the reason

Decided to get the rest of the week off to get away from work. The past year has not been a good one, but I'll make it through. Glancing at the screen, I then realised what date it was today. What a coincidence.

Going through my blog posts, I found this sitting unpublished among my drafts.

3/8/2009
three: our 12-year-plan

It's 3rd August today.

Day by day, three years passed by before we realised it. To say it hasn't been the easiest three years is a severe understatement, but while others around us fall and break apart, we stood our ground and refused to give up.

We are not that different, you and I.

Probably thanks to the stubborn nature in us both. I guess among all the differences we have between us, and we realised we were very different indeed, at least that's something we share. Which gave us much reasons to clash heads as well. Nothing like a some sparks to keep a relationship alive? Haha ..

It takes no time to fall in love,
but it takes years to know what love is.

How true. Even after all this time, I wouldn't dare to say I know what love is, or even how to love.Three years on, we still learned something new about each other every day. But I know someone who will teach me that.

--

Much has changed since this day years ago. I have changed, admittedly. I'm legally a doctor now, fixing patients' hearts, patching them up so they would work again.

Somewhere along the way, I also broke a heart, the one that I should have given my life to protect. Heck, I don't even remember how many years it's been without checking (5 years, really?). It's like a part of me died along with the memories, left behind and forgotten. Or buried somewhere deep along with the guilt I felt and pain I caused.

I still have not given a reason for what I did, nor have I asked for forgiveness. Truth is, I didn't even understand why at the time, although in hindsight more than a year on, I'm still not sure if I did the right thing. All I know is my mind was clouded and my vision was blurred, all I could see was the means to an end.

Nothing would justify the means, and sorry would never be enough. But perhaps the least I could do was to give a reason. Or try to explain what was going on on my side.

Way back in time, I recalled being a naive 20-year-old with no life experience whatsoever. I didn't know what that four-letter word means, and how it can lift you up to the clouds, or make you crash into the deepest pits. I still count myself extremely lucky to have what I had for my first (and only) relationship, there are countless ways I can imagine it being worse with anyone else. So much worse.

But like many naive 20-year-olds, I did the wrong thing. I fell into the traps of naiveity of rushing head-first without thinking of the consequences. Within days, I'm in a relationship. Within months I was drunk with this thing called 'love'. Less than a year, I broke his heart. A few more years, we're apart.

--

Some time before the end, I began to doubt many things. Of how it would work out, of whether this was what I wanted. But most of all, I began to doubt if that fighting against the odds was the best for both of us. If that was the best for me. I never voiced it, thinking it will come to pass. I pretended nothing was wrong for so long, while the doubts slowly grew in my heart.

Eventually they reached a point of no return, down the slippery hill of hopelessness.

Nothing I do would contain the doubts, nothing would make them go away. It became an obsession, I would try to find reasons to justify, to consolidate them. I would imagine life without. I began living the life without. I lost sight of the future we had in mind, blinded to my own doings. I would convince myself that this is it, it's not working out.

And I gave up. On fighting for what little we still have.

The last few months I would dread having any conversations, fearing I would just do the unthinkable without really thinking it through or doing it properly. I had wanted to wait, to talk it through. But when it did happen unplanned, over a phone call thousands of miles apart, I broke. All hell break loose within me, I refused to listen, to reason, to hope. It hit me harder than I could have ever imagined, and I wasn't expecting it.

You tried to reach out to me, but I had already fallen. It was too late for you to do anything at that point, my fault for deluding you that everything had been fine up till then. I reached a place so dark I couldn't recognise myself. The solitude, it brings me to tears to even think of it.

And you stood by. I cursed you for trying to be there for me, for trying to salvage what's left. You reassured me, and I hated you for that.

And it took some time before I finally feel you giving up on me. Walked away from the mess I made without knowing what happened, why it happened. And I got the end I wanted, through means I had not anticipated.

I wanted me out of your life. You deserved better.

--

I suppose more than a year on, I can now look back and see the whole debacle a little clearer. What a cunt I was to you, what I made you go through. Might have been that lingering inferiority complex and self-doubts within which made me think what I thought, but that's still not a good reason. I did what I did, and it is the wrong thing.

There are many ways to better say it, but I guess this would be a start at least.

I'm sorry.

I could only hope that you're living a better life now, and someday meet the one for you.

And maybe someday I would have the courage to face you again, you introducing your other half to me with a big smile on your face.

Come that time, I would be smiling as well.