five years

  (I posted the entry below on Facebook on 10th October 2013 to mark the fifth anniversary of my relationship with ZM. It was meant to be a little surprise for ZM, with a little public flavour, since we have never been very public with our relationship when it first started. In a way, we have been through so much, and I just wanted to express how much he meant to me, in my own way.)

In my whole life, I always feared, most of all no longer being able to say "no".

Even as I wanted to marry you, I feared not being able to leave you. 

I feared the strength of my desire to be with you would weaken with our vows - where can desire roam in the place duty stays? 

I asked you, needled you, wanting to show that you had nothing to stand on - these promises of forever - what do they really bind? Our feet?

"What happens if I leave you?"

"I would be alone."

"Impossible."

"Any other relationship would be a diluted, sanitised version of this. I've put everything I've had into this - there's nothing left. If this does not work, nothing will work."

"This is it," He said, "This is it for me."

And, that, was why I married Him.

Consolidation

                                                                 Etsy: Illustrative Quotations


        It's been about seven months since I've started writing in this place and it's nice to see how much I've grown to love it. As the entries grow, I've decided to categorise some of the entries for ease of reference later:

a) Book
b) Europe
c) Food
d) Hoarder
e) Home & Decor
f) Quotations
g) Taiwan
h) Theatre
i) writings
j) Z & C
k) 我和她

    I'm not really sure how to make the tags appear on the blog (it-idiot) so I'll probably do consolidated entries every now and then. Finally, thank you for actually reading this space of mine. From the number of page views and geography of readers, it's more than likely we have never met in real life. But that's what I love the most about the written word - you write it and let it go. 

Z & C (5)

(i)

   This was ZM's first moment. I got it from his "journal" that he wrote in periodically in Holland:

"Traffic lights went against my favour, hence I decided not to follow gary, and that was when he bumped into the black junkie. And while cycling on a roundabout way, guess who I found. Lost and confused. A girl clad in purple with long hair and a black cap waiting for someone to come by. Crystal. She heaved a sigh of relief. I stopped in my tracks. Two confused and lost souls met. "

(ii) 

      All three of us had finally managed to get a bicycle each and started to cycle through the city centre. However, I wasn't used to the speed at which everyone cycled and actually hit my bicycle on one of the small stone pillars. I was cycling way back and ZM and G were in front. Later, ZM noticed that my bicycle was kind of funny. I told him that my bicycle pedal actually broke into half. 

    Later that day, we went canoeing in the Utrecht canals. I canoed with G, and ZM canoed with an extremely tall guy from Kazakhstan we had met on a city tour earlier. It was a huge group and kind of fun in the you are only young once way. At some points, when the canal was still, and the moon shone down, it seemed almost magical. Other times, when there were really tiny bridges, it was really a push of faith that we could actually make it through to the other side! 

 Much later that day, it was early dawn, I think, hours after we were all back in our apartments from the midnight canoeing, I heard rustling sounds outside. I looked out of the window and there was ZM bending down over my bicycle. 

   I laughed, "What are you doing? 

  ZM looked sheepish and said he was going to fix my bicycle pedal. He told me to go to sleep. 

  It was simultaneously embarrassing and insides-wanting-to-break-out hilarious. 

   That was the first moment for me. 

Z & C (4)

"I cannot fix on the hour, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun."

                                                                                      - Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen 

(i)

     It is too long ago. When I try to remember, I see a few golden moments shining out of the dustiness that seems to meld into each other. All the days that seemed so precious, has faded into oblivion, unnoticed, while we had continued to live on. It is almost as if the past never existed, if we don't remember it.

   It is like the words I told ZM when we left Holland to return to Singapore. I remember looking back at our compartments that pretended they were houses, all the things we had done in our last year, all the life we had lived, and feeling it disappearing already as the bus rode on. I had looked at ZM and told him, "Don't become a memory".


(ii)


    I have no sense of direction. When we arrived in Utrecht, we made our way by always returning back. Re-tracing our steps, as our paths get longer and longer and we slowly etched the route of the city centre in our veins.

