You know I care

Why do you keep on insisting that I feel for you? Whatever for? I will never admit it, knowing how well you feel about it and how things stand. So why do you keep asking? Knowing clearly well that you don't want that to happen and if it did you would be dismayed by the inconvenience. And why do you keep implying while asking that you're deathly afraid of that happening. What purpose does it serve??? You're insulting me with every single time you do it and you're either really stupid or nursing some sadistic fantasy in doing so. You've already hurt me and insulted me enough. Falling for my friend when I was looking on was enough of a blow. And your behaviour that night, everything; the entire fiasco has reduced me to tears time and time again. Someone like you, you'd never know or understand what that pain feels like. You could never comprehend the depths to which that has hurt me and affected me and plunged me into an endless dilemma to which I see no end to. And yet I still hold on to you. You've wrecked me without even trying and you dare to call yourself a good person when everything you've done was to hurt me time and time again. Your play of innocence has worn off its charm and you know as well as I do that your every move seeks to hurt me and to undermine me and while you try to be nice and make amends or whatever, you're never actually doing it right. Are you really that stupid??? Or are you in denial. I hate people in denial. It's just a cowardly way to escape the truth for a little while and pretend you're innocent while you hurt the people around you. Yes I was a fool and I am a fool for falling for you. I've known that and I have accepted that long time ago. It was my own doing and it feels like I did not have a choice. You're here to teach me a lesson. But what lesson I've yet to figure out. You're here to teach me so far how much it can hurt, how low I can get, and to what depths my self esteem and self respect can sink to; beyond what I've ever imagined. I am both ashamed and chagrined at the fact that I feel so strangely for you. You cause me hurt. You've caused me so much hurt. And you continue to keep causing me hurt. While you entertain your fantasies of being a pure soul and innocent of any wrongdoing, your hands clean of any blood, at my expense. I want to be free. I want to shrug off the chains you've set around me and I want to be free of both myself and these cumbersome shackles of self doubt and inadequacy that I have around me. I want to stop feeling like I'm not good enough and yet still wanting desperately to get a hold of that... That dream. That dream that I can someday have the thing which I yearn for and not have it spurn me time and time again. To for once just not get slapped in the face every time for daring to try and to hope. You've shackled me to you and maybe this has to happen. Why??? To teach me hurt? To teach me how much a heart can bleed and every day when you love someone who doesn't love you back?? To then watch you willy nilly gander off to do whatever you so please while I sit there and hold my heart in my hands? And then to sit there and continue to laugh and smile and lie!!! And pretend that nothing is happening and nothing is wrong when you insult me, fall for my friend and announce to the world just how little you care for and think of me??? Why am I so stupid??? 

You know how much problems I am having with my self esteem. I would just really appreciate it if you didn't make it seem like that would be the worst thing in the world if I were to like you. Don't worry I know what you think of me and I understand your position on this very clearly. 

Questions on Fixation. Whatever for?

I've always been acutely aware of my own existence and questioned daily my purpose on this earth. Such awareness comes with two things. Fear and a constant inability to reconcile your place in this world. Especially when things get hard. 

I've been taken to thinking lately about my past relationship again and what it means to me. And I am struck by how much I am embarrassed by how I behaved when I was in that relationship. How spoiled how bratty. Has it changed me and affected me? No doubt. It probably has. But that is such a complicated cause and effect exercise that I cannot figure out how exactly. If nothing else it showed me that what I did was wrong. How I approached it was wrong. And how I dealt with my insecurities was wrong. And I had so many of them. He was my stamping board and how I viewed relationships probably due to my naïveté was definitely skewed. I understand now to a deeper extent what relationships are and what they're not meant to be. And it's glaring how much mistakes I made in my past one. Am I able to be in a good, healthy relationship now that I know this? God only knows. I don't know. What I learned from all this introspection is also I can't question too much and everything of what I do, what I say and everything that I am. Sometimes it's ok to just let go and exist for that is what we're meant to do. Why question everything in life and make yourself so rigid? Burdened by all the questions and notions of what you should be and who you shouldn't be. To whose standards? Life is hampered that way and you're perpetually in a state of hyper awareness like you're controlling an avatar in a video game. That shouldn't be the case. I am learning slowly how to let go and not question every inch of my existence and who I am. I should just let go and let it happen naturally. Let me flow from me naturally and maybe then world will take on a less than mechanical, incomprehensible tone and soften into the softer shades and hues of a happier humanity. 

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

I was watching The Secret Life of Walter Mitty earlier today and at first, I thought it was just some ridiculous movie about a socially dysfunctional guy and his life and it was kind of sad actually. Pretty depressing even. It just had their aura of despondence and hopelessness like he was stuck in a rut and couldn't get out and all he had were his imaginations which was borderline an OCD.

But then I continued watching it somehow and I got it. I finally got it. It started making more sense and the message was clear at the end of the movie. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a beautiful movie with a beautiful message.

It's about life, and the magic and beauty of experience. It is about experiences and how it shapes us as people, and how taking that step into the unknown, into taking adventures makes you grow as a person and into a full fledged PERSON. When it started out, Walter Mitty was a gray husk of a person. He hadn't been anywhere, he hadn't done anything of note and he had mad skills on a skateboard but he hadn't done anything about his skills either. Judging by his character it was probably a lack of confidence resulting in a lack of motivation coupled with a sense of pointlessness as he trudges on the hamster wheel of work every day. But when he finally took that large step into the unknown in search of Sean O'Connell and boarded that flight to Greenland, it wasn't apparent at first but little by little he changed. He wasn't that small hopeless man anymore who didn't have a voice and who didn't matter. He was a man. He was a man who finally found the courage to say what he needed to say and what he wanted to say. Towards the end of the movie he was more bedraggled, but neither was he gray anymore. Not by a long shot. It was like his whole aura shifted and he became a different person. It's not what is outside that makes a man, it's what is inside. And that movie teaches us that. It is about the magic of experience and the beauty of living and feeling and doing not just the everday things but the interesting things, the passionate driven things and the exhilarating things whatever they may be for us which in turn makes us grow into the people we were meant to be. Full of life and colour, character and personality. Walter Mitty grew through his adventures, he became a new man; he became a man. He wasn't stuck in his shell anymore, he'd outgrown it and he'd burst through it like a butterfly from a cocoon. There wasn't hopelessness anymore, there was opportunity. And that movie portrays that message with a quiet subtlety just like the way Sean O'Connell delivers his dialogue. Quietly, serenely, but hard-hitting.

Beautiful things don't ask for attention - Sean O' Connell.

Why Did I Have to Fall in Love?

It has been a thought that occurred to me for some time now in the midst of my emotional torment that is once again and always unrequited love. I don't know what is it about me that I always seem to care for someone who could never feel the same way for me. It has been a while since I have felt a "crush" and I have little doubt that it is possible that what I feel now, is love. I wonder if our feelings and the intensity of them thereof matures as we do. Where once I was a girl and was having crushes on people, now I fall in love. Unfortunate of course when that love happens to be unrequited but love nevertheless. 

I do not understand why and what I feel towards him. Only that it is truly inexplicable. He treats me with such little grace that one would be off put by the idea of falling in love with someone such as that. He is throughly, a bad idea less the fact that he does not love me back. And it is torment. Parts of me wish that he could while other parts of me feel a despair that he never could and they chase each other around in my head every day. Every smile he graces me with turns my hope around and only to send it dashing back to the ground. Every kind word sends me soaring but then every time it comes back to the same old spot same old story and rain starts pouring again. The truth is, I am not what he wants and I can never be. It hurts me to the core to think about everything that churns my mind around when thoughts of him come unbidden. It feels like a wrench is thrown into the workings of my heart and lodges there, refusing to set me free. But I love him. And I have never dared to say it to anyone, to admit it to anyone and I doubt I ever will. I have hidden that truth about what happened from everyone because I couldn't bear the recounting of that story. It always brings a hollow thud to my heart. Why did I have to fall in love? 

Ode to My Joy.

I've come a long way since my childhood. I've lost my way, found it again, and lost it again only to find out that maybe I didn't know my way after all. The world isn't as black and white as I thought it to be. And eventhough I did not realize it then, I thought I was so black and white also. But it's not and I'm not. And I'm sure the world has plenty of lessons in store. Plenty or revelations in store. Most of which I cannot even dream of knowing before the time comes. 

I used to think nothing of my way if life. Maybe I was always alone, but it didn't bother me. It didn't provoke thought as much back then as it unfortunately does now. Suddenly the question of being alone, weighs so heavy on my mind. Perhaps it was the revelation that another human's company is something to be yearned for after all. Perhaps it's the realisation that the world and it's peoples, well, people are not always going to be simple. They're not always going to make it easy. In fact they'll mostly make it goddamned difficult. People will hurt you. And break your heart. And maybe I've learned to see further than that naive dream of possibilities, I've opened my eyes to the bigger and natural picture, one not seen through the glasses of my girlish hopefulness. But whatever it is, people, and the endless comings and goings, the passings by of them in our lives has awoken in me the need to not feel lonely. The fear of being lonely. And the fact that I am lonely. I've always been lonely. I'm just starting to realise that fact now. 

The fear if loneliness is a human condition, especially when one lives in a soulless environment like we do. People come and go and we all go about our business like there's no inter connectivity between us all. Like we are all individual links in a chain that isn't connected, just floating around in actuality. But we are all connected. We are links in a chain, we're meant to connect and form that bond. So why is it so hard? 

I've come to fear my loneliness, particularly the fact that it may last. I know the future's not for us to see, but I would be lying if I said I didn't feel those pangs of fear every once in a while, much as I hate to admit that fact. 

As the days and then the years march on, and the endless procession of people come and go; the stories, the successes and the passions, the mistakes and the dramas. The stories. They seem to flick before like an endless reel of film, a thought provoking one. And just as how every man and for the purposes of feminism, woman sees their world through lenses of their own making, I see that movie through the lenses of my own making. My mind and my interpretation picks out the threads of relationships between all of them, the connectivity and the link in the stories; between people. 

