Restructure- on your own terms

On Servitude & Sentimentality

Today, I started my day back in Sydney with romantic thoughts to revel in before I am back in the grind tomorrow...

But at the moment, I am bogged down with a semi- unexpected turn of events that could threaten to upset me for a long time.

You see, only DL can affect me this way.

At the start of our first physical separation, we could keep up with talking over the phone for just once a week. I reckon that everytime he calls, it would spell trouble and again the balance in my life is severely tilted. So no news on his end was good news. Our lives were fraught with too much trouble and challenges that I felt I was mothering him for too long. Time to concentrate on me and onwards I moved to Sydney a year and a half ago.

DL has lost his day job once again. He casually mentioned it.

I am feeling more weary by the day, with things picking up on my career, I haven't the tenacity of those dark years to submit 40 resumes for the both of us each day, me carefully crafting and tweaking each cover letter to address each job descriptions and having to do so between lunch breaks at the libraries and at the residences of kind friends at night. I did that in every of my freaking waking hours. I could not afford to waste time. And he didn't even know how to craft a cover letter or a CV. You see, we were so broke that he had to cut off the internet access.

Today, the news took me to a different place. I grow tired and I could no long psych myself with positiveness. Even the words of warning from the cab driver/fortune teller does nothing for me to believe that I would see the light at the end of the tunnel. After all, I am supposedly born a lucky star to the fortitutous man who would marry me. I used to think that DL is so down on luck; perhaps the least I could do is to let my luck rub off me since he loves me so much.

I couldn't even pull that mock smile on my face today to brace myself for the challenges ahead. I rang V and started tearing. Then I was on the verge of completly losing my fast depeleting voice.

****

I attribute this pain and weariness that I feel for this relationship to two things. My strong sense of servitude and my sentimentality. That is why I stay.

These are my achillies' heel.

SERVITUDE

I always need to be of good value to somebody. I see it as my duty to life for some reason.

Recently, as I was out partying with the girls, it dawned on me that all I ever want to do is that I want everyone to have a good time. For the past 3 nights, I watched intently, making sure that V and B were having enough fun and that I could be of service to them to make their agendas happen. I spent the night trying to deflect unwanted attention and looking out for my friends. The guise of the social butterfly/livewire is what I would don to serve my friends.

When we lost V's friend on that velvety night, I texted that man to make sure that he got home in one piece and he was grateful that I cared. But I guess it's so me.

And when my Fillipino fling proposed that we left without his gang of friends, I insisted we party as a team (think I was still in semi work mode)... I figured I could put my desires on hold for the moment and I must ensure that we didn't abandon the other boys mid-way that night.

The point that I am trying to make is that this strong sense of servitude has done me in big time with DL. Hence, I heap the world on my shoulders and makes his challenges easy. I have fed him well but I didn't teach him to fish and so I bear the brunt of it and again, I get caught up in my suffering while he has little appreciation for the magnitude of weariness and emotional damages that he had wrecked within me.

SENTIMENTALITY

Good oh sentimental me has resulted in me being in this relationship for far too long. I think far too long at this moment because I have been experiencing more downs than ups. I wonder if I would ever experience that "high" again in our relationship.

Perhaps, if I had left some 3 to 4 years ago, I might have been in better hands or perhaps I wouldn't have ended up the way I am right now. But I didn't because I couldn't leave DL in the lurch and again, I told myself, perhaps when he is ready on his own, I just might...

But the day will never come because I'll always be there for him and perhaps he knows so well that he needn't feel the desire to push himself too hard....

Yesterday, while Dr. Jekyll & Hyde and I were lying in bed, we must've have been on the topic of sentimentality and something relating to my emotional disturbances. We laid in bed, me staring at the ceiling, that mock smile on my face and he asked what I was smiling about.

I said nothing. I am just sad.

Then he asked why I was smiling then.

I said because that is how I braved myself for this world.

My motto is always to service everything with a smile even when the going gets tough.

****
So there you go, dear oh me with the servitude and the sentimentality. Somedays, I tell myself (to instill positiveness that) I could do worse by being with a guy who could charm the pants off me and given my qualities, I could end up broken, but in a different way, holding a different bucket of tears of that of spurned lover rather than the mother...

****

In exchange for emotional security, have I thus lost greater emotional ground than I have gained?

A Pyrrhique victory?

If love is described as one hell of a battlefield...

****

Tonight, I am weary, so weary that I think I could just let go...

Is this my limit?

****


Love's Dormitory

I am tired of giving my heart
cold showers
and early morning runs on emotion's
playing fields.

My love wanders wide on quiet
studious mornings
so please tell me how long
until the end of this term?

- Stuart Flavell