But it was so long ago, I can’t even remember if it was love, or if it was just something that came as close to love as anything else I’ve ever experienced before.

What I do remember is that for the brief while that it lasted, it felt great to know I could actually look out for someone without feeling guilty about it; I could care as much as my heart wanted to without every being questioned; I could call or talk for hours on end without ever needing to ask myself why. It was as if all my emotional inhibitions were taken away, and I was free to be me without judging myself for it.

Then, of course, the dysfunctional reality of things hit home – how ever well things were in our own world, they would never work in reality; how things were really doomed from the start anyway; and worst of all, how being apart and living in two different worlds change people.

The hardest part – watching the person change in front of you.. and watching them falling out of love with you. Suddenly realising you were no longer numero uno; that all being with them meant to you was frustration after frustration. At that point, I taught myself one of the hardest lessons ever: how to fall out of love, because remaining in love was no longer an option.

Making yourself fall out of love with someone is harder to deal with than actually having fallen out of love itself; constantly reminding yourself of the bad times and the reasons why things can, have and will go wrong instead of thinking about the memories that you want to keep. I have pushed the good memories out of my head so many times, I don’t think I remember the details any more. They are just vague, floating pictures of a time that I remember as being a lot less uncomplicated.

The good thing about being in a relationship is that you know there is someone there for you. That in the same way that person has first dibs on you, you too do on them. Knowing that they’d be the first person you’d call and you, them. And the fact that someone is.. well.. yours, and that you actually mean something to someone.

That feeling is good. But I don’t know if it’s good enough to make me risk wearing my heart on my sleeve ever again.

The best excuse I have for not updating would be the celebrations – it’s Eid and there is so much festivity, goodwill and joy that I have temporarily forgotten this blog which, thus far, features quite a bit in my daily schedule.

The fact of the matter is that Eid for me this year has been a bit of a damp squib. Don’t get me wrong, there was a lot planned and they were all successfully executed, as far as I was concerned. The takbir raya the night before, the open houses the next day – all credible efforts to bring the Malaysian raya spirit to this little nook of the North West.

But things failed to incite a mood of festivity within me. For the most part I felt as if I was going through the motions, and half of me wanted to just go back to the office to get some work done. I don’t know what it is… but I am beginning to have fears of turning into a Raya version of Scrooge. I don’t feel sad, I just feel.. indifferent. And between the two, I don’t know which is worse.

I rang a friend last night and it was refreshing, to a certain extent, to know that even in Malaysia, her celebrations weren’t all that happening either. Still doesn’t take me away from theorising why I feel this way, though.

Maybe it’s because my work is piling on my desk, begging to be cleared.
Maybe it’s because I am getting older.
Maybe it’s because I miss Ramadhan already.
Or maybe it’s because Hari Raya has always meant, to me, being with the people I care about the most. And being away from them dampens things.

I don’t know. But I probably need to look deep inside myself to figure out why a day of joy and celebration for Muslims everywhere failed to make me feel more than marginally happy.