I have begged the Divine for a sign lately, to let me know I'm not making the mistakes I shouldn't be making. That I'm not making the mistakes at all. That maybe I should be doing the right thing but what is the right thing? Because I no longer know. All I know is that I fear the loneliness. I fear that may never find someone that I can and will connect with on that level that I find so dear and necessary to me. And I fear it so much that I have begun to start thinking that maybe I need to accept the fact that maybe I just may never find it and I should be ok with it. Maybe. Just to keep my sanity intact. 

I do not enjoy being the Donna to someone's Harvey, nor the Regina or the Miranda in someone else's story. But it seems that that is all that I am. I am the Donna, and the Regina and the Miranda. And the one thing these characters have spoken to me about is that they are in conflict, and or in denial and or they endure. Always enduring. Something I never thought I had to do. Something I never thought I would allow myself to do but I now in fact perhaps, do. We are stupid by design, women, men, all of us. This crucial flaw in us. Is it perhaps really what makes this universe go round? 

I do not want to endure. I want to sing of my own triumphs, to live out my own story where I am not just a spectator on the sidelines; a necessary element but never the one who wears the crown. I want to sing of my own triumphs in my own story, and where I once thought I was living my own story, I seem to feel now that I may have been a tad knocked off course. 

Donna told Louis in an episode that jealousy, it brings out the worst in people. And that is true. And I know that. Envy is a poison, but it seeps through your veins and overtakes all that is good inside you until you feel like you have no choice. It takes strength and a lot of enduring to resist such poison such as envy. And I know that personally. I feel it to the core. Because envy, and jealousy, it will bite you from the inside. Every single pang is like being bitten inside, right on the heart and it will slowly bleed. And it will cry tears on the inside, even when your eyes are dry and your lips still smile because green is not an attractive colour on anyone. 

I know how hard it is, to tell yourself that it's not you. It's just not right. To tell yourself that you understand why it had to be someone else and not you. To tell yourself that you are talking about this now when even thinking about it brings back unpleasant emotions. I know how hard it is to see the object of your jealousy and not hate it; to feel like it is not their fault even when you know in your mind that it is truly not. Your heart just won't let it go. I know those bleeding tears, when they cry those bitter bitter tears but I shall not dwell on it. For even now, this is too much. 

I've never understood the purpose of such a test. To prove me wrong perhaps? That all the things I said I'd never do. I'm just human after all. And when you do realise that, that's when you realise all the stupid stupid things you swore you'd never do, filling the agenda of your daily life. Some things will never make sense to the mind, that makes perfect irrevocable sense to the heart. And maybe now I embrace my humanity. For although I may do the same stupid things I scorned for love, I am doing those same stupid things for love. 

Your Place in the World.

There is something to be said for being so secure in your own identity that you don't care what others may think about you, none of it matters. To be so secure about your own place in this world that validation is a thing of the past and no longer necessary. I am tired. Tired, of being so conscious about what I'm doing "right" and what I'm doing "wrong". Of being please when I do get something "right" and not so pleased when I don't. I am tired of wanting to be something and or someone that someone can be proud of and grateful to have. Someone that someone would want. Someone special in the eyes of that special someone. And failing to do so and become so time and time again. It leaves you feeling empty and drained. Because no matter how hard you try you cannot be that someone. I cannot be that someone if I'm not already it in the first place. I'm tired of trying to be someone he would want, tired of trying so hard to prove that I am and or can be that someone he would want. And though it is disheartening, and saddening that he would want something else, it is just something I have to come to terms with. Because there is no other way around it. It hurts me whenever it is brought it my attention, every little pang with every little reminder that I will never be that someone he wants. And it hurts. It chips away at my self esteem. It makes me question deep down inside me what is it that is not good enough about me, why am I not good enough even though I know full well in my mind that it is not about a question of good enough, it is and has always been a question about different and nothing to do with merit whatsoever. But somehow my heart just can't feel it and my soul doesn't seem to believe it. 

I am tired of trying to be something that I am not. And failing at that. He was right. Of course I always knew he's right. The important thing is being secure and comfortable within yourself and after that, nothing else matters.

Waiting on the Impossible

"Waiting?... Well now THIS is unusual. Quite unexpected," Mademoiselle mused aloud, her right hand stroking her chin as she leaned forward and furrowed her brows. "What do you think?" She looked at me. 

"Nothing surprises me anymore. Frankly after the year we've had, nothing surprises me anymore," I threw my hands up in abandon. 

And it is true. The last year had been an eye opening roller coaster ride of a year. We had laughed and cried, actually mostly cried and things, trust and faith, beliefs have been broken down and rebuilt tentatively and shorn down and stacked up again in a repeated cycle, leaving almost no room for recovery or complete and proper introspection. Not that proper introspection might make much sense of the mess it's left behind in it's wake. We have all grown up, we have matured. Saddened and beaten perhaps but grown somehow and we can only hope it would be for the better. Only the young and foolish make rash judgements and concede to their passions in their convictions. And perhaps we may be not so young anymore, at least in our minds and our hearts. 

"I know we never put any stock in it before. I don't know why either," Missy said with slight bewilderment. 

"Too much has changed," I sighed. "That's the way it is now apparently." I looked at Mademoiselle to gauge her reaction. There was a time when she would have exploded in Missy's face for her stupidity and hopelessness. Pining was not for Mademoiselle. 

But she just gazed expressionlessly at Missy, her right hand still cupping her chin as she sat with her leg crossed one over the other. A thin wispy tendril curling up from the stick in her left hand. Still the same but different. There was no snide remark or derisive expression. No scorn no discerning frown nor vitriol. Just an even expression. She understood now. Or has learned to reconcile the fact that there are two elements to a person and accept the other half of being human. Hurt and feelings. She regarded Missy with less contempt now. And more reserved understanding. 

Missy was sobbing less now. She would use to blubber away into her tissues, heartbroken and shattered from whatever issue was at hand. And of course she would already have, crying is normal and healthy. Perfectly understandable. But she was not doing it now. An air of sadness and despair permeated from her, those dark brown eyes dull from the absence of cheer, sad and downcast. A heavy weariness emanated from her but she had changed a lot as well. And waiting, was a big decision for her. Something completely unexpected and perhaps stands as true testament to just how much she had changed. 

The King of Cups

He's here to teach me all the bitter lessons in life. 

A Story.

I sat on the train today next to a man in uniform. Those suited to firemen or rescue workers. Bright neon yellow with reflective strips. He was by no means refined or genteel in any specific way. He was travelling from Newcastle to York and as I sat beside him the sour smell of his cheese crackers wafted over as he ate them. Unrushed, unhurried, but not particularly slowly either. It occurred to me then, like an awakening of some sort. I not only saw him and acknowledged his presence beside me, I SAW him and I could very potently feel the presence of another living, breathing human being beside me. The coincidence of the conscious and the subconscious, the careless and the meticulous, all in one. I truly appreciated this human next to me. And I thought then. Perhaps he is going home to his family. Perhaps he is taking this train back to those who care for him and patiently await his return. And I realized. Everyone has a story. Be it a good or a bad story, everyone has a story. And we may want to know them, we may not want to know those stories, but each individual has one and thus is how we connect and make sense of this world. 

The Shattering

So that was his purpose in my life. Not to teach me to live alone, but to shatter me so completely that my walls crumble and come down.

The Heart

The heart is a dangerous thing to wield,
And a dangerous thing to have. 
And every once in a while,
On dark and quiet nights, 
I take it out and let it beat. 
But before the night is over,
I turn it cold and dead,
And keep it hid.

Making Love Out of Nothing at All

It would seem that I have not been forthcoming with myself lately. I have told lies and lies again to myself, one piling on top of the other just so that I could save myself the pain of dealing with the truth. But the truth is never going to go away, no matter how hard I look away from it. It will always stay there, a gentle reminder that one cannot run from oneself for too long. Eventually it will turn to you and it will force you to acknowledge it. For the truth is a part of you and will not allow itself to die. For your own good. 

And so I have been confronted with the truth. It was a bitter pill to swallow but I had to at the end. There was no way around it. Where I always have the tendency to fall for the wrong men, and so I did again. It is true that I felt for him. There is no point hiding it now. Why is it this thing in the universe that we will always want what we cannot have? Where does this all lead to and what does it perpetuate? This endless circling. Or are we all meant to learn something at the end of it. That life is fleeting and wanting is for nothing. 

I have been shattered so completely by this betrayal, it was like a knife to my very soft, tender heart. Already bruised and beaten, sliced through with a sharp, senseless blade mid-beat; sending it into a flurry of stutters and stops. And while it is just a sorrow of the heart, we are made with hearts and thus we must acknowledge this. The very real pain of its existence. 

And now I feel a weakening of all my forces. All that I held true and dear to myself, all that I thought was real about myself, maybe it was all a lie. Maybe I was the villain in this story after all. I was just too blind in my heart to see it. And maybe this shattering is what I need for my walls to finally come down. To give up this endless and futile battle against the perceived evil of the senses, my feelings and my thoughts. I was born with an inclination towards the heart and soul and it is pointless to deny it any longer. I feel not the strength to carry on this farce. 

My journey is no one else's but my own. And while I have been adamantly refusing to believe that it is my fault and I could have anything to do with it, the fact is my journey is mine and mine alone. And it has nothing to do with anybody. What they do on their journey is none of my business. I will run my race because it is mine to run. And I will not let myself blame others or anything else for my failures or successes. My life is mine to lead and I shall lead it with blinders on. True to my cause and come what may, some may latch on and other will fall away. But we all have our paths to follow and for however long our paths may cross with each other's, maybe we shall all learn something from one another. Even from the most unlikely of places. 

I want to help because I care. I want our lives to connect because I care. But of it won't then it won't. And I cannot do anything about it neither should I. His path is his own. And where we may connect and for how long in each other's lives, God only knows. And in Him I put my trust. 

The Right Time and the Right Place.

There's a time and there's a place for everything. That's what I've always learnt and all my years waiting and trying to control everything that came my way: sometimes you need to let instinct guide you to act when the time is right and when your heart tugs in that very direction. But when your head tries to take over and you think, and you think and you don't realise that some things must be done by instinct. You instinctively know best. And you just need to learn to trust yourself sometimes. 

