This wouldn't be the first time I tried this writing thing again. Only two years ago I was painfully loyal, checking boxes after each successful day having written a diary entry. Getting bruises and ink all over my fingers, rough and callused skin at the edge of my middle fingernail.
I write numbers everyday. Invoice numbers, purchase orders, customers' contact numbers. I'm not a numbers person; I can barely multiply single digits without losing my head. But words are always mine, and until now I believe I do not have blood but ink in my veins.
Two years ago I was in an entirely different state. I mean, I'm stuck in the same country with no means or intention to ever leave; but my mental state was different back then. I was unsure. I was a child despite being on the way to 22.
Maybe now I am still scared, but of better things. Back then I was afraid of disturbance in my own space. Of buses crashing into me when I was just standing at the sidewalk. Of lunatics attacking me while I'm minding my own business. Tiny ripples that I'd remember forever, even after they've long dispersed.
Now I am afraid of bigger things. Of crashing into stone instead of a soft bed designed to inhale my shape. Now I am afraid of cars swerving suddenly to the lane I'm on. But the fear could only come from the fact that I was out there in the first place. On a parachute, on pillion behind a new man.
I found a better man last year, albeit one who abused my affinity in the worst way a love could. He smokes, but it is the smell of cigarettes sticking to his skin and lips that I grew to love. Sometimes I think about the past, about a boy whose affection I grew to hate. I was the reason that he started smoking, during his days at Outram Park. He is why I wish I am the reason for somebody else to stop.
Next month would make it the ninth since we got together, since I found him. He found a best friend in me, as empty as I am, a void to fill his pent up emotions into. He had been lonely for the previous four years, left behind without explanations and missing thrice as many almosts. While there I was, chasing the same two impossibilities.
Somehow we found each other, even when we are completely different. Maybe the other sides of the spectrum, with his logic and my imagination. Different from whom we loved, five years ago for him and five years long for me. Even with our differing tastes in music and faith, we found comfort in the same marble table, the same lullaby that is his thirteenth floor flat, the same longing during hard days at work. Most of all, the same person: each other.
I got unbelievably lucky there. Maybe next I would find a better job, with better things to love. I would love colleagues who did their part instead of relying on me for every enquiry. I would love friends who spoke in English first and would never leave me out. I would love as an equal and not a superior.
In a way my relationships would correlate with my careers. Here I am now, with a man I treat as an equal. In no way have I belittled him or felt neglected, even after more than eight months. I've never been happier and healthier. For now I am not only content but genuinely happy.
At least, until I clock in tomorrow and remind myself of my newfound indifference for my job.
No comments:
Post a Comment