Reflections: Bangkok & the Personal

Back from the university's study trip broke, tired and with what looks like a kinky-sex-bruise on my left leg.

City Lights: Bangkok in the evening.

I miss the experience, the company and the shopping places in Bangkok so, so much. I miss my money too. 

Over dinner, CF was complaining about her travel buddy in Singapore, and theorising how travelling with a friend shows you the other side of your friend. 

It is a known fact that in one person there are multiple selves or rather, sides. The self you present in front of your close friends may not be the same self you present when facing your parents. Obviously.

But since travelling together requires you to see each other for a minimum of 20 hours per day, you cannot not let the other selves surface. It's only normal. 

I guess I really did pissed Manda off with my daily Skype sessions with the boyfriend. But I don't see what's wrong with talking to my boyfriend. It's my personal business and I don't see how it pisses people off. I don't exhibit to the world. I don't show my laptop screen around.  

Yes I do miss my boyfriend during the 9-day trip. I stayed in for just that one night because I wasn't feeling well. I wasn't that hyper about shopping in malls anyway, we have malls in KL too. I'm sorry if my stamina is weak. I'm sorry if I appeared a bore because I'm talking to my boyfriend.

I can multitask you know. Most girls can.

Bros before hoes. 

Boxing gloves in Jitti Muay Thai Gym.

A muay thai training session made me realise that I'm actually tough. Don't mess with me.

I can kick asses.

One step out of a romantic relationship and I realised how much I've lost and gained. I believe that when you agree to be someone's partner, you place a significant degree of trust, love and other important intangible things in the other's hands. This then forms a kind of emotional attachment that sort of binds the both of you together: when one is affected, the other is too, in varying degrees. The ending of such a liaison, which is a forceful breaking of this attachment, can never be clean.

As much as I would like to think (and pretend) that the break up was amiable, it wasn't. Since I was the one who initiated it, it's expected that the other party would be broken-hearted, hurt and angry. I take full responsibility, and blame. 

Pancake made from flour and banana, coated in condensed milk and cocoa powder.

He was as sweet as the banana pancakes drenched in condensed milk (and coated in cocoa powder) that I had in Bangkok, and will still be if we were still an item. He pampered me, spoiled me, treated me like a royalty for 2 good years. 

In those 2 good years I must have wasted at least a few months of his time: the realisation that marriage isn't something I want (as this point, as they all say, just this point of time and the future you'll never know yada yada yada), and even if it were the groom will not be him. Yet I stayed, for convenience's sake and that was the most terrible thing I did to him. Waited for the day he would further his studies in UK because then I shall be free the easy way, the excuse being that a long distance relationship doesn't work for me.

Oh well. 

Marble flower in Wat Arun.

I figured it's the only fair and good thing to do to break it off now, knowing that it will end soon anyway. What's more, I was actually entertaining the advances of another. Then I could go into my shameless flirtations without affecting him; then he could find a better girl and not be neglected. And I naively thought we could be friends. 

They say when you date someone you date their friends too. So when you break up with someone, it's almost inevitable that you lose some friends as well.  

2 years down the road, the journey, together so it's blatant that we know each other quite well. He said, he has always known that I was a free spirit, not meant to be tied down, not meant for commitment.

Perhaps I wasn't as affected as he is by the break up, but both of us still had to go through the same process of detaching, drawing lines, distancing. Him being quite an integral and frequent figure in the family (even Maxie is close to him), there is a kind of loss experienced on my side: an absence, a void. 

View from student accommodation in Mechai Bamboo School.

I found solace, or rather, solace found me. He came like the fleeting rain in the Malaysian August skies: gentle, unexpected, anticipated. They said he's my rebound. 

And then I moved on. Too fast. Too soon. A crime against myself became a crime against the ex and his friends. And I guess it was justifiable that he vented his anger by calling me names and framing me as what these names suggest. Perhaps. Maybe. Sometimes I felt indignant, sometimes I felt I deserved all these. It wasn't easy to ignore and go on with life since it involved friends.

Hurt me the way I hurt you. Make me bleed as much you have bled.