One Year Later

It has been over a year now. And I am over him. The man I thought I would never fall out of love with, the one whom I thought I would marry and live with for the rest of my life left me one day when I never expected it. It smarted like a morherfucker, but now more than one year later I am over him. 

I don't remember now what made me love him. What made me fall so helplessly in love with him. What made me stay in love. What meant so much to me at the time. Maybe I do know what it was per se, but only as a fact in my mind. My heart is empty of it now. Devoid of all that used to fill it. Riddled full of holes. Sometimes thinking about it, I don't even understand why I felt so in love with him. But then that is just evidence that goes to show how much I have changed. That old me is no more. And with it all remnants of the girl who could have fallen in love with him. The girl who did. 

A heart cannot be filled so full till brimming and then just emptied in one fell swoop. It will deflate. It will collapse in on itself. It will become an empty husk, like the landscape scrubbed clean by harsh winds. When you ask me, do I regret what I did back then? Yes, I regret getting myself into that relationship. I regret doing it, I regret becoming that person that relationship made me become. Because without all of that, maybe I would be a different person. Maybe a happier person, some part of me hopes. 

But whatever happened must have happened for a reason. I must admit that without it, many of the choices I have made would not have been made. He made it happen by being a factor in my life for events to play themselves around. I wouldn't have been this, my bitterness would not have steered me the way it has. Perhaps I would still be so much more naive. Perhaps my heart would have broken anyway. If not there then maybe here possibly due to the extreme naïveté I would have boasted without it. 

Whatever happened perhaps happened for a reason. I am this now. I am who I am. And perhaps it's for the better. No matter how fucked up this person is. 

All of Me.

It has come to occur to me during the course of my therapy that I am afraid of people. People of all walks of life. People from every part of my life. Just people. Because people can hurt you. And they more often than not do. They're mysterious creatures, with mysterious motivations. We are unknowable. And that's what makes us so frightening. But I am inevitably drawn to them as well. All of us are. Like moths to a flame. Because we are meant to be social creatures. We are meant to let others hurt us and we are meant to hurt others. And if you are among the fortunate few, you will spend your time hurting others more than they can ever hurt you. You will break hearts and yet keep yours intact. And you will feel nothing for it. Because you are one of the fortunate few. But alas I am not. I spend more time getting my heart trampled and trodden over time and time again. Over and over again, the same story all over again. Just on a different day. And when the opportunity presents itself for me to hurt someone, I realize that I can't do it. That I would rather hurt than cause someone else to hurt. How is that fair? 

Because all of me, loves all of you. 

Love your curves and all your edges, 

All your perfect imperfections.

Give your all to me, I'll give my all to you.

You're my end and my beginning.

Even when I lose I'm winning. 

Because I give you all of me. 

Mi Mancherai.

My mind wants to clamp down and erase all traces of his existence. But my heart doesn't want to. 

Ode to Love.

All pain is real. No matter how trivial they may look and feel in retrospect, they were real the moment you felt them and they will remain real for the rest of your life. ~

It has come to cross my mind, as I have crossed paths with the very many broken people in this world. Broken by love. It's like a parade, never ending as one passes by and then another. Sometimes I wonder if there is a point to all this. Is there a reason. Why am I meeting all these broken people whose lives have been torn asunder by this one sweet but bile-choked thing called love. Is there a reason? We've all hurt and we will all hurt. But why am I exclusively meeting those who have never recovered from the scars of this thing called love? We're all broken people here. They're all broken people here. So it has crossed my mind. A broken heart is a difficult thing to get over, especially for certain types of people. And for some strange reason, these are the people I keep on meeting. One by one, one after another. An endless parade. It has come to the point that I wonder if everyone in this country is broken in some way by this cursed thing called love. There does seem to be an uncannily large number of them. In my world at least. Why do I attract these fools? Am I supposed to be learning some hidden, deep intrinsic message from this? It is all too obscure. 

So it has come to cross my mind. These broken people were broken by someone. That one person who meant so much and then chose to leave and shattered their world forever. That one person that meant so much. I have never meant so much to any one person in my life. No one has ever loved me so in fact I have never chosen to leave. I was always the one unfortunately, discarded. Discarded like so much old tissue paper and never thought of again. In fact, the one love of my life, the one who shattered me, had the audacity to turn around and regret everything we had together. Life would've been perfect if I was the best friend, and someone else had been his special someone. It never occurred to me how much this hurt or should hurt but maybe I have just been repressing it all. At the end I meant nothing at all again. Back at square one. 

Am I angry? Am I bitter? Yes. I am all those things. The one love of my life, the one who shattered me and in the end I meant nothing to him. Would he ever the affected by me as I have been affected by him? No. This world is a cruel and harsh place. This world of love is a cruel and a harsh place. There was a time when I was much younger, I would have embraced love with open arms. But now I would give anything to have ice chips for a heart. The last remnants of my humanity causes me pain on a daily basis. It's like blows, a boxer weathering a volley of blows. That's where I stand, hunkered down and avoiding volleys of blows after blows. Every day or every week of every month. Everything that reminds me of it hurts me. Bit by bit. Everything that makes me think of it even in the most unrelated way brings me pain. I am incapable of love. But it does seem that I am capable of hurt. So why am I enduring emotional purgatory for an emotional paradise that I am unable to experience? What seems to be the purpose. Even any fool would tell you that it is a foolish cause. I need to stop kidding myself. Someday. Someday I will be able to do it. Someday I will be able to give up so completely that nothing will be able to shift this lump of coal within my chest. And until I find that peace, I wait with bated breath. 

A Selfish Kind of Love.

"Tell me. If he couldn't give you those benefits anymore one day, would you still want him?" 

"... No..."

"If any of them had had to stop giving you whatever benefit it was you got from them, would you still have loved or wanted them?" 

I grappled with the question. The truth was I had always been completely selfish in my dealings with people. I didn't care if they were happy. I only cared if I was happy and anything that affected my happiness was a concern. A selfless love is one I have never experienced. Why would I care if he was happy with someone else? I care about whether I'm happy without him. Or whether I'm happy period. Every one of them have always given me something. And that something was companionship, for I liked their company. And the truth is without those benefits they confer upon me, they are essentially useless. 

"No."

"You see. You've never loved. You're not capable of love. All those little things, those sweet romantic little things that also break your heart. They're shallow. And superficial when you mull over them. They may not be for someone else, but for you they are. Because you're unable to love. So essentially all those things mean nothing to you. They sure as hell don't mean love. All they mean to you is a strike to your self esteem and your sense of self worth. Don't kid yourself. It was never about them. It was always about you. Because you're not capable of love." 

What's So Wrong With Being a Fool Anyway?

"I don't understand it!" Missy sighed and flopped onto the sofa. "This is so screwed up."

I tilted my head slightly and waited for Missy to explain. 

"She's got me all worried now. I can't be the way I was freely! I'm all scared now. She's got me worrying about how it will turn out and that it won't turn out well at all..." Missy trailed off and looked away sadly. 

Mademoiselle's influence had no doubt gotten stronger recently and I knew exactly what she was talking about. In troubling and difficult times her way had seemed like the best one so far to be applied to every situation like a blanket cure or a prevention. 

I sighed and sat up straighter. "Look, Missy..." I began.

"Maybe you're a fool. But maybe, it's ok to be a fool and it's ok to let yourself be a fool if that is who you really are. You need to accept yourself the way you are and some things, there's just no changing, like this I guess. We've all tried really hard. You, Mademoiselle and I. Maybe this is just one of the things to which there is no changing without permanently destroying all that was good and great about the whole and if that's the case then you must learn to accept yourself the way you are and not hate you. Life becomes so much easier that way. What's this obsession with changing and not being like this anymore? Maybe you, maybe we all thing it is the better way, the smarter way to not get hurt anymore but what you're failing to see is that what is the point with trying to do that when it makes you hurt every day. You're going nowhere and basically driving yourself into the very thing you're trying to avoid. There is just no point so maybe you just gotta learn to accept yourself the way you are, fool or not. What's so bad about that anyway? What's the real crime in it? There is none. And you need to understand that." 

Neither Tea Nor Coffee No More.

"Why does it matter Missy?" Mademoiselle asked incredulously, her eyes wide with question. 

"Beats me if I know," Missy said, clearly exasperated by the question. "Look, it's me we're talking about here." To that Mademoiselle shrugged in agreement. 

"Looks like you were right to make that choice," Mademoiselle addressed me in turn. 

"Yeah, I know. But I wish I wasn't," I replied, rubbing my eyes tiredly. "Something's gotta give guys. This can't go on." 

"I know..." Missy said gloomily. "This is getting out of hand," she added, eyeing her bottle. 

Mademoiselle slowly sipped her expensive coffee and watched us inquiringly. She seemed to be waiting for a decision. For the ball to drop. But I didn't have an answer for her. I didn't have an answer for the both of them. Why did it matter? I didn't know the answer to that question. It's just always mattered or I've always been the kind of person it would matter to. Perhaps that's the only reason why. God knows. 

An Afternoon by the Grey Quayside.

"Are you ok?" Mademoiselle asked as we sat around a small round coffee table and looked out at the blustery quayside through the glass walls. Her legs were crossed and her right arm draped casually over the back of her chair. I sat with my arms crossed and my left hand resting under my chin. Outside the grey, overcast sky hung low over the risen tides of the river as passersby traipsed across the rain splattered roads and pathways in their parkas and raincoats. 

The soft music of the coffee shop tinkled in the background as we continued our silent reverie out the window. It was my first time there and for some reason today, I had felt the urge to come inside and have some tea I thought as I wrapped my hands around the warm mug. 

No I was not ok. I was as grey as the sky outside and my mood as overcast. I just sat silently watching the cars and vans clear out what was left of the morning Sunday market, pulling the stalls and carts away one by one and suddenly it was empty again, as if they were never even there and the quayside was as clear of vendors as it is on any other day. 

Mademoiselle sat patiently sipping her designer coffee, not a ripple in the silent waters of her being while mine flurried and eddied like the waters of the river before me pushed along by the wind. A solid wall of black. 

"Why show me kindness when there is none there?" I whispered. 

Mademoiselle just smiled and looked outside. "Because things are never so simple," she said. An unusual line of commentary from her. 