   ZM promised me on the first day that he would always find me if I was lost. He was still only just a friend then, but there was a ball of thread unravelling. And if that ball of thread ran loose, he would be the one on the other end.

    We took a long while to set up our mobile plans, so we practically had no form of external communication except good old being physically present in the same space. What we will do would be to go knock on each other's windows.

   G, ZM and I had formed some form of routine for our meals - lunch and dinner together, and I insisted we would have one day (Wednesday) alone. The boys could meet if they want to - but I would go off and explore. It was nice, in the sense, that I could be a girl again, without feeling like I was dragging the boys into places they rather not be.

  There was one Wednesday when I came back rather late, but not too late since the sun practically sets by 5 pm, and ZM was not around. This was strange since we were going to have dinner together. So, I started preparing dinner anyway, since he would turn up sooner or later.

   He turned up rather late, sweating, and exhausted on his bike. He looked at me with mild anger. "Where were you?"

  "Here?"

  "I went to look for you," He said.

   I apologised and said I didn't know he did.

   He gave a look, "I left a note."

  "You did?" I frowned. "I didn't see one when I returned."

   "It's outside!" He insisted.

   He brought me outside and pointed.

   I laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

   He pointed to a small flowerpot with almost dried-up flowers. We were given a flower pot each from the supermarket because they were dying and they were going to throw them out.

  That was his flowerpot. His tiny flowerpot saying I was here and I've gone to look for you.

Z & C (3)

        I always remembered one of the first things ZM said when we had all said our goodbyes and entered the boarding area. There were three things he wanted to accomplish on Exchange: (i) See the Northern Lights, (ii) Go Ice-Fishing, and (iii) Go Surfing in Spain. I had a good laugh - not that the three things he wanted to do were funny, but perhaps it was his delivery, or the surprise, because that was the moment on when I started to think about what I wanted to do. 

    It was a reminder of the agency we have been given, that we have always had, but sacrificed on the altar of opportunity cost and dreamed gains. We had the agency to do anything - all we needed was time and the strength of will.


  

     We arrived in Utrecht in a flurry of excitement. There were a lot of places with impossible to pronounced names to go. To first pick up the keys for the apartments for ZM and me (we were neighbours), then accompany G to the suburbs where he had rented a room from a Nigerian online. I still remember ZM and I laughing about it - what if it was a scam? G was nervous as well, since it did sound too good to be true. But hindsight will let me tell you that it all turned out well and his landlord was a gregarious Nigerian who sold stuff at the tourist market in Amsterdam from his home village, and then sending money back. I loved these kinds of stories, I try to see the heart of it, behind all the money and middle-men exchanges.

    I also remember G losing his laptop when we had gotten down from the bus. And, that led us to run furiously with all our luggages to try and catch the bus. It all turned out well again because a fellow passenger had passed the laptop to the bus driver and the bus was going to drive back to the main terminal to return it to G. G was so relieved; and so were ZM and I. When you only know two people in a foreign land, it feels likes our fates are entwined - and any happiness or excitement is guiltily had when someone else cannot be happy. So luckily, everything went well, again and again, and we after settling one hundred and one administrative stuff, could tuck in for dinner.

    I made beef stew (in the days when I could still eat beef) with lots and lots and lots of wine (this was before I learned proportionality in cooking). At this point, I didn't even think about love. Loving anyone specifically. There was my whole life to unpack in my suitcase, and there was a whole life waiting for me outside. The air was cool and crisp, the trees were becoming completely yellow. There were too many variations of beauty outside to just stop at one.


   

Z & C (2)

"somewhere I never travelled, gladly beyond

           any experience, ..."

                                                                                         - E.E. Cummings 

       G & ZM were heading to Utrecht with me. All of us didn't know each other. We had friends in between, and had an awkward hello, all three of us, in the cafeteria. We didn't speak in person, thereafter. Leaving it to the numerous email chains to sort out the accommodation, the visa, and the air tickets. The question of "what kind of person are you" hung in the air, unanswered, deferred to after, after everything else, after it finally starts.