Mademoiselle giving me sage advice. I never thought I'd see the day. There's more to her than meets the eye. I suppose just because we perform a specific function does not mean there isn't any more to us than we usually show. 

"But there is no kindness there, is there?" I asked her vaguely. 

Mademoiselle pursed her lips slightly in thought as she slowly studied the arch of the bridge outside. 

"You never know. There actually could be. And could have been. Just because things change doesn't mean that it was never there. And just because there may be more than one reason, doesn't mean kindness isn't one of them." "Of course, we'd never know. Or maybe just not yet." 

Mademoiselle swirled her coffee in the cup and placing it slowly down on the table, looked up at me. 

"Don't let your depression cloud your judgement. Pessimism isn't the same as being realistic. It's an adulteration of what really is all the same." 

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood.

We were at the eve of a momentous decision. A decision that would make a difference for some time to come. But the question of what to do, whether to do it or not is the main issue. Where do we go from here? That was the question.

"What did you do?" Mademoiselle looked at me and asked, her brows furrowed seriously.

"I didn't say anything," I said evenly. "I just left it..." I looked down at the coffee table in front of us as I did so.

"What does that mean?" Missy asked. Her eyes wide with a hint of worry in them.

"I don't think we're on the verge of deciding anything anymore," Mademoiselle said nonchalantly. Flicking some ash to the side. "Because it looks like you already chose."

"Why does it feel like such a last resort?" Missy asked sadly, her eyes downcast.

Mademoiselle lit a stick and looked at us squarely. "Because it is one."

Making Choices.

What was it this time? I wondered as I sat in conference with my two friends, Missy and Mademoiselle. I had always prided myself as being the most stable, the most reasonable among the three of us and with good reason. Not a bristling wall of ice like Mademoiselle, nor a mushy pile of slush like Missy.

The last year had been hard and no doubt, the both of them would have a lot to say. Mademoiselle of course, arrogant as ever, would come up with some naturally blunt but sometimes enlightening insights, and Missy would never fail to remind us that we are human. In fact, it seems all she is good for really, which was what Mademoiselle used to say. An important skill, one I do not wish to undermine.

Today Missy was clearly burdened by something. Her eyes were sad, her shoulders slumped. The cheer of the sunlit room did nothing to lift her moods which were grey like thunderclouds. I understood of course, it had been a hard year for her. Hard times all around for such a fragile heart.

Mademoiselle raised an eyebrow and smirked, drawing casually and exhaling leisurely. She never did have much sympathy.

"I don't know what to do..." Missy trailed off tiredly.

"Nothing. It was never worth your time. I was right all along,"

She was perhaps right.

"Maddy, you know I can't do that. I could never have taken your advice and been what you said I should be."

"Which sucks for you. You never should've bothered. They never were worth it. No one is really."

Ok... I wouldn't go that far...

"You don't mean that," Missy gasped. "Surely someone is."

"Bring me the one who is. I don't think you've met even one have you?" Mademoiselle challenged.

"Well, maybe I've made some stupid mistakes on the way..." Missy conceded slowly.

"Some??" Mademoiselle snorted. "They were all stupid. It was like watching you chase around a chicken. That you never caught. Otherwise we'd all be having chicken right now instead of sitting here and having this conversation."

Fair point.

But the fact of the matter was, none of this was solving her problem. Missy couldn't stop caring, that's just who she is. Mademoiselle on the other hand could probably do with some caring but that is a matter for another day. It's too early in the day for this shit.

Missy just turned away as Mademoiselle's words hung in the air like the remnants of white smoke; lightly, almost gracefully. She was right of course. Missy had been on a quest, not necessarily one without merit, and she had searched and searched. But she had found nothing. And she knew that.

Suddenly her eyes brimmed over with tears and they spilled over her cheeks lightly, streaming down fluidly the way only the tears of someone with a broken heart can. She knew not how to express in words what she was feeling and some things needed no words. I understood. There was nothing to be done. Even I knew not what to do. What use is control, when one knows not what to do with it?

There were no more words anymore.

"Oh come on Missy, you're pathetic. Pull yourself together, all this is no use," Mademoiselle reproached impatiently. "Why do you do this to yourself? I know you're going to say that you don't have a choice but that's not true. We all have a choice. I chose." Mademoiselle sat up aggressively in her chair, all sharp angles like cut glass.

"No, no no no no. Fuck you man I am sick of this!" Missy suddenly expostulated.

Ok... I sat back in my chair, feeling the firm cushion behind the fabric press against my back.

"I am really sick of you telling me that the way I am is wrong and that there's something so significantly and inherently wrong in it as to imply that maybe it deserves punishment!" Missy cried. "Are you saying my sorrows are the punishment then? That's not fair Maddy!" The tears slid fresh and anew down Missy's cheeks.

"Maybe I can choose! But that doesn't mean I'm going to choose to be like you! Just like you did, maybe this means I've chosen too! And maybe my choice has brought pretty shitty results but it's the only choice I can make. It's the only choice I can allow myself to make! You cannot just sit there and tell me that your choice is very much better than mine! You're damaged and problematic in so many ways you won't even try to fix it!" Missy shouted, clearly incensed before sinking back in her armchair in a huff.

Ok... I've never seen her that pissed before. She must be REALLY stressed.

But Mademoiselle just shrugged and turned away. She was not an idiot. She knew Missy was right in some ways. But she chose her path a long time ago and it has served her well to a certain extent; better even than the path Missy had chose. She knew what she was potentially giving up, but she knew the risks of not doing so also and she was not prepared to face them. So she made her choice.

In the Fading Twilight.

Mademoiselle sat brooding on the armchair, one leg crossed over the other and her left elbow resting on the chair's armrest with her hand touching her chin. The room was dim. Outside, the bare bones of winter jut out high from the ground, the softer branches quivering slightly with every gust of blustery wind. The stillness of the view out the window deceivingly belied the chill that hung in the air outside, the sharp bitter coldness that would seep through the walls and cracks were it not for the modern marvel of double glazing windows. 

It was just me and her today. And it had been a while since it was just the two of us. She cut a long silhouette and the light streaming in from the window gleamed silver on her skin where it illuminated her left side.

 

Mademoiselle was not one to mince words. We both knew what was on our minds but no one knew the words to say it. Some things perhaps were better understood unspoken. 

 

A flash of warm golden light flared into existence and died off as quickly as it appeared as Mademoiselle lit a stick and exhaled a stream of white smoke. 

It had been a long time indeed and as we sat and watched the twilight approach in the fast growing gloom, it occurred to me that perhaps we should have made the meeting earlier. The sunlight was much more preferable company than an azure blue evening. 

 

I sat quietly and watched Mademoiselle admire the growing gloom in the outside sky. With want for something better to do, I looked at her intently, studied her, carefully noting the creases in that black coat, the silken scarf, the wild, unbrushed hair. The solidity of black, the wall of black and gold and red and silver. She was a solid wall, a pillar of strength and certainty when all around things are shaken. She never was affected. She was not human. And yet all too human. For I knew, in the quiet hours of being alone, she fears the thoughts that come haunting back from whence they've been banished by the distraction of daily life and activities. Living hard and cold is well enough but sometimes those pesky thoughts are not so easy to get rid of. A sign that she was not after all a lost cause. No lost causes here. We are all redeemable. 

The Point of No Return.

Past the point of no return. I know not now what has been and what will be. I know not even what is. All I know is I know not, and for now that is all I need to know. 

Looking back I find myself forgetting. Many things that used to make sense, that I used to do. I forget what used to be the very reason that drove my actions. They feel like a lifetime ago now. Coming here has changed me much. Perhaps too much. I am not who I used to be. My wells of compassion have dried up and I find myself believing less and less in human nature. In the value of sincerity and kinship. Perhaps I was too naive. No, I was too naive. I know that now. 

The days before me pass like a confusing blur. A scramble from one desperate point to another, all in the quest of maintaining my thin veneer of sanity and composure. For should I let myself it would sure break and fall in shattering pieces all around me. The scramble is my routine now, it has solidified into a steady rhythm, one desperate dash after another, one at a time. Distractions that would serve to help me keep my being from descending into a pit of gloom. But it is all a facade and I know it must end some day. For keeping up a steady march like this is tiring and I shall falter soon. I cannot keep this up. 

I can barely remember what views I held dear anymore. They seem so foreign to me now, that is how much I have left them behind. I never knew I was capable of this, but I doubt now. I doubt everything and everyone. And more importantly I doubt how long good things will last. How long will those smiles last before they too turn into sneers of contempt and ridicule for my person. I have given up I think, on the values of humanity required to believe in others and taking a chance in them. It is too despairing, to risk something and be disappointed time and again. I can risk no more. 

I'm past the point of no return now. There is no going back to the way I used to be, to the position I used to hold no matter how much better it may have been. That is simply not possible anymore. I am different now and though I may not know different how and in what exact way, safe to say I am different now and different enough that that person I used to know no longer holds true. No longer exists. I hate everything now, I hold no hope any longer. I just run. Day in and day out I just run and hope that my feelings never will catch up to me. 

Check Points.

I am not the most spiritual of people. Or perhaps I am. Rather, spiritual enough. What if fate and circumstance really are intertwined? And that it is true all that happens is for a reason and it all leads you to the one path you were meant to take. The main highway of your course in life.

I have believed for some time now that taking Law in the UK is a course in life that I must take. A check point in this journey that I cannot bypass to move on to the next stage. And that is why no matter how many detours I have taken, I found myself coming back again to the same place, on the same path towards taking a Law degree in the United Kingdom. My journey began there. I have no idea what cause and what purpose it could serve, what reasons there could be that it is so important I do this one thing. But perhaps my journey has not ended yet. Perhaps there are more check points to come and I am being shepherded by the good Lord from one to another because it does stand to reason that if there is one, there would be others.

It had not occured to me that there are more stops I must make along this road. But then the air turned sour and the cold bitter. Maybe my stint in this city is up and my next stop is to be a different city in this country.

They say that everything happens for a reason, and when it was time for me to leave for Europe, all the things that held me back in the East fell away. They hurt of course, they caused pain in their leaving. But perhaps it was necessary for me to make that move. And maybe now the same is happening again. When all that holds me back here falls away and the streets start becoming haunted for me. This is a time of reckoning. And we are but toy boats, pushed around on the waves.

I have sat up on nights, praying that I be given guidance, praying for a sign; what should I do. Perhaps this is the sign that I was asking for. That it was time to move on and perhaps consider a new life in a new and different city. Perhaps that is the next stop I must make in this life and all that has occured ushers me onwards there.

I would not lie, even though this city has lost most of its charm for me, I will be anguished to part with it. There is something here that when I leave must be left behind. An imprint of my time here. And after all the madness and all that has occured, it feels like shedding a skin. Necessary but you will miss it and to a certain extent will be loathe to part with it. No one knows if it is true that I must leave to meet my next stop. That still remains to be seen. But stay or go, I will miss this place or I will be displaced in my time here. Stay or go I will be giving myself a new chance or I will be uprooting myself once again. Stay or go, it pretty much is the same thing and I am indifferent.

Change.

"What happens when you start to lose yourself? Or what you used to be and have always thought was everything that defined you?" Missy asked quietly.

The room was silent and the clock ticked on the wall, signifying the passage of time. 

"I mean I know I do a lot. But I do it all differently now. It all changed when I wasn't looking." 

"What happens when you start wondering if something that has really happened was a dream or was it real?" 

I pursed my lips in deep thought. Missy has posed an existential question and one that some of us must ponder some time in our lives. What happens when a part of your life starts to feel like a dream and you actually begin to wonder if it even really happened? 

"I have never changed. I have always stayed the same. And you guys rely on me to stay the same," Mademoiselle said impassively. "I will and shall forever be the rock and the wall." 

"But I have," Missy said gently. "I have so much." 

I rubbed my eyes tiredly. Missy made me think of something that never really occurred to me before. We all change. But sometimes so much that looking back we surprise ourselves. We surprise ourselves by the choices we have chosen to make. We surprise ourselves by the paths we've chose to take and the things we've picked up and given up along the way. These small changes don't matter so much, don't mean so much when they are made sometimes. But they add up. They all add up and before long you wonder if you have lost everything that made you who you were before this. What happens when your past starts to feel like a dream. And what happens when you actually, genuinely start wondering if it was. Does that mean that we have lost ourselves? Are we different people now?

"I feel like I've lost myself. All the things that used to make me me," Missy exhaled. 

"We've all changed. You, me, even Mademoiselle," I finally said evenly. "You've faded, you rallied, you came back. Perhaps not as stubborn-headed as you used to be. We all learned," I directed my statement to Mademoiselle. 

"You are our wall. But you're a different wall now. Some refurbishing has been done," I smiled slightly. 

Mademoiselle just shrugged lightly. 

"It feels strange. To realize that those definitions aren't enough anymore. The way I did things, the things I did. They're all different now. What does that mean?" Missy frowned. 

"It means we've all changed. Perhaps we're growing up. And maybe that does mean we're new people now. Maybe old definitions don't define us anymore. Because we're different people now. Not completely different but different enough that what we used to define ourselves may no longer hold true. We're more than those things we thought we were at a younger age," I placated Missy. "It is unnerving to suddenly realize how far we've come and maybe how far away we are now from all we thought made us who we are." 

Does that mean that you've left that part of your life behind so completely that it feels so foreign and you start to wonder if it was real? Does that mean that you've abandoned who you used to be and should these two versions of you meet they'd be irreconcilably different? Because one must admit that to leave it so far behind as to wonder if it was a dream is pretty damn drastic. 

"Maybe it's ok that we've changed. Maybe it's for the better. We can't stay that way forever. We're better now. I firmly believe that," I assured Missy. "Perhaps you do things differently now but the soul is still there and it is still the same. Just upgraded." 

I don't write the same way anymore. Missy has found a new force in her feelings, and Mademoiselle has found a chink in her armour. Where she was a steel rod perhaps she was now a shoot of bamboo. Strong, resistive and resilient, but not inflexible. Sometimes I find my new tone so unusual and I find myself wondering what happened to my old tone. Could I get it back. Was it perhaps better. But we reflect who we are in what we write. And so how can my writing be the same when I am different now. It doesn't have to be better or worse. It could even be better. But it will change to reflect who I am now and what I hold most dear in my deepest, most contemplative thoughts. 

This is a Story About Finding Every Wrong Kind of Love.

This is not a love story. This is the story of finding every wrong kind of love and a journey through them all, one by one.

Missy was a confident girl. She thought very highly of herself. In fact, it may have been difficult to find someone who loved herself more than Missy did. She was a champion and on top of the world, and the world she lived in was not big enough for her. Every little corner and every little niche, every small building, every small town house, everything about the steady little town was not big enough for her. She felt like a giant of potential, trapped within a tiny little bubble of non-opportunity, just waiting to explode. And every single moment since the realization of her capacity in that little town drove her insane. Missy was bigger and better than that and the small town she lives was just not big enough to contain her. And so she waited, bided her time and dreamed of the day she would burst free into the world. For it was a bigger and wider world out there, waiting for her. Full of chances and opportunities like fruits ripe for the picking and glistening deliciously on the trees. And if she could only get out there, she would own it. The path to her own destiny. Where options and possibilities will be presented to her and she would be free to do with them whatever she willed. To discard some and favour others; she would be free.

She was an ambitious girl. Full of burgeoning hopes and dreams, scattered all over the place yet to develop into full formation. She was creative. She read, sketched, sang, danced. And she wrote, a lot. She was a nice girl. Polite, well-mannered, and mild of temper. She was very much a spontaneous person. She was also enthusiastic, sensible, intelligent, a good listener, loud and jolly good company. But for all the good things Missy was, she also had her problems for Missy was very much an introvert and a loner. She would go everywhere alone, pleased and content in her own company. She would get lost in her thoughts and introspection was her friend and constant company. She would think and think and think and perhaps over-think a lot of things. But that meant that she made some discoveries of the human condition rather early on in life. Missy was eccentric and an exhibitionist. She was never a social butterfly but adapted well. She hid behind a mask of false smiles and a general and rather unusually ubiquitous agreeableness. And over the years, the mask hardened into a shell, naturally called upon when people were around and became second nature. Missy lived in her own world, part fantasy, part reality. All the time waiting, for that something bigger and better to come along. And always hopeful. She was good-natured, she was kind, she was romantic and she was passionate. She was a little girl.

Now Missy's first proper crush was a boy she had known in kindergarten and had met again when they were 16. He had dated her friend from primary school and that was how she met his acquaintance again. He was gentle, soft spoken, mild and nice. She enjoyed his conversation. And it was a new feeling. A light, fluttering touch, caressing her young heart and mind and she enjoyed any contact she could have with him be it on a chat server or casual texts. What they spoke of then only the Lord knows, it flitted from subject to subject, never really intellectual, but never particularly superficial either. She relished every opportunity to meet him, whenever their friends would go out together and he would be there. She would stay on late, so long as she could leave after him. She would go out of her way to make conversation with him and she was so shy around him. But it was not to be. And he found himself a proper girlfriend soon enough. A girl from his school, three years younger than him. And she soon forgot about him.

Missy's first love was music. In particular, singing. She loved to sing. She loved the soaring heights it would bring her to. The dramatic lifts and falls, the crescendoes, the gentle decrescendoes. The expressiveness of belting a heartfelt song into the air where it would waft and hover while more and more notes joined it there as the song progresses. It had a haunting enchantment for her and gripped her. It was her only true passion. The one thing that she never tired of, no matter how many times she did it. There was always a new song, or an old song to revisit. There was always a time, a need for it. And before long, she decided that what she truly wanted to be in this life, was a singer.

But Missy had a problem. For all her confidence and self-assuredness in everything else, she had stage fright. And even then, she knew that stage fright would be the undoing of her career as she was never one to shamelessly go and fight and argue for what she wanted. Part of the consequence of being a quiet, shy girl with a social shell. The shell never extends deep enough. And even then she knew that.

Her dream of becoming a performer someday fully materialized when she was 17. It was an age of enlightenment. But for Missy it seemed, the days never seemed so bleak. This was the point in life when, Missy learnt truly what unhappiness felt like.

She was growing impatient, you see. Everywhere she looked, the walls seemed to press in on her. And she felt ever more and more trapped by the seclusion and smallness of the town she was living in. Every part of her was screaming that the time was now. She needed to break free, to be released into the big, wide world where she could then possibly pursue her one true love. A career in the music industry. But for someone with so much confidence, Missy also had a tremendous amount of self-doubt. Particularly when it came to things she really, truly cared about. And she cared deeply about singing. And so her days grew ever bleak. She had lost all interest in academic pursuits and from left and right, people were pressing for her to do well. It was a shock as it would rightly be expected, to those around her for up until that point, she had as well as everything else, been a star academic student. But things crashed and burned that year and her results fell to dismal points.
She had barely the will to get out of bed in the morning and spent ample time sleeping throughout the day, somewhere inside her, afraid of what facing the world might bring. But at the same time she began losing sleep as well. Listening to her favourite songs caused her pain for she felt the twinge of longing and self doubt with every note. She was stuck in a rut. But still, somewhere deep inside her she till bore hope. Hope that when the time came and she could finally leave, it would all be better.

It was then that she met an astounding person by the name of Brother Gregory. It is unsure what role brother Gregory had to play in Missy's life, only that it had an influence. An indescribable and intangible influence but for some reason she has remembered him and felt this indescribable influence up till today.

A family friend had heard of her penchant for the performing arts and suggested she speak to a visiting brother at the local Catholic church. A brother Gregory. He was supposedly a practitioner of law for 14 years before giving it up in favour of a life as a Catholic priest. And he was apparently very well educated in the arts.

So the day dawned when she was to meet this wise man. She had imagined him rather old, wise and patient. An old man of soft manners playing a piano before a stained glass window. That was the image she had held when she went forth to meet brother Gregory. But when she finally stood before him, Missy was rather surprised to find that this was no old and bent wise and gentle man. This was a stern and firm man of barely middle age with hair lightly greying at the temples. It was rather bewildering for the little girl.