     When Y found out that ZM and I were heading to Utrecht, she was positively ecstatic. Despite our very different backgrounds and personality, we had both ended up with the same choice. Y enthused, "You are going to end up together."

    "We are going there together, but we are not going to be together."

   And there started the round-a-bout tongue twister game between Y and I, as we played with all the verbal permutations of how two people can be together but not be attached.

   I remember begging Y not to say the things she said to me to ZM (although I suspect she did), because it will be vastly awkward for two people, who have never met, to bear the huge weight of someone else's romantic expectation. It would be like a blind date, which will go on interminably for one year.

      Inevitably, something will fall, but not our hearts.


    And, so it went. Curiosity did form within me, since Y, close to my heart, thought we would like each other tremendously. But, I never took it seriously because one thing was always clear, ZM did not read. And, how could I love someone who did not read?

  
    As I write this now, I remember Y and I more than I remember ZM and I at this moment. For, ZM did not exist yet, only a figment of my imaginings at that point. I remember all the friends who so sweetly came to send me off. I remember Y coming for both of us - when she came, she excitedly pointed to a dot from far, "There's ZM." And, then she dropped her voice into a dramatic stage whisper, "His ex girlfriend came to send him off as well."

   I laughed, "That does puts a damper in your plans."

   "But you are better, " Y insisted.


   Y and I were closest before I left. We used to meet every week at the Children's Home and discuss the world's failings and feelings around us. She had this wonderful way of being profoundly distressed and moved by the world at the same time. Y, then, seemed always divided on whether to trust the world or believe in advance it was determined to disappoint.

   It didn't occur to me, all the things I would lose, before I went away. I thought it was just that - a journey away. Not a journey that I could not return from. It is only a few years later, looking back, that I slowly see all the intimacies we lose, when we become someone's else.

   "Come visit us if you can," I said as we hugged.

   "I will, and if you are not together by then, I will ask him why he has not fallen in love with you." 

Z & C (1)

All she knows is that someone fell, and that everything beautiful began after. 

                                                    - Everything Beautiful Began After  by Simon Van Booy 

         "Do you know ZM?" asked Y (also known as Peaches). She asked me that question often as we volunteered at the Children's Home for the first two years of our university life. ZM was the guy she knew who was in the same law school I was, and slowly she grew the idea that we should really know each other. 

       "No" was my first answer, my second answer as well as my third. But, she asked me often enough that I finally had an inkling of who was ZM. That vaguely chinese guy with big eyes in one of the lecture rows. To be sure, I asked, "Is he the guy that looks like kerokeropi?"

   Kerokeropi was a japanese cartoon character. A frog. She paused. Then laughed, "Yes. Yes, he does."

    That was it. Or, at least that's what I thought. But, Y told ZM that I thought he looked like kerokeropi. So, I became the girl that thought he looked like kerokeropi and he became the guy who looked like kerokeropi.

   Ever so often, she would ask if we spoke. Or met. Or said hello. The answer as always was no.

   It would always be no, I told her. As I could not fathom any reason for why we would speak or have to. Well, maybe at your wedding, I remember laughing.

     Y told me that she hoped we would meet, because ZM said he wanted an interesting girl for his girlfriend, and I was the most interesting girl she knew (haha). I remember telling her that wanting an interesting girl for a girlfriend is actually a very generic description - because don't we all fall in love with someone who interests us?

   And so it went, with nothing to connect us, but a whim or dogged fancy by Y. Y and I were ending our 2 year stint at the Children's Home. I had decided to go for exchange and so would be away for a year. I had picked a rather strange choice; I felt very strongly that I wanted to go to a place with a Civil Law System and definitely somewhere in Continental Europe. I chose Utrecht, in the end, because it was so whimsically beautiful from the pictures, and the Dutch spoke great English. It was such a random choice, that I had no idea who would choose to go there as well.

   A few months before we left, I realised that ZM had chosen to go there too.

   Unknownst to us, history was shifting beneath our feet.