Brother Gregory began by asking her why she did not want to do law and she answered simply because it did not speak to her passions. Missy told brother Gregory much about herself, particularly her proclivity towards the less likeable natures of humanity.

"I am cynical and selfish," she had said with no small amount of self-assuredness.

"Why do you sound so proud about it?" he had asked then. To which she merely shrugged. Missy was still too young you see. She understood then that it was unusual to be proud of such things, such qualities. But the young will always think they know of everything and she had never fully contemplated what had caused her to embrace such negative qualities and embrace them as a point of pride. All she knew was a vague inclination that being ruthless puts one ahead in life and that was why she valued those traits. In hindsight, it made her feel more powerful. More ready to face the world.

Brother Gregory showed great aptitude in the arts. He quizzed her on Shakespearean and classic plays to which it can safely be said that she knew nothing about. And her inability to answer any one single question astounded her and made her anxious. For she had known instinctively by then that he was an intelligent man. And she wanted desperately to impress him. She hadn't met many people more intelligent than she in that small town, in fact she had begun to think it was full of idiots, and it was refreshing as well as challenging. But she had no answers that day. Or the next, when he quizzed her how much she knew about the classical opera music scene. She felt so stupid every single time. And he made her feel like a school child being chided in the headmaster's office. She would berate herself on the way home every time, promising and vowing to do better the next time.

The third meeting, she was to sing for him. And Missy was exceedingly nervous. It mattered to her to perform well that day. His approval mattered to her because some part of her felt that if he could approve of her then perhaps, just perhaps, she had a fighting chance. And she felt like she needed to feel that desperately even though at the time she may not have known it.

In all nervousness and with her stage fright, it was no surprise she did not perform so well. And that rather upset her. But she was to have one last chance. She was to perform a scene from a play for him next and this at least she was determined to do much better than this time. Her performance when it happened, was lacklustre at best and her heart almost jumped out of her chest while she acted. But thankfully it was better than the last.

Upon parting, brother Gregory smiled at her at what felt like the first time since they'd met and said, "Good luck." Good luck.

Two words that she would ponder upon for the next two days or so, feeling uplifted by it's implication. For what did it mean? Did it mean that he saw something in her, something that could bring her the chance of success in the field? It wasn't much. But it brought her hope.

That time marked a period of particular conflict within her household, centred around her. As they say, teenagers are rebellious and she was one particularly. The announcement of her intention to pursue the performing arts had not been met well and began to be the root of much conflict within her home. Her parents absolutely disapproved, and she absolutely insisted. It was her one true love you see. And she fought for it. Never had she fought for something so long and so hard before.

Her parents favoured the more stable and respectable profession of law while she favoured the utterly disreputable arts. But in the end, after months of conflict, she agreed. She was now bound for the city, ready to take the next step in life, and the next step towards a qualification in law, and the next step towards the freedom to make her run in the big, wide world just as she'd always dreamed. And maybe there, she could take her first steps into music as well.

College life was a breath of fresh air. New habits were formed, old ones broken. New friends were made and many old ones forgotten. Missy felt that she finally had room the grow and she relished the opportunity. It was a city of opportunities and she was going to make them work for her. She performed in as many events as she could, joined clubs for the performing arts. And college was where she met him. The first boy she would ever have a good and proper "Teardrops on My Guitar" crush on.

Up until that point, she had never known it was possible to feel so deeply for a boy, but that she did and it was unprecedented. She spoke about him to anyone who would listen. For a while it seemed like her life revolved around his existence. He was articulate, intelligent, worldly, and got along well with girls. He treated her with affection afforded for the best of friends and that made her hope that perhaps she had a chance with this boy.

Missy had never known such feelings before. And it was uncomfortable. She desperately wanted him to notice her. To see her as a potential girlfriend as opposed to just another friend. She relished his compliments and wanted to impress. But, she refused to change her dressing, even though she thought it might improve her chances for she wanted him to like her for her. She had big romantic ideas, Missy. And she believed truly, in love and in loving someone for exactly who they were. Nothing else mattered. There was nothing else. It was almost black and white. That was what love was to her. And she dreamed of love. Of finding someone who would cherish her for herself, as herself, for the rest of their lives together.

He was a good boy, intelligent, a scholar, decent family background and fashionable. And he was good to her. He seemed like the perfect choice.

Then her birthday came around and a joint celebration was to be held with some other classmates. She could not sleep the previous night due to a mixture of excitement and anxiety for how the day would go for birthdays were a celebration and meant something to her.

Missy had a birthday dinner planned with some close friends. But he could not make it, for he had to go out to get a birthday cake for the joint celebration. Finally it was time to open the gifts, and she opened hers, a present from everyone with a card signed by everyone. Such anticipation was crushed almost instantly. Missy was almost appalled to see the horrendous selection of knick knacks inside the bag. What made it worse was knowing that he had been responsible for picking the presents. It looked as if someone went into a dollar store blindfolded and picked the first six things they could lay their hands on.
Upon perusing her card which had been signed by everyone, she could not find his signature. She looked again and again and finally found a small squiggle by the side which had no name or message to it and realized that it had to be his as the rest had all been accounted for. The disappointment crushed on her heart like a weight of bricks. He could not even have been bothered to sign his own name, and that disappointed her young heart so.

She made her disappointment known to her friends, and they pronounced their disapproval of his gift choices. She moped and bemoaned his obvious indifference. One day, she went shopping with one of them for a birthday gift for another upcoming birthday. She browsed half-heartedly and expressed her opinions, still down about the fact that at least they were making an effort to choose something their friend would like, unlike his callous and apathetic attempt at gift-buying.

That day before leaving, the friend she had been shopping with hugged her and ran to the waiting car. Missy had felt someone jostle her bag as she moved in for the hug and turned to check it. Upon opening it, she found a necklace that she had expressed favour for of earlier while shopping for the gift, nestled in her bag with no reason to be there. It took her a moment to realize what was happening and by the time she looked up, her friend was already gone, the car already woven into the pattern of traffic that lined the roads of the city.

She was surprised at how quickly and easily the tears came. Flowing freely like rivers down her cheeks as she sobbed, tears of happiness for the first time in her life. She was so moved she did not know what to do, how to react. And so she moved through the mall, crying the whole time. Sobbing like a child. It filled her heart to bursting and when it did burst, gratitude and a gushing of tears washed out. It was the single most touching experience of her young life and would continue to be for many years to come. She probably learned something about friendship that day although exactly what has yet to be defined even by herself.

She agonized over him for months, 6 months to be exact. It was a new love, it was a young love. It wasn't love. Finally, after months of analysing and thinking and looking into things he said and did, she decided she could not take any more of it and decided to confess. The folly and hopefulness of youth.

The day was set and the confession made. But he rather politely and vaguely turned her down, claiming they would be better off as friends. The numb set in, keeping the embarrassment and the sadness at bay for the rest of the day. It would be a day or two before it finally dawned on her just how embarrassing and upsetting it was to have been rejected and by someone she liked so fiercely and who was an integral part of her social circle of 4 which meant that she had to see him every single day even though the last thing she wanted after that was to meet him again. 

Thus came the agonizing days when she struggled with her sense of rejection, her first true sense of rejection and it bit into her soul like no other. It was a weight, hanging from her heart, always threatening to pull it ever lower and lower until it would sink into a pit and be swallowed up by the ground. 

It became almost unbearably awkward to socialize with them for they we're fond of play wrestling and she could not touch him nor go very near him. Thus she sat back a lot, alone in the midst of laughing friends. The loneliness creeped in then, properly as loneliness made it's way up the front porch in preparation for a formal introduction after which she would be irrevocably well acquainted with it. 

The three months trying to forget him went by in a haze of feeling left out and awkward and depressed and heavy-hearted and pouring her woes out to anyone who would listen. Usually to the same people. It tore at her heart but the tears could not come for she was no normal teenage girl who could practically bawl on command. The springs of her tears had dried up one day suddenly some time ago and it took art and a lot of coaxing to get them flowing again. All sorrow just became dead weight within instead of being washed out by cool, cleansing tears. 

When she heard that he was pursuing another, a more glamorously dressed, typically pretty girl doing medicine, what progress she made in forgetting the fiasco was pushed back and her personal insecurities pushed instead to the forefront. It was probably the first time she realised she even had them when it came to the inexplicably confusing world of dating. She felt passed over for not being good enough. And it gnawed at her consciousness for some time before she finally cried all about it to her father; an incredibly unlikely choice, finally expressing her doubts, her inadequacy at the fact that the girl was not only the perfect girl for him but the perfect daughter for them. But it was not for naught, for the next week, after kind reassuring words, she went back to the city and found that she no longer felt anything for him. She felt free and cleansed of it in its entirety and the lightness meant she could breathe again. That day Missy learned that all she needed to heal that wound was to accept herself and to know that she was accepted. So after a total of nine months, the chapter closed on that boy and Missy's father would forever after that be phobic of her having any affections for anyone, probably on the off chance that she might be rejected and broken hearted again.

The next boy was a passing, fleeting experience. He was simply a musician in a band she fronted and she developed a liking for him. A mild, fluttering liking. It was nothing like the deep, crushing affection she had for the previous one. However it was not to be as well for she was not his type at all. She was colourful and loud whereas he preferred a much simpler girl. And so that one passed like a blip on the radar. And was never much considered neither did it affect her much.

Years came and went, Missy had many adventures in the city. Wild, thrilling adventures. Travelling the city in the early hours of the morning, adventures that went on all night and well into the rising of the morning sun. Seasons came and went and as all things in this world, she too changed just as everything does. Something about growing up, it makes one lose one's zest for life sometimes. It takes the magic out of some things, and they never come back. Without knowing it, day by day, hour by hour, month by month, we lose the spark that use to ignite flames of passion or excitement in us in the past. Temperaments cool and mentalities mature. And Missy grew up. Slowly, surely, she grew and developed as a person even when she wasn't looking. She would sometimes sit and look back at all the changes that have occurred and marvel at it all. Over the years since she went to the city, she stopped writing. And the words just didn't flow as frequently nor did she spend very much thought on them any more or hastily pick up a pen and paper to note them down when she did get them at all. There were other more distracting things that occupied her, and she very willingly relinquished her proclivity to write for the excitement of socialising and a perceivedly better habit of not dwelling in thought for too long. Somewhere along the line, she also have up on the dream she had carried in her bosom for so many years. No one knows exactly when she did, only that she did; one day at a time as it inched from her grasp until she finally let it slip free and vanish into the ether, remaining only as thin wisps in her heart and mind.

Then came the one. That one, rather. That one that would make such a big difference in Missy's life that she would never be the same ever again. He was a simple boy. Younger than she. Tall with a shock of long, dark wavy hair and large doe-like eyes rimmed by thick dark lashes. And he took his time in entering her life even though she had known him for some time. But when he finally did, he shook foundations that reverberated through the rest of her world. He was a gentle boy; gentle and kind in spirit and soul and good natured except with a tendency to lash out in particularly strenuous situations by punching walls and solid objects. But he made her feel like the world was made of flowers and sunshine and suddenly everything seemed so much better.

It took a few months before Missy suddenly realised that it was strange what she was feeling for him. Nothing like the shallow albeit distressing crush she had on the other boy. Nothing that she had ever known before. This one felt different, like it originated from a different place within her heart. Warmer, subtler but more insistent somehow in a soft, coaxing way. The Lord knows how Missy finally managed to connect the dots and realized that she had fallen in love with him. Not a fleeting albeit agonizing crush. She was in love with this boy. But he was forbidden to her in every single way, or so she thought and thus she held back.

But the way love is, it sometimes works hard to find its way and somehow, against many many odds, she and him started down a lovely path together. It was a harsh path, especially at first. He had an ex girlfriend he had to deal with which he did poorly but she stood by him patiently while he fumbled and failed to handle the situation effectively. He was a coward you see. One of his fatal flaws. He did not know how to and was too scared to do what most others would have done. Others marvelled at her willingness to stay by him while he let the issue drag on, causing multiple arguments between them and countless other problems and difficulties. But she loved him and somehow it was all worth it. Just to see him smile at her, hear his voice in conversation with her and feel him lying next to her at night. To breathe in his scent and feel the warmth of his embrace. Such simple things but they filled her with such joy, and such wonder.

He treated her like his Queen and she trusted him implicitly. There was never a doubt between the two that there would be anything the matter with their love. She could be herself with him. Completely herself the way she had never been able to be with anyone else. It was giddying and beautifully overwhelming at times.

You see, after some time and for some reason, Missy had decided that it was not alright to open up to people and to let them in much. Nobody cared she had decided, and so the mask hardened into a shell and calcified into an armour which she wore throughout the day and the night and never took off for anyone or anything. It was a transformation that happened slowly and thus escaped her notice and she thought nothing of it. But he tried hard and he worked hard to pry open that shell and learn more about the person inside. He saw through the armour and some part of him recognized the person inside it. A person with passions, and love and a warm, beating heart. And he worked hard to retrieve it. She found it strange at first what he was doing; how it mattered to him and it was all new and alien to her. But after a while she fell in with him and his work paid off. They would speak long into the night and all manner of secrets and stories and empathies would be shared between the two of them. But because of that armour, when she finally realised how much of it she seemed to have dropped for him, it drove her mind into a state of frenzy. A shock and a confusion that was not necessarily unpleasant but bewildering all the same. She did not know what to do with so much feelings. So much emotions. So much openness for someone. They were foreign and she had always told herself that they were bad. It felt like someone had injected a solvent into her and things were liquefying within her, beginning to slosh and jostle around and realigning themselves. The hardened mud surrounding everything seemed to have cracked and a warm golden liquid was making its devastating path down and through her entire being, flooding her soul and shaking the very foundations she had unconsciously placed her personality on. It was terrifying but somehow she could recognize it was good at the same time.

Love is a many splendoured thing. She was his queen and he her king for a long time. They fought many many times over the two years together, she threw many tantrums. But he had changed her as a person. And with him came a warmth from her that never before existed. A general habit of openness and of feeling. Of expression. They would often joke that he had found her heart and he would hide it away so it would be his forever and she could give it to no one else. Perhaps it was true that he had found it. She'd certainly recognized it's existence since then. 

They say love is so significant that one would not fail to recognize it when meeting it's acquaintance. Missy certainly recognized it. It wasn't difficult. They felt to her like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that just fit together and clicked into place. Like they belonged together, two halves of a whole. It felt so right. They talked about it. Her parents would surely object due to his heritage and faith but she was ready to cut ties with her family if need be; she would choose him above all else.

But alas, little did she know it was not to last. A month after the two year mark of being together, circumstances and his personal shadows caused it to end and when it did, the bottom of the world she thought she'd always known suddenly dropped out from under her and Missy felt like she was falling endlessly through an abyss in a suffocating darkness that threatened to engulf and envelope her completely.

The days after the desolation were brutal and harsh. Almost everything would bring fresh tears to her eyes and she knew not how to carry on. Every night would be spent in long repetitive conversations with her friends as she first explored her feelings and recounted every moment she had spent with him throughout the two years. She knew not how to accept it; how to believe it had happened even. The crushing weight of all the broken promises and the heartbreak and disappointment threatened to snuff her very being out and she struggled daily with its weight. Making her way through the day felt like wading through mud; one step at a time, just trying to get from one moment to the next without keeling over. Sometimes the weight of holding it all up would crush her tiny spirit and Missy would just get so tired. So tired of trying to get over someone when she obviously couldn't and her heart obviously wasn't ready to. It was then that loneliness truly and finally made its way to her doorstep, rang the bell and she had answered it. 

Those were dark days that would have reverberating effects on Missy's life and person for a long long time, the extent of which is possibly even now yet to be determined. 

At this point, life had come a long way for Missy and she had come a long way in life. Along the way, she had learned that some dreams must be given up and the humdrum of daily routine and the years somehow stamped it out of her and it was practically no more; existing only in the corners and vestiges of her mind, a memory of a burning passion and merely a mild lingering hope. He had been her new dream but it was over and she was left without. 

Over the years Missy had made two friends, Mademoiselle and Material Girl and they would go on through life, trying to figure things out together.

The problem with Missy is that she was always one to take things too hard and too seriously. The months that passed after him were marked by grey skies and torrential downpours. After a while it seemed to Missy that she hadn't seen the sun in some time and possibly forgot what it's warmth felt like. For it was true he had taken her heart and hid it away. But instead of giving it back, he had ground it into dust and thrown it away. It was then that she knew true heartbreak. The wrenching pain that exists neither here nor there and gives everything in life a dim pallor and a bitter aftertaste. The weight that broke even the strongest man's back and the fell wind that snuffed out the light of even the brightest of candles. 

It never occurred to Missy how much she had changed over the two years until some months after. Her acquaintance with loneliness meant that she now detested spending time alone and was always running from distraction to distraction, always trying to keep her mind from wandering into darker, emptier places. She had lost her solidarity and her comfort in it. And where she had been hopeful before that some day she would find her luck in love, she was hopeful no more. A bleak hopelessness set in for it had felt like a one in a lifetime love to Missy; perhaps it was. True or false, Missy lost all hope that she could ever find something like that again. It was a miracle the first time around and she doubted that lightning could strike twice. Particularly for someone as eccentric as she. Her confidence was in pieces and where once she was well put together, now she was a cracked frame, an empty shell, hollow and fragile and lined with fine fractures and all set to fall apart at the next blow. She was not so sure about herself anymore and in relation to that, not so sure about anything anymore. 

The time passed in a mad internal rush to the next distraction and the next and before long it was time again for Missy to move up and out into the world. For she was bound for the United Kingdom; the path which would seem as if all in her life has led up to. As if all roads had conspired to bring her there regardless of how they looped and turned on their way. 

He was part of her newer, brighter life in England, the next boy. And he made up a large part of the sunny months. 

After some days of arriving, when the initial tears of disappointment at the broken dream (it had been their dream to study together in the west), had passed, She found that she no longer missed home. In fact she never did. Her initial discomfort and apprehension at leaving and arriving in the west was the result of being wrenched from her comfort zone. But after some time, she realized that she had been hiding back at home. Wrapped up in a tight and warm cocoon of her daily routine and hiding from the world, herself, from everything. And she no longer wanted to go back to the place where she hid. She wanted to stay. But since she saw no prospect also of her acquiring a permanent paying position there, she had nothing to look forward to. And thus for a while, all that existed was today. There was no tomorrow, no yesterday, only today. And it was so different although not entirely unpleasant. Missy found that a strange feeling. Like being uprooted and floating in the ether, disconnected and unanchored to anything. Directionless. But the momentary nature of her expectations also meant that she lived in the current time and thought less, wondered less, worried less. She was the happiest she had been in a long, long time. 

The month of sun was bright and cheerful and full of hope; renewed and resurrected like a Phoenix from the ashes. She met him on her second night there and he pursued her, every single day, with persistence and tact and before too long, she found that he had helped her to let go of her previous love. She was ok now. For the first time in a long time, she was ok. It didn't hurt anymore. 

She fell fond of him quickly. Too quickly some would say. Far too quickly. And it was brief but it brought much joy and sunshine to her days. Looking forward to his visits and basking in the golden glow of his attention for her. But as they say, love grows old and waxes cold, and it was never a forever kind of love. It wasn't even love. He got to know her and lost interest and the rest, they say, is history. It ended and left her shattered once again. For though they never did click like two puzzle pieces, she was fond of him. And Missy is the loyal kind of girl. The kind who would try harder, again and again to make it work once she'd started something with someone. But he had a fatal flaw and it proved to be their undoing. He absolutely could not and would not communicate and as she reached out he pulled away. Missy learned that day, from him and her last love, that words are not meant to be trusted. That a boy can say anything but when the time came, words, no matter how sincerely said, would count for absolutely naught.

It was not to be and like a vase that was shattered once and pieced carefully but haphazardly back together again, the second time it was shattered, Missy had no idea what do with the pieces that lay before her. It seemed harder this time around and she had not the energy to try.

Now it would do to explain exactly what an impact her first love had on her. Where she had been a solitary character, content with her own company with a tacit distrust of the efficacy and indeed usefulness of reaching out to the people around her, the trust and the bond of the relationship had opened up an avenue within her which now refused to close. In short, Missy shared more and was more emotionally free to the people within her circle in ways she never was before. She now had the habit, the need of reaching out to those, perhaps even to those whom she should not, in an effort to fill the gaping hole which he left behind. And the new habit of trust he began in her had much to do with it as well. All of those in itself would have been a tremendous, noticeable change were it not for the fact that where she used to love herself and every aspect of her, she now found she no longer did. In fact, she possibly even hated some aspects of herself now and had ceased to think very highly of herself. Her confidence had been trashed and she now began to doubt her own value as an individual on this Earth. That made it a phenomenal change. Almost as if she had been flipped the other way around. She was definitely not the same person anymore.

Her new habits and the second shattering resulted in her reaching out to her new friends in England for solidarity and comfort; for an assurance that she was not in it all alone. However, alas, unforseen to her, they began to pull away as well for the combination of her eccentricity and her sombre mood during the three days after the event was too much for them and they too left her outside in the cold for being a wet blanket.

It hit Missy like no words ever could explain. For aside from the month of sun, England had not been kind to the poor girl. There was something about the country. They say you find yourself when you go abroad and when you travel. You find new things to add to your soul and enrich it in ways staying somewhere without moving never can. Well there was something about England, it somehow inexplicably dug up every single issue Missy has ever had with herself and the world at large; things she'd very comfortably pushed away back home and easily forgot about, things that never even occurred to her, and dumped it all in heap at the forefront of her mind, forcing her for the first time to deal with it fully. 

Now as far as overwhelming goes, that was pretty much good for it. For the first time in her life, Missy found herself thinking about and realizing things about herself she never did or had to before. Bad things. It never occurred to her she had that many problems until they all piled at her doorstep and began knocking like door to door carollers on days leading up to Christmas. It was shocking to say the least and left the poor girl reeling. For the first time in her life, she didn't know who she was. What she stood for, what her position on things were. She felt so lost, stranded in a wood where everything looked the same with an urgent need to reach it's edge but with no possible way of determining which direction to take and go. Every single adversity that had come along before this were bad, but at least through them all she had herself. She knew who she was. But she didn't anymore, not this time and it left her feeling more lost and hopeless than she ever did before. 

It didn't take long in England for Missy to realize that she had indeed been a little girl. She was naive; a revelation that was hard to process at first as she had never been accused of naïveté before. But as the days rolled by, she had to admit that perhaps, just a little bit at least, she was naive. And it took a trip halfway around the world for her to finally realise that. 

Looking back now at the past two years, it was true. She was a little girl then. Hopeful, ambitious, confident, self-content, drunk on the ideals and opportunities of life and yet eccentric and distrustful of others with the care of her heart. But naive. Now she was much the same, just a decomposed version. Still eccentric, but not much else. It was as if the past two years had sucked the life out of her and burst the balloon of her hopes and dreams. She was a more tired version, older and wiser perhaps but much more tired. Of the intricacies of people and their relationships with each other, and of needing it for herself. 

She met him the same night she met the other one. The one who spoke to her first and brought her in to meet his friends, which included the boy who made up her months of sun. He was dark and sarcastic with a mean streak and an imperturbable honesty which he flung around like a baton, lashing out at those around him. He was sharp and bitter and dark like Ebony dipped in bile. And wonderfully eccentric. 

Missy did not know what it was that drew her towards him, it couldn't just be his looks, neither did she know at first that she was drawn towards him. When his friend made his move she forgot all about him but somehow in the deeper recesses of the mind he still held some of her interest, resulting thus in subtle reactions like a momentary flash of excitement should he join them anywhere. So subtle even she didn't notice them. 

But he was dark and her limited conversations with him were twisted and confusing. They were a myre of mockery and criticisms and thinly veiled bitterness guised in the form of eloquent banter. He told her unequivocally how naive and innocent she was and she didn't believe him at first but he persisted with his opinion. 

It was not until after the month of sun had turned into rain and clouds and thunderstorms that he suddenly one day made his move on her. A move that surprised her greatly for she had long discounted the idea that he had any interest whatsoever in her. It also made her realize quite unfortunately that she had great interest in him all along and now that she saw it, she could not unsee it. 

But alas, it too was not meant to be. She discovered that he was that way due to a heartbreak very much similar if not identical to the one she suffered earlier and had decided to shut the door on the world. He was too dark, too bitter and as much as any maiden would like to think she could save someone from their own darkness, Missy's good sense knew that there were some things that one can never save another from; and one of those things is themselves. It was hopeless to try or even consider trying and so she made the hope fade and forced herself to stop entertaining silly, foolish notions of a boy who could only break her heart again. 

It was perhaps subtle but the combination of everything tired her out so. Missy looked back at the years before when her journey started and realized that she had indeed been a little girl. Innocent and young and naive and idealistic. She may not have thought she was ever those things, but she saw now that she indeed was. Slightly wiser and a few years older now, she sat on a low brick hedge in the bitter cold of the oncoming winter with a stick and looked back at the foolishness of her idealism; marvelling at how ignorant she had been, of her own naïveté, and in awe and wonder at how three months in god forsaken England had changed her so completely and managed to turn her upside down and inside out. She was jaded now. And where the world had seemed so big and full of opportunity before, rising up the ranks of how far she could go out into it, suddenly from where she stood, it didn't feel so big anymore. It was like the world shrank when she wasn't looking. 

 

She learned a lot in those three months. Namely that the world was a much more confusing place than she had anticipated. And she herself was much more unfathomable even to herself than she had thought she was. That sometimes one can try with all of one's might but it just won't work out. That it doesn't do anyone any good to care much about what people think about you. Because sometimes you can't help it and the more you care the unhappier you will be. That people are generally unreliable and the hurt in the world can come from anywhere, even from yourself. 

The dark boy left an effect on Missy as well. After him, she realised that she had given up. Given up on all love and all hope that love would come around. She had spent years, loved every wrong kind of love and now she was tired. Tired of hoping and thinking that maybe it could happen. It couldn't happen, and she wasn't about to wait around anymore. 2013 had been a terribly painful year, full of broken dreams and smashing hearts and hopes. Yet also full of very important lessons. They were harsh and they hurt but such are lessons. Some just hurt and that's the way they are. It was her learning curve, a vast amount of learning compacted into the time span of 525,600 minutes and they haven't been kind to her but they have taught her much in the time spent. Something clicked within her and suddenly it seemed as if all patience seeped out of her, leaving an empty hostile shell of bitterness and hopelessness. She could be happy or have some semblance of happiness without that which all humans yearn for. How hard could it be after all, in this age of loneliness that we have carved out for ourselves. 

But it would seem that fate had absolutely no regard for her decision at all. Over the years, Missy had given up on those of her own race; knowing that it would only lead to unrequited affections. She had never been and probably never would be what they are looking for and she accepted that and discounted them from her considerations. But the next boy was one of her own kind, and the first one in over three years to draw her attention to her absolute chagrin. For Missy had thought that at the very least, she was over with such foolhardy pursuits. But no, fate had other plans. She still remembered the first time she met him.

It had always been a point of wonder for her how some people can mean absolutely nothing at the first meeting but grow to mean so much eventually. He was just a passing note at best when she first met his acquaintance. She could barely have been bothered to remember his name, it being so similar to another's. All she remembered was that he was tall and willowy and friendly. He smiled, introduced himself and invited her to join them that night but she politely ignored the statement, not wanting to have to turn someone down expressly. And just like that, he was gone from her conscious notice, like a leaf blown away by the wind.

It would be a matter of great confusion and of strange wonder how she started talking to him as to a friend more than an acquaintance. But when the boy who made up her month of sun went away, leaving only shadow in his wake, for some strange reason unknown even to herself, she turned to him for conversation and it was he who was subject to the various contemplative expressions she had to share. He gave her kindness when there was none, and he was good to her when no one else was. And for a long time after that, she would feel a deep gratitude towards him and a desire to remain on amicable terms with him.

But it was not to be as well, as Missy can and could have predicted from the start. He was a hurricane and a tempest. A conundrum and a tumultuous brew of implosive emotions and contradictions. He was a mystery unto others and perhaps even unto himself. She could sense somewhere deep inside, a suppressed unhappiness with the path planned out for his life. For he was one who had to be free. To do all he wanted to do and to go where he wanted to go, bound to no one and nothing but himself. Perhaps his sense of dissatisfaction came from the weight of obligation on his shoulders, perhaps his desire to break free a reflection of his own sense of inescapable responsibility. But in this life he could find no meaning and perhaps thus, an emptiness resided somewhere within him. He was always in a frantic race to accomplish all that he would before returning home to settle in his duties. And he had a fascination for new people because perhaps they represented a break from the life he so wished could be different.

Missy could only sit and watch as it all unravelled. All efforts she made slipped like water through her fingers. He offended with the ease of a bird taking to air and was prone to violent mood swings. One moment he would be as bright and sunny as she remembered him and the next sullen and petulant like a five year old. She did not know what to do. And when he turned against her, she felt the full force of his animosity gusting like a chilly northern wind. Something changed when she wasn't looking. But he suddenly pulled away from her and developed a dislike for her character. It excaped her understanding and hurt her shrivelled, battered heart how someone could be so appreciative of her personality one day and develope a complete dislike for it the next. It represented another blow to her already crumbled faith in friendships and people. But so it had to be, and so it was.

His change of direction gave her whiplash and with that so did her regard for him fall from great heights, to abysmal depths. To lose respect for someone is in no way a pleasant experience. One would not generally think so but it takes something away from both parties; the one who lost someone's respect, and the one who lost his or her respect for someone for having good regard for another is a fulfilling experience somewhat and gives a more pleasant feeling than having that regard just exiting through the doors one day and never coming back.

With the closing of the previous year, Missy had thought that her extreme learning curve was coming to and end but it would seem not. Perhaps it was gradually evening out but she was still in the meantime being battered with difficult pills to swallow. Perhaps there was a point to it all, to all these lessons she had been bombarded with so far; to her acquaintances with despair, loneliness and doubt. Perhaps there was a reason and a purpose which would make it all worthwhile. But for the mean time, Missy had no idea what it was or what it could be.